[Sca-cooks] Recreation of 12th century Cheshire monastery Medical Herb Garden

[Sharon Gordon]

How they took a cure 800 years ago


Oct 24 2003

By Jenny Watson Daily Post Staff





MEDIEVAL monks used herbs to treat ailments such as rickets and TB centuries
before the discovery of modern drugs like penicillin.

Now, 800 years later, research has allowed gardeners at a Cheshire monastery
to recreate a 12th-century medical herb garden for the first time.

The project has been charted by the BBC gardening series Hidden Gardens
presented by Chris Beardshaw and will be aired in the New Year.

The garden stands on the ground where monks from Norton Priory, near
Runcorn, would have grown their herbs when the monastery's infirmary was
built in 1134.

Academics from Oxford University and experts from Kew Gardens used ancient
manuscripts stored in the Bodleian Library to ensure authenticity.

Norton Priory director Steve Miller said: "The monks would have ground up a
mixture of these herbs and used them in poultices and compounds.

"TB was treated with sage and lovage, while rickets was treated with rue and
betony."

One of the texts studied by historian Dr Tony Hunt was a 9th-century Latin
poem by German poet Walafrid Strabo called Hortalus or Little Garden.

It contains a detailed description of a monastery garden, and information
about which herbs were used by ancient doctors.

Among the herbs mentioned, which have been planted at Norton, include
mandrake, sage, lovage, horehound, figwort, costmary, rue, valerian ,
lungwort, saffron and angelica.

Medieval monks would have ground the herbs and mixed them with ale, milk,
vinegar or honey to make medicines while skin ointments were made by mixing
leaves in butter.

But Steve said although local school children will be allowed to make scent
bags filled with dried, aromatic herbs, Norton Priory will not be selling
its potions.

Hidden Gardens producer Jacci Parry said: "This was one of our most
fascinating projects. It is the earliest garden we have, in fact, ever
recreated in Britain."

The garden will be open to the public from October 19.