One of the more curious, and frankly slightly odd, tales connected with Christchurch Priory is that of the so-called miraculous beam. When the Priory was being built in the early twelfth century, the craftsmen encountered a bit of a structural hiccup that was considered to be rather sub-optimal. A large timber beam, essential for the roof not to fall down, turned out to be too short for its intended place. This is a civil engineering blunder and I’m sure my friend Liam would have been appalled at such incompetence.
But then, so the story goes, a mysterious carpenter appeared and he was a man that no-one had seen before, who quietly went about his work without complaint. Overnight, the too-short beam was miraculously found to be the perfect length, fitting flawlessly where before it had failed. The stranger, naturally, had vanished. So the rest of the builders decided that it must have been Jesus himself who fixed the beam. Hence the name Christ’s Church, the Priory’s supposed moment of celestial rebranding. I imagine that this whole thing was the talk of the pubs for that evening and indeed several nights to come.
The beam itself is still there today, high up in the Priory’s roof and my photo isn’t really very clear. It’s a reminder though of the construction process, although I rather suspect that they just did some medieval joining of a beam rather than Jesus himself popping across, but who knows? I mean, it’s good for publicity if nothing else?