Getting there and getting in

Getting around our East Midlands countryside is usually easy enough, though sometimes in remoter areas roads can narrow to a single carriageway with only occasional passing spots, or deteriorate as more and more grass starts sprouting up in the middle of the road.  This can cause problems especially if the road gradually peters out or turns into a farm track, or if you suddenly come across large farm vehicles lumbering along in either direction.  But then you have to admit that the countryside is their area after all and working farmers really ought to take priority over mere daytrippers like us. Even so once we had to follow a very wide tracked agricultural vehicle, so wide that its tracks extended over both verges.  We followed this for over five miles at around 15 mph before it turned off, but never mind, the countryside was very pretty, the sun was shining, and we didn’t have to worry about any other vehicle approaching at speed around practically blind corners, which is the other hazard along such roads. 

Little Casterton: Hidden in the trees

Of course when you eventually get to a village you have to find the church which isn’t always as simple as you might think.  Several times, even with the aid of an OS map, we’ve gone round the houses several times before eventually finding the church, even sometimes where it had a tower.  When all else fails we aim for the thickest clump of trees and that’s where the church is usually hiding.  Then there are also villages where access to the church is by footpath as at Little Casterton (Rutland) or Allington (near Grantham) or through a field, such as at Cotham or Elston Chapel (both near Newark).  Occasionally access is through private land such as at Thorpe or Fenton (again both near Newark).  And then there is the lovely little oddity at Moorhouse (Notts) which we featured in an earlier blog.  There you can only get to the church through a farmyard and a field full of cattle.  It’s worth the effort though. 

Cotham: Access across a field

Elston Chapel: Another field

Thorpe by Newark: Access through private land

Fenton: Again access through a private garden

Lovely old doorway: Sadly it was locked

We’ve covered the issue of getting inside churches in several earlier blogs.  It’s very sad that some parishes feel that they can no longer keep their churches open though completely understandable in an age where so many churches are rarely used and many have been targeted by thieves.  It is great news therefore that in our travels around the region this year around 60% of those we’ve visited have been open or the key has been easily accessible nearby.  We’ve been lucky as well.  At one church where both the porch and even the churchyard gate was padlocked we were spotted peering through windows.  Instead of calling the police or demanding what we were up to a neighbour came running out offering us the key.  Thanks to him and also to all those other keyholders we’ve met who’ve always been happy to provide the key, often without any requirement for us to prove who we were.  I hope that means that we look both honest and respectable! 

However I recently visited a church by myself near where my wife has her tai chi class in the village hall.  While she was doing that I thought I’d nip along to the nearby church as I had an hour or so to wait for her.  As I got to the porch there was a big colourful sign declaring that there was a Holiday Club for children going on that morning in the church and I could see children, mothers and grannies in the church.  I hoped that as this church was normally locked this would finally be my chance to see the interior and anyway I always like to see churches being used.  However it was not to be.  I was stopped at the door by a determined looking granny and having first said it’d be fine to look around she then demanded to see my CRB clearance.  I haven’t had any reason to date to get clearance so once again I failed to see inside that particular church.  It did occur to me, however, that if I’d been a 60+ woman instead of a 60+ man I might have been allowed in without question….

Bawdy and Weird

Our village church wasn’t what you might call child friendly, at least it wasn’t back in the 1950’s.  I used to wake up on Sunday morning dreading the trek down to the church where for an hour or more I had to keep quiet and inactive and  knew I’d be so excruciatingly bored.  The service was only an hour or so but it seemed like days.   But then there was such a huge rush of relief when the final blessing was given and it was all over for another week!  Then my grandfather would go off to the pub for a pint with his friends and I’d go home with my grandmother to the lovely smells of the Sunday roast which had to be on the table at 1.00pm sharp.  Woe betide my grandfather if he wasn’t there on the dot.

But there were some things in the church to divert the young mind, things that no doubt were put there with just that purpose.  Like the carving under the roof of a man sticking out his tongue, and a matching head on the other side with several teeth missing.  Later, to my great amusement, I discovered in the frieze above the transept window outside there was a little man with his trousers round his ankles, peering through his legs, mooning at the world at large.  At the time I suppose I must have wondered why such non-religious things could be in the church but I didn’t think too hard about it.  Now perhaps I do try to get into the medieval mind a bit more but I still wonder how such things were permitted.  Of course we have to put them more into the context of a church filled with gaudy paintings of saints, gruesome depictions of the crucifixion and graphic representations of the final judgement.  So perhaps masons were allowed to leave their mark by carving self portraits or caricatures of local people.  And they must have had fun carving all the devils and monsters for the outside, meant perhaps as warnings to the parishioners not to stray off the path of righteousness, or maybe to scare off other evil spirits. 

Here in the East Midlands we have a wealth of odd carvings and funny faces.  We’ve already featured some of these in previous blogs but in this piece I want to celebrate the art and wit of the masons who’ve left us such a legacy that still delights and scares today.  Two Nottinghamshire churches deserve special mention, Averham and Laxton, both of which still have many fascinating carvings, also Kelby in Lincolnshire.  There must be many more that we haven’t visited yet so these are only a small sample, a work in progress.

