Hereford

What a cheek, or, Odd things in churches (15)

My occasional series, Odd things in churches, is dedicated to showing that it really is very surprising what one can find inside the places of worship of the Church of England. From instruments of punishment to fire-fighting equipment, items of whimsy to testimonies to obscure traditions, they’re all to be found, left behind by our ancestors and now regarded with a range of attitudes from indifference to notoriety. Today’s example is the embodiment of notoriety. Sometimes the more notorious features built into the fabric of churches can seem to us distinctly odd, nowhere more so than the numerous grotesque and rude carvings that seem to have been tolerated in medieval places of worship. Perhaps the most famous of these are the female figures known as Sheela na Gigs, but there are also male exhibitionists, like this man, carved high up in an aisle roof in Hereford’s medieval church of All Saints.

The All Saints exhibitionist has raised quite a few eyebrows in recent years – in part because he’s now more visible to the public since the church started serving coffee and provided seats and table in an upstairs gallery below the roof from which he moons down on us. He’s unusual in all kinds of ways. Although grotesques, even obscene ones, are not uncommon on medieval churches, they most often occur on the outside. When they do appear inside, they’re usually above doorways, arches, or entrances, and for many, this helps to explain their presence: they’re there, it’s said, to ward off evil spirits attempting to enter a sacred space. They do this, it is argued, by means of a kind of homoeopathy perhaps best summed up in the phrase ‘like cures like’. This kind of protective notion does not explain this figure’s presence high in the roof. Neither does another theory, that they are there to dissuade us from the sins they represent – before the construction of the gallery the exhibitionist was very difficult to spot.

Many like to suggest that he’s simply a carver’s joke. In one corner of the roof, he could have been done as the carver was finishing his work, and the scaffolding swiftly removed before the priest or the parish bigwigs had had the chance to inspect the roof too closely. We’ll never know whether this was the case. To modern eyes he just seems to be attracting attention of a particularly saucy kind. Something to ponder over the next cappuccino and cake.