Stratford Langthorne - the real-life Abbey on the Marsh - and other possible IRL inspiration for C.S. Pacat
It took a bit of hunting, but thanks to Google Maps, Wikipedia, and the map included at the beginning of Dark Rise, I'm pretty confident that Stratford Langthorne Abbey is the Abbey on the Marsh.
"Stratford Langthorne Abbey, or the Abbey of St Mary's, Stratford Langthorne … also known as West Ham Abbey due to its location in the parish of West Ham, was one of the largest Cistercian abbeys in England, possessing 1,500 acres of local land"
Per Justice in Dark Rise, we know that the Abbey itself was torn down about a hundred years before the events of the book, which takes place in 1821.
"The Abbey lay between the Channelsea River and Marsh Lane (Manor Road). Nothing visible remains on the site, as local landowners took away much of the stone for their own buildings"
... "The Great Gate of the abbey survived in Baker's Row until 1825."
... "Excavation continues on the site as the remaining former factories are redeveloped. The latest, at Bakers Row, was in early 2008 and identified the former gatehouse of the Abbey - to the north east of the Abbey Church and defining the eastern edge of the precinct. This area, where former council stables were situated, is now protected from further development"
Weren't the stables of the Hall of the Stewards near its Northern Gate? And doesn't the following bit kind of sound like the Stewards with all of their artisan crafts?
"The Abbey was self-sufficient for its needs ... There were also workshops for brewing, shearing, weaving and tannery with farm buildings to service the extensive holdings and mills ..."
The Abbey's crest can still be seen on the outside of the Stratford Old Court House, and has been incorporated into the Newham Coat of Arms:
[Now please keep in mind that the whole rest of this post is just me spitballing about things that possibly provided inspiration for Pacat, because the heraldry for Newham above and Barking/Dagenham below are both from the 1900s, even if they incorporated older elements such as the Abbey Crest.]
Anyway, I don't know about anyone else, but in that Newham heraldry I see the Sun, with a sword (Ekthalion?) protruding from it, along with the Sun King's "royal sceptre with the sun's rays coruscating from it" as described in ch. 15 of Dark Heir. The "sceptre" is actually the crozier of the Bishop of Stratford-Lanthorne Abbey, but damn if it don't look like the Sun King's sceptre to me.
Also, before I came across Stratford Langthorne Abbey, I thought the Abbey on the Marsh could have been Barking Abbey (but it's just a bit too far from the area in Dark Rise's map). But when I was looking through heraldry today, the coat of arms for the nearby Borough of Barking and Dagenham (which like the Newham one has elements that represent its Abbey), and it really grabbed my attention:
We have two lions that are collared, holding torches, and a tower [see my previous update re: the Four Kingdoms] with the rays of the sun behind it. The motto ('DEI GRATIA PROBEMUR REBUS') means "By the grace of God let us be judged by our deeds." I can't help looking at those collared Lions without seeing Rassalon, Violet, and James asking to be judged by their deeds.
There's one other thing I want to include here, which isn't directly related to Dark Rise but to C.S. Pacat's other novel series, Captive Prince. One of the sources from the Wikipedia article on the Stratford Langthorne Abbey contains a paragraph which includes two very recognizable names for fans of CaPri:
Near the west end of the abbey church was a house occupied in 1538 by Lady de Vere and previously by the countess of Salisbury. ... In the same area were several other unnamed houses, one of which was on lease to Peter Vannes, dean of Salisbury.
Per the acknowledgements at the end of Dark Rise, we know that Pacat was working on the project for "more than ten years" before Dark Rise was finished. Dark Rise was published in 2021, and the first book of Captive Prince was self-published in 2013, so there were at least a couple years of overlap on the two projects. Anyway, I simply find it cool to discover in my own research a place where the world-building of the two projects may have intersected.
Let me know your thoughts!
