Moreton Valence, Gloucestershire

Dragon-slayer

The A38 between Gloucester and Bristol was once a major artery to the southwest, though nowadays the M5, running roughly parallel, takes most of the heavy traffic. I remember when I was a boy that my parents and I would sit in traffic jams on the A38, and when the car got moving again we’d pass through dusty villages, places called odd things like Cambridge and Berkeley Road, that seemed to want to be somewhere else. Moreton Valence was one that got away down lanes to one side of the main road, and its church feels remote, a world away from the bustle that anyway has gone now.

We came here to look at the outside of the church and in particular the wondrous tympanum above the door that now shelters beneath a partly timber-framed porch. It’s Norman, and vigorously carved in low relief, although the relief was probably deeper when it was made in the 12th century – there are signs of wear during the centuries before the porch was built in the late Middle Ages, and this, the main entrance to the church, unusually faces north. The reason for the odd orientation is across the churchyard fence. An ancient moat, filled with duckweed, marks the site of what must have been the medieval manor house. A north door was the quickest way in for the local lord.

And what he and the rest of the congregation saw as they entered was this carving: an angel, presumably the Archangel Michael, spearing a dragon. The carver portrayed Michael with long hair, neatly carved feathered wings, and a nimbus. The sculptor made good use of the semicircular shape of the stone, portraying Michael leaning dramatically towards the beast, so that both his head and his wing almost touch the edge of the tympanum: it’s a pose that suggests power and effort, as he shoves his spear or lance dragonwards. The beast, too, is carefully carved. A beady eye, one fang, and a curvaceous ear are all visible, though difficult to capture in a photograph without extra lighting. Like the angel, the dragon is effectively positioned, but – in keeping with its defensive stance – the creature is twisted awkwardly with the body pointing forwards and the head turned back. Again, the frame is neatly filled.

The sculpture of Norman tympana is quite diverse. Even within the confines of this blog, I’ve posted tympana featuring such subjects as the Harrowing of Hell, the Coronation of the Virgin, Christ in Majesty, and miscellaneous monsters. The other dragon-slayer I’ve seen in a Norman carving, at Ruardean, is on horseback, and as such has been seen as a knight and so identified as St George. The Ruardean figure is in much deeper relief than this one at Moreton Valence, and it’s a shame the stone here has worn so much – the wings, Michael’s garment, the nimbus, and other details suggest carving of some detail and quality. But I’m grateful for what’s left.

Quenington, Gloucestershire

Harrowing of Hell

Here’s the tympanum from the south doorway at Quenington, the north doorway of which was the subject of my previous post. This time, the subject is the Harrowing of Hell. Christ is seen piercing the body of Satan with a cross – or a spear with a cross at its upper end. To the right are three figures is positions of supplication – they’re said to have emerged from the mouth of the serpent at the bottom right of the carving, which symbolizes the mouth of Hell.  The whole scene is framed within a round-headed Norman arch, set on round shafts. A charming (and unusual) detail is the sun that shines above the figures, as if suggesting that they have come out and up into the light, which is symbolic of the Lord’s presence.

The framing arch is unusual and is smaller than the overall arch of the doorway, the zigzag carving of which is visible around the edge of the photograph. It’s as is the carving was originally intended for a smaller doorway. Or as if it was done by a different carver from the doorway and someone got the measurements wrong. The rather gawky result in a way adds to the charm.

In our postmodern, 21st-century way, we are apt to be affected by such naïve carvings, and even to be condescending about their simplicity. But to medieval Christians this was serious stuff: the descent of Christ into Hell, in order to bring about the salvation of those who were righteous but had had the misfortune to die between the beginning of time and the coming of Christ and had therefore ended up for a few centuries or more in the bad place.* It was a very real and dramatic image of Christ’s power and his ability to save souls.  However we think about that now, the carvings that such stories inspired still have the power to draw us in.

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* These souls were also said to be in Limbo, a region of Hell that was separate from the Hell of the damned.

Quenington, Gloucestershire

Coronation of the Virgin

While I’m in Gloucestershire, two more posts about a building in my home county that I’ve revisited recently. It’s St Swithun’s church, Quenington, one of the smaller and less assuming of the Cotswolds’ remarkable collection of parish churches. It’s a medieval building, but one much restored in the 1880s by F. S.Waller, a Gloucestershire architect who worked on quite a few local churches, but not always with the best of results. Waller rebuilt most of the western end of the church, added a vestry that was no doubt practically very useful but aesthetically far from ideal, and replaced an early-19th century tower with a picturesque bellcote.

