Lincolnshire (and Bucks): Big Churches and Things In Them

Of course one of my stopping-points in Lincolnshire was the Cathedral, gigantic and splendid. I was glad the presence of the Imp was pointed out, so I could avoid photographing it by accident and taking its baleful influence with me ("that which holds the image of an Angel becomes itself an Angel ..."). I paid my respects to Bd Edward King, whose statue presumably depicts him raising a hand in blessing, but it always looks as though he's just saying hello. And then there was this wonderfully pompous 18th-century clergyman who is surely thinking, 'God thinks I am a thoroughly fine fellow, and who am I to dissent from the Lord's opinion'.

But there was also a range of huge churches in modest places. St James's Louth was first, with its scary paper angels:

Followed by St Botolph's, Boston, and its carved knight who is surely Death:

And then St Wulfram's, Grantham, where the scary artefact is the shrine of St Wulfram itself:

(And then there was St James's Grimsby, 'Grimsby Minster' as it is now known, which I couldn't get into).

All these buildings are almost shockingly big for churches which have no history of belonging to religious communities - contrast Lincs with my native Dorset, where all the big churches - Christchurch Priory, Wimborne Minster, Sherborne Abbey, and Milton Abbey - were all monastic at one point. That partly reflects the medieval wealth of this part of the country, but also some other historical factor that led to these towns maintaining one major parish church rather than a collection of them. Stamford, which I visited on the way home, is different, though just as prosperous once: there are five surviving medieval churches there, out of at least as many again. 

But visiting High Wycombe, where I used to live, this week, I was reminded that the situation was the same there. All Saints' is the only old parish church, and, like the Lincolnshire examples, is bigger than it needs to be. I was pleased this time to find it open, which it hasn't been for some time. 

Was St Catherine present? She was, though all in relatively modern images; from the left, a window at Louth, carved above the choir stalls of the Cathedral, a window in the crypt at Boston which has a good stab at looking medieval, and a statue at High Wycombe, very unusually holding what I suppose is intended as a small globe. How can I not have noticed it in the seven years I lived in the town?

St Nectan's Kieve

One of our earlier stops on the Cornwall trip was St Nectan's Kieve. It was 1986, I think, that I first made a visit to St Piran's Well at the entrance to the Kieve but have never walked up the valley itself. I knew about the waterfall, but wasn't completely prepared for what we found there. St Piran's Well has recently been tidied up and isn't the ivy-choked ruin that relatively recent writers have described, which is good.

As for the Kieve, you must be able to drive to the tea room and complex at the top, but we picked our way up the gorge through the woods, crossing wooden bridges and clambering around stones and tree roots. As always with these things you wonder how long it's going to take but the journey does increase the sense of anticipation and separation from the world outside. You arrive at the shop, where, if you're lucky (the staff seem reluctant to linger in one place very long) you will be greeted, given tickets, and offered a pair of wellington boots. You then pass through a gate and down slippery steps to make the descent to the waterfall.

And the waterfall does not disappoint! With your wellies you can wade into the stream and gaze up at the classic view you may have seen from books, with the water thundering down past the rocky cliffs and under that unlikely stone arch into the pool beneath, the air thronged with drops of water. It's exhilarating.

But the Kieve is more than an interesting natural feature: it's become a pagan shrine. This was certainly not the case some thirty-odd years ago so it would have been interesting to have some more information available about the history of the place, but this doesn't seem to be available. Nevertheless, as you cross the stream and look about you can see how important this place is to people: the walls of the gorge are full of little mementoes of visitors and their loved ones, and in the stream itself are artful piles of stones which are apparently known as 'fairy stacks', not something I've seen anywhere else.

