Stanton, Gloucestershire

 

Sheepdogs, or, Odd things in churches (16)

I can’t remember when I first went inside the church of St Michael and All Angels, Stanton, in the north Cotswolds, but I think I already knew the story behind the bench-end in my photograph. Perhaps I knew the story from the Gloucestershire volume of Arthur Mee’s series, ‘The King’s England’, probably the only book that my parents had that would have held such a historical tidbit: ‘It may be that when Wesley preached in this place there listened to him shepherds from the hills who would tie their dogs to the ends of the benches, which still have the marks of the chafing of the chains which held the dogs.’ Such marks can certainly be seen on the bench end in my picture, perhaps from the chains themselves or from a metal ring to which chains were attached.

Can this be true? It’s certainly plausible. For centuries, Cotswold farms were the sheep farms par excellence of England. For years I’ve lived in this part of the country and there are still plenty of sheep farmed around here. Shepherds might these days ride around on quad bikes or in 4 x 4s, and wherever they go their dogs go with them. In church, in the 18th century or earlier, one can imagine the chained dogs excited on their weekly meeting with the neighbours pulling on their chains and chafing at the woodwork before settling down quietly by the time the service began. We’re often told that Cotswold churches (like many in Suffolk and other areas) were built from the proceeds of the wool trade. It’s good to be reminded that none of that money could have been made without the people who raised the sheep – and the animals that rounded them up.

Crowcombe, Somerset

Monsters!

I am always on the lookout for monsters in churches. I live in an area – the Cotswolds – where a long tradition of stone carving made it easy for masons and parishioners alike to indulge a fascination with gargoyles and grotesques of many kinds. Most of these carvings are on the outsides of churches, where they range from the oddest of Norman corbels to the most amusing of late-medieval grotesques. No one really knows what they are doing there, but an answer connected to the notion of ritual protection (from evil spirits for example) is probably not too far from the mark. Grotesques and monsters carved on the walls of a church, especially around or near the doorway, may have been put there to protect the sacred space within from malign interference.

Sometimes, though, grotesques and monsters get inside the church too. In areas of the country where a lot of medieval woodwork has survived (Somerset and Devon spring to mind), foliate heads, grotesques, and other such images were sometimes carved on the ends of the benches or pews. The church at Crowcombe has an impressive set of late-medieval bench ends and one of the most striking of all features this remarkable scene of two naked men fighting a bizarre two-headed creature. It seems to be not quite a classical chimera, not quite a medieval amphisbema. I turned to my copy of M. W. Tisdall’s book, God’s Beasts,* a lavishly illustrated catalogue of animal carvings in churches. The author seems to agree, placing this carving in a chapter on dragons, but e glossing it as a ‘twin-headed monster’. Dragons generally are seen in Christian iconography as a symbol of evil, making these two human antagonists brave fighters for good. There’s also a sense though, that medieval woodworkers simply liked carving this sot of thing: images of evil overcome could be enjoyable to portray and behold.†

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* M. W. Tisdall, God’s Beasts (Charlefort Press, 1998)

† For a scholarly account of grotesques and similar images in medieval art, see Michael Camille, Image on the Edge (Reaktion Books, 2019)

Othery, Somerset

Confusion

If I’d been a member of what was called in my youth the Boy Scouts, perhaps I’d be more mindful of their once much quoted motto: ‘Be prepared’. As it is, I am quite capable of being unprepared to the extent of not putting the relevant volume of Pevsner’s Buildings of England series in the car when I set off on a trip. I made this very omission when going to Somerset the other day. The trip was not concerned primarily with observing or exploring buildings, but wherever I go, architectural observation is inclined to take over, and so it was when, with time on my hands, I stopped to look at the church in the village of Othery, set on the Somerset levels. The building, at least, didn’t seen difficult to grasp: a cruciform church with a tall central tower, not as flashy as many in Somerset but with attractive openings in the upper stage where the bells are and below that some statues in niches – Christ enthrones and Saint Mary, Saint John, and Saint Michael, to whom the church is dedicated.

But when I got inside, the furnishing got me baffled. Other church contains a striking collection of wooden benches with carved ends. Carved bench ends are speciality in Somerset. Some churches have outstanding ones, dating from the 14th to the 16th centuries, carved with depictions of symbols, animals, plants, saints, even satirical depictions. Anyone who likes church woodwork should visit Somerset.* Othery has some excellent bench ends, but they struck me as varying somewhat in style. Some looked medieval, some exhibited a certain formality or treatment of details that made me wonder if they were Victorian reproductions. Some were carved with vigour and had slight and not disagreeable roughnesses of surface, some were much smoother. In the end I abandoned speculation and enjoyed the carving for the visual feast it offered – multiple portrayals of foliage, tracery, curious beasts, King David playing his harp, grapes on the vine, a saint or two. The latter include more than one depiction of St Michael the Archangel dispatching the devil, who takes the shape of a dragon.

