Rock, Worcestershire

Watcher, cock, or, Odd things in churches (18)

For many of us, weathercocks are almost synonymous with churches. It was back in the 9th century that Pope Nicholas I decreed that a cockerel should be displayed at the uppermost point of every parish church, a reminder of the fateful triple crowing of the cock that signalled Peter’s betrayal of Christ. The practice of putting a rooster on every church long ago fell into neglect (if it was ever universal), but hundreds of churches still have weathercocks, combining the function of symbol with that of practical use. Know the wind direction and you’re part of the way to forecasting the weather. ‘If that cock’s pointing down the street and there’s a dark cloud over the hill,’ said an old gardener from our neighbourhood, ‘It’ll be raining here in an hour.’ He was right, and such knowledge is useful not only to gardeners but also to the farmers and farm workers who were for centuries the mainstays of the rural economy.

Nothing odd, then, about weathercocks on churches. But a weathercock inside a church is decidedly odd. And yet, what do you do with a rooster that has to be taken down from the tower? Throw him away or send him for scrap metal to be melted down? Maybe there’s a better way. Doesn’t it make sense to set him up inside the church, where his symbolic function survives and he represents a bit of church history? Or perhaps you should keep him safe, against the day when funds can be found to re-erect him on the tower, where he belongs.

Whatever the motivation for keeping this weathercock indoors, I was pleased to see him here, where he provided a few minutes’ distraction from Romanesque carvings and other delights in the church at Rock. Close-up, in spite or perhaps because of the repairs, bolts and rivets, he’s revealed as an appealing bit of folk sculpture, perhaps the proud work of a local blacksmith. The details of the head are sketched by way of telling cuts in the metal: eye, bill, comb, crest. The body is surprisingly slim, making me wonder if weathercocks (and maybe actual roosters) got plumper in more recent years. The tail is splendidly broad, its pattern of holes suggesting feathers and presumably leaving enough metal to catch the wind. In a collection of folk art like the wonderful one at Compton Verney, this would be a star exhibit. Here, in its rightful local setting, it’s a delight.

King’s Lynn, Norfolk

 

Maritime Lynn, 1

This brick octagonal tower poking up near the bank of the Great Ouse in King’s Lynn was built in 1864 as part of the Pilot Office of the town’s port. It’s essentially an observation tower, allowing officials to keep an eye on shipping. Adjoining are workshops and a store for explosives,* as well as the remaining part of the town’s first public baths, which had been put up during the previous decade (and was partly converted to the offices of the King’s Lynn Conservancy Board in the 1980s). This is an important structure historically because it represents the prominence of the town as a port, which was the busiest in East Anglia for much of the Middle Ages, when it was a centre for the export of wool and cloth and the import of wine, timber, and other goods. The port remained a major one for several centuries afterwards, with corn from eastern England becoming the main export commodity as the wool trade declined. In the mid-19th century it was still busy but had begun a slow decline.

As well as ample windows, another requirement of the people keeping watch was a good idea of the wind direction. This is provided by the weather vane on top of the tower’s roof. The shaft of the vane is connected to a compass inside the building, so those working there can read the wind direction without going outside. This ingenious arrangement looks like a typical bit of Victorian wizardry, but the idea goes back further – for example, Thomas Jefferson’s classical country house, Monticello, has a similar arrangement. I don’t know if Jefferson invented it – he was highly inventive and the house has several other ingenious bits of 18th-century technology – but in King’s Lynn it was more than a rich man’s clever toy. No doubt it was well used.

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* For signalling flares, apparently.

Thaxted, Essex

Weather forecats

Plain vanes or pennants often, fish now and then, foxes and hounds, ships, and human figures occasionally, and the ubiquitous cockerel more frequently than not; sometimes a stag, a horse, or a beast from the field of heraldry; a dragon or grasshopper or two. That list sums up the iconography of weather wanes (or wind vanes, or weathercocks, as in ‘That weathercock’s a fish!’), though no doubt my readers can think of some more examples.

There are also a few weather vanes that are famously unique landmarks: Old Father Time at Lord’s Cricket Ground, Sir Cloudesley Shovel’s ship The Rodney at Rochester, Erasmus seated the wrong way round on a horse in Whitechapel.

My picture shows one that’s more humble than these examples, and far from unique. But I’ve not often come across feline weathervanes, so wanted to share this cat in Thaxted, set on his pleasantly scrolly mount. His tail is scrolly too, and his markings admirable, although I wondered when I saw him if they had faded from a deeper ginger. Whether or not that’s so, he still stands guard effectively, catching the eye, and the wind.