Back at the top of the steps you can also visit St Nectan's Cell, a tiny room underneath the shop complex which has the reputation of being the place where Nectan lived as a hermit in the sixth century. Alternatively it may be no older than the 18th century and the identification as the hermitage ascribable to Fr Hawker of Morwenstow's very active historical imagination, but that doesn't matter as it is now a pagan cult room festooned with ribbons, strings of beads, figurines, interesting pebbles, and records of loved ones and relationships which have the same moving quality that they have in Christian shrines, or indeed those of any other religion. The instinct to commemorate such an immaterial element as love, to turn it into something physical and (at least semi-) permanent, is as strong in this context as it is anywhere else, and carries the same sensation of reverence and sympathy. What, from his now-heavenly perspective, St Nectan makes of it is a different matter.

Continuity

Down in darkest West Dorset, in what they will one day call PJ Harvey Country hem-hem, is a village with the lyrical name of Whitchurch Canonicorum, the White Church of the Canons. The church of St Candida and the Holy Cross there is a fine one, although calling it 'the Cathedral of the Vale' is I think a trifle hubristic. Not that the Marshwood Vale, all of six miles or so across, offers any other rivals for cathedral status. In one transept stands a white stone box surmounting three oval alcoves. This is the Shrine of St Wite, one of only two pre-Reformation shrines in England which are still intact - the other is that of St Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey. The idea is that, should you be ill, you should pray at the shrine to blessed St Wite - supposedly a female hermit who lived out on the hills and was martyred by the Danes, though no one really knows - and place your afflicted part in an alcove. Her Holy Well is not far away to the south of Stanton St Gabriel, while there is another arched well just opposite the church itself.

My family first came here years ago. I was looking for the well, so I think I must have been about 15, which would make my sister 8 at the time.

This last week my mum was on holiday round the coast in Seaton with my sister and her family. It was her first holiday (apart from staying with me for a few days) since my dad died. They all went to the village of the White Church of the Canons, and my nieces, G (7) and J (3) put their hands in the shrine and lit candles, exactly the same as we had first done twenty-eight years ago.

Derbyshire Shrines

One of my holiday days out took me around the Goyt Valley walks. There are two reservoirs damming the waters of the little River Goyt, and part of the landscape is the grounds of the now-lost Errwood Hall, abandoned since the 1930s. I already knew about the little woodland shrine which you can see here, apparently built by the Roman Catholic owners of Errwood, the Grimshawes, in memory of a Spanish lady who acted as companion to one of the Mrs Grimshawe. Inside you can find a tile image of St Joseph in whose honour the shrine is dedicated, a characteristic range of religious tat and also commemorative items (including a pink teddy bear looking out of the window).

 

I was much more surprised to discover a completely different little shrine overlooking the valley, and right beside the road which swoops down to the reservoirs from the top of the hill opposite. There is a mosaic icon of the Virgin and Child, lamps, and fresh flowers. It turns out that the shrine was built in the 1950s on the initiative of a Roman Catholic priest from Buxton - you can see more of its history here. Would the Council grant permission for such a structure today? Quite apart from any considerations of religious partisanship, it is right next to the road, just on the verge - something of a perilous position for devotees!
 
 

Finally, in the village of Stoney Middleton, I found this: a shrine in a niche underneath a row of houses. There is a side road which branches off the main street and goes immediately very steeply uphill, allowing this archway beneath a house which sits next to a small car parking space. The icons (especially of Christ's Transfiguration) suggested an Orthodox inspiration and, as it turns out, the little shrine was assembled by a member of the congregation of St Aidan's Orthodox Church in Manchester. More about it here.

Who would have expected such a collection of sacred sites in this small corner of the world?

Telling Stories

A while ago I had reason to look up a prayer to St Michael for protection against evil on behalf of a parishioner. There is quite a well-known one from Roman Catholic sources and whose authorship is ascribed to Pope Leo XIII. But it has an interesting story behind it, involving a gradual inflation of the drama allegedly surrounding its composition. Originally it was simply promulgated by the Pope without comment. Then in the 1940s one of Leo’s secretaries claimed the prayer originated from a vision the Pope underwent at Mass one morning, in which the Church’s spiritual enemies were revealed to him. In its most developed form, the story has Leo collapsing, passing out and remaining insensible for days before coming round and revealing the details of his vision. That, of course, is complete fiction.