Back home, with the Pevsner Somerset: South and West volume in front of me, I read: ‘BENCHES. A confusing collection because of the interventions of the antiquary William Stradling of Cholton Polden in 1848–50. Some are C15–C16…Many are Victorian…by William Halliday, Stradling’s carpenter. Stradling copied originals, including some with small figures (St. Margaret, St Michael) that seem of separate provenance.’ In other words the church contains original medieval carvings by at least two differing and distinguishable hands, as well as Victorian ones by Stradling. An article in the useful essay collection, Pews, Benches & Chairs† agrees, and points to the image of St Michael in my photograph above as one of the medieval originals (there’s a contrasting Victorian one, below, with a much more detailed, scalier dragon). There’s just enough detail in the medieval one: the saint’s angelic form standing astride the creature’s back, the dragon’s neck curving upwards to suggest that it still has life in it, but not much strength, the canopy with its crocketed finials topping the image and filling the available space above. It’s a slightly naïve bit of work, but there’s still much to like about it. What I take to be the later version is much more artful.The devil is part dragon (with a tail that curves beautifully) and part human (with torso, head, and arms). The saint’s sword is poised; his wings fill the space above artfully; much work has been put into capturing the drapery of his clothes. There’s a lot of action in this carving. I wouldn’t want to express a preference for one over the other. It’s good that the church has them both.

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* See, for example, an earlier post, here, about bench ends at Brent Knoll.

† Trevor Cooper and Sarah Brown (eds), Pews, Benches & Chairs (Ecclesiological Society, 2011)

Brent Knoll, Somerset

Lambing

The church at Brent Knoll has a terrific collection of bench ends dating from the 14th and 15th centuries. Vigorously carved, they feature a number of different devotional and moral subjects and I’m sharing one of the devotional ones today.

I particularly like the chevron-carved wool of this lamb, and the way its head is turned towards the cross and flag. In some respects this is a familiar image from Christian iconography, a symbol of Jesus and the way he is sacrificed to redeem the sins of humankind that’s found in a variety of locations from van Eyck’s large Ghent Altarpiece to humble pub signs. ‘Behold the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world,’ says John the Baptist in John’s Gospel. But there is no ‘standard’ version of the image – sometimes the lamb bleeds, to represent sacrifice, sometimes he is shown with a book, often, as here, he stands holding the flag. The lamb usually has a halo, but here he has not. Another issue for carvers of the lamb and flag was portraying how the creature holds the flagpole. Some versions of the image have the lamb’s leg crooked around the pole, which rests on the his shoulder; in others the pole stands on the ground while the lamb holds it against his body. Here it seems to balance on the lamb’s foot, a lovely touch.

Buildings, and the objects inside them, are also interesting for the personal memories they conjure up, and I cannot resist sharing one such memory. This image, then, reminds me of the Lamb and Flag pub in Covent Garden. This pub was an Ian Nairn special, and I was pleased to discover that it was an office local when I worked in the area, a watering hole we favoured especially in the summer. ‘It’s one o’clock. Anyone want to go and stand outside the Lamb and Flag?’ J, a cherished colleague, gone now, would call out. An hour of vertical drinking – sometimes I have to say rather more than an hour* – would ensue.

* Most of us reformed, in the end: autre temps, autre moeurs…

Altarnun, Cornwall

Doodle-sack*

I’ve been looking at a lot of church woodwork recently, cricking my neck to examine carved angels in roofs, and clicking my knees to get down and peer at the images on bench ends. I’ve been struck, as I’ve done this, by the variety of musical instruments being played, especially by carved angels (there were far more than harps in medieval heaven, clearly), and down on ground level too. Altarnun’s superb set of bench ends features a couple of musicians, one playing some kind of fiddle, and this bagpiper, who gives a fair indication of the folkish nature of the art, and also, presumably, of the music to be heard hereabouts in the late Middle Ages, when these bench ends were carved.

In the United Kingdom we tend to think of bagpipes as Scottish. The Scottish pipes skirl in military parades, at royal occasions, and I’ve even seen buskers, wearing the kilt and taking the chance with their pipes on the streets of London. We should know better, of course, than to think the Scots have the monopoly. There are Irish pipes, Northumbrian small pipes, all kinds of bagpipes. They’re all over Europe too. I was thrilled during my travels in Central Europe to find the bagpiping centre of Strakonice in the Czech Republic. And there is the opera Schwanda the Bagpiper,† and so on and on.

There are plenty of references to early pipes and bagpipes in Cornwall, including a number of carvings in churches. These instruments are interesting in that, unlike many bagpipes, they have two chanters – the pipes with holes on which one plays the melody – which must open up harmonic possibilities denied to players of bagpipes with a single chanter.

The carving of the figure is simple but bold, and it is badly worn. But one still gets an impression of the vigorous style – in the folds of the costume, the modelling of the bag, the extraordinary hat, even the little dog. John Betjeman said that a church should bring one to one’s knees. Peering at this bagpiper got me kneeling to look closely – not quite the kind of prayerful kneeling that Betjeman had in mind. But Betjeman also encouraged us all to use our eyes. And I’m glad I got down, and peered.

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* I am playing here on Dudelsack (the sack on which one tootles), the wonderful German word for bagpipes.
† Švanda dudák in Czech, Schwanda der Dudelsackpfeiffer in German, by the composer Jaromir Weinberger and based on a play by the Czech writer Josef Kajetán Tyl.