In Part 1 of this 3-part series, the subject of misericords in choir stalls was introduced, the four churches covered in this three-parter were identified, and the St Werburgh’s Abbey (Chester Cathedral) misericords were discussed. Part 2 takes a look at the misericords in the smaller churches of Gresford All Saints’, Malpas St Oswald’s and Bebington St Andrew’s. References for all three parts can be found at the end of Part 3.
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Chester, Gresford, Malpas and Bebington (continued)
Basic data about the misericords at the four churches
The misericords carved for St Werburgh’s Abbey (Chester Cathedral) were discussed in Part 1. All Saints’ church in Gresford, St Oswald’s at Malpas and St Andrew’s in Bebington were considerably more modest in scale than St Werburgh’s Abbey, but all were impressive when measured against other parish churches in the region, and obviously had access to relatively substantial funding. The table above was also posted in part 1 and provides some of the vital statistics of all four sets of misericords.
All Saints’, Gresford
All Saints’ Church in Gresford
All Saints’ Church in Gresford is unexpectedly big for such a small and unimposing village. The stone church was founded in the 13th century and underwent a major revamp in the 15th century, and is still busy today. I have written about All Saints’ on two previous posts, one about the history of the church in general, and the other about the 15th century gargoyles and grotesques that inhabit its exterior. It has been suggested that the misericords were sourced from Basingwerk Abbey at Holywell in north Wales and added to All Saints’s after the abbey was dissolved in the early 1500s, but although this remains a possibility, it is also probable that All Saints’ was sufficiently well provided for to pay for its own misericord carvings.
Choir stalls at Gresford All Saints’
Neither the All Saints’ guidebook nor the CPAT survey suggest a date for the misericords, and the church’s web page does not mention them. Based on the presence of a preaching fox, a theme thought to represent mendicant friars who were only present from the 14th century, they must have carved after the late 14th century. It is also very probable that they post-date those at St Werburgh’s (1390) as there was nothing else nearby to provide a model. Although the Gresford misericords could plausibly have been associated with the major rebuild of the church in the 15th century, when two new aisles were added and many other changes were made, Dominic Strange’s misericord timeline places the misericords in the late 15th or early 16th century, over 100 years after the Chester misericords. If correct, it demonstrates the durability of themes that were popular in earlier periods.
Sketch plan of the Gresford misericords.
The choir stalls provide a good example of a three-sided arrangement in a squared U-shape. In total there were originally fourteen misericords, four on the north, four on the south and two lots of three on the west. The latter flanked the entrance from the nave to the choir. Today two are blank, either because they were never completed, or because they were removed due to inappropriate content or severe damage (I can find nothing to help determine which). Some are quite badly damaged, but the entire group indicate great skill and include some varied topics.
The choir, Gresford All Saints’
The misericords are separated by arm rests that curl up the sides of the chairs and along the backs, each one featuring a small human figure at the front of the arm rest. Exceptions are at the corners between the north and west rows and the west and south rows, which feature fantastic beasts.
As in St Werburgh’s, a fox is dressed as a friar but this time he is in a pulpit preaching to chickens and geese, demonstrating that this theme was of interest not merely to monastic establishments but to churches as well. The allegedly venal of some elements of the mendicant cause may be the theme here. The earliest mendicant friars were poor and itinerant, begging for alms. By the later middle ages they were comfortably established in friaries of their own, the recipients of patronage, gifts and wills. The apparent hypocrisy was a source of grievance for the clergy beyond the seclusion of the cloister. The parish priest may also have felt threatened by the powerful public sermons and the more evocative style of engagement with the general public delivered by the friars. In the parish church, as well as in the heart of the monastery, friars might be seen as a threat to the role of the conventional clergy, to be satirized, derided and, if possible, undermined.
One of the more puzzling themes that occasionally appears on misericords (but is missing from Chester, possibly due to removal in the Victorian period) is the revealing of male nether regions. At Gresford this is given a context. The misericord shows an acrobat hanging over a pole held by two men, ostentatiously exposing his undercarriage, apparently during a performance, possibly a form of slap-stick entertainment. Quite what these were doing on misericords is uncertain, although there is a lot of speculation on the subject. Whilst there may have been a warning against lewdness and impurity, it is difficult to deny that at least some of these depictions were intended to include a degree of crude humour.
A badly damaged misericord shows two cats, both standing on their hind legs in front of something that is now missing but appears to show a mouse hole at the base, with a tiny mouse with pointed ears to its right. The cats are holding hands, with one apparently leading the other. The leading cat seems to have been holding something in its outstretched paw. Perhaps the upright stance reflects the cat’s commanding, self-possessed and often self-satisfied view of its position within its own universe. An alternative interpretation is that when animals are shown adopting human behaviour, it is a reminder of human failings. Similarly standing on their hind legs are the cats in MS. Bodley 764 (folio 50r), which also shows cats on the hunt.
Wheelbarrows feature quite frequently in misericords, and one of the Gresford misericords shows two women seated side by side in a wheelbarrow being pushed towards the open jaws of a monster’s head by a creature with staring eyes and a forked tail. The cavalcade is followed by a man. All the participants in the scene stare out at the onlooker. The open jaws of the monster represent the gateway to hell. This is a much simpler version of a well-known example at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, which shows two monks being wheeled towards the hellmouth by either a demon or the devil himself, leading to the suggestion that the two wimpled women on the Gresford misericord may be nuns (but bearing in mind that wimples were not exclusive to nuns). The supporters appear to be small rodents, but it is difficult to see how they might relate to the central narrative.
A splendid winged griffin, facing left, is positioned between two delicate unicorns, one of which is missing its head. The griffin has the head and wings of an eagle, the body of a Lion and is four-legged. Like the lion, which can exert its power for either good or evil, depending on the context. When Alexander the Great encounters the enclave of griffins in his voyage to the end of the world, the creature is a true monster, ugly, frightening and vicious. On the other hand it is a pair of griffins that carried Alexander over the edge of the world. The griffin is often used to represent rival ideas and can, in different contexts, represent such opposing individuals as Satan and Christ. The griffin also represents the combination of the opposing elemental forces of air (eagle) and earth (lion). It is difficult to know what, in this context, the griffin is intended to convey. The presence of unicorns, which are often associated with Christ, may either be supportive companions, opposing forces, or hapless victims, and there is nothing to help determine which. The supporters are decorative flowers.
Another misericord, also quite unlike its companions, seems to refer to the gargoyles and grotesques so strongly featured on the exterior of the building. It may have had no specific symbolic meaning. It is a monster’s face with vaulting emanating from its head. The vaulting may be intended to evoke the magnificent screen that separates choir from nave at All Saints’, although the flowers at the intersections on the misericord are not present on the screen. Perhaps it is intended to bring indoors the collective message that the gargoyles and grotesques were communicating from the exterior of the church (discussed briefly in an earlier post).
Some of the All Saints’ misericords are very badly damaged, leaving the core subject matter very difficult to identify. A particularly frustrating example is the misericord whose central subject matter is completely missing. Flanking it there is a wonderful winged angel on the left and, on the right, a lady in an elaborate dress kneeling before a personal altar with the soft folds of her dress flowing behind her on the floor. Perhaps this was either the Annunciation or the Coronation of the Virgin, particularly as there are no other overtly religious stories included in the All Saints’ corpus.
Another badly damaged misericord shows a woman on a four-legged animal, the head of which is missing and is therefore unidentifiable. It is short, has particularly bandy legs and ill-defined feet, none of which suggest a horse. Two carvings, one in front of the woman and animal, and one behind, are lost. The one behind is almost certainly another figure in a long garment, but the one in front may or may not be.
Some of the misericords contain no narrative or obviously symbolic component. One misericord has no central subject matter and no obvious sign of damage, with just two images as supporters, right on the edge of the underside of the seat. These are two three-quarter partial heads, almost sketches, looking towards one another. The meaning of this, if there was any, is lost. If there was a central carving, there is not even a shape left to suggest a subject matter. It is possible that it was carved at a much later date to replace one of the original misericords that might have been damaged or whose subject matter was considered inappropriate. These lost stories are very frustrating.
St Oswald’s Church in Malpas. Photograph by Alan Marsh. Source: Historic England
St Oswald’s Church in the village of Malpas was founded in the late 1300s. The church underwent a similar modernization in the 15th century to that at Gresford, including a similar camber beam roof. It has a great many features that continue to impress, particularly the spectacular tomb effigies of the 15th and early 16th centuries, but its remaining misericords are disappointingly confined to three choir stalls.
There is a set of three choir stalls with three misericords, in a single row, still displayed in the choir area in St Oswald’s. The visitor guide to the church says that there were “at least twelve” 15th century choir stalls with misericords, with only nine surviving and six “much restored.” Given that there are only three on display, it is something of a puzzle as to what happened to the remaining six of the nine surviving. There are no descriptions of any of the misericords, and nor does the booklet say where the surviving misericords (other than the three still in the choir at Malpas) are located today.
The remaining row of choir stalls at St Oswald’s with the misericords hidden beneath the seats.
The choir stalls have carved armrests, although they less elaborate than those at Gresford, and have no carved bench ends. This may suggest that carved choir stalls were never a very important component of the chancel at St Oswald’s, or that the funds required for a more ambitious project were not available. All three remaining misericords are described here, with the disclaimer that they represent only a very small sample of the original corpus. Two of the three are damaged.
I particularly like the mermaid. Mermaids appear on many misericords in Britain. Mermaids resembled Greek sirens, representing both the temptation and lust that men might find hard to resist on the one hand, and the dangers represented by the deformation of the human image in the form of a hybrid creature on the other. They were usually shown, as at Malpas, with bared breasts, with a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other, warnings not merely of seduction but of the vice of vanity. The Malpas mermaid looks down and seems to be moving gently to her right. Her tail has been lightly carved to suggest fish scales. Her bare chest is distinctly flat and smooth, unlike most misericord mermaids, perhaps to avoid encouraging carnal thoughts amongst the Malpas choristers. She holds the comb in her left hand, which rests on her thigh (separated from her upper arm by breakage), and the mirror in the other, overlapping one of the supporters. Both supporters are three-lobed leaves.
A winged monster has one head, shown facing outward, but two bodies that are shown in profile either side of the head. This is probably the simplest and least worked of all three, with minimal details carved into the image, although there are shallow markings to suggest the scaled nature of the wings, and clawed feet. The face is shown in more detail, with three protrusions from the head, which may or may not depict serpents. It is clearly a monster with affinities like the wings, tails and claws that are shared with dragons. Dragons, wyverns and related monsters may represent paganism, power, uncontrolled violence or lust, the Devil himself and unspecified evil and sin that must be confronted and neutralized, or at the very least rationalized. As such creatures are usually associated with remote, often hostile landscapes, they may also represent fear of the unknown. It may also offer a shifting geographical component, so that the dragon may be feared in the remote landscape but is only confronted when it threatens human habitation and safety. The three-lobed leaf supporters are nicely done, with clearly defined edges. A much more elaborate version of a single-headed and double-bodied monster is shown in the Luttrell Psalter (folio 195v), but is evidently part of the same family of images familiar and available to medieval illuminators, carvers and sculptors.
Single-headed two-bodied monster from the Luttrell Psalter (Add MS 42130 f.195.v). Source: Groteskology
Finally, two knights are shown engaged in an athletic, almost balletic fight with swords. Of the three this is by far the most complex, compositionally. At first glance it is very difficult to see exactly what is going on, and whose limbs belong to whom, vividly capturing movement. The pointed shoes, generally confined to the well-to-do, emphasize the mobility and athleticism of the figures. Perhaps it refers to a scene from a chivalric romance, such a the Chester examples that show scenes from stories of Yvain and Tristan and Isolde. Again, the supporters are foliage.
St Andrew’s, Bebington
St Andrew’s, Bebington
As I was just about ready to hit the Publish button on this post I had a whizz through Dominic Strange’s Timeline and Gazetteer, which revealed that St Andrew’s in Bebington on the Wirral possesses misericords in three choir stalls, plus two that have survived being separated from their choir stalls, now serving as corbels. Although the church is not open except for Sunday services, weddings etc., Karen from the church office very kindly arranged for me to visit when volunteers were working there.
Choir stalls in St Andrew’s, Bebington
It is particularly nice to have found these misericords because, as with St Oswald’s in Malpas, the misericords at St Andrew’s rarely appears in books about misericords, always overshadowed by Chester Cathedral and Gresford All Saints’. It is clear that they should be included here not only because they are local and under-sung but because they show some themes that are not shown in the misericords at the other locations discussed in these posts.
The pelican in her piety
Dominic Strange places all five misericords in the 15th century. The guidebook to the church, by Richard Lancelyn Green, says that there were originally twelve of them, with six surviving until 1847 when they were split up due to damp and dry rot. Presumably the other six were discarded. Initially, in 1871, they were split into pairs and then, in 1897, three of them were reassembled into the row that survives today in the chancel, just to the side of the main altar. Two of them have been removed from their original choir stalls and are deployed as corbels but there is no mention of the sixth 1847 survivor.
At the far left of the choir stall is the pelican in her piety plucking her breast (shown above), already described in connection with Chester in part 1, but flanked here with foliage.
The head of a man with beard and hat or other form of head covering may or may not be a portrait. Many misericords show human faces, some characterized by particular expressions or actions, but many contain no clues about the significance. The supporters feature pomegranates. Pomegranates are associated with numerous ideas from antiquity onwards. The symbolism attached to them ranges from fertility, regeneration and good luck to representing the shedding of the blood of Christ and as a symbol of the church and its congregation. Without knowing quite what the man’s head represents it is difficult to interpret the entire message of the misericord.
The third in the row is a splendid dolphin flanked by equally splendid seahorses, presumably designed by someone who had seen neither dolphin or seahorse. The dolphin is a rather terrifying looking creature, but there seem to be no negative narratives associated with it. The bestiary in MS Bodley 764 includes the dolphin, but attaches no special meaning to it, stating that “they follow men’s voices, or gather in shoals when music is played . . . if they go in front of the ship, leaping in the waves, they appear to foretell bad weather.” The only other misericord dolphins that I’ve seen in my online travels are at Norwich Cathedral and St Laurence’s Church in Ludlow.
The remaining two misericords, now used as corbels, show what may be a bull’s head, and a sow with a litter. You can see them on the World of Misericords website. The sow with a litter is a theme also featured on one of the St Werburgh misericords. MS Bodley 764 is quite clear on the negative connotations: “The sow that was washed and returns to her wallowing in the mire is filthier than before; and he who weeps for his admitted sins, but does not desist from them, earns a graver punishment, condemned by his own misdeeds which he could have prevented by repentance; and he descends as if into murky waters because he removes the cleanness of his life by such tears, which are tainted before the eyes of God.” Sows represent unclean spirits and are often associated with gluttony and, more disturbingly, heresy. And in the medieval mind, where heresy lurks, paganism may be lurking nearby.
Contributors to knowledge
Even in such small numbers, the churches at Malpas and Bebington contribute to the body of information about Medieval misericords, helping to build up a database of knowledge about the themes that were of interest to those who commissioned them for the most sacred parts of their monasteries and parish churches. Unless an early report describing or illustrating some of the other misericords emerges, the legacy of those who commissioned, funded and carved the misericords at Malpas and Bebington are confined to just these three and five examples respectively. Although the themes were represented elsewhere, none of the topics shown replicate any of those surviving at St Werburgh’s.
Other churches in the region with misericords
Grapevine misericord at Nantwich St Mary’s. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
The above are the only churches with misericords in the Wrexham-Chester area, but there are others in the general region. For example, there is a set of fourteen dating to the late 14th century in St Mary’s Nantwich to the east, in the town centre. There are 20 dating to the late 15th century in St Asaph’s Cathedral to the west in north Wales. Another set of sixteen dating to the late 15th century can be found in St Bartholemew’s in the village of Tong to the southeast (where the A41 meets the M54). Finally, there are two fine sets of 15th century misericords (the first of sixteen in 1425 the second of twelve in 1447) in St Laurence’s church in Ludlow.
Part 3 wraps up the series, looking at who was involved in the creation of misericords, how they were paid for, and why they featured so frequently in the most sacred part of a church, often hidden from view but containing a mixture of messages that in each case contributed to the sense of a church’s identity. Visitor details and references are also added at the end of part 3.
I first encountered the fabulously inventive misericords, an integral part of some church choir stalls, in Chester Cathedral, founded as St Werburgh’s Abbey. At the abbey they were installed in the late 14th century, and in all cases, from the late 12th to the early 16th century the choir stalls were located in the holiest section of a church, where sacred liturgies and rituals were performed.
Two choir stalls from St Andrew’s Bebington. On the left the hinged seat is in the down position, hiding the misericord beneath. On the right, the seat is tipped up, leaning on the seat back, and reveals the carved misericord on the underside of the seat (my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Misericords are hinged wooden seats set into the choir stalls. When folded down to provide seating, the seat has a plain, flat surface, but when folded up to rest against the seat back, a small platform on the underside of the seat allows the standing chorister to rest his rear end. The word misericord derives from the Latin misericordia (mercy or pity) and for the tired or aged monk or chorister looking for some respite for weary and arthritic legs, it probably was mercifully welcome.
The central theme of this misericord is a two-bodied monster with a single head. The supporters are also rather wonderful monsters, the one on the right also a double-bodied creature, the one on the left possibly a wyvern (Chester Cathedral, my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
In some cases, these misericords were decorated with elaborate carvings. They are flamboyant, skilfully carved and conceptually clever, covering a variety of themes, with individual scenes capturing a seemingly bottomless pit of information about medieval ideas, anxieties, beliefs and even humour. They consist of a central scene and two “supporters.” The central scene is the main subject matter, and the supporters may relate to it, but may simply perform the job of ornamental complements. Although many western European countries also display misericords, the supporters are a British feature. The earliest misericords known in Britain date to the 13th century, with the most complete examples being at Exeter and Salisbury.
The themes of misericords may be religious, mythological, fantastical, domestic, seasonal, humorous, crude and even scatological. Unlike gargoyles, and the figures on arm rests and bench ends, which are individual sculptures, the misericords often make up quite complex scenes, and may be have a narrative component. Particularly skilled carvers produced sophisticated forms and structures which not only engage the viewer but stand out as works of art in their own right. Whilst some were evidently intended to amuse or surprise, others were layered with meaning, creating galleries of real character and adventure.
Misericords, just one component of the choir stalls, are usually accompanied by carved arm rests and often magnificent bench-ends, and in the wealthier establishments sit beneath elaborate canopies, as at Chester Cathedral, making up a fascinating ensemble of images, ideas and aesthetics. Arm rests sit between each of the choir stalls, often running partially up the side of the stall too, creating the sense that each choir stall was an individual unit, and are often carved, usually into human, animal and imaginary figures. Bench ends are panels at the ends of each row of choir stalls, and desks, in front of choir stalls, for holding books and music were also decorated. Panels were carved with scenes and they were topped with little carved sculptural elements called finials. Other sculptural features complemented and supported them.
The bigger, most prosperous establishments could afford more ambitious creations, in terms of both the quantity and quality of the misericords, but smaller establishments with suitably generous patrons often have some excellent and surprising examples to offer. One of the features of British misericords that is not often seen in Europe is the addition of secondary carvings called supporters. These are sometimes purely decorative, and sometimes contribute to the central subject matter.
The u-shaped choir at All Saints’ Gresford with choir stalls and misericords at north, south and, with a gap to allow access from the nave, the west (my sketch Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0).
Rows of choir stalls with misericords, each with a row of narrow desks in front of them for holding music and manuscripts, face one another across the choir, as at Chester Cathedral. In some cases there may be a third set of choir stalls at the west end, up against the screen that separates choir from nave to form a squared U-shaped choir, as at All Saints’ in Gresford.
Inevitably some establishments had misericords which have now been lost. Peterborough Cathedral retains only three of what must have been an impressive collection of misericords rivalling other great ecclesiastical establishments.
Part 1 introduces misericords and explains what they are. Examples from Chester Cathedral are discussed. Part 2 looks at the examples from Gresford All Saints’, Malpas St Oswald’s and Bebington St Andrew’s. Part 3 looks at who chose the themes on misericords, where the ideas came from, who paid for them, and why some often profane images were housed in such sacred places. Also in part 3, some final comments are followed by visitor details and a full list of the references used for all three parts.
All three parts are already written. Part 2 has now been posted on the blog and Part 3 will be posted shortly. If you would like to see the list of references before part 3 is posted, please get in touch and I will email them.
On these posts, some of the photographs are mine, but others, particularly for Chester Cathedral where I didn’t use flash, have been taken from Dominic Strange’s remarkable World of Misericords website, with Dominic’s permission and my sincere thanks. His copyright statement is here. Please see the captions for the correct attributions. I have included some images from all the churches discussed, but to see the complete medieval corpus of each, do visit Dominic’s site, which has complete images from all the churches mentioned in this post, plus a great many other monastic churches, cathedrals and churches in Britain and Europe. This is the type of ever-growing online resource that makes the most of the web as a platform for building shared resources from which both professionals and enthusiasts can benefit and to which they can contribute. xxxxxxxxxxxx
Chester, Gresford, Malpas and Bebington
St Werburgh’s Abbey in Chester was the first of these four medieval churches to have misericords installed along with their choir stalls. Chester, being an abbey with massive financial resources, had 48 misericords of which 43 survive. All Saints’ in Gresford had 14, St Oswald’s in Malpas 12, and it is unknown how many there were at St Andrew’s in Bebington. A summary of the vital statistics is shown below.
Basic data about the misericords at the four churches
Chester
Chester Cathedral. (my photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)
Chester Cathedral was founded as St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey by Hugh Lupus in c.1092 but the choir stalls and their misericords were not installed until the 14th century, in about 1380. The delicately crafted choir (or quire) was the exclusive domain of the monks and their daily rituals, visited only rarely perhaps by the most generous of the abbey’s patrons. The monks were called to the choir seven times a day and once at night. The object of the exercise was to honour and worship the glory of God. This makes the choir the spiritual heart of a monastery. And yet it is here that profane and irreverent images of many misericords were also resident, as fully integrated components of the monks’ devotional and liturgical lives.
The timing of the new choir stalls is particularly interesting as it follows a period of enormous national hardship, beginning with crop failure and famine, and climaxing with the Black Death. The abbey clearly had funds at its disposal, even during such a difficult period, because the choir represents an enormous investment. With its choir stalls, desks, benches and elaborate canopies, all carved in oak, the choir’s components were not merely functional. Today the choir and its many flourishes are valued not only for the considerable skill demonstrated by its carvers and for its considerable aesthetic merit, but for the symbolic character of many of its representational carvings.
The layout of the choir stalls and description of their misericords. Source: Stephen Smalley 1996 (see “Sources” at end). Click to enlarge.
Although Chester Cathedral appears at first glance to have a complete set of medieval misericords, 5 out of the 48 were, as mentioned above, replaced by Victorian restorers either to replace damaged ones or to replace those that were considered to have inappropriate themes, such as nudity or poor taste. It is not known what happened to the missing misericords, but they were probably destroyed at the time. Given that the Puritan soldiers of the English Civil War defaced many features of Chester Cathedral in 1645 it is astonishing that the 48 survived so long.
The St Werburgh’s Abbey examples are justifiably famous, very similar to the examples at Lincoln Cathedral, built a decade earlier, which probably provided some templates for Chester, and with which they may have shared a workforce. Shown to the right is the layout of the misericords and the topic of each one, copied from a small and invaluable booklet that used to be sold in the cathedral shop. It is now presumably out of print and has become very difficult to source (thanks for the loan Katie!). Note that those misericords shown in italics are Victorian replacements.
The themes present at Chester’s St Werburgh Abbey are a phenomenal mix, so only a few can be picked out to represent some of the ideas on show.
Obviously religious themes and personalities are often in a minority on misericords, but where a monastery or church is named for a particular saint, a misericord may be dedicated to that saint. The Anglo-Saxon saint Werburgh was an 8th century nun and abbess from the Midlands. One of the misericords focuses on St Werburgh’s miracle. There are various versions of the story but all agree that geese were damaging the convent fields. Werburgh ordered them to be gathered up before commanding them to leave. The convent steward, Hugh, was angry with the geese for devastating his field of corn. One version says that whilst Werburgh was away Hugh captured and cooked one of the geese, and when she returned the remaining geese had refused to leave, forming a delegation to inform her of the event and ask for her help. Werbugh ordered that the bones and feathers of the carcass should be gathered up, and the missing goose was reborn. The supporter to the left shows Hugh and Werburgh rounding up the geese. In the centre Werburgh resurrects the goose, which flies away with its companions. On the right supporter Hugh is on his knees, repentant, and is forgiven by Werburgh.
Coronation of the Virgin in Chester. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
The infrequency of religious topics is perhaps due to a general feeling that it as unsuitable to a) hide them away and b) sit on them. However they do occur and at Chester another obviously religious topic that requires no interpretation is the Coronation of the Virgin. The Chester example is not the carved equivalent of a delicate Fra Angelico, being a rather chunky rendition, but it has real charm and the supporters, cittern-playing winged angels, are lovely. The Virgin and Child is the subject of another misericord. St George and the Dragon is another popular religious topic for misericords, an action scene that shows an uncompromising approach to demonic danger, but the one at Chester is Victorian.
The rear end of Yvain’s horse captured in the portcullis in Chester. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
Popular romance stories provide the theme for some misericords, such as the 12th century Arthurian story “The Knight of the Lion” by Chrétien de Troyes about Sir Yvain. A snapshot from the story is captured on a really entertaining vignette. The central scene shows a walled town with its entrance arch flanked by two slender towers. Look closely, and you see that the rear end of a horse faces you. As Yvain chased his opponent into the gatehouse, the portcullis was activated by a secret device as Yvain’s horse stepped on it. The portcullis dropped, narrowly missing Yvain and chopped the horse in two. The portcullis at the other end of the gatehouse also dropped, trapping Yvain. All of this, and the rest of the story, would have been immediately recognizable, without showing Yvain himself, from the image of the half-horse on the outer side of the portcullis. The horse’s arse approach to a story that had plenty of other events from which to select probably raised many smiles as well as evoking the rest of the story. The supporters show another aspect of the tale involving two men-at-arms.
Alexander in Flight in Chester. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Alexander the Great, very small part history and a much greater part legend and fiction, was a very popular character in the Middle Ages. At Chester a misericord captures the notorious “flight” of Alexander. The great leader, having reached the edge of the world, wished to explore the unknown beyond, rising both to the heights and to the depths. Perched on what looks like a piece of wood in this misericord is his throne, supported on ropes held by two griffins. Fully equipped to take flight, he was carried over the edge of the known world to explore the unknown.
Alexander in Flight shown in the mid-15th century Talbot Shrewsbury Book, officially known as Royal MS 15 E VI (folio 20v). Source: British Library.
Having acquainted himself with the unknown world, and finding nothing left for him to conquer, Alexander returned to the known world. Alexander’s flight to the unknown may be more favourite story than morality tale, although it can also be taken to represent the folly of all-encompassing ambition. Alexander goes on to conquer Babylon and build himself a massive golden throne. In Babylon, he dies. As David Williams says “Alexander is both the force that battles the monsters as he attempts to extend civilization to the ends of the earth, and he is the monster itself, demolisher of cities, reviser of history.” The misericord’s supporters also show griffins. Griffins are discussed further with reference to a splendid example at Gresford in Part 2.
Angry woman berating a cowering man in Chester. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
Scenes of domestic life on British misericords include some startling vignettes of women attacking men, presumably their husbands. The marvellous example at Chester involves a woman with a dress resembling a tornado, sweeping her much smaller, cowering husband aside with a wooden implement, apparently in a garden or rural setting. The Chester Cathedral Quire Misericords booklet describes this as “fighting couple,” which seems like something of an understatement for a scene showing a whirlwind of fury breaking loose. Some of these many British and European woman-abusing-man misericords have been interpreted as depicting the physical, carnal and uncontrolled aspect of women. It has also been suggested that some of them may represent male anxiety in the face of increasing female emancipation. Perhaps, in the male-only environment of the choir, a humorous subtext was that the monastery is a much safer place for a man than a marital home. The supporters, which appear at first glance to be floral, have angry faces at their centres, reinforcing the message of conflict and hostility.
A page from the 13th century MS Bodley 764, showing the tigress with the mirror at the top (see below). Source: Bodleian Library, Oxford
Real world animals, fish and birds shown on misericords, either local or exotic, are frequently very beautiful, but often have symbolic roles as well. “Bestiaries” were encyclopaedia type books produced in the middle ages that not only produced information about animals (some of them mythological or imaginary) but also put them into religious context. An example is the fascinating bestiary now known as manuscript MS Bodley 764 available to view on the Bodleian Library website or available in print, translated by Richard Barber (see Sources at the end of Part 3). This describes characteristics of familiar, exotic and mythological animals, many of which appear on misericords. There is also the splendid Medieval Bestiary website, an excellent resource that lists animals (again, real, exotic and mythological) and examines medieval perspectives on each, including their symbolic value.
The MS Bodley 764 bestiary says that a familiar British bird, the heron, symbolizes “the soul of saints or the elect, who, scorning the turbulence of this world, lest they should become ensnared in the traps of the devil, raise their minds above things to the serenity of heaven where they could see God face to face.” A Chester misericord shows two fabulous herons, their necks sinuously curved and their heads facing upwards as though feeding off the underside of the misericord. They are flanked by supporters that are less easy to interpret, but possibly representing demonic influences: a winged dragon with claws on one side, and on the other side a man-headed dragon with beard and an elaborate hat, scaled body and hooves.
The knight stealing a cub and deceiving the tigress with a mirror. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
An exotic animal displayed on a misericord was the tiger, something impossible for most people to experience, much like a unicorn, but known to be the living product of distant lands. In this particular narrative it is at the heart of a morality tale, which is described in the bestiary. A knight lies flat on his horse’s back, holding a stolen tiger cub in his left hand. From this apparently perilous position he reaches to the ground and drops a mirror in the path of the tigress that pursues her stolen cub. The tigress stops when she sees the mirror, believing that her own reflection is the stolen cub. Together, the knight and the mirror represent demonic trickery and deceit, whilst the inclusion of the tiger provides an exotic flavour to the scene. Admittedly the tiger doesn’t look like a tiger (no stripes either on the misericord or on the blue creature in the bestiary, shown in MS Bodley 764 above) but this was a well known scene that would have been familiar to educated medieval onlookers.
Some animals have specifically religious associations. The “Pelican in her Piety” is a recurring theme and is shown on one of the misericords at Chester, as well as one of the associated carvings, representing the sacrifice of Christ to redeem humanity. The pelican, attacked by her hungry children (representing ungrateful humanity), retaliates and accidentally kills them. Remorsefully, she pecks her own breast until she bleeds, and this revives her chicks (representing Christ’s sacrifice for humanity).
The unicorn, his head cradled in the lap of a virgin whilst killed by a knight. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Mythological animals on the Chester misericords also often have specific ideas associated with them, which may sometimes be an odd blending of imaginary animals with Christian ideas. For example, there is a carving of a really lovely unicorn with a curly mane, its head in the lap of a woman (above). Even as it lies there it is attacked and killed by a man in armour with a sword. The woman is a virgin, and the voluntary submission of the unicorn symbolizes its respect for her pure condition, like the Virgin Mary, whilst the killing of the unicorn represents Christ’s sacrifice and the martyrdom of the innocent. The supporters show a wyvern with scaled wings, and one with bat wings, probably demonic characters representing the eternal threat of evil. This scene is a popular one, not confined to misericords. Below it is an illustration in a manuscript, showing exactly the same components.
The 13th century Rochester Bestiary: British Library, Royal 12f. XIII, fol.10v. Source: Wikpedia
Animals mimicking human actions normally incorporate a particular comment on the human world, often derisive or satirical. In St Werburgh’s Abbey, the wily fox in a friar’s habit, preaching to a woman, possibly a nun, probably represented the new mendicant friars preaching to the gullible general public. The orders of friars in Chester were Franciscans, Dominicans and Carmelites. These were the new kids on the block in the 13th century who, unlike the established Benedictine monks, were preaching in the streets, and mingling with people where they lived and worked, diverting donations to their own establishments and raising questions about the value of monks who were hidden away. These scenes at several churches demonstrate Benedictine contempt for the mendicants, putting a clever and often amusing spin on their activities (the friar-foxes are often shown preaching to geese and cockerels), but almost certainly demonstrate a certain amount of anxiety about how their popularity would impact the conventional, secluded monks in their cloisters. Another, closely related interpretation is that the fox represents the anti-establishment Lollards, deeply troubling to the church in the 14th century.
Mythological people also have a place on misericords. Wildmen are a popular subject, of which there are three examples at Chester, each dealing with a slightly different theme. A Wildman (or wodehouse) is distinguished from other men by being covered from head to foot with a curly or shaggy pelt. Only the bearded upper face, hands and feet are fur-free. Wildmen were nearer to nature than to civilization, and accordingly had powers over the natural world. One of the examples, known from a number of sites, shows a lion (often God) fighting a dragon (often Satan) with the supporters showing Wildmen riding, and thereby controlling, dragons. A second example, shown here, shows a Wildman (with head damaged) riding a lion, holding its chain in one hand. The pair are flanked by two different types of dragon or monster. Wildmen riding dragons and lions represent nature tamed, but may also suggest the taming of passions like love and lust.
Scene from the romance of Tristan and Isolde. My photo Creative Commons licence CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Finally, some churches have scenes that are unique or found only rarely. Chester has a misericord showing a scene from the early 13th century Arthurian romance of Tristan and Isolde (or Iseult), which it shares only with Lincoln Cathedral. The misericord at Chester shows the lovers in front of a tree with a dog at their feet. In or behind the tree is Isolde’s justifiably suspicious husband King Mark, spying on the lovers. Tristan’s dog at the feet of the lovers represents loyalty and love in most versions of the tale, but in one version of the story it is revealed that blind loyalty can be dangerous, when the dog betrays the disguised Tristan by recognizing him. One of the difficulties of deciphering a scene like this is that there may be several versions of a popular story that include the same lead characters and supporting roles, but with different narrative twists and outcomes.
Sow and piglets. Source: Dominic Strange, World of Misericords
The misericords at Chester help to demonstrate the variety of themes and ideas that were in play in the Middle Ages, and successfully demonstrate the imagination, creativity and skill that went into the misericords in a prestigious religious institution. They do not capture the complete range of typical subject matters that might be found on misericords throughout Britain. Five of them are, of course, missing, either because of damage or, perhaps more likely, because the Victorian restorers considered their themes to be inappropriate. Even so, the massive variety of misericord subjects chosen across the many ecclesiastical institutions in Britain point to different interests and ideas in the many places in which they appear.
Emulating their more prestigious cousins much smaller churches could also follow ecclesiastical fashion and demonstrate, on a more modest scale, their ability to produce fine misericords and other sculptural elements of their own. In Part 2the twelve of fourteen misericords at Gresford, and the remaining examples at Malpas (three of twelve) and Bebington (five of twelve) are discussed.
The small Llangar Church is exceptional. It is Grade-1 listed and a Scheduled Monument located in the Dee valley not far from Corwen. From its lovely lime-washed white walls and its small but well-filled churchyard to its painted interior and box pews, all set in the middle of a field, there is so much that is unexpected in Llangar Church. It has been subjected to detailed historical and archaeological research, and is accordingly much better understood than many other churches in north Wales. This work, looking at over 500 years of use, means that there is far too much information to include here. We were shown round by visitor guide Heather on the day, who was excellent, but there is not always a tour available, so the official Cadw guide book is certainly one way go to if you want a more informative account, with 18 pages dedicated to Llangar Church. The survey and excavation report published in Archaeologia Cambrensis in 1981 (pages 64-132) is the most detailed report available, and can be accessed online. See Sources at the end of this post for both.
Visiting details and a map are at the end, but do note that this can be combined with a visit to the brightly painted 17th century Rhug Chapel, which is a 5-10 minute drive away, also on the map at the end (and about which I have posted here).
The meaning of the church’s name remains uncertain. One interpretation suggests that it it can be translated as “Church of the White Deer,” whilst another suggestion is that it might refer to the name of a neighbouring Iron Age hillfort. The Coflein website refers to it as “All Saints.”
Whatever the meaning of its name, the first documented evidence of it dates to 1291 and the church was probably founded earlier in the 13th century, serving local farms and the services that supported them. It escaped the destructive attentions of the Reformation, and was used until 1856, when it was replaced by a new church in Cynwyd that was both bigger and far more conveniently located. Although abandonment of the church, combined with its relatively inconvenient location, led to neglect, decay and damage, it fortunately escaped being plundered for building materials, and avoided the indignities of Victorian restoration work that usually augmented and remodelled what was found rather than merely preserving an architectural legacy.
It was not until the 1970s that conservation work accompanied by survey and research projects began to rescue the site and uncover some of its complex architectural and social history. The church was not a time capsule of a single particular period, but a palimpsest of multiple periods. This was a living, breathing community resource for over the 500 years, and as people and ideas changed, so did the church. The Cadw analysis of the architectural development of the church identifies five main phases: Medieval, Early 17th century, Mid to Late 17th century, early 18th century and later 18th and 19th centuries. The scatter of painted and engraved dates through the church from the 17th century suggest that that this was a period when the church underwent a number of repairs and modifications.
The churchyard
The entrance to the churchyard is marked by an attractive and remarkably solid 18th century stone lych gate, with double wooden doors. Like all lych gates it provided a shelter for coffin bearers and a place to rest the coffin bier until the service began, and also served as a formal entrance to the churchyard. The slate roof has two tiers of decorative pointed tiles on the churchyard side.
The churchyard is on a slope. To provide a flat surface on which to build the church, material was removed from the east and transferred to the west end. The dangers of this scheme, leaving one end much more consolidated and compressed than the other, resulted in later structural problems on the north side (opposite the porch side) and at the west end. Over the the decades, many of the headstones have started tilting downhill.
The cemetery has a particular charm all of its own, which is difficult to define but has something to do with the simplicity of the grave monuments, and the general absence of ostentation. The earliest of the monuments in the churchyard date to around 1600. Chest tombs of the 17th and earlier 18th centuries cluster close to the church itself, whilst those further away were later. These later graves were both chest tombs and graves marked by a headstone and footstone. The cemetery went out of use in the 1870s, when the church was abandoned. The church and churchyard, built into the side of a hill, are rather exposed and some of the inscriptions are very worn. Interestingly, most of those graves before 1825 were inscribed in English, whereas later ones were largely in Welsh.
18th century
1821
1841
There is also a sundial base just beyond the church porch.
Llangar Church and churchyard showing the northwest corner, by the Dee, completely free of graves. Aerial view. Source: RCAHMW Coflein
In general the north side of a churchyard was the last to receive graves, either because it had previously been in use for community activities or because, being darker and colder, it was less attractive for visiting. In the case of Llangar the northwest corner remained entirely free of burials right up to the moment of its abandonment, but this is probably because of problems with subsidence, a theory supported by various changes made to the church’s architecture to counter structural difficulties.
The church exterior
The guide book has a step by step tour of the exterior as revealed by the survey work. It is a fascinating detective story over two pages, perfect for anyone doing a self-guided tour on a dry day. The short version is that the south wall (porch side) dates to the Middle Ages, and the north wall was medieval but was modified over the centuries, with some windows blocked and others added. The north wall is now propped up by a modern retaining wall added during the renovation, but it is worth looking out for a top-to-bottom jagged line like a crack at the west end, which shows where structural work was carried out in the second half of the 17th century. The west wall was rebuilt in the early 18th century. The porch was added in the early 17th century, re-roofed in 1702, and the big ornamental window in the Perpendicular gothic style probably dates to around the same time.
The interior
Visitors enter the church via the porch with two stone benches, probably dating to the early 17th century. There is paintwork and various pieces of graffiti carved into wood and stone. Take note too of the noticeboard showing some of the restoration work.
As you walk in to the church, you are confronted with a fabulous red-painted life-sized skeleton representing Death, at gallery level on the opposite wall. As a reminder that a church is the interface between the living and the dead, and that life is only a temporary condition before interment and Judgement Day, this can scarcely be beaten. There are more details about this image below.
The ground floor is a single space with a floor covered in stone slabs and a small overhead gallery at the west end, which was probably used for the musicians. There are no aisles or other architectural divisions. The space beneath the gallery was clearly reserved for parts of the congregation that had the lowest status, at the furthest distance from the sacred east end, and was very dark and cramped beneath the low ceiling.
The earliest parts of the wooden beamed ceiling are thought to date to the 15th century, although timbers were replaced and repaired in subsequent centuries, and today most of them are modern, from the 1970s restoration. The east end, traditionally the sacred end of a church, is marked by a “canopy of honour” dating to the late 15th or early 16th century, a barrel-shaped ceiling that would have shown sacred themes in paintings that have now been lost. It is thought that they may have looked like those at St Benedict’s Church at Gyffin near Conwy showing the twelve apostles (its website is here, complete with a virtual tour).
The only feature that would have furnished the church of the Middle Ages to survive is the simple font set into a niche, which has been moved from its original position, probably in the 18th century. Most of the surviving fittings date to the early part of the 18th century.
From the 18th century, the public sat in the surviving box pews along the north wall and on backless bench pews on the south wall. Four of the elegant box are dated 1711 (belonging to the Hughes family of Gwerclas, 1759, 1768 and 1841. One preserves the initialse of one of its occupants.
Another pew, at the south side of the 18th century altar and dated 1841, was used by the rector’s family. Opposite, on the other side of the altar, is a painted 18th century cupboard topped with a winged angel. It is set into the north wall dating to the 18th century, with three keyholes, requiring three keyholders. The altar itself dates to the 18th century but was built of 17th century wood. The window above the altar is flanked by two panels, which between them show the Ten Commandments, in Welsh. Originally the east end would also have housed a pulpit, but this was moved to part way along the south wall. It is a three-tiered pulpit, which was probably moved from the east end sometime after 1732 to allow the altar rail to be employed for the giving of the sacrament.
Like nearby 17th century Rhug, Llangar’s interior wall paintings escaped the whitewashing vigour of the Reformation, but unlike Rhug, the paintings represent different time periods, from the 14th to late 18th centuries. Some images were overpainted with new ones, and many are very faint. One of the paintings has been removed to preserve it and is now in the exhibition area at Rhug Chapel. The Cadw guide contains a full description of all of the paintings, by A.J. Parkinson, but here are some highlights.
North wall
Most of the images were intended to provide visual material to support sermons, which Parkinson refers to as “teaching aids.” The fabulous skeleton is brandishing time’s arrow in one bony hand and a winged hour-glass in the other. Between his legs are a shovel and pickaxe, tools of the gravedigger. He is dated tentatively to 1748, the death of rector Edward Samuel, who was a notable Welsh scholar and poet. Looking to his left, on the front of the gallery, are some elegant yellow frames with floral motifs, containing texts that are now too faint to read, but may by Biblical.
To the right of the skeleton, over the window, is the name of the rector in 1730, and to the right of this was the Royal Arms of the same period, now in the Rhug Chapel visitor centre.
The rest of the north wall above the box pulpits contains overlapping images, the earliest of which, possibly 14th century, is a bishop (very difficult to make out) in the doorway of a substantial and rather exotic church, the towers of which can be easily seen.
The red frame possibly dates to the 15th century and probably contained a narrative, such as the life of Christ, or scenes from the lives of saints. Other decorations along the wall were painted over in the 18th century.
On the south wall are a series of morality-themed panels outlined in red, probably dating to the 15th century. All are very faint. Some of them show representations of the Seven Deadly Sins, in which each sin is personified and is shown riding an appropriate animal. These are very difficult to make out, but are almost unique. Jane Durrant’s reconstruction below shows what they may have looked like in the late medieval period (scanned from the Cadw guide book).
Cutaway reconstruction showing teh south wall panels as they may have looked in the 15th century. By Jane Durrant. Source: Cadw guide book by W. Nigel Yates (full details at end, p.28).
On the left is a stag, representing lechery, and on the right is a wild boar representing gluttony, two of the Seven Deadly Sins
The gallery with benches, at the west end, is reached by a flight of stone stairs. It probably housing the musicians and singers, retains a very unusual four-sided music stand.
From the Middle Ages to the 19th Century populations changed, and parish boundaries often ceased to be representative of where people were concentrated and wanted to worship. In the middle 19th century Llangar and Gwyddelwern were neighbouring parishes, but Llangar’s population did not exceed 251 people dotted around the parish, whereas Gwyddelwern’s population had reached 1,118, of which nearly half lived in Cynwyd, near to Llangar. In 1853 the decision was made to redraw the parish boundaries so that Cynwyd was in the parish of Llangar, but at the same time it was also decided that a new church should be built at Cynwyd to replace the inconveniently located Llangar Church. Llangar Church had gone out of use by the mid 1870s except for occasional burials. Some abandoned buildings are robbed for their materials, but Llangar survived intact, although as its roof deteriorated, so the rest of it came under threat.
Restoration
Noticeboard in the church porch
The importance of Llangar was recognized in the 1960s, and it was taken into care by the Welsh Office in 1967. Restoration work began in 1974. There is a noticeboard in the porch of the church showing some of the restoration work, as well as on the Coflein website. Amongst many other restoration activities, one of the big structural changes accomplished during the restoration was the addition of a retaining wall on the outside of the original wall on the eastern end of the north side. This should continue to stabilize the church to secure its future. The roof was largely rebuilt, and most of the interior required conservation work. Survey work, involving a number of different specialists, began to reveal the history of the church and churchyard.
Final Comments
More than any other church that I have visited in recent years, Llangar provides a sense of a place of social congregation. This was off the beaten track, even for rural people who came from their farms and forges to attend the Sunday service. Many of them will have met at market, but a sense of real community probably only developed on the back of the weekly congregation, which was a social as well as a religious activity, attended by entire families. The paintings on the walls, changing over time to suit different needs, helped to involve the congregation in the Christian narrative, surrounding them with key messages and providing them with a sense of context. The painting here was not merely decorative, like Rhug, but invested with shared articles of faith. It is a small place, but it has a real impact.
Visiting
Source: Google Maps (with my annotations). Llangar Church is at the bottom of the map, Rhug at the top.
Before setting out, it is vital to check the website, because the church is open only on certain days of the month in the spring and summer, and is closed during autumn and winter. Do note that opening times are timed to coincide with those of nearby Rhug Chapel, so you can do both at the same time. https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/llangar-old-parish-church
Llangar Church and its churchyard are located in the Dee valley in a field just off the B4401, a well-used tourist route to the eastern side of Lake Tegid (sometimes referred to as Lake Bala).
There is a large lay-by opposite the farm track that gives access to the church. The church is sign-posted, but when I was there the sign was hidden by tree branches. There is a small post box on a pole next to the farm track that leads to the church, and a sign on the open gate for Station Cottage. The track leads downhill for a minute or two, past farm buildings on the left. The road goes hard right and then hard left. At the left turning, there is a gate on the right hand side (with a sign to its left saying Guide Dogs Only) that takes the visitor across a field, complete with mud and cow-pats, through a small gate on to a grassy footpath flanked by upright slates. This leads to the lych gate and the churchyard beyond.
For those taking unwilling legs into account, although it is only about 5-10 minutes from car to lych gate this is very slippery underfoot after rainfall, meaning that this would almost certainly be better approached during a dry period. Part of the graveyard is on a steep slope, which would make exploring it challenging, and there are steps up to the gallery within the church, but otherwise there should be no difficulties.
If you want to get the most out of the visit, the guide book is very helpful (see Sources below), covering both Llangar Church and Rhug Chapel as well as Gwydir Uchaf Church near Betws-y-Coed, which I have not yet visited, but looks fabulous. The guide book is particularly strong on Llangar Church. It can be purchased at Rhug Chapel, or ordered online from the usual sources.
If you plan to include a walk in your visit, the farm track from the road leads to a public footpath that runs along the disused railway track, which a couple who had arrived early recommended. There are many good walks in the Corwen area, some of which are detailed in an excellent leaflet, which can be downloaded here as a PDF.
Sources:
Books and papers
Parkinson, A.J. 1993. The Wall Paintings. In Yates, N.W. Rug Chapel, Llangar Church, Gwydir Uchaf Chapel. Cadw, p.37-39.
Although I haven’t yet managed to get hold of it Heather, the Cadw visitor guide, also recommended R. Suggett’s Painted Temples: Wallpaintings and Rood-screens in Welsh Churches, 1200–1800. RCAHMW 2021.
Another book that I haven’t yet seen, to which Peter Carrington alerted me, is Archaeologies and Antiquaries: Essays by Dai Morgan Evans edited by Howard Williams, Kara Critchell and Sheena Evans. Archaeopress 2022, which has four chapters dedicated to Llangar. https://www.archaeopress.com/Archaeopress/Products/9781803271583
Having visited Grade-1 listed Rhug (pronounced “rig”) Chapel around 20 years ago, I had always meant to return because I found it such a joyous place. A small building, it is a jack-in-a-box full of surprises. Although fairly plain on the exterior, it escaped Reformation erasure as well as any major Victorian remodelling. The interior retains all of its 17th Century charm, an extravaganza of bright paintwork, wonderful patterns and motifs, and lively carvings. It is a celebration of colour, very unusual in most of Britain’s attractive but sombre post-Reformation Anglican buildings.
The chapel is in a rural setting, just to the west of Corwen in the Dee valley, with plenty of footpaths in the immediate area. You might consider visiting the nearby and remarkable little Llangar Church at the same time (which I have posted about on this blog here). Both are open only a few times a month for a part of the year, closed for the rest of the year, but their opening times are co-ordinated so that they can be visited on the same days. Visiting details for both are at the end of the post.
Many thanks to Cadw guide Heather for a great introductory talk, and for pointing out many details that we might otherwise have missed, and there was plenty of time to ask questions and wander around afterwards. There is not always a guided talk available. I’ve written up some of the top level details of the visit below, but I recommend buying the Cadw guide book, which is stuffed full of information and great photos. It also has the details of Llangar Church and Gwydir Uchaf Chapel. I haven’t yet visited Gwydir Uchaf near Betws-y-Coed but it is one on my list.
Apologies for the poor quality of the interior photographs, which are very grainy and occasionally a bit blurred, due to the low lighting that helps to preserve the paintwork. Hopefully they will still suggest that the chapel is very much worth a visit.
Background
Cross at Rhug, brought by William Salusbury from Denbigh
Rhug Chapel, properly the Chapel of Holy Trinity, was built as a private chapel by Colonel William Salusbury (1580-1660), set apart from Rhug Manor. The land in which Rhug sits belonged to descendants of Prince of Powys Madog ap Merdudd (who died in 1160) until it passed to a daughter, who married into the Salesbury family. Sir Robert Salusbury, the son of this marriage, added the lordship of Glyndyfrdwy to the family’s property, once in the ownership of the rebel Owain Glyndwr. Robert died in 1599, and his only son, who had no children of his own, died only nine years later in 1608. The estate passed to Sir Robert’s brother instead, Captain John Salusbury. He too died without children, only three years later, in 1611 and was in turn succeeded by his brother, William Salusbury.
William Salusbury was once a privateer (a type of state-authorized pirate) in the East Indies, and most importantly a royalist governor of Denbigh Castle, who was known in old age as “Hen Hosanau Gleision,” which translates as “Old Blue Stockings.” He is best known for his defence of Denbigh Castle for the royalist cause during the Civil War. Denbigh fell to the parliamentarians but not until after six months under siege when he was ordered by the king to surrender.
Denbigh Castle. Source: Cadw via Wikipedia
Inheriting the Rhug estate in 1611, William Salusbury found himself saddled with heavily encumbered estates, mortgaged to the hilt, and spent the next 30 years turning this situation around. The chapel was built for his family’s private worship. His religious preferences leaned towards the Anglican “high church” of Charles I, which accounts for the bright colours and the sense of celebration. The services were carried out in Welsh, and many of the texts within the chapel are in Welsh as well as Latin.
On his death at the age of 80, having lived long enough to see the restoration of the monarchy, William left a deed of endowment dated 3rd January 1641 so that services should be maintained, and continue to be delivered in Welsh. He also required that the curate was dedicated to the chapel and was not employed elsewhere as well. The endowment was provided with portions of land that would provide the chapel with an income, managed by trustees. The original requirements were ignored some time after William’s death, and the vicars of Corwen or Llangar usually took Rhug into their existing domains and delivered the service in English. In the mid 19th Century an additional sum was bequeathed to the bishopric of St Asaph in order to reinforce the original stipend to the chaplain.
The Exterior
Approaching the church we paused at a tall cross, around 6ft (1.8m) tall, on a plinth and three steps. This is not contemporary with the construction of the church, but predates it, having been brought by William Salusbury from Denbigh Castle. Both the east window and the western door are accessorized with sculptural features. At the east end these are two heads, one with a crown and one with a mitre; at the west end they are carved into a loosely floral or leafy motif. The tracery in the windows was a 19th century addition, as was the small belfry.
In the churchyard there is a circular fenced area with three large headstones, and two secondary ones. These are headstones from the 1860s belonging to the Wynn family. The central one features a lighthouse on top and a horseshoe at bottom left, belonging to a daughter who died after falling from her horse. The lighthouse, of unusual four-sided construction, represents the one on Bardsey Island, once the property of the estate.
The church is surrounded by a lovely Potentilla hedged walkway. Some of the Potentilla, yellow and white, was in flower. I have never seen it used as hedging before, and it works beautifully.
The Interior
Open the door, and you will find yourself given the option of climbing a staircase to the gallery on the left, or opening interior doors to proceed in to the nave (main seating area) and the chancel beyond (the sacred east end) on your right. The lighting is very low, so it is worth sitting in one of the many pews for a minute or two to let your eyes adjust, particularly if it is a bright day outside. Upstairs, the gallery was probably used by musicians. It provides a superb view of the ceiling and beam decoration.
The beams and trusses of the hammerbeam ceiling are painted with flowers, grapes and foliage in bright colours. One of the cross-beams shows the date of construction, 1637. The 16 and 37 are either side of the abbreviation IHS, which stands for the first three letters of the name of Jesus in Latin and is frequently sees on gravestones in the area. The same IHS motif is found elsewhere in the church. The beams themselves are painted with flowers and grapes vines that spread vigorously towards the painted sky. Ceiling bosses, wooden features that traditionally sit over the meeting of beams, are also beautifully painted with a variety of motifs.
Between the beams, the ceiling is also painted. Over the nave the sinuous shapes emulate wispy clouds. Over the chancel a “canopy of honour” is provided by a wonderful heavenly scene of angels and stars on a blue background.
Angels are a recurring theme in the small chapel, with four wooden sculpted angels suspended at the base of roof trusses and others decorating the fabulous wooden, candle-holding chandelier hanging from the centre of the church.
The optimism of angels with their promise of heavenly mercy is balanced by the grim reality of impending death. The skull and skeleton are accompanied by candles burning down, an hourglass with the sands draining, and a dial, both signifying the passing of time. At the base of the dial the words “hora fugit” (the hour flies). In the centre of the hourglass and dial is the phrase “ut hora sic vita” meaning “as with the hour, so with life.” The welsh inscriptions below this are translated, courtesy of the Cadw guide book , as follows:
“as the flame gradually consumes the tallow of the lighted candle, so life on the orbit (earth) perishes daily” (from a 16th century carol)
“lifetime, however long its stay, will come to an end by night and by day” (from the Englynion y Misoedd, Stanzas of the Months)
“my nose and my face are perished, very dumb am I, no-one knows me” (from a poem attributed to Ieuan ap Rhydderch)
“every strong one is weak in the end” (a 16th century proverb)
One of the most celebrated features of the chapel is the frieze that runs at the top of both north and south walls, consisting of a series of rectangular pieces, highly coloured and very ornate, each showing a small creature at its centre, some identifiable as either from nature or myth, and one which is completely unidentifiable.
In the chancel, flanking the altar, are two unusual canopied benches looking rather like four-poster beds. The role of these has been much-discussed and although it is not known exactly how they were used, a plausible suggestion is that at least one was a family pew. The other might also have been a family pew but in the absence of a pulpit may have served as a place from which the service could be delivered.
The pews themselves were plain benches when the church was first built, but back rests were added a little later. On each side, from front to back, each of the pews was connected with a single piece of wood, with scallop-shaped openings carved out to provide access to the pews. Facing into the aisle, the sections between these access points are carved with images, quite difficult to see in the low light without a torch, depicting birds, animals and imaginary creatures. The carvings were fairly difficult to make out in the light conditions on the day so I tortured the photos below both in the camera’s settings and in Photoshop. Even so, they are still fuzzy.
The frieze along the top of the wall and the carvings on the side of the pews seem somewhat reminiscent of misericords. Misericords at Chester Cathedral (from its monastery days), and both Gresford and Malpas parish churches are part of a Medieval tradition that includes the grotesque, the humorous, and the fabled in the holiest sanctuaries of their Christian homes. Although the images at Rhug are at least two hundred years later than those at Chester Cathedral, they do echo this earlier medieval Catholic tradition of combining Christian icons and motifs with wild, mythological and completely invented imagery. The world of the “other,” neither sublime heaven nor the realm of pedestrian human reality, is where demons, the unexplained and the unknown reside. Positioning them alongside Christian images, like the pelican plucking her breast to feed her young (immediately above, a Christian symbol representing the sacrifice of Christ for humanity) emphasizes how humans negotiate a world of conflicting experiences and demands, opportunities and pitfalls, both natural and supernatural. This glorious little chapel balances the beauty of nature, the strangeness of the unknown, the fear of impending death, and the promise of angelic eternity.
Additions and restoration work
Inevitably, some restoration work was required and there were a number of tweaks to William’s original vision. In 1854-55 the bell turret was added by Sir Robert Vaughan, some floor tiles were laid in the nave and chancel, and a mock-Jacobean chancel screen incorporating a lectern were added (compensating for the lack of pulpit in the original church). The windows were remodelled. Originally, according to a visitor in 1849, the windows had mullions (vertical divisions), but no gothic style ornamental tracery. All the windows now have tracery. As in many small churches, a lean-to vestry was added to the north side.
The font, at the rear of the south side, was added in 1864. The altar itself, and the stained glass windows, belong to the later 19th century. The window on the north side (right as you look down from the entrance) has a particularly Pre-Raphaelite look to it.
William’s architectural legacy has only been altered very slightly. Rhug Chapel is now under the care of Cadw who have done a lot of work to make the chapel and its surrounding site a pleasure to visit. ———–
Visiting Rhug Chapel (and Llangar Church)
First, you need to check the opening times, as the Rhug Chapel and Llangar Church are only open on certain days, and are closed entirely over the winter period.
For Rhug the opening times and other details are available on the Cadw website: https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/rug-chapel. The chapel lies just off an A-road and has its own car park. There are toilets and a picnic area, as well as a gift shop and a small exhibition area that is well worth visiting, which contains information about Rhug, Llangar and Gwydir Uchaf. For those with unwilling legs there are no problems here. From the car park to the church is all on the flat. You may not want to go upstairs to the gallery, because the steps are quite steep, but this will not spoil your visit. There are no steps to access the gift shop or the small exhibit. For disabled access, see the Facilities section on the Rhug web page.
Llangar Church
If you want to visit Llangar Church at the same time, around a 10 minute drive away, its Cadw web page is at: https://cadw.gov.wales/visit/places-to-visit/llangar-old-parish-church. At the time of writing there is no information about facilities or disabled access on the above web page, but although I haven’t yet posted about Llangar Church following my visit (working on it) there is reasonable parking in a large layby opposite. I would not recommend it for unwilling legs after rainfall, which was when I visited, because the entire approach (slippery farm track, muddy section after the farm track, and slippery gravestones laid as pathways) was causing people to slide and slip more than somewhat as they walked. Like Rhug it is fine once inside, except for the stairs up to the gallery. I would give it a flat negative for wheelchair access.
Caer Drewyn. Source: Peoples Collection
As you are leaving and are pulling out of the car park, pause before turning on to the road and take a moment to look up at the hill in front of you. Towards the peak you can make out the fortifications of an Iron Age hillfort, the well-preserved Caer Drewyn. The stone rubble perimeter that defines it is particularly clear in bright sunshine or under snow, but even in bland light you can still make it out. The hillfort is open to the public and can be reached by a number of footpaths. I’ve written about it on another post here. ——-
Although I haven’t yet managed to get hold of it Heather, the Cadw guide, also recommended R. Suggett’s Painted Temples: Wallpaintings and Rood-screens in Welsh Churches, 1200–1800. RCAHMW 2021
A previous post took a quick chronological hike through All Saints’ church in Gresford, which dates mainly from the 15th century but includes features dating back to the 13th century. As with many gothic churches, the exterior may be architecturally consistent with what is going on inside, but often has a rather different character that seems scarcely in keeping with the sacred, the holy and the peaceful ideas associated with a monument to the divine. The photographs on this page are a small selection from All Saints’ Church, dating to the 1400s or later, shown at random. If you want to visit the church, maps and visiting details are on the previous post.
There is a lot of writing about gargoyles and grotesques, much of it descriptive, and there are some terrific books of photographs to show what these creatures looked like, but there are no definitive answers about what these external features were actually doing there. So far, a job description remains elusive.
Gargoyles and grotesques each has a slightly different definition. Both are usually made of stone, and are high up on on or under the rooflines of church, cathedral and abbey, or clustered around windows and door openings. Some may be highly sculptural and elaborate, and others are less complex, but all make up a landscape of the unknown. They are all carved into fantastic forms, some fearsome, some weird, occasionally crude, and every now and again borderline pornographic. Gargoyles are usually grotesques, but not all grotesques are gargoyles. A gargoyle is a carving that draws water away from the building, spewing rainwater out through its mouth or rather more unusually its rear end via a water spout. A grotesque is any ecclesiastical carving that merits the term, something from another world, a creature from an alternative reality or a reality just out of sight, something of nightmares and fears. Some may be monsters of the imagination, some grotesquely distorted human faces, some composites of recognizably human and animal features, others simply odd.
Grotesques and gargoyles occupy liminal spaces, between heaven and earth at the top of buildings, and at boundaries between interior and exterior at windows and doors. Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris is famous for its gargoyles and grotesques, and vividly demonstrates how in the bigger ecclesiastical constructions, many of these features are invisible from ground level and always would have been. This may imply that some of these creatures were intended not only for human audiences, but for supernatural observers too.
One evocative piece of contemporary writing on the subject survives. The vigorous Cistercian monk, abbot and mystic Bernard of Clairvaux was unimpressed by gargoyles in the following oft-quoted 12th century piece, but what is interesting is that he seems to have been just as ignorant of their actual symbolic purpose as researchers today:
What are these fantastic monsters doing in the cloisters under the very eyes of the brothers as they read? What is the meaning of these unclean monkeys, strange savage lions and monsters? To what purpose are here placed these creatures, half beast, half man? I see several bodies with one head and several heads with one body. Here is a quadruped with a serpent’s head, there a fish with a quadruped’s head, then again an animal half horse, half goat … Surely if we do not blush for such absurdities we should at least regret what we have spent on them.
Although different types have been identified and named, creating a terminology to enable discussion of the different forms that appear, this is a matter of categorization rather than comprehension. Identification of recurring themes such as hunky punks, chimeras, and sheela na gigs help to navigate the landscape of the grotesques, but do not explain what they are doing there. A number of explanatory approaches have been attempted, but these simply serve to underscore that there is no consensus on the role of grotesques and how they should be understood. Here are a few examples, in no particular order:
Depictions of demons or heretics as a warning against sin and depravity , and as an aid to church teachings, to reinforce the campaign against sin
Demons vanquished and expelled by the Church
Illustrations of specific Christian texts
A vivid contrast to the divine and the angelic: “The gargoyle is all body and no soul – a pure projector of filth, the opposite of the angel whose body is weightless and orifice-less” (Michael Camille).
Representations of paganism
Warnings to intruders not to violate the holy space within
Figments of the imagination
Critiques of human monstrosity, reflections of imperfections in humanity and the individual
Devices to reinforce religious hierarchy: “These glimpses of the impossible, in their absurdity, work to safeguard the established order and whatever is promoted as normal and morally right” (Alex Woodcock)
Copies of earlier forms that have lost their meaning over time
Alex Woodcock comments: “If there is no definitive answer to the question fo why they are there, then it is because the carvings themselves are too full of possible meanings, and paradoxical ones at that, to be comfortably explained – and perhaps that is the point. In his book Medieval Religion and Its Anxieties, which looks at “the other Middle Ages”, Thomas Fudgé suggests, apart from St Bernard, we have no real way of reaching what people in the Middle Ages saw and thought they looked on grotesques: “It seems clear that viewing medieval art through modern yes is fatal and that creating artificial categories with the use of terms such as marginal, official, high, low, and so on when referring to art is a form of hegemony by posterity on the past.”
Yet although they may not be marginal, in the pejorative sense of the word, the grotesque and the peculiar often do occupy the margins, not only in architecture, where they occupy distant spaces and boundaries, but also in illuminated manuscripts, rather like subversive or thought-provoking comments on the main message. This idea of the strange and inexplicable occupying the margins is explored by Michael Camille, in his book Image on the Edge. Here the margins are an active component of the core text, be that text an illuminated manuscript or an architectural narrative, or indeed a social situation.
Fudgé traces a chronological trend within grotesques, describing 13th century gargoyles as terrifying, whilst in the 14th century “they took on comedic dimensions that by the fifteenth century gave way to amusement.” As Camille says, “The medieval image-world was, like medieval life itself, rigidly structured and hierarchical. For this reason, resisting, ridiculing, overturning and inverting it was not only possible. It was limitless.” During the process, fear was replaced by fun, and monstrous elements of human nature and activity became the targets of satire. Grotesques disappear during the Renaissance, when their role was apparently no longer relevant.
The gargoyles and grotesques on the exterior at All Saints’ in Gresford are carved a mix of forms and sizes, and date to when the church was re-designed and given two new side aisles in the 1400s. Some of the grotesques look down from the roof and tower, a lot are arranged in a line above a string course just beneath the roof of the side aisles, whilst others sit on finial bases or above window corbels, much nearer to the observer, and perhaps most threatening, although as the photo to the left shows, not all of the carvings were fearsome monsters; some were unalarming representations of human faces. I have photographed all those that can be seen from ground level, some rather more successfully than others, and as a corpus it is quite a remarkable collection of images. Only a small selection are shown here. They are delightful to the modern eye, perhaps rather less so to the late Medieval church-goer. ——– —–
There are more photographs, high quality images taken at the level of the gargoyles and grotesques, on the Images tab of the All Saints’s page on the Coflein website, together with images of statues amongst the pinnacles. See more too on the Archives page. Some of them provide an excellent overview of the imagery that exists at roof level.
Sources:
Camille, Michael 2019 (2nd edition). Image on the Edge. The Margins of Medieval Art. Reaktion Books.
Fudgé, Thomas, 2016. Medieval Religion and its Anxieties. History and Mystery in the Other Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan
Woodcock, Alex, 2011. Gargoyles and Grotesques. Shire Publications
All Saints’ Church in Gresford is such a short hop from my parents’ home in Rossett that I should have visited years ago, but somehow never got around to it. I tried a couple of times earlier this summer, but the church was busy in its role as a community resource, which was good to see. The church is big. Although it is difficult to imagine when driving along the Chester-Wrexham road, Gresford was originally a small village, noted in the Domesday survey as part of Duddestan in the Cheshire Hundred. A sense of village life still remains in the buildings that surround the churchyard, together with the charming village pond just down the road, complete with lazy ducks sunbathing on warm summer days. All Saints’, reaching most of its present extent in the 15th century, was an imposing presence, and must have been a source of considerable local pride.
The location of the Church of All Saints in Gresford. Source: streetmap.co.uk
For a detailed account of the church’s history, see the history page on the Gresford All Saints’ website. This post provides a short overview of some of the key features, with photographs. First, a note on the name. Most churches in the area are named after particular saints, but All Saints refers, as it name suggests, to all Christian saints. The saints represented by “all,” however, include not only those who are known but those who remain unrecognized. All Saints’ Day is celebrated in Catholic and some Protestant churches on 1st November annually. The owner of the Church of England Saint Dedications web page calculates that it is the second most popular church dedication in England, after St Mary. Although Gresford is in Wales, just over the border, it switched hands between England and Wales throughout its earlier history.
The Grade 1 listed All Saints’ is unexpectedly impressive for its understated setting. Much bigger for example, than Worthenbury’s St Deiniol’s, with which it shares a sense both of ambition and commitment. Today both are clearly much-loved by their communities, and both vie for the title of the finest parish church in north Wales. The significant difference between the two is that whereas St Deiniol’s was built between 1736-9 by Richard Trubshaw with real Georgian panache, All Saints’ is thought to have been founded in the 13th century and was in almost continuous use from at least the 14th century. The 11th century Domesday survey mentions a church and priest, but this church was apparently replaced by the establishment of the Gresford church, either in the same or slightly different location. All surviving walls are made of local high-quality Cefn yellow sandstone, which is used for many of the municipal buildings in Wrexham. A separate post about the exterior gargoyles and grotesques has been posted on the blog here.
The late 13th and 14th centuries were a period of energetic church building in England and Wales. It is thought that the remarkable gothic architectural projects carried out at two notable sites created a tidal wave of enthusiasm for architectural projects in religious establishments. One was the new and remarkable shrine created for Archbishop Thomas Becket in Canterbury Cathedral, murdered on 29th December 1170, who was canonized only three years later and therefore required a shrine worthy of his status, into which his remains were transferred (translated) in 1220. The other was the ambitious shrine built by Henry III for St Edward the Confessor at Westminster Abbey, completed in 1269.
When All Saints’ Church was built in the 13th century, prestigious contemporary religious buildings included, for example, St John the Baptist Church in Chester founded in 1075, St Werburgh’s Abbey, founded in 1093 and Basingwerk Abbey founded 1132.
Subsequently All Saints’ underwent many alterations and embellishments in the centuries that followed, including the 14th century addition of the tower to a lower level than today, together with a south aisle. There was an almost total rebuild in the 15th century and the upward extension of the tower in the 16th century. The dominant style, following the 15th century rebuild, is known as Late Gothic Perpendicular, a peculiarly English style that emphasized the tall and thin aspects of the Gothic, mainly exhibited in the stone tracery of the stained glass windows, which make up an enormous part of the interface between interior and exterior.
The only clue to the original appearance of the church lies in a 16th century document that claims that it had been “strangely and beautifully made erect,” which is intriguing but not particularly helpful. The church is rectangular in plan with a tower protruding at the west end and two porches.
All Saints’ sits within a churchyard. The earliest grave marker dates to 1696, and there are some from the 18th century. Most date to the 19th century. There is a good mixture of chest tombs and gravestones of different designs and styles of engraving. The churchyard’s oldest occupant is in fact a lovely yew tree (Taxus baccata), estimated to be 1600 years old. The other yew trees were planted in 1726. Often associated with churchyards, yews have a mixed reputation, seen both as symbols of immortality and indicators of impending disaster, the latter association perhaps because of its toxicity. In this context, it seems clear that the yews are intended to represent life everlasting.
The exterior features of the church include crenulations, and follows the gothic tradition of adding gargoyles, which draw water away from the roof, and decorative sculptural elements, including small beasts, real and imaginary, and tortured faces, usually referred to as grotesques, as well as floral themes. Some of these sit on the stringcourse, a few of which are positioned under hood-moulds (projecting reliefs to protect the underlying features from rainwater). They are worth a post in their own right, if only to capture some of them with a telephoto lens so that they can bee seen much more easily than with the eye, which I will do in the next month or so.
Internally, the church is divided into traditional sections. The nave (the main body of the church where the public sit in pews) is flanked by two side aisles at ground floor level, marked by two 7-bay arcades. A clerestory (row of windows above the level of the aisle) provides the nave with much more light than the stained glass alone. A screen, erected in the 15th century, divides the nave from the sacred end of the church, the chancel with the choir and high altar. The chancel is flanked by two chapels, which can be reached from the aisles. The north aisle, shown above, used to run directly into one of the two chapels that flank the choir and altar, but is now partially interrupted by a 19th century organ.
The church has seen continuous use since the 13th century. The main surviving feature of the 13th century is the crypt, closed to the public but accessed via the north chapel. The 14th century is represented by a number of key internal features. In the south aisle, the effigy of Madog ap Llywelyn ap Griffith, who died in 1330, lies in a niche, shown in full armour with a lion rampant on his shield. The inscription reads HIC IACET (here lies) MADOC AP LLYWELYN AP GRIFFI
Almost opposite, and dating to the same period, is another niche, this time showing the beautifully engraved gravestone of Goronwy ap Iowerth.
HIC:IACET:GRONW:F’:IORWERTH:F’:dd’.CVI’:AIE:DS’:/ABSO/LWAT Here lies Goronwy son of Iorwerth son of David, whose soul may God absolve.
The raised 14th century sanctuary with the high altar, approached via a flight of steps, sits over the 13th century crypt.
From the 15th century are the fabulous misericords (carved scenes on the undersides of seating in the choir) and one of the church’s real treasures, the gorgeous wainscoted screens (the central panel of which was vaulted, photograph further down the page), and a very fine stained-glass window behind the high altar donated by Thomas Stanley, Earl of Derby and step-father of Henry VII. The font, at the west end, with its eight panels that include depictions of the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus, the lion of St Mark, and possibly St Leonard, also dates to the 15th century.
Don’t forget to look up. The ceiling is a particularly fine camberbeam structure, crossed with rafters, with painted panels and bosses. At the ends of the rafters are carved wooden angels.
So why was the medieval church so popular that it could afford a new tower in the 14th century and a major rebuild to include new aisles and new features in the 15th century? In her booklet about All Saints’, Bethan Jones suggests that the gifts showered on the church, including furnishings, might suggest that it had acquired a relic and had become a pilgrim destination. Relics generated considerable incomes for cathedral, monastery and church alike. In Chester, the Rood of St John’s Church was a popular pilgrim destination, and in the 14th century the shrine of St Werburgh in the Chester abbey had become popular. To the west, the shrine of St Winefrede at Holywell and the church at St Asaph were also on the pilgrim circuit. No record survives of such a relic at Gresford, but it is difficult to account for the size of the church in any other way, other than a major investment by a donor who wished to make his mark on the church during the period of the Reformation, but neither is there any record, documentary or material, of such a benefactor.
16th century features include the fine stained glass windows in east and north walls of the Lady Chapel, reached via the north aisle. In the Trevor Chapel there is a superb painted 1589 memorial to John Trevor (Sion Trefor), lying as though still alive, with his head propped thoughtfully on one hand. His coat of arms is above and a winged skull beneath. An inscription conceals the central portion of his body.
The church continued to be well used throughout its history. Dating to the 17th century, the Trevor Chapel a charming memorial to John Trevor’s daughter-in-law with her daughters dates to 1602, and another, rather more monumental piece, shows her with her husband (shown further down this post) and dates to 1638. Other memorials in the church also date to the 1600s.
In the 18th century, a number of additions were made. The two chandeliers in the nave date to the mid and late 18th century. The south porch (the main entrance to the church today) had stained glass panels added in the 18th century to commemorate local deaths during the First World War. The first mention of the bells is in 1775, when three of the bells were mentioned I the parish register having been returned after being recast at Gloucester, meaning that there were at least three bells in the tower at that date, the tenor, third and treble bells, although in 1873 six bells are listed so it is possible that there were six bells in 1775.
In the 19th and early 20th centuries a number of alterations and additions were made, mostly sympathetic to the original structure. The 15th century east window was restored during the 19th century, using additional glass, but has remained true to the original. In St Catherine’s Chapel, better known as the Trevor Chapel, there are two hatchments for George Boscawen (who died in 1833) and Thomas Griffith (who died in 1856), both shown immediately below. The Hill and Son organ was installed in 1912. The addition of the north porch in 1921 to serve as a war memorial included old fragments of glass. A painting in the Trevor Chapel commemorates the Gresford Colliery Disaster of 1934 and serves as a memorial to the 266 men who died. This is shown at the very end of the post, following the list of sources.
An intriguing object in the church is a short square column, made of stone and carved with a figure holding a pair of shears. It may date to the Roman occupation, and it is possible that one face represents Atropos, one of the three Moirai or Fates, responsible for cutting the “thread of life” (the metaphor for a human lifespan). It was found during excavations at the east end of the church.
Final Comments
There is too much to say about Gresford All Saints’ on a single post, and I will revisit the church on future posts to look specifically at the choir and misericords, the gargoyles and grotesques that accessorize the exterior of the church, and the churchyard itself. Apologies for the highly granular photographs of the interior, including some which are slightly blurred around the edges, both of which were caused by having to photograph in very low light. I hope that the images are good enough to give a sense of the magnificence of the church and some of its features.
Here are a few more photos, in completely random order, and please see Visitor Information below them.
Visitor Information
The church is open daily, but is a living church and may not always be available for visitors. It has services on a Sunday and on Thursday mornings, marriages and funerals during the week and on Saturdays, and may be used as a community resource for events such as the annual craft fair. Check the church website for it’s opening times and events. It took me three attempts to find it free of activities, which is great news for the church and its future, and no bother for me as I live locally, but check the website for information, and it may be worth emailing the contact address on the website if you are coming from further away.
There are plenty of information boards throughout to explain the key features, but not so many or so big that they intrude on the atmosphere of the church. If you are interested in the history, the colour booklet by Bethan Jones provides a tour of all of the key features. It can be purchased (cash only) at the church, where there are a number of leaflets and postcards available on the shelves to the right as you enter, including one devoted to the bells.
The Trevor Chapel on the south of the church (right as you look towards the altar) is used for private prayer, but is accessible to visitors when it is not in use. The crypt, with an entrance from the Lady Chapel, is closed to the public.
For those with unwilling legs, it’s an easy to access church, with no steps needed to negotiate the entrance via the porch on the north side. The nave, the choir and the chapels can all be accessed without using steps. Being an active church, there are plenty of pews in the nave on which to sit down and absorb the atmosphere.
Sources
Books and booklets
Bethan Jones, 1997. All Saints Church Gresford. ‘The Finest Parish Church in Wales’. The Friends of the Parish Church of All Saints Gresford.
Hubbard, E. 1986. The Buildings of Wales: Clwyd (Denbighshire and Flintshire). Penguin Books
Roberts, F.H. 2013. All Saints’ Gresford. Tower and Bells. All Saints Church, Gresford
Wooding, J.M. and Yates, N. (eds.) 2011. A Guide to the Churches and Chapels of Wales. University of Wales Press
The Thomas Becket ceiling boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral. Photograph by Andie Byrnes
Introduction
Who was Thomas Becket?
The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel of St Werburgh’s Abbey
Final Comments
Sources
Introduction
Chester Cathedral plan (annotated). Source: Wikipedia
In the 13th century, Abbot Simon de Whitchurch (1265-1291) began the construction of Lady Chapel in St Werburgh’s Abbey (which is today Chester Cathedral, and about which I have posted here, with visiting information including accessibility). It was dedicated to the Virgin Mary. In the ceiling, where the vaulting ribs meet, three round ceiling bosses high above the floor show religious themes. One shows the Holy Trinity and the second shows the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus. The third, shown above, shows shows the murder of Thomas Becket, Archbishop of Canterbury, by four knights loyal to Henry II on 29th December 1170 in Christ Church Cathedral in Canterbury. It is one of only two Becket ceiling bosses known to survive in Britain; the other is at Exeter Cathedral (shown below left).
What these two busy little scenes in Chester and Exeter depict was a brutal and savage act of great violence. The murder of Becket was a violation one of England’s holiest precincts, a modern martyrdom, and an affront not only to the ecclesiastical hierarchy in England but to the papacy itself. All eyes turned towards Henry II. This was not the sort of attention that Henry wanted, and he spent the rest of his reign attempting to distance himself from the event.
The news of the murder spread swiftly and was deeply shocking to 12th century English and European society. The terrible events were captured by eye witness accounts, not least that of the clerk Edward Grim who attempted to intervene and protect Becket. Almost immediately miracles were attributed to Becket, and only three years later he was canonized by the pope, becoming St Thomas. His story was told in biographies of the saint, and his scenes of his life, martyrdom and miracles were rendered in wood, stone and paint, whilst relics were assiduously collected and displayed. In a world where martyrs and their deeds were factual events but remote, the real-time martyrdom of the head of the English church by representatives of the king was religious persecution in action, fresh and alarming in a way that past events might not be. It was unthinkable.
Document dating to around 1180, around a decade after the event, showing the murder of Becket, from an eye-witness account by John of Salisbury (Cotton MS Claudius BII f.341r). Source: British Library.
From the moment of his murder, people were attracted to Christ Church cathedral to commemorate Becket. His canonization made Christ Church Cathedral a formal and very desirable pilgrim destination. The shrine itself, completed 50 years after Becket’s death, became one of Europe’s top pilgrim sites.
The saint was still attracting pilgrims in the 16th century when Henry VIII, identifying the cult of Becket as a challenge to his absolute control over religious as well as secular matters, ordered that every image of the martyr should be destroyed. The systematic annihilation of Becket shrines and images contributed to the demise of Becket’s legacy, which was reinforced by further systematic defacements of Catholic artistic and architectural themes during the Reformation, including various monuments in Chester Cathedral, including the St Werburgh shrine.
Thomas Becket was the son of a Norman merchant who moved from Normandy (northwest France) to take up opportunities in London following the invasion of William I in 1066. Gilbert and his wife Matilda lived in commercial area of London called Cheapside. Gilbert rose to the position of sheriff, climbing several rungs on the social and political ladder. It is thought that Thomas Becket was born around 1118-1120.
Becket was was born into the period of civil war between King Stephen and the Empress Matilda (mother of Henry II). He received a good formal education, first at Merton Priory (now in southwest London), and later at a school in London. In his late teenage years he went to Paris to study, in a Parisian heyday of scholarship and artistic endeavour. His studies included some of the most popular scholastic topics, including grammar, rhetoric and canon (church) law, which were essential tools for anyone wanting to make their mark on the world, but did not include any formal religious education. He returned to England in the early 1140s under the reign of Henry II, who was crowned as monarch on the death of Stephen in December 1154.
Seals of Archbishop Theobald and of Christ Church, Canterbury. Source: “Theobald. Archbishop of Canterbury” by Avrom Saltman via the Internet Archive
In the mid 1140s Becket was recommended to the Archbishop of Canterbury Theobold of Bec (c.1090-1116) and obtained a role as a clerk in the cathedral, a mainly administrative position which, however, offered opportunities for advancement. A cathedral is both the principal church of the diocese and the seat of the bishop and, as at Christ Church, often included a monastic establishment. Becket’s Paris education was probably attractive to Theobold, who had a number of similarly educated young men in his employ. Like most incumbents of the Canterbury archbishopric, Theobold was both a cleric and a diplomat, closely involved in crown matters, but had twice been exiled by King Stephen due to his intervention in political matters. He sent Becket to Auxerre in France and Bologna in Italy to study law. Law, divided into Church (canon) law and state law, was rapidly becoming an important topic in Medieval England.
Becket’s rise to power
The 12th-century Topographica Hiberniae (Topology of Ireland) by Gerald of Wales shows a rare contemporary image of the king. Source: Wikipedia
In 1154 Becket was promoted to the role of Archdeacon of Canterbury. As well as the financial rewards that enabled him to satisfy his love of luxury, his new position was sufficiently prestigious for Theobold to recommend Becket to the 21-year old Henry II as the new royal chancellor. Henry’s coronation at Westminster Abbey, following the death of Stephen, had taken place in the same year. Their professional relationship evolved into a friendship over a period of eight years as Becket flourished in a position of enormous responsibility. It was a mark of Becket’s success in this role that on the death of Theobold in 1161 Henry moved to appoint him Archbishop of Canterbury, to hold both positions simultaneously. Becket had no religious ambitions, had received no clerical training and consequently had never been ordained into the priesthood. In spite of these drawbacks, Becket was elected to the role by the monks of Canterbury and the bishops of southern England. Ordination was rushed through, and Becket was consecrated as Archbishop on 3rd June 1162. His appointment was confirmed by Pope, who sent him a pallium, a vestment that symbolized his new office and status.
Needless to say, the appointment was not universally celebrated. Quite apart from the fact that Becket had made enemies on his rise to power, decisions such as the appointment of an archbishop was one of the areas of conflict between Crown and Church. The Church thought that it should have complete autonomy over its own affairs, answerable only to the papacy and to God; but the Crown, conscious of the power and wealth wielded by the ecclesiastical institutions, wanted to exercise its own authority over the activities of the most important institutions, including Canterbury. The right to appoint the most senior ecclesiastical personnel, was only one bone of contention. The right of the Church to operate under its own canon law was another.
King Henry II and Thomas Becket arguing. Peter of Langtoft’s Chronicle, Royal 20 A II, f.7v. Source: British Library
There was no reason to think that Thomas Becket would not continue to remain completely committed and loyal to the Crown. It was therefore a very unpleasant surprise to Henry II when Becket began to take his new role seriously, resigning his position as chancellor to focus on promoting the rights of the Church and representing the authority of the papacy. From this point forward, Becket and Henry had opposing interests. Becket’s training in law put him in an excellent position for arguing that the Church, rather than the Crown, should be in charge of ecclesiastical justice, in which Church clerics who committed even violent crime would be judged not by secular courts but by the far more lenient ecclesiastical courts. There were many other disputes between the two, when Becket took a stand not only where ecclesiastical interests were involved, but in matters of state as well. Henry attempted to resolve the situation by imposing a set of “customs,” or rules adhered to in the era of Henry I, Henry II’s grandfather, assembled in the Constitutions of Clarendon to which he commanded that Becket and all the bishops defer. Although Becket at first refused to ratify the document, he and the bishops eventually submitted to pressure and signed. However, Henry was seriously annoyed and began to investigate Becket, finding grounds for ordering him to court to address a number of charges. When Becket refused first to accept the charges against him and then to reject the resulting sentence, he made the decision to flee to France.
The Abbey Church of the monastery of Pontigny. Photo by Mediocrity. Source: Wikipedia
Becket lived in exile at the Cistercian monastery of Pontigny in France from November 1164 until 1170. In exile he attempted to drum up support, but alienated Henry still further by excommunicating a number of his advisers. Pope Alexander sent papal legates to try to resolve the dispute instructing Becket to refrain from taking any more actions against the king and his court, but in April 1169 Becket excommunicated another ten royal officials. In 1170 Henry’s son Henry was crowned as the Young King, in a secondary role to Henry II order to settle any potential succession disputes. The coronation was presided over by the Archbishop of York, Roger de Pont L’Évêque. It was the right of the Archbishop of Canterbury to preside over coronations, and Becket responded to this insult by laying an interdict on England, with the pope’s permission. This forced Henry back to the negotiating table, and he came to terms with Becket on 22nd July 1170. Becket returned to England in the December of that year. One might have thought that Becket would count his blessings, but before he arrived he could not resist excommunicating the three individuals most closely associated with the coronation of the Young King, one of whom was the Archbishop of York. The three appealed to the king, who was in his Normandy territory, and it was at this point that Henry, in a rage, expressed his frustrations about Becket’s latest act of rebellion. What Henry II actually said is not recorded, but it spurred four of his knights to set off for Canterbury from Normandy. ———-
Murder in the cathedral
One of the earliest known representations of the murder of Becket (c.1175–1225). British Library Harley MS 5102, f.32. Source: Wikipedia
The knights rode from London to Canterbury. They left their armour and weapons outside the cathedral precinct, intending to arrest Becket and return him to London for trial. Becket was having none of it. Eye-witness accounts state unambiguously that Becket’s behaviour was that of a very angry man under serious threat, confronting the knights on the steps of the cathedral. Goaded by Becket’s verbal retaliation and refusal to back down, they retreated to put on their armour and retrieve their weapons, returning to slaughter the unarmed archbishop in rage. Blows of the sword to his head killed him relatively swiftly, producing an alarming amount of gore that spilled onto the floor around him. One of the swords struck him so powerfully that the sheer momentum carried it to the ground, snapping the end off the blade. Edward Grim, who attempted to intervene, was badly injured.
His murderers were Reginald FitzUrse, William de Tracy, Richard Brito (or le Breton) and Hugh de Morville. FitzUrse, whose name means “son of bear,” is often marked out on images of the murder with the image of a bear’s head on his shield. He is shown on both the Chester and Exeter bosses. Having committed the crime, the knights headed for Yorkshire where they remained for a year. Curiously, Henry made no move against them, but in 1171 Pope Alexander III excommunicated them, and 1172 they headed for Rome to seek absolution from the pope. It is thought that they were probably sent on crusade, and either died on their way, or in battle, although there are a number of unsubstantiated traditions about their ultimate fates.
The Christ Church was closed for nearly a year so that Pope Alexander III could be consulted on how to proceed so that the cathedral could be re-consecrated and returned to normal use, rejuvenated as a destination for pilgrims.
Miracles and legacy
Detail of the Canterbury Christ Church Cathedral miracle window, which shows some of Becket’s miracles. Source: Reverend Mark R Collins blog
Until his death, Becket had been a political creature, and a representative of ecclesiastical interests. He did not position himself as a man of the people, but as a newly inspired champion of the rights of the Church. This did not prevent the place of his death becoming a destination for pilgrims of all social scales, even before he was officially canonized. Curiously, Becket was not merely an emblem of devotion to the Church and a promoter of its rights in the face of opposition from the Crown, but a saint who produced miracles for the everyday person, becoming an unlikely saint to act on behalf of the general populace.
A reconstruction of the Thomas Becket shrine in Canterbury Cathedral. Source: Smithsonian Magazine
The first miracles reported following the death of Becket took place at his tomb. Hundreds of others soon followed, 703 being reported within the first 10 years, many recorded by Benedict of Peterborough. Within twenty years of the murder, no less than twenty biographies had been written about the saint including contemporary accounts including, for example, those by John of Salisbury, Edward Grim and Benedict of Peterborough, the latter listing many of his miracles. Images of him in various media appeared all over Europe, and his relics spread just as far. As the Oxford History of Saints comments laconically, “His faults were forgotten and he was hailed as a martyr for the cause of Christ and the liberty of the Church.” In short, Becket and the miracles associated with him went viral.
Fifty years after his death, a new shrine was opened with great ceremony, and St Thomas was moved into a new tomb within the shrine. It was a spectacle of gold and precious gems, and was surrounded by stained glass windows telling the story of his life and miraculous works. At the height of its popularity, it attracted over 100,000 pilgrims a year. In the Jubilee year of 1420 the shrine earned £360 for Canterbury Cathedral, which equates today to around £231,483, which could have purchased 83 horses or 620 cows (data from the National Archive’s Currency Convertor) or could have been used to build a new section of cathedral. Images and symbols of St Thomas were moulded into ampullae and badges for the hundreds of pilgrims who visited his Canterbury shrine. The shrine no longer survives; it was destroyed in 1538 under the orders of Henry VIII. ——–
The Becket boss at St Werburgh’s Abbey
The Lady Chapel
The Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
St Werburgh’s Abbey featured many architectural-sculptural elements which embellish the core structure of the building, providing focal points, colour and a hint of glamour. The Lady Chapel was built under Abbot Simon de Whitchurch (1265-1291). In Burne’s words, “He was evidently an outstanding character and under him the abbey flourished exceedingly.” It was a period of great prosperity for the abbey, with an income derived from, amongst other things, church pensions (a sort of tax), appropriated church tithes, gifts of houses and lands, and possibly pilgrimage to the reliquary-shrine of St Werburgh, although the new shrine to the saint was not built until the 14th century, and it is unclear how important it was as a pilgrim destination before then.
Although the earliest known Lady Chapel predates the Norman invasion, the Lady Chapel became particularly important in the 13th century when the Virgin Mary was undergoing a resurgence of devotion. The elegant, vaulted Lady Chapel St Werburgh’s was built in the 13th century. Like most Lady Chapels it was built to the east of the High Altar, projecting from the main building. Here clerics performed daily services to the Virgin Mary. It is easy to forget that most architectural elements would have been brightly painted, but the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral, restored to a typical colour scheme of green, blue, red and gold in the 1960s, provides an excellent example of how these components would have looked. The lancet windows at the end of the chapel date to 1869, when Gilbert Scott removed the later Perpendicular window to be more faithful to the 13th century vision.
The Holy Trinity, with God holding the arms of the crucifix in his hands
Some Lady Chapels are large and ornate, but in some cases they form smaller, more private and tranquil spaces than other chapels within a monastery or cathedral. The Chester example is delectable, its small footprint and relative height giving a sense of both intimacy and space. The reconstructed shrine of St Werburgh, a victim of the Reformation’s hostility to reliquaries and idolatry, is located at its east end, but according to Jessica Hodge was probably originally at the east end of the quire.
The ceiling bosses form a row across the centre of the chapel, from east to west. The east end was symbolically the most sacred, and it is at the east end of the chapel that the ceiling boss showing the Holy Trinity is located. In the centre is, the Virgin Mary is depicted, and at the west end is the Becket boss. The chapel was created during a period of great religious significance during the reign of Henry III, who had been crowned for the second time in 1220, the same year in which Becket’s remains were moved to a custom-built shrine on July 7th 1220, reinvigorating the already vibrant cult. The spectacular event was used by both the Archbishop of Canterbury, Stephen Langton, and the king to help to heal the ongoing rift between the Church and the king. In 1225 Henry ratified the Magna Carta, granting the freedom of the Church. This was a momentous decade in the Church’s history and religious houses throughout Medieval England rode the crest of this remarkable period during the rest of the century with new architectural projects, rebuilding, expanding and celebrating. By 1260-1280 when the Chester Lady Chapel was built, it was the centenary of Becket’s death. It is possible that the Becket boss was installed to commemorate this event following an ecclesiastically bright start to the century.
The St Thomas ceiling boss
Ceiling bosses are both architectural and sculptural elements, usually circular or sub-circular, positioned in the ceiling where the vaulting ribs that form arches meets, either to hide the join, or acting as keystones to add structural integrity to the complex set of tensions and stresses. There can be much more to them than first glance suggests, and behind the decorated end, an undecorated portion of the boss may be inserted into the join. Examples on the floor of the cloisters provide a good idea of this, showing the decorated section that would face down, and the plain stump that would be inserted into the join.
Three relatively large stone vaulting bosses were provided at the point where seven or eight stone ribs of the slender vaulting meets, each carved and painted with a different aspect of Christian iconography. Smaller bosses were also added to at vault joins, where three or four ribs meet, sculpted into beautiful foliage, and gilded. Corbels, where the vaulting ribs begin, are also decorated with foliage. These carved stone features would all have been carved and painted prior to installation. The white painted ceiling and walls between the brightly coloured features are the perfect foil for them, providing them with reflected light and emphasizing the rich colours.
The Becket scene offers a sanitized version of the traumatic event on 29th December 1170, recycling a scene that bears only a passing resemblance to the terrible violence of reality, one version of a standardized formula for representing this event, an overstuffed and static little scene that looks rather like a posed portrait, with all of the protagonists shown full face, as though looking towards a camera. The composition is curious. Three knights dominate the scene. Sir Reginald FitzUrse is identifiable, as he is in the Exeter ceiling boss of this scene, by the bear’s head on his shield. One knight at the front strikes at Becket’s head. At the back of the group is clerk Edward Grim holding a cross and appears to preside over the scene. Becket is squashed into the lower right hand section of the scene, kneeling behind an altar, his hands held, palms outwards, in front of him. Behind him, even more squashed and barely visible, is the fourth knight, striking at Becket’s head, his sword converging with the sword of the knight in the foreground. In spite of all four swords, the most dynamic element of the scene is the way in which Becket’s hands are raised in front of him, either in prayer, supplication or in a gesture of surrender.
By contrast, the Exeter ceiling boss, which Burne says is about a century later, makes rather more compositional sense, placing Becket at the centre of the scene, looking out at the viewer with his hands raised, whilst the knights crowd in on him, intent on their deadly purpose while Grim does his best to ward them off. It has far more dramatic impact, and is easier to understand as a narrative. Both bosses share the same formulaic approach to the event.
When the chapel was built between c.1260 and 1280, over a century had passed since the martyrdom of Becket, and the detail of the real event had become less important than its symbolism and the theological narrative built around it. Becket shown praying in front of an altar conveyed the sense of Becket’s purity and holiness far more efficiently than the actual scene of anger, shouting and resistance that preceded the murder. Similarly, theGrim was not a cross-bearerclerk. However, there is an obvious dramatic advantage to showing him holding the cross as he confronted the knights in support of Becket. It remains a peculiarity of the scene that the knights and Grim are the central characters, whilst Becket is squeezed to the side.
Who was the intended audience?
Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
In the 13th century the eastern end of the abbey church was the exclusive domain of the abbey monks, and it is unlikely that the Lady Chapel was seen by anyone else. By the 14th century, the pilgrim status of Chester, with the miraculous holy rood in St John’s, and nearby pilgrim destinations at Holywell and St Asaph, lead to a reinvigorated interest in the Anglo-Saxon St Werburgh. A new shrine to St Werburgh was built in the 1300s and according to Jessica Hodge, was situated at the east end of the quire, presumably accessed via the nave and the north aisle. Pilgrims to the shrine would therefore have been granted access to the usually private east end, and they may have been shown the neighbouring Lady Chapel and the Becket boss as part of their pilgrimage. Some of them may have included a visit to the Nunnery of St Mary in their travels, which possessed a relic in the form of the girdle of Thomas Becket.
Lady Chapel corbel
When they were new, the monks would have been well aware of the subject matter of the ceiling bosses. As time went by they may have been repainted and repaired, but there will have been periods when they receded into the background. Even today, people don’t always look up, and even when they do, they are not always sure what they are looking at. Even if access had been generally available, the ceiling bosses are so high up that it is difficult to see the detail without either a telephoto lens or a ladder. When I was last there, I pointed the Becket boss out to a lady who asked what I was photographing, and the only way that she could make it out, even with her distance glasses on, was to see the enlarged image on the screen of my digital camera. Similarly, I only really got to grips with the subject matter on the other two bosses by photographing them and bringing them up on my computer screen later.
If one factors in the available lighting in the Middle Ages, which was confined to any light that passed through the stained glass windows, supplemented by candles, it is unlikely that these bosses were generally very visible from the ground. Compare them with those in the enclosed walkway (cloister), which are much closer to the ground and therefore much easier to appreciate.
Why were images of Becket purged during the 16th century?
The Becket boss prior to restoration. Source: Godfrey W. Matthews, The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester Cathedral
Chester became a cathedral after the Benedictine monastery of St Werburgh was dissolved by Henry VIII. In spite of this lucky escape, it is possible that the ceiling boss was deliberately defaced at this time. Godfrey W Matthews, writing in 1934, described it as follows: “It is very badly worn, which is curious, as the two bosses to the east of it are in a good state of reservation. It is possible that some attempt had been made to deface it, for the figures suggest chipping.” Henry VIII imposed a policy of extreme prejudice against Becket, ordering all images of him to be destroyed. The tomb and pilgrim shrine in Canterbury were removed in 1538 and Becket’s mortal remains disposed of. Images throughout the country were removed.
Chester Cathedral also came under fairly savage review during the Reformation, when various architectural features and monuments were maimed or destroyed to remove overtly Catholic themes. Most of the survivors are in high places that were difficult to reach.
Are ceiling bosses works of art, or mere architectural flourishes?
Stonemason, artist and researcher Alex Woodcock, whose PhD focuses on Exeter stone sculptures, highlights how the bright colours and dark shadows at Exeter were contrasted to give reveal a sense of depth and to emphasise the three dimensional character of the bosses and corbels. This can be seen at Chester as well, where the depth of the three dimensional aspect of the sculpted forms provides a sense of theatre and allows simple shapes to be very skilfully highlighted. Woodcock points out that architectural sculpture “is often assumed to be secondary to free-standing sculpture, possibly because of its very architectural function” and that because the boss would have been there anyway, the images are seen less as art than mere decoration. As he points out, however, “in terms of the hours needed to complete the carving using hand tools, their production would appear almost prohibitive in terms of expense today.” Not all ceiling bosses and corbels are good art, but many of them are tremendous and well worth the time taken to appreciate them as stand-alone works.
Final Comments
The Lady Chapel in the 1870s. Source: Blomfield 1879
Most of us learned a version of the “turbulent priest” story at school. This was a man who stirred up hornets’ nests in his role as Archbishop of Canterbury, both within the royal court and within the cathedral. He divided opinion in his own lifetime, finding friends and making enemies. His immediate legacy was to generate a healthy income for Canterbury Cathedral, as pilgrims flocked to share in the wonders of the miracle-worker. Politically, he became an ongoing reminder of the conflict between royalty and the Church, a symbol not merely of spiritual martyrdom, but carried with him a morality tale about the dangers of the crown having absolute power over both the church and the people.
On a vaulting boss in Chester Cathedral, accompanied by the Virgin Mary and the Holy Trinity, Becket and his murderers look down on the visitor. Representing a scene of appalling violence, Becket, Grim and the errant knights are a reminder that throughout the early Middle Ages, the Church and the King were equally powerful, and serious conflicts ran the risk of monstrous outcomes.
After nearly 400 years of popularity, Becket and his legacy were terminally undermined by Henry VIII and the Reformation, destroying his images in cathedral, church, monastery and private residence. Queen Mary briefly restored both Catholicism and Becket’s status, but Elizabeth I followed her father’s lead. Although Becket is remembered today, the split from the papacy and the tidal wave of the Reformation swept away his significance and his popularity in Britain. Having said that, the lady I was chatting to in the Lady Chapel in Chester Cathedral told me that in the congregation of her Liverpool Anglo-Catholic church they follow the missal, and continue to commemorate the date of Becket’s murder. Although he survives mainly as a historical figure, Thomas Becket has not vanished from view.
Sources:
Books and papers
Bartlett, R. 2013. Why Can the Dead Do Such Great Things? Saints and Worshippers from the Martyrs to the Reformation. Princeton University Press
de Beer, Lloyd, and Speakman, Naomi 2021. Thomas Becket, Murder and the Making of a Saint. The Trustees of the British Museum
Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of Chester. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. SPCK.
Crouch, D. 2017. Medieval Britain, c.1000-1500. Cambridge University Press
Farmer, D. 2011 (5th edition). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press
Guy, J. 2013. Thomas Becket. Warrior, Priest, Rebel, Victim. A 900-Year-Old Story Retold. Penguin
de Hamel, C. 2020. The Book in the Cathedral. The Last Relic of Thomas Becket. Allen Lane
Hamilton, B. 2003. Religion in the Medieval West. Arnold.
Hamilton, S. 2021. Responding to Violence: Liturgy, Authority and Sacred Places c.900-c.1150. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 2021, 31 (202), p.23-47.
Hodge, Jessica 2017. Chester Cathedral. Scala Arts and Heritage
Jenkins, J. 2023. Who Put the ‘a’ in ‘Thomas a Becket? The History of a Name from the Angevins to the Victorians, Open Library of Humanities 9(1) https://olh.openlibhums.org/article/id/9353/
Luxford, Julian 2005. The Art and Architecture of English Benedictine Monasteries, 1300-1540. A Patronage History. The Boydell Press p.21-27
Matthews, G.W. The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester. Historic Society of Lancaster and Cheshire 86, 1934, p.41-46
Orme, N. 2017. The History of England’s Cathedrals. Impress
Schmoelz, M. 2017. Pilgrimage in medieval East Anglia. A regional survey of the shrines and pilgrimages of Norfolk, Suffolk, volume 1. Unpublished PhD thesis, University of East Anglia, June 2017
Webster, P. 2016. Introduction. The Cult of St Thomas Becket: An Historiographical Pilgrimage. In Gelin, M and Webster P. (eds.) The Cult of St Thomas Becket in the Plantagenet World, c.1170-1220. Boydell and Brewer.
Williams, Godfrey W. 1934. The Becket Boss in the Lady Chapel, Chester. Historic Society of Lancaster and Cheshire 86, 1934, p.41-46
Woodcock, A. 2018 (2nd edition). Of Sirens and Centaurs. Medieval Sculpture at Exeter Cathedral. Impress Books
St Werburgh pilgrim badge, possibly 14th century, cast in lead alloy, purchased by the British Museum from a London dealer in curiosities, medals and coins. British Museum 1836,0610.73
Had you been a pilgrim in the middle ages, undertaking a journey to Chester to visit the miracle-performing shrine of St Werburgh, you might have been tempted to buy yourself a pilgrim’s badge to commemorate a job well done and to communicate your achievement to others. Most importantly, however, you would have had the opportunity to touch that badge to the saint’s shrine in order to absorb some of the saint’s divine power into the badge itself. That’s what you are looking at on the left – a pilgrim’s badge associated with the Abbey of St Werburgh, which would have been sold to pilgrims either as they arrived, or as they left via the gift shop. Badges like this were associated with many of the major shrines and could be added to an existing personal collection, representing the piety implied by many pilgrimages.
When I first came to live in the Chester area, just a couple of years ago, I knew the name St Werburgh and recognized that it was Anglo-Saxon, but it was a surprise to realize that she was a female saint, and that there was a pilgrim shrine dedicated to her in the former abbey (now the cathedral). Nor did I know that the pilgrims who came to visit the abbey might purchase a badge as a token of their visit, a pious badge of honour, sometimes the signal of the many discomforts or difficulties that had been overcome to enable a pilgrimage to be successfully completed.
Chester Cathedral, formerly St Werburgh’s Benedictine Abbey, from the east. Photograph by Stephen Hamilton.
What I particularly like about pilgrim badges is that there are so many threads to the story. An anonymous pilgrim once owned the above token of his or her journey to the shrine, now in the British Museum (albeit not on display). The British Museum purchased it in 1836 from a dealer in medals and coins called Harry Cureton. The story of this particular badge between the time of its manufacture to its purchase by a dealer before being accessioned into the British Museum’s collections is lost, but its story is embedded in other, much older histories, including the actions of the Anglo-Saxon queen who moved that saint from Staffordshire to Chester in the 10th century, and the subsequent centuries of pilgrim visits to the abbey to experience St Werburgh for themselves.
So who was the Anglo-Saxon saint, where was she from, why did she become central to Benedictine worship in Chester after her death, what is the geese-in-a-basket pilgrim badge all about, and what role did the shrine of St Werburgh play in the economic life of Chester’s abbey?
St Werburgh and her family
St Werburgh’s posthumous arrival in Chester
St Werburgh in the Benedictine monastery of 1093
The miracles of St Werburgh at the monastery
The 14th century shrine
Pilgrims to the shrine in the later Middle Ages – a nice little earner
How pilgrim badges were made, sold, worn and used
The Dissolution and subsequent events
The shrine in the 19th century
From Harry Cureton to the British Museum
Final Comments
Videos
Sources
St Werburgh and her family
Werburgh was born a Mercian princess in around AD650. Her father was Wulfhere, king of Mercia and her mother Ermengild, who became a nun on the death of Wulfhere, first at Minster-in-Sheppey and then at Ely, where she succeeded her mother Seaxburgh as abbess. Werburgh was educated at home by Chad, who became Bishop of Lichfield. Although St Werburgh is depicted in a couple of the stained glass windows in the cathedral, these are modern, romanticized visualizations. There are no contemporary depictions, and apart from having an idea of what she may have worn, her appearance is unknown. Medieval accounts of her life probably incorporate older material, and almost certainly include quite a bit of myth and conjecture.
Saint Æthelreda of Ely from the 10th century Benedictional of St. Æthelwold, illuminated manuscript in the British Library. Source: Wikipedia
On the death of her father, Werburgh went as a nun to the convent of Ely founded by her great aunt Æthereda (also known as Æthelthryth), who became its abbess. St Æthelreda was the daughter of Anna, king of East Anglia, sister of Seaxburgh and the virgin wife of Egfrith, the king of Northumbria. Werburgh’s father was succeeded by his brother Æthelred, Werburgh’s uncle, who eventually asked Werburgh to take charge of and organize nunneries in the Midlands, including Weedon in Northamptonshire, Hanbury in Staffordshire and Threckingham in Lincolnshire (or alternatively Trentham in Staffordshire). She was so pure and good that she could hang her veil on a sunbeam. She died at Threckingham / Trentham in around 700, and was buried at Hanbury, at her own request. Unfortunately, the nuns at Threckingham were unwilling to release the remains, and a delegation was sent from Hanbury to retrieve her.
Saints were not canonized by the papacy until the 12th century, but had to be verified by bishops. The miracle that caused Werburgh to be recognized as a saint was an unusual one. Although there are a number of versions of the story, the differences are minor. One version says that St Werburgh had enjoyed watching a visiting flock of geese in a neighbouring meadow of the convent in which she was staying. One of them was particularly large and had a black ring of feathers around his neck. She became fond of him and called him Grayking. The convent steward, Hugh, had also noticed Grayking but his interest had little to do with aesthetically pleasing plumage. Angry with the geese for devastating his field of corn, Hugh soon had Grayking in the pot. One version says that Werburgh was away when this happened, and when she returned the remaining geese formed a delegation to inform her of the event and ask for her help. Werbugh acted immediately, ordering that the bones and feathers of the carcass should be gathered up. When she commanded the bones of the dead goose to rise again, they assembled themselves and Grayking was reborn.
Late 14th century misericord in Chester Cathedral showing St Werburgh performing miracles. Photo by Stephen Hamilton. Source: Wikipedia
Dr Thomas Pickles (Senior Lecturer, Medieval History) recounts a slightly different version of the story in the video at the end of the post. He goes on to discuss why other similar stories in across Europe may have developed in response to sacrifices at the time of harvests, which may have became Christianized via labourers who worked the land belonging to religious organizations, giving the St Werburgh miracle story wider relevance.
Nine years after her burial, St Werburgh’s nephew Coelred, now King of Mercia, decided to move the saint to a less modest tomb in Hanbury. When she was removed from her coffin she was found to be “in whole and perfect form,” a certain mark of sainthood.
St Werburgh never visited Chester during her lifetime, and her arrival in the Anglo-Saxon burh (fortified settlement) in around 907, over 200 years after her death, requires another thread of history that starts, for the practical purposes of this post, with Alfred the Great, King of Wessex (848 – 899AD). Alfred’s daughter was the princess Æthelflæd who, at the age of around 15, was married for political reasons to Æthelred, king of Mercia. Æthelflæd grew up in a time of disruption and war, during the Viking incursions, and the associated competition for territory. She was also familiar with the arts of diplomacy and negotiation. She was well suited for the role of queen of Mercia. Although subordinate to her husband, with duties and responsibilities, she also had rights, privileges and a position of respect that she clearly built on, being recognized as partner to her husband in many of their joint enterprises, including the establishment of new burghs at Worcester and Gloucester, whilst improving existing towns such as Hereford and Winchcombe.
Æthelflæd’s father, Alfred the Great, died on 26th October 899, and was succeeded as King of Wessex by his eldest son, Edward the Elder, brother of Æthelflæd. Edward was forced to fight off a counter claim from his cousin Æthelwold. He was triumphant but was forced to address the situation again in 902 when Æthelwold unsuccessfully mounted another campaign against Edward. In the same year Æthelflæd’s mother died, probably in St Mary’s Abbey in Winchester, which she had founded, and a threat was made to the northwestern territory of Mercia at Chester. It was only now, when the vulnerability of the old town threatened the security of the kingdom of Mercia that it drew attention from Æthelred and his Æthelflæd. In the last decade of his life Æthelred suffered a recurring illness, and he had succumbed to a bout of this affliction when Chester came under threat. Æthelflæd assumed authority during the crisis.
Kingdoms in England in AD878, by Hel-hama. Source: Wikipedia
In the 890s Chester was described in the Anglo-Saxon Charters as “a deserted city in Wirral.” It still had much of its Roman walls, but the interior was in ruins. Mercia had been a much larger and more powerful kingdom in its past, but the Viking (Scandinavian) invasions had taken control of the eastern reaches of the former kingdom. In the south, Wessex was the most powerful kingdom, whilst in the northeast the king of Northumbria still held land on the east half of the island, extending well into present-day Scotland. The Dane-controlled land ran down much of the east coast south of Northumbria, and there was a significant Scandinavian presence in Ireland.
It was from Ireland that the threat to Chester emerged. In 902 the Irish kings formed an alliance to rid themselves of the Vikings, capturing Norse Dublin and forcing many to leave as groups of refugees in need of new lands to colonize. One of these refugees was Ingimund, who lead one of these ousted groups onto Anglesey. Forcibly ejected by the Welsh, they followed the Dee inland towards Chester. According to one source, they requested a meeting with the Mercian royalty. With Æthelred still sick, Æthelflæd met with Ingimund who proposed a peaceful solution to the dilemma. Æthelflæd was pragmatically willing to negotiate a home for them on the north of the Wirral peninsula, perhaps believing that they might provide a protective buffer against other Viking interests seeking to find new territory to colonize. Here they could have lived in peace by farming and trading via the sea routes, but they had been settled for only a few years when Ingimund broke faith with Æthelflæd and began to amass troops. Hearing of the threat, Æthelflæd assembled forces of her ow within the Chester walls. The town was besieged but the Mercians emerged triumphant.
Æthelflaed’s name (spelled Æþelflæd), in the B-text of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: Cotton MS Tiberius A VI, f. 30r. Source: Medieval Manuscripts Blog
In 907 the Anglo-Saxon Charter says that Chester was “restored,” the work usually credited to Æthelflæd. With Æthelred temporarily restored to health, they couple established Chester as a new burgh within the 5m (16ft) tall walls encompassing an area of 26 hectares (65 acres). It was far bigger than their previous burhs, and represented a significant investment in the border town. At the same time, Æthelflæd took the decision to move the relics of St Werburgh from Hanbury to Chester. The timing was probably driven by the threat to the relics of St Werburgh at Hanbury by advancing Danish forces. This echoes Æthelflæd’s decision to move the relics of St Oswald from lands under Danish occupation, which took place under similar circumstances. The decision to move St Werburgh to Chester may have been motivated by the need to give Chester an authentic, stabilizing Christian focus with links back to a noble Mercian past. The creation of a prominent settlement in a vulnerable borderline position needed to attract people with the same features familiar from other towns.
According to St Weburgh monk Henry Bradshaw, writing in c.1513, but probably referencing much earlier sources, when the saint was removed to Chester, her body was found to be ‘resolued unto powder’, which was seen not in terms of decay or corruption of the remains, but as a divine miracle performed to protect the saint’s holy remains:
Lest the cruell gentils / and wiked myscreantes
With pollute handes full of corrupcion
Shulde touche her body / by indignation
Excerpt from Henry Bradshaw’s “The Life of St Wereburge of Chester,” originally 1513, re-edited and published 1887
Although there is no incontrovertible data to support the presence of a church on the site of St Werburgh’s Abbey, there is a tradition that a wooden church dedicated to Saints Peter and Paul had been founded there by Æthelflæd’s father Wulfhere, King of Mercia, which would have housed her remains. This church would have been rededicated to St Werburgh when the saint became resident. Archaeological excavations produced pre-Norman building materials, but it is not possible to assign an early 10th century date to them. Wherever the church was located, the patronage of the queen ensured the initial success, and it received additional grants throughout the 10th century, including one from King Edgar in 958. In the 1086 Domesday survey records the monastery and its possessions, indicating that the Anglo-Saxon St Werburgh’s was upgraded from church to monastery sometime before that date.
In 911 Æthelred died of unknown causes probably related to his recurring illness. He was buried in Gloucester. Many previous royal widows of the period had retired to a convent to live out the rest of their lives. There was plenty of precedent in Æthelflæd’s own family for monastic service. One great aunt was the founder of Ely Abbey, another was the founder of Minster-in Sheppey abbey, and Æthelflæd’s own mother had retired on the death of Wulfhere to a nunnery, eventually becoming abbess of Ely. Æthelflæd, however, took the reigns of the Mercian government into her own hands, ruling as myrcna hlæfdige, Lady of the Mercians. The church-monastery of St Werburgh continued to house the saint’s remains, and seems to have survived the military action that took place in and around Chester following the Conquest.
St Werburgh in the Benedictine monastery of 1093
Coat of arms of Hugh d’Avranche. Source: Wikipedia
In 1093, only 27 years after the Norman Conquest, the abbey was refounded as an Anglo-Norman Benedictine abbey by the notorious knight and magnate Hugh d’Avranches, also known as Hugh Lupus. Hugh and been granted Chester as Earl by William I, and was one of the most powerful men in England. His appointment followed William I’s vengeful retaliation against Chester for two rebellions, which had left the city in disarray. Hugh’s task was to ensure that the city remained docile after William departed, serving the crown as the northenmost marcher town, a buffer zone between Wales and England, and an increasingly important commercial port.
There were many possible reasons for landowners to found monastic establishments, including convention (it was often seen as the duty of the nobility to promote religious houses), political maneovering, simple piety, and fear of the ever-approaching perils of the afterlife. Hugh’s decision to refound the abbey was probably two-fold. Whilst making a conspicuous contribution to a deeply resentful city for which he was now responsible, and in which he needed to maintain the peace, he was also looking after his own spiritual interests. He managed to secure one of the most high status bishops in the country, Anselm to come and supervise the project, and Anselm left his clerk Richard to become the first abbot. Hugh endowed his shiny new monastery with rich and prosperous lands to ensure its self-sufficiency. These were not merely charitable acts. Hugh Lupus, for example, was heading perilously towards the end of a far from virtuous life. John Hicklin, writing in 1852, gives an evocative summary of the situation:
Hugh Lupus, following the example of most of his predecessors, lived a life of the wildest luxury and rapine. At length, falling sick from the consequence of his excesses, and age and disease coming on, the old hardened soldier was struck with remorse; and—an expiation common enough in those days—the great Hugh Lupus took the cowl, retired in the last state of disease into the monastery, and in three days was no more.
By founding a monastery and committing himself to a brief period as a monk at the last possible moment, Hugh attempted to provide himself with some after-life insurance. The logic of this is somewhat difficult to compute today.
The curvilinear Romanesque remains of the abbey financed by Hugh Lupus, seen through a later gothic arch.
Monks were considered to be closer to Heaven than any other human on earth, and their prayers were thought to be heard with undiluted clarity by God. The idea of pleasing God by founding a monastery, and then reaching closer to Heaven by being buried within the monastic cloister seems suspiciously like inducement today, and one would have thought that God would have been wise to such manoeuvring. Given the sheer number of wealthy men and women founding abbeys and priories, however, this aspect of the matter does not appear to have occurred to them. Matters had became much more contractual during the 11th, when the idea of purgatory was taught in the church. This intermediate area between heaven and hell allowed redeemable sinners to suffer a hell-like experience to work off their crimes against Christianity before eventually entering Heaven. From this time onward, substantial efforts were made to negotiate for reduced time spent in purgatory, including the buying of “indulgences,” and gifts from the lower echelons to monasteries.
After the original endowment, the abbey continued to receive many properties over the centuries from wealthy local landowners, and smaller gifts in the wills of those who were not quite as well positioned, all attempting to win the good will of the monks, and through them, the divine. Those with less purchasing power would not anticipate having the same negotiating power, but every contribution might help. In the process of all this human fear and negotiations to minimize the inevitable punishments after death, monasteries became substantially wealthy, some of the richest landowners in the kingdom. Land was not, however, their only form of income. Not all monasteries were lucky enough to secure the bones, blood or hair of a saint that might attract pilgrims, but the abbey of St Werburgh still retained the bones of St Werburgh after its rebuild in 1093.
The miracles of St Werburgh at the abbey in Chester
Neither Goscelin de St-Bertin writing in the late 11th century, nor William of Malmesbury, writing in the 12th century were able to provide many details about the earlier miracles that St Werburgh was supposed to have performed at Chester, but William of Malmesbury has the following to say: “The merits of this virgin are proclaimed at Chester and her miracles extolled. Although she is promptly favourable to the petitions of all, she is especially quick to give heed to the prayers of women and children.” Her girdle, held by the abbey, was apparently particularly popular with pregnant women.
Basingwerk Abbey today
In 1500 a monk at St Werburgh’s Abbey wrote a life of St Werburgh in which he credits her with a miracle on behalf of Richard, Earl of Chester in around 1120. Richard made a pilgrimage to St Winifrede’s Well at Holywell in around 1120 but attacked by hostile Welsh men, he was forced to shelter at nearby Basingwerk Abbey. Before William, Constable of Chester, set forth to search for the earl, he prayed to St Werburgh, who parted the river Dee because no boat was available, permitting William and his men to walk across the river bed and rescue the earl. In another story, St Werburgh intervened during an unexpected Welsh attack on Chester. She blinded the attackers, forcing them to retreat. This military aspect to the saint is underlined by the tradition of taking the shrine on procession around the city when it was considered to be under threat, setting her down briefly on parts of the city walls.
In the 15th century the Welsh poets Maredudd ap Rhys and Guto’r Glyn called there, the one to pray to ease the pains in his legs, which was apparently a successful visit, and the other to pray for the alleviation of the ills of a friend.
The 14th century shrine
The reconstructed shrine of St Werburgh at the west end of the Lady Chapel in St Werburgh’s Cathedral, Chester. It was reassembled in the 19th Century from broken -up parts, and it is impossible to say how closely it resembles the original 14th century shrine. The warm lighting is as it would have been seen by candle-light.
Nearly 250 years after Hugh’s foundation, in around 1340 (just before the Black Death) a new red sandstone shrine was built for the saint, an elaborate gothic affair around 7ft (2.1m) tall, built to look like a chapel. The new shrine, on two levels, contained whatever remained of the relics in the upper layer, whilst the lower half was provided with niches into which pilgrims could fold themselves to get even closer to the spirituality of the saint. The top was decorated with statuettes for former Anglo-Saxon monarchs, most of whom are missing their heads today. Little carved animals formed a line around the middle, images of the natural world that were as much part of God’s creation as people. Today, the only one of these natural world carvings left is a tiny dog, scratching his ear with a hind leg. The shrine was also, in all likelihood, bedecked with elaborate precious stones, its architectural details finished in gold.
Although today it is located in the 13th century Lady Chapel, it was originally located in the easternmost bay of the presbytery, behind the high altar. The relics of the saint were encased very safely within the very top of the shrine, but the spiritual power of the bones themselves emanated from the relics, permeating the stone, so that touching the shrine was equivalent to touching the saint’s essence. This was a powerful concept, and a vibrant presence in the monastery. This substantial monument was a permanent fixture. There would be no carrying the shrine through the town in times of threat or stress.
St Werburgh’s shrine showing the niches, the dog scratching it’s ear and gilded statuettes, some without their heads, of Anglo-Saxon kings. Click to enlarge
Pilgrims to the shrine in the later Middle Ages – a nice little earner
Monks needed to make a living. Monastic communities became more expensive as the centuries rolled forward, as the trappings of seclusion and self-denial fell away towards the 16th century. Guests, who were not expected to pay for their upkeep, were always a drain on popular monastic establishments, and alms to the poor still had to be paid. Expenses too accrued from the management of extensive estates, including wages for bailiffs and labourers, repairs to buildings and boundaries, and the costs involved in agricultural production. Churches appropriated by the monastery for their incomes still involved costs, including the provision of an incumbent priest. St Werburgh’s was often involved in legal disputes with Chester citizens, and this too was costly. After the stricter earlier middle ages, standards began to slip in Benedictine monasteries. Abbots rolled out ambitious extension plans for the monastic church, and required larger and more luxurious quarters, which included spaces where VIP guests could be lavishly entertained, costly vanity projects that formed part of their legacy. Provisions became more luxurious and more expensive. The upkeep of a vast monastic architectural complex could be eye-watering, even without the occasional devastating fire or flood. Balancing the books was a constant headache for monastic establishments.
By the later middle ages, when imaginative ways of generating income were increasingly critical to monastic wellbeing, pilgrims were a great way of generating income. Pilgrimages were usually journeys of meaning, sometimes deeply spiritual and personal, characterized by any number of aspirations including cures for illnesses and defects, expressions of penitence, a wish to feel the presence of something holy, and the urge to give thanks for a prayer answered; but pilgrimages could also be timed to enjoy feasts, fairs and markets, and as such were not merely pious and spiritual, but could be a sociable and enjoyable liberation from the mundane. When pilgrims visited shrines, tombs and reliquaries to satisfy personal needs, the monastery expected pilgrims to show their gratitude to the saint and to Heaven by gifting a contribution to the monastic coffers in the form of “altarage.” This was usually money, but sometimes it took the form of valuable gifts.
Clusters of shrines were good news for everyone. Pilgrims to a particular shrine would frequently do the rounds of all the other major religious sites and shrines in the immediate area, as well as those further afield in the region, soaking up all the divinity available. In Chester itself, St Werburgh’s shrine was in competition with the miracle-performing Holy Rood (a sculpture of Christ on the cross) in St John’s the Baptist’s Church (next to the amphitheatre), which was reputed to include a piece of the true cross, reputed to have been found by Helen, the mother of the Emperor Constantine. It was installed in around 1250. Although St Werburgh became a secondary attraction after this date, the rood at St John’s was far better known and carried more weight because the power of the crucifix of Christ himself was rather more compelling to pilgrims than an Anglo-Saxon saint. It was to the Holy Rood of St John’s that Edward I took the nobility of Gwynedd men to swear fealty before himself and God.
The glorious 15th century vaulting above the clear water of the inner reservoir of St Winifrede’s Well, Holywell.
Some shrines were more revered than others and had great pulling power, which could generate satisfying levels of income. The ownership of St Winifrede’s Well in Holywell (northeast Wales), for example, alternated between St Werburgh’s Abbey and Basingwerk Abbey just down the hill from the well, depending on whether the English or Welsh were in control of the area, and this represented a useful form of income for whichever abbey was in command of its resources. It is also probable that many of the pilgrims visiting Chester were en route to the Cathedral of St Asaph (Llanelwy), which contained the 6th century relics of the eponymous saint, renowned for his healing miracles, and St Winifrede’s sacred Well, enclosed by some superb gothic architecture. These were located 28 (45km) and 14 miles (22km) away from Chester respectively, and 16 miles (26km) from each other. The east-west pilgrim route between Holywell and St Asaph was well known by the later medieval period, making use of the Deva-Varis-Canovium-Segontium (Chester to Caernarfon) Roman road, which was crossed by Offa’s Dyke and took in the beautifully carved late 10th century Maen Achyfan cross, which still stands today. At St Winefrede’s Well, the nearby Cistercian monks of Basingwerk Abbey provided all the facilities that the pilgrims might need to make the most of the experience. The 7th century saint’s remains had actually been removed to Shrewsbury Abbey in 1138, but Holywell was the site of the miracle in which she died by beheading and was brought back to life, and was imbued with miraculous potency.
A selection of Medieval and post-Medieval pilgrim badges. Source: British Museum
Because pilgrims travelled to specific shrines, it is easy to think of pilgrimages exclusively in terms of destinations, but the act of making a pilgrimage was as much about the journey as the destination, and pilgrim routes could be both sociable experiences shared with like-minded individuals, and essential to the spiritual character of the undertaking. As pilgrim routes became fixed in the religious round, they became special places in the landscape, with identities of their own, and features that singled them out as part of the greater network of pilgrim experience.
Although St Werburgh’s Abbey would undoubtedly have preferred to be the most important of the local shrines, and would have done its best to attract pilgrims, it certainly benefited from the proximity of more fashionable and perhaps more relatable pilgrim destinations nearby, and the network of routes that connected them. The 14th century shrine was almost certainly built to jump on the bandwagon of pilgrim visits to Chester, and to provide a more impressive and inclusive experience for pilgrims, without losing the connection with the Anglo-Saxon past.
There are no records surviving from St Werburgh’s to indicate what sort of income the monastery derived from pilgrims, but nearby St John the Baptist’s Holy Rood was the second most important source of three primary sources of income for the church, amounting to in excess of £50.00 per annum in the 14th century (the National Archives Currency Convertor equates this, for 1350, to £29,361 in modern money or, for example, 72 horses or 135 cows. This is half the value of the nationally important Ethelreda’s shrine at Ely, which in 1408/9 earned £19 9s 10d, and is a drop in the ocean to what St Thomas Becket’s shrines could attract from both British and western European pilgrims: £120 in 1411 and a staggering £360 in the Jubilee year of 1420, which equates to day to around £231,483, which could have purchased 83 horses or 620 cows. St Winifrede’s Well earned an annual revenue by the time of the Reformation of £157 15s 2d, which probably included the sale of indulgences.
Altarage was also payable on saints feast days by anyone attending the celebration. For St Werburgh, this day was 3rd February. Again, we have no records for St Werburgh, but at Selby Abbey in Yorkshire, which held a shrine of St Germain, the festival of the Burial of St German on the 1st October in 1446-1447 earned the abbey 16s.8d., and the offerings for the festival of the Death of the saint on 31st July earned 6s. The money-box (stipite) of St Germain accumulated £9. 14s 10d for the year. Again, these were useful contributions to an abbey’s financial resources, amounting to £6790 in modern money, which would purchase 14 horses or 27 cows.
St Werburgh’s would have been a long way down the pilgrimage and altarage income scale, but the earnings would still have been valuable.
How pilgrim badges were made, sold, worn and used
St Werburgh’s pilgrim badges being made in stone moulds. Photograph by Colin Torode of Lionheart Replicas, with my thanks to Colin for sending it to me.
Before badges were available, pilgrims might collect earth from around a shrine, or chip of small pieces off the shrine itself. Small vessels could be used to carry holy water or oils. Low-cost badges were a far more satisfying and permanent memento of a pilgrimage successfully undertaken, and first appear during the 12th century. Decorated metal ampullae too, were manufactured to hold liquids, but in smaller numbers. Wealthier pilgrims might order a custom-made item, which might be made of a more expensive material, but the less expensive materials are by far the most frequently represented in museum and personal collections. By the 15th century they might cost as little as a penny for twelve. One of the appealing aspects of the pilgrim badges is that the majority that survive today were clearly made for those who did not have much surplus cash to spend on souvenirs.
The badges were cast in moulds, which would have required careful crafting. The mould was usually made of stone, preferably limestone. A liquid alloy was poured into it to set, usually comingling lead with either pewter or tin. Lead was locally available, and the other ores were inexpensive and could be imported. Once solidified, the object was removed from its mould, trimmed, polished and was then ready to sell. The photograph above shows one of Colin Torode’s stone moulds, in use for making St Werburgh pilgrim badges for Lionheart Historical Pewter Replicas, which sells many replica pilgrim badges (I have their lovely St Werburgh geese-in-the-basket). See the brief video by the Digital Pilgrims Project at the end of the post to see how some of these objects were made.
The pilgrim badges were sold at the abbey gates, or in stalls in town markets. If purchased before a visit to the shrine, the pilgrim badge could be touched to the shrine, so that it would permeate the badge itself with its spiritual energy. It could then be dipped into a liquid to be swallowed as a health cure or rubbed onto a wound as a salve. Given its portability, it could also be carried back to someone who was unfit to make the pilgrimage so that they could benefit from the power of the shrine.
The pilgrim badges were usually worn with great pride, sewn on to items of outer clothing like hats or coats, or on bags. Over time, as they became familiar and were transferred from old to new clothing, they probably became apotropaic lucky talismans, as well as items of religious meaning. Sometimes they were pinned to walls of homes.
The Dissolution and subsequent events
The opening page of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, the beginning of the Dissolution of the monasteries, showing Henry VIII presiding over the nation’s extaordinary religious shake-up. Source: Wikipedia
Although Henry VIII ordered the dissolution of the abbey in 1536, its conversion into a cathedral saved it from wholescale destruction. Although it retained most of its key components, some features fell victim to reformers. Henry VIII’s withdrawal from the Catholic church was only realistically viable because of a movement in Europe that challenged what it saw as the papal hierarchy’s abuse of the core ideals of Christianity. In 1517, nearly 20 years before the Dissolution, Martin Luther at the University of Wittenberg in Germany, disgusted by the financial corruption of the papacy and the clergy, began to promote the emergence of a more honest, less moderated religion in which men and women could worship in their homes as well as in their churches and build a more direct relationship with Christ and God. The existence of Purgatory was rejected, the appeal to saints for their intercession was deemed idolatrous, religious images that had been the focal points of worship were condemned, and the role of the clergy as a bridge between people and God was challenged.
In England the reform movement was politically and socially necessary both to usher in Henry’s new era and to avoid the new religious house being labelled heretical. Using Martin Luther’s reforming as a launch pad, an older, purer version of religion was sought. As part of the process, effigies and saints were to be removed with extreme prejudice. Targets of this reforming zeal included emblems of the later Anglo-Saxon period as well as those of the medieval period. The 14th century shrine of St Werburgh really did not stand a chance. The shrine was dismantled and parts were used to build a tomb for the first bishop. Later, in 1635, elements were incorporated into an episcopal throne.
When some pieces of the shrine were rediscovered in the 19th century, Sir Arthur Blomfield attempted a reconstruction, which is what stands in the Lady Chapel today. The small statues of the Saxon kings do survive, but their heads are missing; of the little figures that adorned it, only a dog scratching its ear with a hind leg now survives. It was reassembled in the Lady Chapel.
Although St Werburgh no longer attracts pilgrims, the well of St Winefrede at Holywell, near Basingwerk Abbey on the north Wales coast, still does. Although more usual in Catholic parts of Europe than in Anglican Britain, pilgrimage continues to offer the option of a spiritual journey today, and pilgrim badges continue to be collected by those who make the journey. The gift shop at St Winifrede’s well contains a wide and colourful selection of religious memorabilia. See the Encountering a Pilgrim’s Medal video at the end of the post for comments on a modern pilgrim badge.
From Harry Cureton to the British Museum
There’s one last thread to the story. According to the British Museum’s records, in 1836 it purchased the badge at the top of this post from one Henry (Harry) Osborne Cureton who conducted his trade in London variously as a curiosity dealer, a medallist and coin dealer. In the February 1851 edition of the Athenaeum an advert was placed, announcing that Cureton’s entire stock was being sold off due to his retirement. The British Museum’s web page about Harry Cureton suggests that that after this he may have been employ in some capacity at the Museum. If the British Museum was one of the buyers of the collection advertised in the Athenaeum, Cureton may have been hired to catalogue the objects, of which the St Werburgh pilgrim badge may have been one.
Athenaeum no.1215, February 8th 1851 advert by Messrs S. Leigh Sotheby and John Wilkinson for the sale at auction of Harry Osborn Cureton’s stock of coins, medals and antiquities. Source: Google Books
The badge is not on display at the British Museum, which is a shame but not terribly surprising. As the British Museum’s Fact Sheet explains, it’s collection totals at least 8 million objects, of which roughly roughly 80,000 (1%) are on public display at any one time, the rest remaining in storage.
Just as one expects pilgrims to travel, one expects pilgrim badges to travel. Margery Kempe, early 14th century wife, mother of fourteen children, visionary and pilgrim, managed to fit in pilgrimages to the Holy Land via Italy, to Santiago de Compostela in Spain, and to Danzig in Prussia. We have no idea where the owner of the St Werburgh badge might have worn it on his or her travels, but it is not at all surprising to find that it ended its travels in London.
Final Comments
1916 window in St Werburgh’s in the refectory, showing an imaginative, romantic view of the saint. Photograph by Wolfgang Sauber. Source: Wikipedia
This post started with an image of geese in a basket, an emblem of St Werburgh that was cast and sold to pilgrims as a totem of their enterprising pilgrimage to the shrine of a Mercian princess, St Werburgh, within the abbey at Chester. By exploring the connection between a 7th century saint who was buried in Staffordshire and a 10th century Mercian queen who translated (transferred) the remains of the saint to Chester, we encounter the Viking colonisation of Britain. The new shrine containing the saint’s relics in Chester was a powerful new emblem of Christian faith, using affinity to the earlier Anglo-Saxon past to provide meaning and reassurance in the very turbulent present.
In 1093, when Hugh Lupus, first Earl of Chester decided to put his stamp on Chester and, at the same time, pave his way to a comfortable afterlife by founding an impressive Benedictine monastery, the saint was provided with a new home, echoing Æthelflæd’s own intentions. St Werburgh’s original Anglo-Saxon shrine was built to evoke both the past and the present, using history to provide a sense of continuity and stability as Chester entered a new era.Some of this sense of the present being reinforced by the past was carried forward into the 14th century shrine as well. St Werburgh went on to generate income for the monastery throughout the middle ages.
Pilgrims on the road to Canterbury. John Lydgate’s Prologue of the Siege of Thebes c. 1457–1460: Royal MS 18 D II, f. 148r.Few pilgrimages would have been so comfortably and elegantly undertaken. Source: British Library
A pilgrim badge, even if it was mass-produced and relatively inexpensive, was an attractive symbol, and one to wear with pride, but was not merely an inanimate souvenir. By touching it to the shrine, it became a conduit of spirituality, transmitting the essence, goodness and potentially curative powers of the saint within. In an era in which Christ was universally accepted as being embedded in the Eucharist via transubstantiation, a Church-given reality, the idea of objects like pilgrim badges as agents of transformation was not a theoretical matter but another everyday Christian reality. Intrinsically the badge had an active, multi-functional role as a medium of the shrine’s essence, and as a symbol of hope, piety, charity, perseverance and / or status. The medieval period offered pilgrims a fluid, multi-layered religious existence in which, if they were deserving, the secular and spiritual could mingle in certain places under certain conditions. In a sense, whilst the shrine cannot be divided and shared, the pilgrim badge, the emblem of the shrine and sometimes the vessel holding the essence of the shrine, is a way of dividing the shrine infinitely amongst those who invested it with their beliefs and hopes.
Detail of St Werburgh’s shrine
The static 14th century shrine and the multiple, travelling pilgrim badges were firmly linked. The shrine, unmoving, connected to a long-lost Anglo-Saxon past, was rooted to its particular spot. The pilgrim badges, by contrast, were all about the here and now, both for the craftsmen who made them and for the visiting pilgrims who purchased them. The shrine would have existed without the pilgrim badges, but the badges were dependent on both the shrine and the pilgrims. Whilst the memory was alive, the badge containing the memory remained a connected to the shrine via the pilgrim. The shrine, acting as the anchor for such experiences, stayed firmly put, but its tendrils extended into the secular world via the tales told by the pilgrims who had visited, encouraging others to replicate the experience.
At some point, the pilgrim badge was parted from the pilgrim. Perhaps the pilgrim died and it was inherited by one of his or her children. Later in its history it encountered another point of departure and re-entered into the world of commercial transactions. Eventually, it found its way into the ownership of a dealer in portable objects, like medals and coins, and in the 1860s was accessioned into the collection of the British Museum, where it is now buried in storage. Perhaps one day it will emerge to perform a role as a piece of valued heritage, but for the time being, it is divorced from any of the realities that it once served.
Quite apart from looking great on my favourite black coat, my own replica St Werburgh’s badge (shown right) can be seen as an aspect of the St Werburgh shrine’s new identity. Today the shrine finds itself as part of the discussion about modern contexts, including conservation, tourism, academic research and local history, where current perspectives reinvent churches, cathedrals and shrines in many different, novel ways, and contribute to ongoing narratives. My newly purchased badge has become part of that ongoing story. It’s a nice thought. The reassembled shrine in the Lady Chapel does not contain St Werburgh’s relics, but the saint remains irrefutably embedded into the fabric of the cathedral and is central to its identity.
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Videos:
Why did St Werburgh of Chester Resurrect a Goose?
By Dr Thomas Pickles, University of Chester
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Video: Metal Casting – Pilgrim Badge
By the Digital Pilgrims Project
Video modern pilgrim token from Pilgrim Flask page
Piers Baker-Bates of the Open University talks about the value of his own pilgrimage memento
Burne, R.V.H. 1962. The Monks of Chester. The History of St Werburgh’s Abbey. SPCK
Clarke, C. 2011. Remembering Anglo-Saxon Mercia in late medieval and early modern Chester. In Clarke, C. (ed.) Mapping Medieval Chester: place and identity in an English borderland city c.1200-1500, p.201-218
Varnam, L. 2013. Sanctity and the City. Sacred Space in Henry Bradshaw,’s Life of St Werburge. In Clarke, C. (ed.) Mapping Medieval Chester: place and identity in an English borderland city c.1200-1500, p.114-130
Claassen, C. 2011. Waning pilgrimage paths and modern roadscapes: moving through landscape in northern Guerrero, Mexico. World Archaeology, vol.43, iss.3, p.493-504
Clarkson, T. 2018. Æthelflæd. The Lady of the Mercians. John Donald
Hahn, H.P. and Weiss, H. 2013. Introduction: Biographies, travels and itineraries of things. In Hahn, H.P and Weiss, H. (eds.) Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things. Shifting contexts of material culture through time and space. Oxbow Books
Hicklin, J. 1852. A History of Chester Cathedral with biographical notices of the Bishops and Deans. George Prichard
Jones, D. 1957. The Church in Chester 1300-1540. Chetham Society
Garland, L.M. 2005. Aspects of Welsh Saints’ Cults and Pilgrimage c.1066-1530. Unpublished PhD, Kings College London
Gilchrist, R. 2013. The materiality of medieval heirlooms: From biographical to sacred objects. In Hahn, H.P and Weiss, H. (eds.) Mobility, Meaning and Transformations of Things. Shifting contexts of material culture through time and space. Oxbow Books
Goscelin de St-Bertin 1974 (N. J. Munday, translator). The Life of St. Werburg by Goscelin. Friends of Chester Cathedral
Kempe, M. (translated with introduction by Windeatt, B. 1985) The Book of Margery Kempe. Penguin Classics
Locker, M.D. 2015. Landscapes of Pilgrimage in Medieval Britain. Archaeopress
Lynch, J.H. 1992. The Medieval Church. A Brief History. Longman.
Mason, D. 2007. Chester AD400-1066. From Roman Fortress to English Town. Tempus
Moreland, J. 2010. Archaeology, Theory and the Middle Ages. Understanding the Early Medieval Past. Duckworth.
Schmoelz, M. 2017. Pilgrimage in medieval East Anglia. A regional survey of the shrines and pilgrimages of Norfolk and Suffolk. Unpublished PhD, University of East Anglia
Tillotson, J.H. 1988. Monastery and Society in the Late Middle Ages. Selected Account Rolls from Selby Abbey, Yorkshire 1398-1537. The Boydell Press
Turner Camp, C. 2011.Inventing the Past in Henry Bradshaw’s ‘Life of St Werburge’,Exemplaria,vol.23, iss.3, p244-267
Webb, D. 2000. Pilgrimage in Medieval England. Hambledon and London
Whitehead, A. 2020. Mercia. The Rise and Fall of a Kingdom. Amberley
Worthenbury, a small village on the border between England and Wales seems an unlikely location for a really superb Grade-1 listed Georgian church built on such an ambitious scale, but the two fit very well together. The village is picturesque, the scenery peaceful and the church stunning. It was built between between 1735 and 1739 by Richard Trubshaw, financed by the local Puleston family of Emral Hall, and the church was consecrated, with all due ceremony, by the Bishop of Chester on Palm Sunday 1739. It is thought to be one of the most impressive Georgian churches in Wales, if not the best. It has been beautifully maintained by its Worthenbury custodians.
The church is dedicated to St Deiniol (pronounced day-nee-ol, the Welsh form of Daniel, died c.584). The saint has a certain local interest, although the details are far from clear. It is generally agreed that he was the son of St Dunawd, who may or may not have been the first abbot of a monastery at Bangor on Dee known today as Bangor Monachorum, meaning “Bangor of the Monks.” The origins of the monastery are buried in a cloud of myth, and it is by no means clear whether a monastery was actually built there. According to the Clwyd and Powys Archaeological Trust (CPAT) the name Bangor Monachorum actually appears in documents no earlier than 1607. Popular history has it that the current church of St Dunawd was built on its remains but I have seen no documentary or archaeological data to support this, meaning that there either isn’t any, or that it is doing a good job of hiding.
Rather than looking for solid data, here’s a brief version of the usual story of St Deiniol, paraphrased from the lengthy entries in the The Dictionary of Welsh Biography and the Oxford Dictionary of Saints. One version has it that St Dunawd joined forces with his three sons, one of whom was Deiniol, to found a monastery of on the banks of the Dee, at Bangor on Dee, becoming its first abbot. Another version suggests that Deiniol was the first abbot, having first established a parent monastery in Bangor in northwest Wales. Whatever the case, St Deiniol is best known for being a monk and bishop, who is credited by Bede for having established a monastery with over 2000 monks, the most famous in Britain at the time, nearly half of whom were slaughtered by the Anglo-Saxons. It is not entirely clear why he was canonized.
Domesday’s record of Hurdingberie (the Anglo-Saxon name for Worthenbury), highlighted in red. Source: Open Domesday
Worthenbury sits on the Anglo-Welsh border that lies around 10km southeast of Wrexham, and is 3km west of Bangor on Dee. The Worthenbury Brook runs a short distance to the south of the church. The village is surrounded by undulating fields. Probably a small nucleated settlement in the 10th century, it was apparently little bigger by the time of Domesday, when it appears under the name “Hurdingberie,” a name of Anglo-Saxon origin, and came under the tenancy of one “Robert, son of Hugh,” the Norman baron Robert FitzHugh, who held it from the crown, amongst many other properties. At the time of Domesday, 1086, its inhabitants consisted of 3 villagers, 1 slave and 4 “other” (information sourced from the Open Domesday project). Its holdings included 10 ploughlands, 2 lord’s plough teams, 4 men’s plough teams, a meadow of 1 acre and a mill. There are some beautiful medieval ridge-and-furrow fields in the vicinity, shown in the photograph below.
Worthenbury village. The church is at bottom left and ridge-and-furrow fields are at top right. Source: CPAT – photo 04-c-0049
It is thought that the first religious house on the site was a chapel, first mentioned in 1388, perhaps attached to the elusive monastery of Bangor Monachorum. In 1277 century Edward I (ruled 1272-1307), in the throes of his territorial disputes with Llywelyn ap Gruffyd, dispossessed the owner of Emral Hall, Emma Audley, who had married a Welsh prince, and moved her back to her family home in Shropshire. Worthenbury was at that time in Maelor Saesenag, and found itself shifting between English and Welsh ownership, depending on who was in the ascendancy. Edward gave Emral instead Sir Roger Puleston. The Pulestons came from near Newport in Shropshire, where they had settled during the reign of Henry III (ruled 1216-1272). They had Norman roots, had proven themselves in battle, and could be relied upon to stand up against Welsh hostilities in the frontier position in which Worthenbury found itself. Emral Hall remained in the Puleston family for over 700 years. The architect Robert Trubshaw was hired to remodel Emral Hall for the Puleston family, but even afterwards it retained many earlier features.
Richard Trubshaw obviously did a good job for the Puleston family, because he was hired to build today’s church between 1735 and 1739 at a cost of £955.00. It is always difficult to know what a sum of money actually means in the past, but fortunately the National Archives has a currency convertor provides equivalents. In today’s money, £955 equates to £112,897. Alternatively, it was equivalent to the price of 139 horses or 205 head of cattle. The gothic architectural ideal had dominated British architecture for such a long time, that the Georgian aesthetic, when done this well, comes as a breath of fresh air. St Deiniol’s is a superb example of refined Georgian ideas.
Palazzo Thiene, Vicenza, Italy 1542–1558. Source: Wikipedia
Georgian architecture is named for four kings named George who reigned in succession, from the accession of George I in 1714 to 1830, when George IV (“Prinny”) died. Georgian architectural principles, employed for domestic, institutional and ecclesiastical architecture, were typified by attractive symmetry, space and light, the latter requiring many large windows. Georgian architects were greatly influenced by the Renaissance architect Andrea Palladio (1508-1580), whose governmental palace, Palazzo Thiene, was characterized by vast, symmetrically aligned windows with semi-circular tops and is a clear antecedent of Georgian aesthetics.
The 3-storey church tower, showing the dramatic contrast of the creamy-coloured sandstone and the deep red brick
Trubshaw’s new church was established on the site of at least two pre-existing churches, one of wattle and daub in 544AD and another, in 1557, built of brick and timber, both belonging to the Bangor on Dee parish. Worthenbury only became the centre of its own parish in 1689 when Sir Roger Puleston succeeded in separating it from Bangor. Its rectory, at the opposite end of the village, had been built in 1657 by Judge Puleston for the minister to Worthenbury who was also tutor to the judge’s two sons. Whilst the new church was being built, the congregation worshipped at Emral Hall’s private chapel.
The footprint is that of a traditional church, with an east-west orientation. It includes the usual components of a bell tower, a nave for the public, and a chancel for the clergy with an altar, all beautifully preserved. The Georgian style simply yells a new type of self-confidence and a pride in the here-and-now. The semi-circular chancel, a revival of the Romanesque, is a particularly nice touch, softening the angles and giving the church a real air of distinction.
The brickwork of the church was arranged in header-and-stretcher or Flemish bond (alternating long and short), and it was provided with a slated roof. The sandstone is from the Cefn Mawr quarries in north Wales, which produces yellow sandstone, varying in both colour and quality. The sandstone at St Deiniol’s is a very fine-grained creamy colour that contrasts beautifully with the warm red of the brick. The urn finials on the corners at the top of the tower are replicas of those at the main entrance to Emral Park, which are apparently now at Eccleston Church, on the Duke of Westminster’s estate. They support weather vanes. The finials mid-way along the balustrade are topped with crucifixes. The tower also has arched windows at top and bottom, and circular windows at centre, with radiating keystones. It was also fitted with blue-faced clock with golden numerals, made by Joyce’s of Whitchurch.
Georgian churches, being so much newer than medieval predecessors, stand some hope of surviving changes of fashion and fortunately, the interior of St Deiniol’s church has been infinitely better respected than many of its predecessors. Many medieval churches have been disfigured on the inside, barely reconcilable with the original conception.Later architectural embellishments and the addition of inappropriate funerary monuments may disguise original beautiful lines, and the installation of modern paraphernalia can be ruinous to a church’s interior. Westminster Abbey, for example, retains much of its essential dignity on the exterior, but has been battered into often vulgar submission inside. St Deiniol’s retains its fine lines. It has a fabulous interior, retaining its extraordinary and lovely box-pews, which I have never seen before, each with a family crest painted on the side. These provide a sense of what it must have been like to form one of the congregation, all together in one space, but physically divided by family and status. Rather than the seating being lined up in rows, the boxes give a sense both of intimacy and social division. The box-pews of the Pulestons, the most important family, were those nearest the altar, and were furnished with chairs rather than pews, and hearths. One of these currently contains a small display showing the history of the church. The minister was allocated the pew below the three-tier pulpit. Less important families sat in the boxes behind these positions, and the church wardens were confined to the rear of the church. Some of the pews for the lower orders were not installed until 1810, and were sourced from Gresford parish church.
A gallery was added in 1830 to accommodate musicians and an organ, and displays the royal coat of arms. It is full-width, with tiered seating for the choir. It is supported on slender cast iron columns, and its panelled front displays the royal coat of arms.
——– There are four stained glass windows. That in the south of the nave shows St Michael and is in memory of Captain Summers who died in the First World War and lived at Emral. To the south of the chancel is a window given by Catherine Theodosia Puleston, in memory of her parents and sisters. The origin of the east window is a somewhat muddled story. When Emma Corbet married Richard Puleston and moved into Emral, she recorded finding a collection of stained glass fragments and when she died in 1797, her will asked that the pieces should be made up into a new window at Worthenbury. Quite where the glass came from, or why the pieces were kept at Emral, is uncertain, although it is speculated that it may have come from from a 14th century window in Westminster College, or from the demolished Emral Hall chapel. Interestingly, the new window was built inside the original plain window. The small circular window was installed in 1913 in memory of Violet Parry, another connection with the Puleston family.
Don’t forget to look up. The plaster ceiling has been given some really fine baroque – rococo decorative features. As well as some attractive ornamentation it features a gilded dove and sunburst, and small grey clouds. My photograph makes it look rather brash, but from ground level, it looks charming.
Of the smaller fixtures and fittings, the vestry doors and small collecting boxes inscribed with “Remember the Poor” were made from wood that was rescued from the previous church. The font dates to around 1745, and above it is a shelf, which was designed to receive bread for the poor. This tradition survived up until 1939, when soup, cloth and coal were still distributed to those in need. The bells were cast in 1746, and were recast and hung in 1958. The rather battered cross in the chancel is the Emral Cross, formerly in the chapel in Emral Park, which was demolished in 1775. The two-tiered chandelier was installed in 1816, and the single-tiered chandelier was installed in 1898. there are numerous funerary memorials, mainly to members of the Puleston family, but other local families are also represented. Family connections to the church are also preserved in the three Puleston funerary hatchments set up along the west end of the church. Hatchments are diamond-shaped, made of wood, and contain the components of the coat of arms that has been earned by the deceased, and which he is entitled to display. There is modern lighting and heating, but it is very well done.
Large scale repairs were undertaken in 1851, which included re-roofing the building due to damage by deathwatch beetle.
Within the church, the earliest burial known is that of Mrs Anne Puleston, wife of John Puleston, dating to 1742. John Puleston was buried in 1746. The earliest of the churchyard’s graves cluster around the apse, made of yellow sandstone. The inscriptions are badly eroded and many are illegible, but a chest tomb of 1768 is the earliest of those that can be deciphered. There are a number of different styles of grave markers, including chests, table tombs and tablets, and they continue into the 19th century, indicating that people from surrounding villages were also buried there.
Emral Hall was sadly demolished in 1936, although the magnificent Jacobean ceiling of the banqueting hall, together with the mullion windows, were purchased by Sir William Clough-Ellis and installed in the town hall of of Portmeirion, where they remain preserved. Today Emral Park serves as a horse stud, dairy farm and caravan park.
The church no longer holds congregations, but this is of very recent date. It is anticipated that the church will be transferred to the jurisdiction of the Friends of Friendless Churches, who do such an excellent job of caring for churches without owners, amongst whom are those like St Deiniol’s, which are no longer in a position to pay the Anglican authorities for their services, but retain real value as heritage.
My sincere thanks to Catherine Starkey for arranging access during very icy weather, when the church would usually have been closed. —-
East window
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Visiting:
The church is no longer in active service for congregations, and at the time of writing it is expected that the Friends of Friendless Churches will take it over. This means that its opening times are uncertain at the moment, but these may be forthcoming. Local people have done a great job of keeping it open for visitors, and they very kindly opened it for me (with my sincere thanks) just before Christmas when, although it was usually open during the day, it had been temporarily closed due to the abysmal weather conditions.
It is easy to find. There is one road through Worthenbury, and the church is clearly visible heading north to south, on the right, and if you are heading south to north, it is at left on the right-hand corner past the bridge.
Thinking of it in terms of those with mobility issues, there are two steps leading up from the road through the gate into the churchyard, with a rail on the left as you face the church, and there are a small number of steps in the church itself.
Sources:
Books and papers:
Farmer, David. 2011 (5th edition, revised). The Oxford Dictionary of Saints. Oxford University Press.
Pamphlets:
Anon, n.d. The Parish Church of St Deiniol, Worthenbury. A Guide for Visitors.
Harrison, Sunter. 1990. Worthenbury Church, Emral Chapel and the Pulestons. Published privately.
Rhuddlan Friary by Samuel and Nathaniel Buck 1742. Click to see the larger image. Source: Coflein
Prior to visiting Edward I’s 1277 Rhuddlan Castle (upcoming) I was having a look on the Ordnance Survey map of Rhuddlan, and saw that a little way downriver from Edward I’s castle, and beyond the earlier motte-and-bailey castle of Twthill, there is a site marked as “remains of a friary.” I was unaware of anything there, so I had a look through my books and on the Coflein website. Sure enough, there was a substantial Dominican friary there, established in 1258 by Llywelyn ap Grufudd(Llywelyn the Last), 19 years prior to Edward I’s castle. It went the way of the greater percentage of monastic establishments, and was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1538. In some texts it is referred to as a priory, but the friaries were originally quite different from abbeys and priories.
The site of the Rhuddlan Dominican Friary today. The farm in the foreground lies over the site, and some of the buildings incorporate elements from the Medieval building. Source: Coflein
Today there is almost no sign that it ever existed. This is by no means an isolated case of a monastic or mendicant building being erased from the landscape. Of around 270 friaries of the different orders, only 15 in England and Wales have survived well enough to determine their layout and appearance. Some are known only from their archaeological remains and others have yet to be investigated archaeologically and therefore appear, for all intents and purposes, to have vanished. In the case of Rhuddlan Friary, there are details of its past that can be recovered even without any ruins to examine, although it has been a jigsaw assembled by many people and published in different places. The earliest useful account, by Harry Longueville Jones in 1847, worked hard to pull together the various tenuous threads, as its author describes: “The unsatisfactory complaint, of fewness of materials for the history of Religious Houses in Wales, applies with peculiar force to that of the Priory of Rhuddlan; and the utmost that can, at present, be attempted, towards an account of it must consist in the stringing together of various brief uncorrected relics, scattered up and down in various books and a few manuscripts.” It still feels a bit like that, but it is work like that of Jones that paved the way for people like me.
Over the site where it once stood there is now a working farm and caravan park, formerly Plas Newydd and currently called Abbey Farm. It does, however, incorporate some stonework from the former friary, and parts of it are therefore of considerable interest. The farm is private property and not open to visits from the general public, although a public footpath skirts it. Fortunately, there are various accounts and photographs available of the surviving masonry and tomb slabs. In addition, much of the friary church was still standing in the middle of the 18th century, when a drawing of it was made by Buck (above) showing a simple but substantial layout with gothic styling, with Rhuddlan Castle in the background, and this has allowed assessment of what was there at the time of the dissolution. It has also been mentioned in a number of Medieval documents.
Rhuddlan. The map on the left shows the location of Rhuddlan (source: Google Maps). The map on the right shows the location of Rhuddlan Priory in relation to the 11th century Twthill motte-and-bailey castle and Edward I’s 1277 stone castle (source: Ordnance Survey Explorer 264 – Vale of Clwyd)———–
The Dominicans
Saint Dominic (c.1170–1221), portrayed in the Perugia Altarpiece by Fra Angelico. Galleria Nazionale dell’Umbria, Perugia. Source: Wikipedia
The Order of Preachers (Ordinis Praedicatorum), better known as the Dominicans, Black Friars or Preaching Friars were founded in Toulouse, France, in the early 13th century by Spanish priest Dominic of Caleruega. Attwater describes a Dominican friar as “one who combines elements of the earlier monasticism – its dedicatory vows, its communal life, its daily round of praise of God in church – with the manifold works of the pastoral ministry.” In a pre-plague era where overpopulation was a serious problem, and the poor and uneducated were clustered into many towns, the role of the mendicant orders was conspicuous and often impressive.
The order of St Dominic (c.1170-1221) was officially recognised by the papacy in 1216. Like the other monastic and mendicant orders they had strict rules, but unlike the majority of other British monastic establishments, they based themselves not on the rules of St Benedict but on the Rule of St Augustine. They were therefore much closer in their practises and values to the Austins, Franciscans and Carmelites, also mendicants, than any of the orders based on the Rule of St Benedict that dotted the British rural landscape. The three main focal points of the Dominicans were:
Scholarship and intellectual integrity were seen as essential to salvation for heretics and the poor, whose ignorance led them astray. Dominicans recruited amongst graduates and clerics. Robust theological training was given to all new Dominican friars, and education was essential to their ethos
A vow of corporate as well as personal poverty was also integral, meaning that, at least in the first century of their activities, they could not engage in commercial activities and were dependent on charity for their survival, and would accept land and houses with which to establish themselves, or money with which to purchase them (unlike the Franciscans who rejected the ownership of property)
A mission to both preach to and lend aid to the poor, weeding out heresy was fundamental to their ideas, following the example of the apostles to evangelize, leading the misguided and disadvantaged to salvation
St Dominic’s house, Maison Seilha,n at Place du Parlement Chapelle, Toulouse, France. Source: Wikipedia
The Dominicans organized themselves with a system of centralized government, an elected body that resembled the General Chapter of the Cistercian order (an annual conference to administer and rule the order). The Dominican friaries were divided into provinces, each of which was headed by an elected provincial prior. These answered to a master-general who was himself elected. Each friary had a prior at its head who was elected by the chapter, and not only attended the annual chapter but was also accompanied by another member of the same priory whose role was, somewhat disconcertingly, to report on the prior’s performance. This type of performance review and downward as well as upward accountability is very modern in concept. It was this organization and accountability that turned the Dominicans from wandering clerics into a force to be reckoned with, which became important as the different mendicant orders found themselves increasingly in competition for donations, both with each other and the older institutions.
The Dominicans arrived in England in around 1221, and were known as the Black Friars or Friars Preacher. They spread first to Ireland and then, in 1230, to Scotland. There were five Dominican houses in Wales, two of which, Bangor and Rhuddlan, were in north Wales. By 1260 the Dominicans had persuaded both wealthy and poor that there was much to recommend them. They had around thirty six houses in England, nine in Scotland and the five in Wales, and by the end of the 13th century there were around 60 in total.
The earliest preaching took place in public places like market squares where a sizeable audience could be gathered. As they became established and increasingly popular, and were able to use donations to found churches to which audiences could be attracted, they began to preach on their own premises. They tailored their preaching to their audience, and presented themselves as men of the people, sharing their poverty, quite distinct from both the upper echelons of society and the more established Benedictine monasteries. At the same time they also appealed to the new commercial classes in the urban centres that they favoured.
Dominicans believed that ignorance was at the heart of heresy and defection from God, and that education would provide the ignorant and the poor with the tools to achieve salvation. Throughout Europe the teaching of theology and logic continued to be of importance to the Dominicans, and each Dominican priory was responsible for setting up its own school to teach the basics, while they also set up regional schools for the further education of those friars who were academically promising. Leading Dominicans increasingly contributed to the development of Medieval universities. Their mission to educate the laity was given an extra relevance by the decision of the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, which required that every person should make confession to a priest at least once a year. This required the general public to understand exactly what was required for a blameless life, and what steps were required in order to make a valid confession.
Whereas Benedictine monks renounced all personal possessions and properties, the monastic houses in which they lived and worshipped could be very wealthy indeed, and were often fairly massive and elaborate structures. Fountains Abbey (Benedictine, Yorkshire), Glastonbury (Benedictine, Somerset) and Lewes Priory (Cluniac, Sussex) are good examples. The mendicants, by contrast, were permitted only to acquire enough resources to survive, via begging for alms or through charitable donations and bequests. Even so, the friars of different orders were so popular, amongst the wealthy as well as the poor, that churches grew from simple places of worship to much grander affairs. As J. Patrick Greene puts it “the more successfully the friars gave enabled the wealthy to gain spiritual grace through the vicarious experience of poverty, the less it became a reality for the friars themselves.” This can be seen at the Franciscan friary in Oxford and the Dominican friary in Chester. Hinnebusch expands on this, and suggests that in the 13th century the Dominicans were also able to generate income of their own: “Most houses had gardens, orchards, groves, and sometimes vineyards and fish ponds. Undoubtedly some houses were able to sell part of the produce from these sources and thus supplement the alms of the people.” At least in the early years of their mission, their properties were not rented out, certainly as this was in direct violation of Dominican rules, which were strictly enforced. There is more on this in connection with Rhuddlan Friary, below. In the later Medieval period, however, matters changed as Hinnebusch explains:
In 1261, a papal bull allowed the Order to accept revenues for the purchase of ecclesiastical ornaments, vestments, and books. In 1266 friars were allowed to accept inheritances which would have come to them if they had remained in the world. These could be held or converted into money for the maintenance of the community. In 1274 after the attack on the mendicant orders at the Council of Lyons, Gregory X declared that the friars could “accept properties with a safe conscience.” The bull Supra Cathedram of Boniface VIII, 1299, in obliging the friars to give a fourth of all legacies, bequests, funeral charges, and other donations to the parish church struck a death blow to mendicant poverty. Under these conditions the quest and voluntary gifts were no longer sufficient, and the Order was obliged to seek for fixed sources of income.
Inevitably the mendicants stepped on the toes of the secular clergy, those bishops and parish priests whose congregations and incomes were under threat by the arrival of the mendicants, particularly as the mendicant churches grew and incorporated larger congregations. Papal intervention was sought on several occasions, but the tensions continued.
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The Dominican Friary at Rhuddlan
The foundation of the friary
The Dominican Friary at Rhuddlan was established by Llywelyn ap Gruffud (Llywelyn the Last) in 1258, 19 years before work began on Edward I’s castle nearby. He is also thought to have founded the priory at Bangor in the mid-13th century. It was a tradition amongst the Welsh princes to found monasteries. Although Cistercian monasteries were particularly prestigious amongst the princes, with one in each of the main cantrefs, Llywelyn was not a lavish spender on elaborate monastic projects, although he occasionally made financial gifts to those houses established by his ancestors. He became a benefactor of the very small Cistercian monastery at Cymer near Dolgellau that had been established by Gruffudd ap Cynan of Gwynedd in 1198, as well as of Beddgelert Augustinian Priory near Bangor, thought to have been established by one or more of the lords of Gwynedd in 1200. He made a loan to an abbot of Valle Crucis Cistercian Abbey near Llangollen, which had been founded by Madog ap Gruffydd Maelor, ruler of Powys (north), in 1201. Perhaps when it came to founding his own houses, he preferred the ideologies and practices of the Dominicans; it is also possible that they represented a rather less eye-watering investment. It should be noted that Samuel Lewis, in his 1849 Topographical History of Wales, believed that it had been established in 1197 by Ranulf III of Chester, but he gives no explanation for his thinking.
Rhuddlan Friary was established on the River Clwyd, 4.8km (3 miles) to the sea on the cost of North Wales, set above the floodplain, with a short cliff separating it from the valley below. A town had been here since the Anglo-Saxon period, taking advantage of the best pace to ford the river. William the Conqueror is thought to have ordered the building of the Twthill motte-and-bailey castle which was built in the 11th century and was probably still maintained for defensive purposes when the Dominicans set up their friary.
There were only two Dominican houses in north Wales, the other being in Bangor, established in 1251, seven years earlier than Rhuddlan, again probably by Llywelyn ap Gruffud. Wales was not strong on mendicant orders in general, primarily because they favoured urban areas, and Wales in the 13th century lacked the busy towns that were growing up in England. There was only one Franciscan house in north Wales, on Anglesey, and a single Carmelite house, at Denbigh. Given that there were so few mendicant orders represented in north Wales it would be interesting to understand why Rhuddlan, of all the possible towns in Wales, was selected as an attractive site for the Dominicans. Although it may have had something to do with Llywelyn himself, it is also possible that the founding friar may have had input, and may have had a connection to Rhuddlan.
Whether parish church, abbey, priory or friary, all religious establishments came under the wing of a regional ecclesiastical body, a diocese, headed by a bishop. By 1291 Rhuddlan Friary came under the diocese of St Asaph (in English), Llanelwy (in Welsh), together with other ecclesiastical deaneries (groups of parishes) like Aberconwy Cistercian Abbey, Strata Marcella Cistercian Abbey near Conwy, Valle Crucis Cistercian Abbey near Llangollen and Basingwerk Cistercian Abbey near Holywell. Rhuddlan Friary, Valle Crucis Abbey and Aberconwy Abbey all provided St Asaph with bishops. Rhuddlan’s Prior Anian II (or Einion II) became the bishop of St Asaph in 1268.
It is not known where the friars came from. Dominican scholarship was an important component of their ethos, and the Rhuddlan friars would have received training when they joined the order, although Latin would have formed a common language, and a common bond. Rhuddlan had passed between the English and Welsh through its history, but because friars mingled with communities, it is probable that at least some of the friars must have been Welsh speakers. Attwater points to the dozen Dominican bishops that he knows of with English names, but says that the impression they give is misleading, and that Welsh friars predominantly had Welsh names. Potential sources for friars to populate a new friary could have included the other Welsh friaries, but also reasonably nearby was Chester, where a Dominican friary had been established in 1236 and was doing very well.
The friary architecture
Although there is almost nothing left of the Dominican friary at Rhuddlan, it will have been built on the lines of other Dominican communal establishments. Like the more numerous Benedictine monasteries and priories, a Dominican friary consisted of a church, which made up one side of a complex of buildings that were arranged in square or rectangle around a garden, the garth. The church would usually be on the north, and the domestic and administrative buildings were incorporated into the other buildings over one or two storeys. The image below shows the layout of the mainly 14th century Dominican friary at Norwich, as an example, in this case fairly elaborate but, like most Dominican friaries, the church had no side transepts which makes them look significantly different from Benedictine-style abbeys and priories.
Ground plan of Norwich Friary. Source: Giraud, E.J. and Linde, .J.C. 2021 – via Google Books
The drawing by Buck shown at the top of the page and shown again below has been invaluable to architectural experts who have been able to clarify the main features. The following is taken from Clapham, published in 1927, who has done an excellent job of deconstructing the image and reconstructing the friary, and concludes that the friary was built on a “much more ambitious scale than was usual among lesser friaries.”
Rhuddlan Friary by Buck. Source: Coflein
The whole length of the building shown was no doubt occupied by the dorter [dormitory] on the first floor and at its north end is some indication of the junction with the church, though even then this building had been entirely destroyed. Projecting eastwards from the range is a gabled structure, with three lancet-windows in the east end and three in the south return wall; this was undoubtedly the chapter-house with a room above it. Further south, in the main range, is the archway of a passage from the cloister, and still further south a chimney-stack, probably that of the fireplace in the warming-house.
At the south end of the range is a large doorway, at the dorter-level, evidently that leading to the rere-dorter [latrines], the ruins of which, with its connecting bridge, are also shown. Of the southern range of the cloister court, the eastern part of the inner or north wall is still standing and contains four small square-headed windows of red Chester stone, set high in the wall, above a string-course which probably marked the level of the cloister-roof. The rest of the range seems to have been rebuilt, but the south side of it is shown in
steep perspective in Buck’s view. The only other ancient portion of the existing buildings is the northern portion of the outer wall of an outbuilding on the west of the yard.
It appears to have projected westward from the original western range, as there is a return angle at the south end. It contains two pointed windows, probably of the fourteenth century, and blocked with ashlar. The rest of this range contains other pointed windows, but they appear not to be original and the walls themselves to be of post-suppression date.
Inscribed stones in vicarage wall at the Friary near Rhuddlan Church, taken by Leonard Monroe. Source: Coflein
At Abbey Farm today, the farmyard is thought to occupy the site of the cloister garth and part of the south cloister range, with the farmhouse occupying the site of the church, and the southern range perhaps incorporated into another farm building where blocked windows probably date to the 14th century. Modern buildings have obscured what was probably the cloister, c.26-28m square. Medieval building materials have been identified and in one of the farm buildings at the east of the farm complex, with some sepulchral slab fragments incorporated into the walls, as well as a niche with a heavily eroded 14th century effigy still visible in it, shown below. Clapham picks out details that were incorporated into the farm buildings that sit over the site, including bits of architectural and sepulchral masonry (tomb slabs). Some of the tomb slabs are shown on this page, thanks to a digitization programme by Coflein, but with no attempt to put them in any particular order. See captions for credits and links.
Built into the garden-wall, to the north of the yard, are portions of a moulded and cusped arch of early fourteenth-century date and probably part of a tomb recess. Of the various funeral monuments built into the walls of the buildings round the yard . . . .
Engraving incorporated into a wall. Photograph taken by Leonard Monroe. Source: Coflein
On the east side of the yard: (a) effigy in high relief of a civilian in hood with flap, belt with skirt of gown tucked into it and holding in both hands a baton, or possibly a mace, probably fourteenth-century; (b) part of a coffin-lid with inscription.
On south side of yard: (a) incised slab with figure of an archbishop1 in mass-vestments with cross-staff and marginal inscription to William Freney, archbishop of Rages, c. 1290.
This slab has now been removed to the parish church; (b) slab with raguly cross in relief, head in a quatrefoil, sword at side and inscription to Robert, son of Robert de Bridelton, early fourteenth-century.
On west side of yard: coffin-lid with elaborately enriched cross on stem inscribed ‘Hie jacet [here lies] Snaisii,’ the rest of the inscription destroyed, thirteenth-century. The inventory of goods taken at the suppression mentions the quire with a table of alabaster on the altar and new stalls, two bells in the steeple and the kitchen.
There are references to the friary church having a particularly magnificent rood screen, which attracted pilgrims, about which more below. In 1849, Samuel Lewis writes that “near it [the friary] is a fine spring, from which the priory derived water, conveyed to it by leaden pipes, that were taken up not many years ago: from this spring the town of Rhuddlan is now supplied during seasons of drought”
Unlike the better known Cistercian monasteries of north Wales, which were built in areas where the monks could worship in isolation, as separate from the world beyond the cloister as possible, the Dominicans always intended to be part of the local community and their friaries were built either on the edge of towns, like Rhuddlan, or within them, like Chester’s Dominican friary. The friars’ lives were a balance between the communal living and worship that too place within their monastic premises and the preaching that they carried out in neighbouring communities. They built their friaries in or near towns and the friars would have been familiar figures around the town of Rhuddlan where they would have mingling with townspeople and recruiting support in their missionary roles.
How the friary sustained itself
Inscribed stones in vicarage wall at the Friary near Rhuddlan Church, taken by Leonard Monroe. Source: Coflein
The friary appears to have been well provided for throughout the 13th century, and must have had significant status locally. By 1283 there were 23 friars at Rhuddlan, a very healthy number. In Cardiff and Haverfordwest, both Dominican friaries, numbers are recorded in 1285 as 30 and 39 respectively, but Rhuddlan was rather more remote. In 1268 Rhuddlan Friary’s prior “Anian (Einion) of Nanneu” became Bishop of St Asaph, a significant honour. It is unlikely that such an appointment would have been made from a minor establishment, a suggestion supported by other appointments to the position from the big Cistercian abbeys of Aberconwy and Valle Crucis in north Wales. Records of payments to the monastery also give a sense of its importance, including a payment in 1281/1282 at the time of the birth of the princess Elizabeth at Rhuddlan, Edward and Eleanor’s 5th child, of 7s 8d to the friars of Rhuddlan and 1s 1d for the brethren of the hospital of Rhuddlan (about which more below); a bequest in the will of Bishop Gervase de Castro in 1370 of 60 shillings and another bequest, this time of 20 shillings, from Llewelyn ap Madoc, bishop of St Asaph, in 1373.
