Katherine of Ledbury

Katherine of Ledbury (also known as Katherine de Audley or St Katherine of Ledbury; born 1272) was a Gloucestershire-born noblewoman of the 13-14th centuries who became an anchoress in Ledbury, Herefordshire. Although never officially canonised, Katherine was the subject of William Wordsworth's sonnet, “St. Catherine of Ledbury,” and is remembered as a patron saint of that town.

Life The site of Brimpsfield Castle in Gloucestershire, Katherine's birthplace. In 1287 or 1288, when Katherine was 15 or 16 years old, she married Baron Nicholas de Audley and had two sons and a daughter, the first when she was 17 years old.

She later became an anchoress in Ledbury. The scholar Liz Herbert McAvoy has speculated that Katherine's disappearance and reappearance in Ledbury may have been an attempt to avoid being married to another lord after the death of her husband, which McAvoy claimed was common practice at that time. John Masefield clarified these claims, stating that in November 1308, Katherine had obtained a license to grant her dower-lands to her son Nicholas in return for an annual payment of £100 for her sustenance. Masefield concluded this may have been "her first step toward withdrawal from the world."

Photograph of the interior of St Katherine's Chapel, also called the Chapter House, in St Michael and All Angels’ Church, which may have been built as a shrine to Katherine in anticipation of a canonisation that never occurred. Other sources, however, have suggested that Katherine did not live at the farm but sent her maid there to fetch the milk she sometimes drank.

On 7 October 1313 Katherine granted her lands in Carmarthenshire to her daughter and son-in-law. Masefield concluded that at this time, she was living in Ledbury but was not yet a recluse. At some point between then and 1323, her life as an anchoress began: she was first referred to as a "recluse" on a deed dated 1323 in which she was allotted an annuity of £30 through the sheriff of Hereford, “the sums being paid,” according to Clay, “out of lands which were in the custody of her husband's executor.” Legends have attributed clairvoyance and a miraculous power of prayer to Katherine. The antiquarian later drew a sketch of the supposed marks, which he claimed to have found in the sandstone rocks of Whelpley Brook in Herefordshire and which the locals called the "tracks of St. Catherine's Mare and Colt." The stones themselves were for many years used by local people as charms or safeguards against robbery, and according to the Saturday Review, people continued to believe the story of Katherine and her mare into the early 19th century.

Having continued her journey and reached the village of Bosbury, Katherine heard the bells ringing and sent Mabel to identify the cause. She said she knew "she was to end her days at some place whose name terminated with bury." It was only upon reaching Ledbury that Katherine finally heard the church bells ringing of their own accord and decided to remain “under the shadow of the bell-tower” as an anchoress.

Cult

Katherine was not formally canonised but was known, according to John Masefield, as "a very good woman." There is, however, speculation that the Chapter House of St Michael and All Angels Church in Ledbury was built as a shrine to Katherine.

Liz Herbert McAvoy has emphasised the "correlation between these two women [St Catherine of Alexandria and Katherine de Audley] in the popular imagination," a correlation she ascribes to the fact that the life of St. Catherine was "deemed eminently suitable for the instruction of young women considering religious enclosure" and that Katherine de Audley was herself enclosed "less than 100 metres from the powerful establishment [St Katherine's Hospital] devoted to her saintly namesake." William Wordsworth wrote the sonnet “St. Catherine of Ledbury” after taking a trip to Ledbury from Brinsop Court in Herefordshire, 20 miles away, where he was staying with his family. immortalised the legend of Katherine and the bells:

ST. CATHERINE OF LEDBURY When human touch (as monkish books attest) Nor was applied nor could be, Ledbury bells Broke forth in concert flung adown the dells, And upward, high as Malvern's cloudy crest; Sweet tones, and caught by a noble lady blest To rapture! Mabel listened at the side Of her loved mistress; soon the music died. And Catherine said, Here I set up my rest. Warned in a dream, the wanderer long had sought A home that by such miracle of sound Must be revealed: she heard it now, or felt The deep, deep joy of a confiding thought; And there, a saintly anchoress, she dwelt Till she exchanged for heaven that happy ground. For the book's epigraph, he gave a Latin phrase often found inscribed on medieval bells, Sum rosa pulsata mundi Katerina vocata, meaning, "When struck, I am the Rose of the World, called Katherine."

The western and eastern corbels on the archway of St Katherine's Chapel in St Michael and All Angels' Church, Ledbury. John Masefield speculated that the eastern corbel (bottom) depicted Katherine de Audley and that the western depicted her maid Mabel. Masefield also believed the legendary words Katherine spoke when she heard the bells ring, "Here I set up my rest," reflected a historical reality: at the Ritual of Enclosure when she began her life as an anchoress, according to the Exeter use, Katherine would have said the words, "Be this my rest for ever and ever."

Masefield also mentioned the "harmless pleasure" he took in believing that the heads of two women that can be seen carved into the chapel's arch are portraits of Katherine and her maid Mabel: