The Anchorhold and its Occupants
The anchorhold at All Saints North Street was rebuilt in 1910 to the designs of architect Edwin Ridsdale Tate. This feature of All Saints is now unique among churches in York, though many others would have existed in the pre-Reformation period. These buildings housed anchorites – individuals who retreated from the day-to-day business of the secular world, residing in seclusion in pursuit of spiritual revelation.
It was in the medieval period that All Saints North Street housed its most famous anchorite. Dame Emma Raughton was enclosed in the anchorhold in 1425 and lived there into the 1430s. Though we don’t know much else about Emma’s life before enclosure, she had experienced visions of the Blessed Virgin Mary predicting the death of King Henry V, the succession of his infant son, and the coronation of the latter in both England and France. The visions are well documented because of Dame Emma’s connection to a very powerful man – Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick. Drawing on her visions, Emma suggested that the Earl was the most fitting guardian for the infant King. In her correspondence with Richard Beauchamp, she also advised on personal matters, suggesting that building a chantry near Warwick would result in a much-wanted son for the Earl. Both the guardianship and the birth of a son came to pass, and these interactions are documented in the Rous Roll and The Pageants of Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, written a few decades after the events they recorded.
The modern anchorhold has also been home to notable residents. Adeline Cashman, a nun, was probably the first to live in the newly-reconstructed anchorhold in the early twentieth century. She acted as an advisor to Mary Breckenridge, who founded the Frontier Nursing Service in Kentucky in 1925, saving the lives of many women and children in remote areas through its midwifery service.
Brother Walter Willman, a former Bradford clothworker and First World War veteran, took up residence in the 1930s and lived in the anchorhold until his death in the 1970s. He was a familiar face in York and was interviewed for the BBC by Alan Whicker in 1961.
The anchorhold now houses the church’s heating system but is occasionally open for special tours, enabling visitors to look through the squint that once enabled our anchorites to watch the Mass from their secluded position.