Billesley, Warwickshire

On the path through life

All Saints’ church, Billelsey is between the towns of Alcester and Stratford upon Avon. It’s a tiny church with an atmosphere that you could best describe as ‘country Georgian’ – round-headed windows, box pews, plain white walls. There’s a tradition that Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway here, and in their day the church would probably still have had its some of its medieval fittings and atmosphere – it would have been darker, with smaller windows and maybe this wonderful carving, now on display inside the church, was over the door.

A carved relief like this is a real surprise in rural Warwickshire. Its style (the vigorous interlacing foliage, the linear design on the figure’s kilt-like costume, the bird, the serpent) is like the work of the Herefordshire sculptors of the 12th century – I’ve posted previously about their wonderful carvings at Kilpeck, Shobdon, and Castle Frome. But their work wasn’t confined to Herefordshire – there are a few examples in nearby counties such as Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire too.

The Billesley carving seems to show a man, pursued by sinister forces (a serpent and a dragon) trying to escape towards a dove, symbol of peace, purity, and the Holy Spirit. The whole carving of this figure on his path through life is bursting with vigour and the surprise of finding it among the plain white walls of this quiet church is part of the pleasure it gives. There would no doubt have been more carvings here by the same 12th-century master, but all except this one and a fragment of a stone cross have vanished in later rebuildings of the church. We can only be grateful for the burgeoning vigour of what survives.

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Note This church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.