To Averham first, the tower covered in well preserved monster faces.  Also many fine corbel heads within the church.  Then on to Laxton with a glorious cornucopia of animals, bug eyed monsters and, as we’ll see later, one distinctly bawdy.

Averham (Notts)

Averham (Notts)

Bug eyed monster at Laxton

Friendly pig at Laxton

More monsters at Laxton

 Kelby has a tower covered in heads and grimacing faces.  Those medieval masons had an amazing imagination!

Grimacing monster at Kelby

Heads on Kelby tower

And now a few carvings and monsters from other churches:

Frieze at Heckington (Lincs)

Frieze at Brant Broughton (Lincs)

Ancaster (Lincs)

Hawton (Notts)

North Muskham (Notts)

Hougham (Lincs)

Leasingham (Lincs)

Norton Disney (Lincs)

The other categories I mentioned above include bawdy and weird.  Firstly the bawdy and to Braunston in Rutland where you can see an ancient earth mother carving which could be over 1,000 years old.  It must have upset an incumbent priest at some time in history as it was turned over face down and used as a step into the church for several centuries before being rediscovered in the 1920’s.  Some people have classified it as a sheela na gig, a type of female figure exposing her genitalia, perhaps as a warning against lust, though many other theories exist.  Sheela na gigs occur all over the country, and especially in Ireland, but many were allegedly destroyed in the nineteenth century by outraged restorers.  Here’s one surviving example we found at Etton (near Peterborough), high up on the tower.

Earth mother at 
Brauston in Rutland

Sheela na gig at Etton (near Peterborough)

Now the rather explicit monster at Laxton (Notts), again displaying his all to the world at large.  It certainly raises the question as to how it could have been permitted but it has survived and we can only marvel at its audacity and enjoy it for what it is, and it is certainly different!

Finally in the saucy department, how about this lovely mermaid from All Saints Church in Stamford, a nautical theme in a place miles from the sea and a lovely survival in excellent condition?

Showing his all at Laxton!

Mermaid at All Saints, Stamford

And now onto the really weird category.  Firstly the head of an astonished man with a lizard crawling up his face from Wymondham church in Leicestershire.  What was the story?  One of the masons perhaps had fallen asleep outside only to be woken up by the lizard and then recorded by his fellow masons for posterity?

Lizard man at Wymondham (Leics)

Here’s another strange head, locally nicknamed Toothy, from Norwell in Notts.  (Yes I know we’ve shown him before but he’s worth another look…)  Anyway is he an exaggerated depiction of a local man or something much stranger?

"Toothy" at Norwell (Notts)

Strange beast at Little Casterton (Rutland)

And what sort of creature is this little chap we found in Little Casterton in Rutland, certainly lizard like from this angle?

Next here are a couple of pictures of a bench end carving from Westborough (Lincs) which depict a devil licking the backs of naked men apparently at prayer.  No doubt huge symbolism, but of what exactly?

Side view, Westborough bench end

Devil's tongue? Westborough (Lincs)

And finally a very strange carving from the tower at Ewerby, near Sleaford.  It looks like a monk (or nun) at prayer being attacked (or raped?)  It could perhaps be a warning for the devout to resist temptation by the devil, but another strange feature is that it projects horizontally from the tower.  Weird, really weird!

Attack at Ewerby (Lincs)

 To enlarge photographs just click on them.

Across Centuries and Across Continents

Sumo wrestling may not be the most obvious connection with medieval English rural churches but bear with me and I’ll get there in the end….

Nottinghamshire’s Thurgarton Priory Church is, like so many survivals from the pre-Reformation era, not complete.  Once it might have rivalled nearby Southwell Minster in its size and magnificence.  Now it could be described as a sad remnant, a village church fashioned from part of the original nave, a single western tower where once stood two, and a cut down western front which can only be seen from the private estate of the adjacent Thurgarton Priory which like Newstead Abbey, not far away, is a great house built on the site of the original Priory.  The Priory Church though is well worth a visit and this year it was open as part of the Notts Open Churches initiative in July.

Surviving tower and remnant of west front

Victorian chancel added on part of original nave

I was particularly keen to see inside the church because the flyer for the Open Churches featured a photo of a wood carving showing two wrestlers locked in the (Japanese) yotsu position where each wrestler grips the other’s belt as they each try to topple the other.  The carving turned out to be a fragment cut from a misericord and in itself could have been just a depiction of local wrestlers in the English tradition, similar to the Cumberland style of wrestling, or indeed Mongolian wrestling.  However when I looked at the other remnant of the misericord in the church, just three seats, I was rather amazed to find another carving of what looked for all the world like a Japanese sumo Grand Champion (yokozuna) performing the traditional ring entering ceremony (dohyo-iri).  See what you think, coincidence or what?  The picture below shows the current Grand Champion, Hakuho, performing the ring entering ceremony next to the Thurgarton carving.  The other photos show the medieval wrestlers plus a photo of two maegashira ranked wrestlers, Kaisei and Aran, locked in a yotsu position.  Aran (black belt) won this bout, by the way.