Then a few days later a former parishioner from Lamford sent me an email. ‘Greetings from the Shrine of Our Lady of Yankalilla!’ he said. Our Lady of where? Yankalilla turns out to be in New South Wales. In 1995 a damp patch mysteriously appeared on the wall of a very unremarkable Anglican church in this unremarkable Australian town, and, with some imagination, you can see how it resembles the traditional pieta image of Mary holding the dead body of Jesus. And so up popped the Shrine – endorsed by the Anglican bishop of The Murray, complete with a holy well and all the accoutrements of an albeit relatively minor sacred place.

In both these examples you can see very old patterns re-emerging, stories escalating and ideas gathering as imagination gets to work and tales get re-told. I can’t exactly forget these patterns as I re-tell the older stories in the Biblical texts, especially to the children at school. We’re careful to couch them in terms of being stories, and even fairly small children are aware that some stories are real and some aren’t. I wonder what exactly they think about the Bible’s, though, and how easily they distinguish between the categories.

Holiday 2009

For the last couple of years I've taken holidays in properties owned by the Landmark Trust, that arcane organisation that buys up derelict historic buildings and does them up as holiday lets. This year's stop was the Abbey Gatehouse in Tewkesbury. This is essentially a single, large room over the gateway of the abbey precincts, built in about 1500 and accessed only by a narrow spiral staircase; so narrow, in fact, that when the Trust refitted it the furniture had to be assembled in situ, and in fact the armchairs were upholstered there too. The problem of inserting everything you need for a modern holiday was solved by constructing a sort of room-within-a-room, an oak gallery with kitchen and bathroom either side on the bottom and beds on the top. Genius.


As well as the Victorian gargoyles (dubbed by some earlier visitors Brother Jeremiah and Sister Agnes) there are two disapproving clerical portraits to keep guests in line.

The restored shrine of St Thomas at Hereford Cathedral has a very pleasing medieval garishness. Overall I preferred Hereford to the correct grandeur of the Abbey at Tewkesbury.

A day out took me within a couple of miles of Tintern Abbey, which I couldn't miss for its honoured place in the history of Romanticism. I was too late to get in - but to be honest all I needed was a photo or two. It's difficult now, looking at the ruins tamed and ringed with walls and roads like a lion in a zoo enclosure, to imagine how they must have appeared to Wordsworth and his ilk.

Then there was Tyntesfield, the great Gothic revival mansion in north Somerset recently opened by the National Trust. The chapel is a glorious Tractarian jewelbox, but the rest of it, undergoing frantic restoration, is virtually invisible beneath a cage of scaffolding. Only now and again can you catch a glimpse of the occasional arch or mullion.

I also made it to the Picturesque landscapes of Piercefield and Downton, which I'll add to the Gothic Gardens page on the website.

Our Lady of Haddington, a Great Surprise

A couple of weeks ago, before starting at Swanvale Halt, I was up north of the Border visiting chums in East Lothian. On a day of constant downpour which thwarted our planned trip to a haunted castle we went instead to the fair town of Haddington, and visited the Kirk of St Mary, 'lantern of Lothian' as it was known. It was enough of a surprise to discover that the chancel lay in ruins until the 1970s and its restoration - hardly the most auspicious time for rebuilding churches. Then I turned a corner and found, in an ostensibly Presbyterian church, this:

Apparently the chapel containing the image of Our Lady, the successor to a medieval pilgrimage site, was restored in the 19th century by Earl Lauderdale, whose family were Episcopal (quite right too), and so remains officially an Episcopal place of worship.

Outside in common with many Scottish kirks is a wonderfully grim graveyard. There was plenty of fun to be had, even in the appalling rain, but my favourite was this little skellie peeping out from beneath a fallen urn to see whether it was safe: