Saints and angels - a font in Ware church, Herts

The church of St Mary the Virgin, in Ware, Herts, is big, and evidently no expense was spared on it when it was built (mostly in the 14th and 15th centuries). It has transepts - fairly unusual for a parish church - and - even more unusually - the nave, transepts and chancel all have clerestory* windows. It was quite heavily restored in the 19th century, which must have neutered or at least changed its character. (We ought to be grateful to the Victorians for rescuing so many churches from dereliction rather than routinely reviling them. Even though sometimes they did replace and alter too much, on the whole I think the balance is in their favour.) The interior isn't as grand (though the nave arcades are taller than in an average church) or as full of interest as the exterior suggests it should be, but there's still enough to keep aficiandos of churches happy for a while. I like the slightly Edward Bawdenish hassocks around the altar; there's some interesting woodwork and some better than average early Victorian and Edwardian stained glass. Best of all is the font.

Hertfordshire can't boast a good collection of fonts; Anstey, with its mermen, is my favourite, but Ware has much the most elaborately carved. It dates from about 1380, when the Perpendicular style still had some reminiscences of Decorated. You can't say that the carving is top quality, but it's not without flair. Best of all, it's largely escaped the attentions of iconoclasts and other vandals and is remarkably complete.

There are eight main figures on the font, and between them are demiangels holding, alternately, Instruments of the Passion and musical instruments. The first eight photos below show the eight figures on the main faces of the font, starting with St George, who faces east, and then going round clockwise.

St George

St George looks very unconcerned as he stabs the dragon, indeed, he looks practically uninvolved, as if he's out for a hike and has hardly noticed that he's accidentally speared something. The dragon itself is splendidly characterised. The hoodmould under which George stands has a distinctly ogee** shaped top to accommodate his helmet.

  

St Catherine

St Catherine of Alexandria carries the instruments of her martyrdom, the sword and wheel.

St James

St James, the patron saint of pilgrims, has a staff and book. It looks as if he's carrying a roast chicken impaled on his staff. On his right is an angel brandishing three of the nails with which Christ was nailed to the cross.

John the Baptist

Mary

This and the next panel together form an Annunciation scene, in which Gabriel tells Mary that she is to be the mother of Jesus. She is shown with a lily, a symbol of purity and chastity. Her face has been abraded, possibly deliberately by iconoclasts. If so, we can be grateful that they were rather lazy and did only a token amount of damage.

The Angel Gabriel

Gabriel's legs are clumsily carved. He holds an unrolled scroll and a wand. On his left an angel displays the scourge with which Christ was whipped.

St Margaret of Antioch

St Margaret, patron saint of women in childbirth (obviously appropriate for a font), was swallowed whole by the devil, who'd assumed the shape of a dragon to perform this gastronomic crime. She managed to kill him with the cross she was carrying, however. In this depiction she's much more dynamic than St George, though her dragon isn't as fearsome. Her face has been badly damaged too; the church guidebook suggests that she and Mary were targeted because they faced the main entrances into the church. Maybe. 

St Christopher

St Christopher carries the young Christ over beautifully stylised water. The faces of Christ and the two flanking angels are badly damaged.

Angel with lance

This angel, holding the lance with which Christ's side was pierced, isn't at all as angels are normally depicted. She looks deeply haggard and hollow-cheeked. 

Angel with lute or cittern

John the Baptist

St George

The font must be nearly coeval with what's usually called the Peasants' Revolt of 1381 (though modern historians point out that most of the rebels weren't peasants at all but what we'd now call middle class). There's a connection between this event and Ware, as Joan of Kent, the mother of King Richard II, was Lady of the Manor (and local legend has it that she paid for the rebuilding of the church). Representations of her death-mask allegedly feature in the corbels at the east ends of the aisles, and the badges of her family (a white hart) and of her son the king (a white hart with a crowned collar and a chain) indisputably feature in other corbels. The story goes that during the revolt she was stopped by Wat Tyler and the rebels, but shown respect by them and allowed to proceed and even given an escort. 

This is perhaps of dubious historicity. But it is certain that during the revolt the castle of John of Gaunt (against whom the revolt was partly aimed) in Hertford was attacked by rebels from Ware, who seriously damaged it and stole goods worth a thousand pounds (an astounding figure). After this, fifty of the Ware rebels teamed up with others from Essex and went to London, where they assaulted  and more or less demolished Gaunt's Savoy Palace (in the Strand, where the Savoy Hotel and Theatre stand now). It would be good to be able to find some hint of these events somewhere on the font, but I can't.

There's an article by the Rev. Harry P. Pollard about Hertfordshire fonts in the Transactions of the St Albans and Herts Architectural and Archaeological Society, 1908:

http://www.stalbanshistory.org/documents/1907_14_01_.pdf

It's delightfully redolent of leisured Edwardian vicars. But the Rev. Harry mentions Ware's font only in passing, even though he admits that it's second only to that of Anstey in the county. Incidentally, the article reveals that suspicious, over-protective church custodians and locked churches aren't the preserve of the 21st century. He mentions having to seek out 'the guardians of the keys', and twice he was accompanied by them to their churches, 'apparently thinking that the parish would shortly be mourning the loss of a font if I went unattended.' Isn't it comforting to know that some things never change?