Misericord Yokozuna?

Grand Champion Hakuho

Medieval Wrestlers

Wrestlers Kaisei and Aran

 Churches, don’t you just love them?!  They continually throw up fascinating little puzzles and misericord carvings often depict lovely little vignettes from everday medieval life.  But the question raised here is what link there might be between the Thurgarton wrestlers and modern day sumo thousands of miles away in Japan: maybe none, maybe coincidence, or maybe just maybe, a common thread that reaches out across centuries and across continents!

Open Sesame

The Diocese of Southwell and Nottingham's enterprising Open Churches weekends in July were the answer to a church crawler's prayer. Our foray on 22nd into the countryside between Newark and Tuxford revealed some attractive churches and unexpected teasures.

Armed with Ashley Emery's magnificent Open Churches guidebook (Ashley is the son of our friend and former colleague Mike Emery) we selected 5 that were close to each other and all open on the same day. Some, it has to be said, were offering tea and cake.

All Saints, Sutton on Trent, one that did, was clearly an important church when it was built in the 13th Century. It still looks the part, with a substantial corner-buttressed tower, battlemented clerestorey and pinnacled Meering Chapel, built onto the chancel in 1525.

All Saints, Sutton on Trent

 The church is unusual in having escaped a Victorian renovation and one of the original features is the surviving rood screen and loft, complete with stairs, built between the south aisle and the Chapel, (rather than across the chancel arch - the pattern  we discovered at Coates by Stow in Lincolnshire on a previous trip). Altogether, a splendid Grade I listed building with an authentic medieval interior.

Medieval rood loft and Meering Chapel

Across the A1, the fascinating Our Lady of Egmanton very definitely did undergo a Victorian renovation. A shrine to the Virgin existed here in the Middle Ages and the lord of the manor, the Anglo-Catholic 7th Duke of Newcastle, revived the tradition in the 1890s. He commissioned the celebrated Gothic Revivalist architect Sir Ninian Comper to restore the interior, with a colourful rood loft and screen and Marian statuary. The screen has panels of saints in red and gold and a canopy of honour. "A glowing casket of colourful woodwork, candles and statuary", says Simon Jenkins, which merits inclusion in his  thousand best churches list .

Sumptuous rood screen by Ninian Comper

At our next church, St Michael and the Archangel in Laxton, we were welcomed, as we were in Egmanton, by an organist and by informative guides. The church is one of the largest in Nottinghamshire and has effigies and gargoyles galore.

The 5 Wounds of Christ

 The carving on the north aisle screen of the five wounds of Christ has a historical reference, as these were the symbol of the Pilgrimage of Grace, a rebellion against the dissolution of the monasteries by Henry VIII. Was Laxton a centre for a time of the old order in the Church?

A striking mid 20th Century statue by Stanislas Reychan depicts the Biblical story of the harrowing of hell. A plaque explains that Christ descended into hell on Easter Saturday, stabbing Satan and releasing all the souls there bar three - Herrod, Cain and Judas.

The Harrowing of Hell

Still in Laxton parish, the hamlet of Moorhouse has its own tiny church. The chapel was rebuilt in 1861 by the landowner, J E Denison, of Ossington, who was also the Speaker of the House of Commons. Access is through a farmyard but the interior is worth the trek.



Interior of Moorhouse chapel

The chapel in a farmyard

 The style is French Gothic and it is freshly painted, with decorative mini-columns near the altar.

Mini columns

Nollekins statue of Robert Denison

J.E. Denison's Hall at nearby Ossington has long been demolished but the Holy Rood church alongside the ruins is in fine condition. It is in a simple Georgian style, built in 1785 to plans by John Carr of York. It has fine glass and monuments, including statues of William and Robert Denison by the celebrated 18th Century sculptor, Joseph Nollekins.

Holy Rood, Ossington

Some monuments remain from the ealier medieval church that was replaced on the site, including the Elizabethan tomb of William Cartwright, his wife, Grace and 12 children. Some hold skulls, showing that they pre-deceased their parents.

After a surprising Georgian find, Norwell, our final church in this series, was back in the medieval mould, with effigies, corbel faces and a green man looking down from the roof. The church was large, light and airy, with a splendid clerestory. One of the columns felt decidedly cold and damp to the touch and the churchwarden told us that there had been a well under the church at one time. We were particularly grateful for the offer of hot tea at this point.

We were saddened to hear that lead had been stolen from the roof (a recurrent theme in these postings) but heartened that coated stainless steel had been allowed as a replacement in a Grade I listed building. Finally, Norwell benefits from a very detailed history on the Southwell and Nottingham Church History Project web site, which can be found at:

http://southwellchurches.nottingham.ac.uk/norwell/hhistory.php

Face on corbel

Effigy of a lady, south aisle

St Laurence, Norwell

Click on any photo to enlarge it.