Waller also built porches for the north and south doorways, and this is cause for celebration because these are the features of the building that really stand out and deserve protection from the elements. The doorways are Norman, of the mid-12th century, and remarkable. Here’s the tympanum over the south doorway. The carving depicts the Coronation of the Virgin and this in itself is interesting, as there are very few representations of this subject in England before the 13th century, when it – and the wider cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary – became very popular. She sits together with Christ, holding (it is said) a dove, while he crowns her. Round about are the symbols of the four Evangelists, two angels, and on the far left, an elaborate domed Romanesque building – either a church or, as Pevsner speculates, the Heavenly Mansions.

Detail of the Coronation tympanum, Quenington

I’m a fan of Norman tympana – see past posts about Elkstone and Great Rollright, for example – but I get particularly excited about this one for various reasons including its unusual subject and the depiction of an elaborate building. It’s a nice illustration of the way in which even an isolated village church can reflect notions, from the design of domed churches to the evolving reverence for the Virgin Mary, that were probably more current in far-away cities than in remote villages, but which had travelled there, via writings or word of mouth, carried by priests, monks, and stonemasons, among whom were the best travelled and most knowledgeable people of the Middle Ages.

Dinton, Buckinghamshire

Advice to the wise

To go with the pair of tympana that have caught my eye during recent church visits, here’s another tympanum, this time from my archives. It is both stunning and very unusual.

The doorway itself is another showy late-Norman (12th-century) piece of design, complete with an outer row of billet mouldings (the repeating raised rectangles), a band of chevrons, a plain roll moulding, and, innermost, around the tympanum itself, a lovely bit of interlace that is carved in quite low relief. The ornament continues lower down, too – the capitals of the shafts on either side of the door are just visible at the bottom of my photograph.

The tympanum shows two monsters that have lion-like manes and dog-like heads but each beast has only two legs and their bodies taper into their tails. They are eating fruit from a tree which may be a tree of life. Below on the lintel is another beast – this time winged, to make it look more dragon-like. It’s said to be the dragon attempting to devour St Michael, who defends himself with a cross.

Between the tympanum carving and the lintel is an inscription in Latin, which is a very rare thing indeed to see in a Norman doorway on a parish church. It’s not easy to read, because its capital letters are run together without word spaces and the second line is placed on the edge of the lintel, but it seems to go: ‘Praemia pro meritis si qis despet habenda Audiat hic preepta sibique sit retinenda’ and this has been translated as ‘If anyone despairs of having rewards for his merits, Let this man hear the advice and let it be retained by him.’  Which is hardly specific, but suggests, I suppose, that it would be a good idea to listen to what you’re told in church – an interesting emphasis on the teachings of the church at a time when there was a greater stress on liturgy and the sacraments than on sermonizing.

Great Rollright, Oxfordshire

Fishy

The fascinating church at Great Rollright, not far from Chipping Norton in the Oxfordshire Cotswolds, has many notable features and I’ll more than likely return to it, but for now, I wanted to share the wonderful late-12th century doorway. This is a rustic example of Romanesque carving: it has many of the typical features of this style – chevron ornament, beakheads, a carved tympanum (the semicircular panel above the door) – but all of these done in a very vigorous and simple way that shows the hand of a local carver. This is not the work of a top-notch sculptor, then, like the great doorway at Malmesbury Abbey or the outstanding work of the Herefordshire school, but still arresting.

The beakheads are crudely done. They’re recognisable, just, as heads with beaks, although some seem to lack eyes of other facial features (and a couple on the far right seem to break with the conventions completely) so one has to wonder if the carver knew exactly what he was doing. And yet their simple shapes and strong linear carving have a strong character. For beakheads and chevrons done with more sophistication, look at the doorways at Elkstone or, especially, Kilpeck.

The tympanum bridges the gap between completely abstract, patterned carving and the figurative work that the Normans often placed above their church entrances. Along the bottom there are roundels, some flower-like, some that seem to incorporate a star pattern, others looking a bit like round shields with a central boss. Above are cross patterns and an enigma – a carving that seems to show a large fish, a human head, and a figure wrapped in a decorated shroud. I wondered when I first saw them if the head and fish were meant to represent Jonah and the whale – but why the shrouded corpse?

If this doorway poses more questions than it answers, it’s still an eloquent reminder that all over the country, from Yorkshire to Sussex, there was an explosion of sculpture in the late-12th century, work that survives in large quantities, in both towns and remote villages, and can still give us much pleasure.

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Please click on the image to see more detail in the carving.