Acoustic jar

An acoustic jar, also known by the Greek name echea (ηχεία, literally echoers), or sounding vases, are ceramic vessels found set into the walls, ceilings, and sometimes floors, of medieval churches.

[3] Vitruvius mentions the Roman general Lucius Mummius, who destroyed the city of Corinth and its theatre, and then brought the remains of the building's bronze echeas back to Rome.

The chronicler recorded that, in 1432: on the vigil of the Assumption, after brother Odo le Roy, the prior, had returned from the before-mentioned general chapter, it was ordered that pots should be put into the choir of the church of this place, he stating that he had seen such in a church elsewhere thinking that they made the singing better, and resound more, they were put up there in one day, by taking as many workmen as were necessary.

[9] In 1859 a correspondent to Archaeologia Cambrensis reported that at Pallet there was "a modern chapel, with earthenware vessels inserted in the walls of the choir, expressly for acoustic purposes".

[9] In England, a set of eleven jars survives high in the chancel walls of St Andrew's Church at Lyddington, Rutland.

[10] At St Peter Mancroft in Norwich two L-shaped trenches accommodating a number of acoustic jars were discovered beneath the wooden floor on which the choir stalls had previously stood.

[11] At Fountains Abbey, in Yorkshire several earthenware vessels were discovered mortared into the base of the choir screen, their necks protruding through the stonework.

The Chronicler of Metz, in the only medieval source on the purpose of the jars, mocks the prior for believing that they might have improved the sound of the choir,[8] and the archaeologist Ralph Merrifield suggested that their use might have owed more to a tradition of votive deposits than to the theories of Vitruvius.