The friary also appears to have been taking steps, beyond accepting alms and bequests, to care of itself. Hinnebusch comments “At Rhuddlan in 1534, the prior leased several gardens and an apple orchard ; two years later a second apple orchard was leased. When the house was sup pressed, the sale of the effects of the priory included kine and pigs.” Kine were a type of cattle.
Map showing Rhuddlan on the Welsh pilgrim routes, which link north and south Wales. See the following link for the full UK map. Source: The British Pilgrimage Trust
The excellently researched academic Monastic Wales Project website states that “Pilgrims flocked to visit the rood at Rhuddlan,” but does not expand on the comment. The rood is the screen that divides the nave (where the public worship) from the chancel (the sanctuary at the eastern end of the church that was confined to the friars). It is usually ornate, and made of open tracery in wood or stone (more likely wood at a Dominican friary like Rhuddlan, as it was much less expensive). It was usually topped with a beam that held the rood (a depiction of the crucifixion), often accompanied by other key figures from the Christian story. At Bangor, part of the rood survives, and symbols of the evangelists, the ox, eagle, lion and man, accompanied Christ. Some rood screens attracted pilgrims either because of their particular design or because of associated miracles, In her PhD thesis, Lisa Garland says that many depictions of Christ became objects of pilgrimage, particularly in the 15th century, many gilded. In north Wales, both Rhuddlan and Bangor had rood screens that attracted pilgrims, were celebrated in Welsh bardic poetry, and and were located on Welsh pilgrim routes, as shown on the map above right. Pilgrims might be depended upon for offerings to a religious institution, helping to support them. The rood at Rhuddlan was celebrated by the poet Gruffudd ab Ieuan ap Llywelyn Fychan, which would probably have been good PR for the friary.
The Impact of Rhuddlan Castle
Edward I saw himself as a devout Christian. He had been on crusade, and he had made a vow to build a Cistercian monastery, which he founded in east Cheshire at Vale Royal in c.1270. Edward I’s military activities often dragged monastic establishments in Wales into the conflict. Being devout, or at least concerned about his status in the eyes of God, Edward compensated a number of monastic establishments in north Wales, both big and small, with significant sums of money and other gifts. These included Basingwerk (near Flint Castle), Valle Crucis (near Llangollen), Aberconwy (near Conwy), and Cymer (near Dolgellau).
Inscribed tomb slab incorporated into the wall above a doorway. Source: Coflein
There is no surviving record of Rhuddlan Friary suffering damage to building or losing resources such as grain or livestock, but Llywelyn surrendered at Rhuddlan Castle in November 1277 and it seems improbable that the friary escaped entirely unscathed during the conflict. The friars of Rhuddlan are credited with having organized the care of the wounded at that time, so were clearly in the thick of it. Whether from guilt about harm inflicted or from appreciation of the Dominicans, Edward continued to finance the friary after Llywelyn’s death in 1282. This is not particularly surprising, as both Edward’s father Henry III and Edward I himself were supporters of the mendicants in England, providing them with the much-valued stamp of royal approval. In addition, Edward had a policy of compensating religious houses for damage inflicted during his conflicts with Llywelyn in Wales. By way of thanks for royal support, Rhuddlan Friary supplied Queen Eleanor with honey from its own hives. Queen Eleanor died in 1291, Rhuddlan Friary was a beneficiary from her will, which included a grant of 100 shillings each to the Dominican houses of Wales and England. Rhuddlan Friary was also allocated 2 and 1/2 acres of land.
The community of Rhuddlan friary
The Danse Macabre or Dance of Death (1493) by Michael Wolgemut, from the Nuremberg Chronicle of Hartmann Schedel. Source: Wikipedia
Very little is known about the individuals who lived within the community of Rhuddlan Friary or any of the activities that were carried out, including their preaching. Rhuddlan is considered to be a probable source of a version of the danse macabre (dance of death, also known as the dance of Paul’s). Several of the mendicant orders used the danse in their sermons, and the Dominicans were particularly enthusiastic about its terrifying imagery, often featuring death as a cadaver coming to claim the living, which was a warning of perils to come, and a reminder of the need to prepare one’s soul for the inevitable. Here’s a flavour from a paper by Gray and Hale, translated from the Welsh, by poet Dafydd Ddu Hiraddug:
The corpse that was full of excess in a dirty closed place
As food for insects without worthy blessing …
The beautiful eyes now rounded holes
Full of maggots, in truth;
The comely mouth, which was so playful,
And was haughty, sad its form
A sardonic black hole, unlikely to be loved,
Black sorrowful nape, pathetic loneliness:
And the white teeth like old pegs
Dirty grey putrid bones
The long arms and the beautiful legs
Are sticks with gristle: offensive and putrid!
Enough to put the fear of God into anyone.
Only one of the community members is known for certain, and that is because he achieved prominence outside the friary’s walls as Bishop of St Asaph. I have included his biographical details below because it is some indication of the level of seniority that the friary could attract.
Effigy of Anian in St Asaph Cathedral. Source: Wikipedia
Anian, the Rhuddlan prior who became Bishop of St Asaph in 1268, was often a chosen intermediary between Llywelyn ap Gruffudd and both Henry III and Edward I, but he became alienated from Llywelyn as the relationship between the prince and Edward I deteriorated. Towards the end of 1273 Anian he wrote to Pope Gregory X to make charges against the prince. This put him in confict with the Cistercian order in Wales, whose abbots in turn wrote to the pope, on 7 March 1274 in defence of Llywelyn. His loyalties remained with the king and he continued to represent Edward’s interests against Llywelyn. When Edward was defeated in 1277, Anian’s diocese, St Asaph passed to the control of the English Crown. In 1281 Anian was given support from Edward in his bid to the papacy to move bishopric from St Asaph to the new royal castle and its accompanying town at Rhuddlan, a far higher status location, but this came to nothing. During the resumption of hostilities between Wales and England in 1282, the cathedral of St Asaph was burned, infuriating Anian, who refused to lend the king further support and excommunicated the soldiers who attacked the cathedral. The king seized his goods and denied him the diocese. The rift was repaired in 1284 with the intercession of the Archbishop of Canterbury, Pecham. Anian was granted the advowson (vacant ecclesiastical appointment) of Rhuddlan in return for a good will gesture of 500 marks. Throughout this period he fell out with many other secular and religious dignitaries. He died on 5th February 1293.
In 1284 some indication of the status of the friary is provided by the appointment of the prior of Rhuddlan by Archbishop Pecham to the commission of inquiry tasked with assessing the need for rebuilding and repair of churches damaged during the Edwardian wars in Wales. This was not Anian, who was by now the bishop of St Asaph, but I have not yet tracked down his name.
St Mary’s Church on the River Clwyd, Rhuddlan, which now houses the tomb of William de Freney. Edward I’s Rhuddlan Castle is shown in the bacground. Source: photograph by Mike Searle on Geograph.
There would have been cemetery at Rhuddlan Friary, where the inmates would have been buried. There are various pieces of tombstone incorporated into stone walls at Rhuddlan, re-used as building materials. Only one of the burials has been identified for sure, dating to c.1290: when William de Freney, archbishop of Edessa (Upper Mesopotamia), was buried at Rhuddlan. His tomb was saved because it was removed to St Mary’s Church in the town, where it remains. If this was done at the dissolution it is something of a puzzle why none of the other tombs were moved at the same time. William de Freney was a Dominican monk, but although he was buried at Rhuddlan, his career unfolded far from north Wales, and although it is possible that he ended his days at the friary it is by no means certain. He was a diplomat and skilled orator and linguist. It is possible that when Edward went on crusade in 1270, de Freney went with him, but his movements are unclear until his death at Rhuddlan. Edward I spent a lot of time in the 1270s and 1280s in Rhuddlan, and the presence of de Freney at Rhuddlan was almost certainly connected with Edward’s own movements. The tomb slab is inscribed with a legend in Norman French: PRIEZ PVR LALME FRERE WILLIAM DE FRENEY ERCHEVESHE DE RAGES (Pray for the soul of Brother William de Freney Archbishop of Rages). The name Rages appears to have been identified with Edessa.
The friary and the town
There are no records about interactions between the friary and the town, although they must have been frequent and various. The friars must have been impacted just as much as the townspeople by the famine and then the plague, both of which swept through England and Wales in the first half of the 14th century.
Where Edward built castles in Wales, he changed the entire character of each of those areas. Oddly, the friary was not included in the new borough established by Edward in 1278, which went against usual practice. I have read nothing to explain this. Perhaps the exclusion was at the request of the friary itself, to maintain its independence, or for other reasons of its own. The town that the friars attended before the arrival of Edward I in 1277 was a very different place from the one that Edward built for English immigrants, a Gascon-inspired planned town called a bastide, and the friary presumably extended its reach to the English newcomers, although it is very probable that the majority of the Dominican friars were in fact Welsh. This could of course have changed over the decades as the town changed and new members were accepted in to the friary.
When Edward’s engineers and labourers had finished straightening out and deepening 2 miles of the River Clwyd to enable seagoing ships to reach the castle, the friars may have benefitted. As soldiers and sailors arrived by ship, the friars would certainly have had new audiences for their preaching might, which might very well have been welcome as they contemplated war with Llywelyn, the privations of the terrain and the weather and their own mortality.
Unsurprisingly, given the order’s pastoral mission, during the Black Death of the 14th century, the order was very nearly wiped out as the friars throughout Europe mixed with their communities, attempting to bring support, and placing themselves at the highest possible risk. Figures are highly elusive for Wales, but one estimate suggests that by the end of the 14th century the population of Wales had been reduced from a total of around 300,000 to under 200,000, a reduction of some 100,000 people. Although an earlier famine had some part to play in that figure, successive resurgences of the plague were the main cause. Most of these would have been in the minority of lowland urban centres like Rhuddlan, rather than in the upland areas where the population was more dispersed, but its impact was still ferocious.
It is not known exactly how the Black Death impacted Rhuddlan, but enough of the population survived to enable both town and friary to survive. Under 100 years later, the senior occupants of the burgess and their land are recorded in a document dated 1428. Most of the survivors noted are English names, probably those descended from Edward I’s settlers. As well as recording that a community of burgesses had formed a landholding corporation, and that St Mary’s itself had land holdings. No mention is made of the friary, but this was excluded from Edward’s new borough.
A public footpath connects the friary to the still-surviving motte of the 1073 Twthill motte-and-bailey castle, and Edward I’s 1277 stone castle beyond. This part of the valley must have been quite a sight in the 13th and 14th centuries, with the canalized river running at the foot of friary and the cliff below both castles, new and old, with ships moored against the river.
The dissolution
The opening page of the Valor Ecclesiasticus, showing Henry VIII presiding over the valuation of the religious houses prior to their dissolution. Source: Wikipedia
The friary was dissolved in 1538, when six friars signed the Act of Surrender. The surviving details of the abbey, as meagre as they are, have been discussed above. The process of dividing the assets for sequestration and sale was overseen by Richard Ingworth, Bishop of Dover, who was ironically Dominican. He recorded that he sold “cows and pigs for 22./-; paid for servants, and carried off a little chalice.” The chalice would have contributed to the treasure trove being amalgamated from the dissolution by Henry VIII. The premises additional to the church and cemetery are recorded at that time as a hall with three chambers, two other chambers, a kitchen and a stable. ——–
There is considerable confusion about the presence of a hospital during the 13th century, when the friary was founded. There are two references to it in documentation associated with Edward I, but it is by no means certain that it belonged to the Dominican friary.
In 1848 Harry Longueville Jones, in the second part of his piece on Rhuddlan Priory, gives a description of the hospital’s location, although he still gives no further idea of why he thought that a hospital was located here: “The Hospital stood about a quarter of a mile to the NE of the priory on the southern side of the road leading to Diserth; an old building, although perhaps not original, was standing here until within a few years. It is now replaced by an ordinary cottage, in which all features of antiquity are disappeared. Leaden pipes and conduits, leading from the hospital to the priory, have been dug up in the fields near that latter building” (p.48), He goes on to suggest that it was “not improbable” that it could have been a “Lazarhouse” (a hospice for lepers), but this seems simply to be speculation.
Effigy in a wall at Abbey Farm. Source: Jones 1847
One of Edward I’s edicts states that the burial ground at the church of Rhuddlan had become inadequate, and that another site near the hospital should therefore be made available, suggesting at the very least that a hospital was in the vicinity. One possibility is that references to a hospital refer not to a permanent facility, but to the work that the Dominicans are recorded as having carried out during the 1277 war, tending the wounded on a temporary basis. The friars must have been involved again in Dafydd’s rebellion of 1282, and there is reference to money being granted to a hospital in the same listing where a much larger sum was also granted to the priory. The friars were probably spared the violence in the national uprising led by Madog ap Llywelyn (in the north) and Morgan ap Marededd (in the south) in 1294-5 when English troops were garrisoned at Rhuddlan, but the castle was not one of those that was attacked by the rebels.
One idea, repeated by Harry Longueville Jones in July 1847, is that there might have been a Templar hospital at the site, perhaps adopted by the Dominicans after the closure of the Templar order. A piece of data discussed in this context is the presence of a farmhouse near the friary that was called Spittal or Ysbythy, although the word Ysbyty (hospital) can simply identify land that belonged to the Knights Hospitallers or Templars, and does not always indicate the presence of an actual hospital.
Excavations carried out to the east of the castle in 1978 as well as beyond Edward’s borough defences found no traces of a hospital, and so far remains have not showed up on aerial photographs. It was presumably completely robbed out for building materials.
Final Comments
It is easy to see why the mendicants, who combined secluded worship and pious austerity with community involvement the religious education and salvation of the poor would be attractive to the wealthy, their offering far more visible and easier to relate to than the older, more remote orders.
The remnant of a lovely tomb slab at the Abbey Farm (also shown above in black and white). Source: Geograph, by Mike Searle
The stories of Rhuddlan and former Rhuddlan friar Anian, who became Bishop of St Asaph, show how religion and politics are inevitably intertwined. The Dominicans had no way of Knowing, when they established their new friary in Rhuddlan, that Edward I would follow a decade later, and the new royal castle and town would have changed the entire profile of the area, introducing not only a garrison but English settlers, and drawing a target on the town for the wars of 1277 and 1282, although it appears to have escaped attack in the uprising of 1294. This would have raised the importance of the Dominican friars as a source of Christian values and salvation within a war zone, but in times of peace, a perhaps even more important role was attempting to help cement the different elements of the royal town and the local Welsh interests.
At the moment, there are many more questions than answers about the Rhuddlan Friary, but answers may lie under the surface. Further excavations around Rhuddlan may clarify the remains of the friary, help to date of some of the fortifications, and clarify what other buildings may have existed during the Medieval period.
The surrounding former abbey precinct that once extended across the surrounding fields has suffered the same indignity as Valle Crucis Abby in Llangollen, being used a caravan and chalet park. The friars would probably have been turning in their graves, had their graves survived.
Rhuddlan Abbey Farm. Over the lintel of the blue door on the far left the above tomb slab has been incorporated into the stonework of the wall. Source: Geograph, by Mike Searle
There are no visitor details on this post, because the remains of the friary are on private land, and are not open to the general public, so I was unable to visit. There is a footpath that runs around the outside of the farm.
I have not yet visited Rhuddlan for well over a decade, and am looking forward to a visit to the castles. The friary is a real insight into how much one can learn from published and online resources without visiting the site. A big hats-off to those early illustrators and writers who have captured so much that later writers have used to recreate past buildings and landscapes. I wrote this entire piece without leaving my house, and that’s a massive reflection on how much work others have done.
Cule, J. 1977. Early hospital development in Wales. National Library of Wales journal. 1977, Winter Volume XX/2.
“Extracted onto the pages of GENUKI with the kind permission of the National Library of Wales. This is a complete extract of this article (Gareth Hicks May 2003):” https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/wal/Archives/NLWjournals/EarlyHospitals.
Davies, J. 2007 (3rd edition). A History of Wales. Penguin.
Gray, M. and Hale, D. 2021. Dancing and Dicing with Death: literary evidence for some lost wall paintings in Wales. Ancient Monuments Society Transactions Volume 65 (2021), p.7-19
Greene, J.P. 1992. Medieval Monasteries. Leicester University Press
Hinnebusch, W.A. 1944. The Domestic Economy of the Early English Dominicans. The Catholic Historical Review , Oct., 1944, Vol. 30, No. 3 (Oct., 1944), p. 247-270
As in St Werburgh’s, a fox is dressed as a friar but this time he is in a pulpit preaching to chickens and geese, demonstrating that this theme was of interest not merely to monastic establishments but to churches as well. The allegedly venal of some elements of the mendicant cause may be the theme here. The earliest mendicant friars were poor and itinerant, begging for alms. By the later middle ages they were comfortably established in friaries of their own, the recipients of patronage, gifts and wills. The apparent hypocrisy was a source of grievance for the clergy beyond the seclusion of the cloister. The parish priest may also have felt threatened by the powerful public sermons and the more evocative style of engagement with the general public delivered by the friars. In the parish church, as well as in the heart of the monastery, friars might be seen as a threat to the role of the conventional clergy, to be satirized, derided and, if possible, undermined.
One of the more puzzling themes that occasionally appears on misericords (but is missing from Chester, possibly due to removal in the Victorian period) is the revealing of male nether regions. At Gresford this is given a context. The misericord shows an acrobat hanging over a pole held by two men, ostentatiously exposing his undercarriage, apparently during a performance, possibly a form of slap-stick entertainment. Quite what these were doing on misericords is uncertain, although there is a lot of speculation on the subject. Whilst there may have been a warning against lewdness and impurity, it is difficult to deny that at least some of these depictions were intended to include a degree of crude humour.
A badly damaged misericord shows two cats, both standing on their hind legs in front of something that is now missing but appears to show a mouse hole at the base, with a tiny mouse with pointed ears to its right. The cats are holding hands, with one apparently leading the other. The leading cat seems to have been holding something in its outstretched paw. Perhaps the upright stance reflects the cat’s commanding, self-possessed and often self-satisfied view of its position within its own universe. An alternative interpretation is that when animals are shown adopting human behaviour, it is a reminder of human failings. Similarly standing on their hind legs are the cats in MS. Bodley 764 (folio 50r), which also shows cats on the hunt.
Wheelbarrows feature quite frequently in misericords, and one of the Gresford misericords shows two women seated side by side in a wheelbarrow being pushed towards the open jaws of a monster’s head by a creature with staring eyes and a forked tail. The cavalcade is followed by a man. All the participants in the scene stare out at the onlooker. The open jaws of the monster represent the gateway to hell. This is a much simpler version of a well-known example at St George’s Chapel, Windsor Castle, which shows two monks being wheeled towards the hellmouth by either a demon or the devil himself, leading to the suggestion that the two wimpled women on the Gresford misericord may be nuns (but bearing in mind that wimples were not exclusive to nuns). The supporters appear to be small rodents, but it is difficult to see how they might relate to the central narrative.
A splendid winged griffin, facing left, is positioned between two delicate unicorns, one of which is missing its head. The griffin has the head and wings of an eagle, the body of a Lion and is four-legged. Like the lion, which can exert its power for either good or evil, depending on the context. When Alexander the Great encounters the enclave of griffins in his voyage to the end of the world, the creature is a true monster, ugly, frightening and vicious. On the other hand it is a pair of griffins that carried Alexander over the edge of the world. The griffin is often used to represent rival ideas and can, in different contexts, represent such opposing individuals as Satan and Christ. The griffin also represents the combination of the opposing elemental forces of air (eagle) and earth (lion). It is difficult to know what, in this context, the griffin is intended to convey. The presence of unicorns, which are often associated with Christ, may either be supportive companions, opposing forces, or hapless victims, and there is nothing to help determine which. The supporters are decorative flowers.
Another misericord, also quite unlike its companions, seems to refer to the gargoyles and grotesques so strongly featured on the exterior of the building. It may have had no specific symbolic meaning. It is a monster’s face with vaulting emanating from its head. The vaulting may be intended to evoke the magnificent screen that separates choir from nave at All Saints’, although the flowers at the intersections on the misericord are not present on the screen. Perhaps it is intended to bring indoors the collective message that the gargoyles and grotesques were communicating from the exterior of the church (discussed briefly in an earlier post).
Some of the All Saints’ misericords are very badly damaged, leaving the core subject matter very difficult to identify. A particularly frustrating example is the misericord whose central subject matter is completely missing. Flanking it there is a wonderful winged angel on the left and, on the right, a lady in an elaborate dress kneeling before a personal altar with the soft folds of her dress flowing behind her on the floor. Perhaps this was either the Annunciation or the Coronation of the Virgin, particularly as there are no other overtly religious stories included in the All Saints’ corpus.
Another badly damaged misericord shows a woman on a four-legged animal, the head of which is missing and is therefore unidentifiable. It is short, has particularly bandy legs and ill-defined feet, none of which suggest a horse. Two carvings, one in front of the woman and animal, and one behind, are lost. The one behind is almost certainly another figure in a long garment, but the one in front may or may not be.
Some of the misericords contain no narrative or obviously symbolic component. One misericord has no central subject matter and no obvious sign of damage, with just two images as supporters, right on the edge of the underside of the seat. These are two three-quarter partial heads, almost sketches, looking towards one another. The meaning of this, if there was any, is lost. If there was a central carving, there is not even a shape left to suggest a subject matter. It is possible that it was carved at a much later date to replace one of the original misericords that might have been damaged or whose subject matter was considered inappropriate. These lost stories are very frustrating.
I particularly like the mermaid. Mermaids appear on many misericords in Britain. Mermaids resembled Greek sirens, representing both the temptation and lust that men might find hard to resist on the one hand, and the dangers represented by the deformation of the human image in the form of a hybrid creature on the other. They were usually shown, as at Malpas, with bared breasts, with a comb in one hand and a mirror in the other, warnings not merely of seduction but of the vice of vanity. The Malpas mermaid looks down and seems to be moving gently to her right. Her tail has been lightly carved to suggest fish scales. Her bare chest is distinctly flat and smooth, unlike most misericord mermaids, perhaps to avoid encouraging carnal thoughts amongst the Malpas choristers. She holds the comb in her left hand, which rests on her thigh (separated from her upper arm by breakage), and the mirror in the other, overlapping one of the supporters. Both supporters are three-lobed leaves.
A winged monster has one head, shown facing outward, but two bodies that are shown in profile either side of the head. This is probably the simplest and least worked of all three, with minimal details carved into the image, although there are shallow markings to suggest the scaled nature of the wings, and clawed feet. The face is shown in more detail, with three protrusions from the head, which may or may not depict serpents. It is clearly a monster with affinities like the wings, tails and claws that are shared with dragons. Dragons, wyverns and related monsters may represent paganism, power, uncontrolled violence or lust, the Devil himself and unspecified evil and sin that must be confronted and neutralized, or at the very least rationalized. As such creatures are usually associated with remote, often hostile landscapes, they may also represent fear of the unknown. It may also offer a shifting geographical component, so that the dragon may be feared in the remote landscape but is only confronted when it threatens human habitation and safety. The three-lobed leaf supporters are nicely done, with clearly defined edges. A much more elaborate version of a single-headed and double-bodied monster is shown in the Luttrell Psalter (folio 195v), but is evidently part of the same family of images familiar and available to medieval illuminators, carvers and sculptors.
Finally, two knights are shown engaged in an athletic, almost balletic fight with swords. Of the three this is by far the most complex, compositionally. At first glance it is very difficult to see exactly what is going on, and whose limbs belong to whom, vividly capturing movement. The pointed shoes, generally confined to the well-to-do, emphasize the mobility and athleticism of the figures. Perhaps it refers to a scene from a chivalric romance, such a the Chester examples that show scenes from stories of Yvain and Tristan and Isolde. Again, the supporters are foliage.
The head of a man with beard and hat or other form of head covering may or may not be a portrait. Many misericords show human faces, some characterized by particular expressions or actions, but many contain no clues about the significance. The supporters feature pomegranates. Pomegranates are associated with numerous ideas from antiquity onwards. The symbolism attached to them ranges from fertility, regeneration and good luck to representing the shedding of the blood of Christ and as a symbol of the church and its congregation. Without knowing quite what the man’s head represents it is difficult to interpret the entire message of the misericord.
The remaining two misericords, now used as corbels, show what may be a bull’s head, and a sow with a litter. You can see them on the World of Misericords website. The sow with a litter is a theme also featured on one of the St Werburgh misericords. MS Bodley 764 is quite clear on the negative connotations: “The sow that was washed and returns to her wallowing in the mire is filthier than before; and he who weeps for his admitted sins, but does not desist from them, earns a graver punishment, condemned by his own misdeeds which he could have prevented by repentance; and he descends as if into murky waters because he removes the cleanness of his life by such tears, which are tainted before the eyes of God.” Sows represent unclean spirits and are often associated with gluttony and, more disturbingly, heresy. And in the medieval mind, where heresy lurks, paganism may be lurking nearby.
Based in Churton 
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