Banfield Church’s Old Chest

Banfield Church’s Old Chest is a medieval record-keeping coffer whose movement between churches helps explain the gaps in the history of St. Joseph’s Church and connects Gerry Fenn’s archival investigation with Thomas Woolgar’s account of the past. It is more than a container: its age, contents, and transfer make the custody of the parish’s history a concrete part of the mystery.

Description and Purpose

Fenn describes the chest as made of thick elm or oak, reinforced with bands of Sussex iron, and secured by three locks. He estimates its size at about five feet by two, while acknowledging that he is unsure of the measurements. The description presents a substantial piece of parish furniture built to protect valuable records and objects, rather than an ordinary household box.

Fenn explains that church coffers were used to store documents, books, valuables, and records. He refers to an order by Henry VIII requiring each church to maintain a strong, parish-funded coffer for its records. Banfield’s chest, however, was already about two centuries old by then, placing its origins in the fourteenth century. Its existence therefore predates the later regulation: it represents a local record-keeping practice with a longer history than the rule Fenn cites.

Fenn’s Search in the Church

The chest becomes important after Monsignor Delgard describes a period for which the church archives contain no records. Fenn asks whether an old chest remains in the church and gives Delgard its distinctive construction and locks as clues. Delgard is surprised by the description and says he has not seen such a chest. He rules out the presbytery when Fenn asks about the house and attic, but does not know where it might be.

Fenn argues that the chest could preserve material about St. Joseph’s Church that is absent from the surviving archives. Delgard appears to recognize its significance, though he does not explain why. He offers to check the crypt after Mass; Fenn volunteers to go at once. In the crypt, Fenn opens a rusted door with a long key and searches among cardboard boxes, an old table, a leaning ladder, and other objects in the poor light. Puddles gather in the uneven floor, and a low, square object under a dust sheet catches his attention as he looks for the chest. The search scene gives the archival question a physical location, but the chest’s importance rests on the records it may contain, not simply on its age or appearance.

Removal and Later Custody

Woolgar’s chronicle supplies a later account of the chest’s movement. After Woolgar was removed from St. Joseph’s Church and assigned to St. Peter’s, his father brought him items from his former parish, including vestments. The church chest was carried there as well. Woolgar says it held the records of St. Joseph’s and the parish of Banfield, making its removal a direct explanation for why important material might no longer be found in its original setting.

Woolgar also describes his father examining the chest’s papers and other writings for anything that might bring disgrace on the family. He says the search found no account of his misconduct. Yet the chronicle itself was being written for a future reader and was to remain well hidden. The distinction matters: the chest held an official body of parish records, while Woolgar’s testimony survives as a separate, concealed account. The coffer’s contents could be searched, but its presence alone did not guarantee that every version of the past was available to the people who controlled it.

Narrative Significance

The chest joins two different kinds of evidence: the missing institutional archive that Fenn hopes to recover and the personal chronicle through which Woolgar records what he believes the official account leaves out. Its history is therefore also a history of custody. The parish-funded coffer was designed to preserve records, but its later removal shifts those records away from the community whose history they document.

The object’s solid construction contrasts with the uncertainty surrounding its whereabouts and contents. Its locks suggest security, while the narrative makes clear that physical protection cannot settle what is preserved, what is omitted, or who has access. By sending Fenn to search the crypt and later revealing that Woolgar’s father transported the coffer to St. Peter’s, the story turns an old repository into a link between present investigation and a contested past.