* Clerestory windows are of course to be found in upper storeys; they're the 'high windows' Philip Larkin wrote about so memorably. But how should the word be pronounced? For decades I stressed the middle syllable (cleRESTory), and then for some reason I started stressing the first syllable, which seems to be the preferred modern pronunciation. (My 1964 Concise Oxford lists only the first.) This is an example of how stresses unaccountably creep from syllable to syllable; consider for example the case of 'formidable', which used to be pronounced with the stress on the first syllable, but is now almost universally stressed on the second. Why?

** An ogee is an S-shaped double curve, very typical of the Decorated style dominant in the first half of the 14th century, though Perpendicular architects and artists continued to use it for the best part of the next two centuries.

A Georgian tragedy in Ware church, Herts

I went to Ware last week to see the church. Unfortunately, although the church is open every day and very welcoming, I couldn't see much at all because of the weather. The rain was so torrential and the sky so dark that light levels in the church were somewhere between a bit gloomy and definitely murky. I persisted for a while, but gave up and went for lunch, hoping things would improve. They didn't, so I went home.

Today looked better, so I tried again. One of the first things you see when you enter, as it's more or less opposite the door, is this monument to the Rev. Robert Atkinson, his wife and daughter. At first glance it looks an attractive enough ('pretty' is Pevsner's adjective) fairly typical mid-Georgian piece, with an oval cartouche set against an obelisk. But if you take the time to read the inscription, what a melancholy tale it tells.

All monuments record deaths, so naturally they're all mournful, but this is something out of the ordinary. In 1754, the unnamed six month old daughter of Robert and Sarah Atkinson died (or 'departed'). What grief they must have felt. Then, next year, Sarah died, aged only 26. Perhaps she never recovered from her daughter's death; we'll never know. How Robert too must have suffered and mourned. Then, one short year later, after losing both his young daughter and his wife, Robert died.  The sight of the two overlapping hearts* is almost unbearable. 

This monument also stands out because of the books, pot of ink and quill pen on the bottom left. They are presumably there to indicate that Robert was an educated man (he was a Reverend, after all); perhaps he tried to take solace in his library after the deaths of his daughter and wife. There are five books, and you'd expect them to be of a religious or at least improving nature, and one of them to be a bible. As fas as I can see none of them has a title (the two with their spines towards us have some decorative tooling, but no words), but they certainly don't look like bibles. Bibles are almost always big, fat books, and all these are rather slim volumes. It seems a little strange that the Reverend Atkinson doesn't have a bible on his shelf.

It's also rather odd that three of the books have their spines facing away from us; books are always stored spines out, for obvious reasons. Conspiracy theorists might say that the sculptor is hinting that there's something illicit about the 'hidden' books, but this is mere fantasy. As for the true explanation,  I can only guess that the sculptor thought that arranging them like this would add variety to the composition.

The sculptor is Henry Cox of Northampton, who was born in 1725 and died in 1810, so he was much longer lived than poor Robert. According to Rupert Gunnis's Dictionary of British Sculptors 1660-1851 there's another monument by Cox, to John Shipton who died in 1748, in Wollaston church in Northants which features books, inkpot and quill. Thanks to Henry Cox's skill, Robert, Sarah and their anonymous daughter, although 'departed', have achieved a kind of immortality.

* They're difficult to see, but they're above the inscription, sitting on top of the crown. Professor Wikipedia says that hearts have been used as a symbol of romantic love since the late Middle Ages.

Getting into churches

I first entered a church in autumn 1957. It was All Saints, Leavesden, Herts, a fairly undistinguished effort by George Gilbert Scott of 1853, but I hope I can be forgiven for not assessing its aesthetic merits at the time as I was only a couple of months old and the occasion was my baptism. (I'm not sure why my parents went in for this ceremony as they weren't and aren't religious; I assume their motives were social rather than spiritual.) I must have entered churches occasionally over the next few years as a child and teenager, but the first time I went out of my way to see one was in summer  1976, between A Levels and university. (I went alone, but I was inspired to go by my old English teacher, Ray Winch, with whom I was to visit many more churches in the following decades.) The church in question was St Nicholas, Hurst, Berks. I can't remember much now about the occasion or the church, but it must have made an impression on me because I rapidly became an addict, seeking them out wherever and whenever I could. I got into churches at the age of eighteen or nineteen, and I'm still into them now.

Perhaps one day I'll try to explain (to myself as much as to any readers this blog might have) why I'm so 'into' churches. But what I'm going to write about at the moment is the physical act of getting into a church, of being able to open the door and walk in.

Let me say from the beginning that I appreciate that what I'm asking for (reasonable access to churches) relies on the goodwill and efforts of a large number of people. Churches can't usually be open 24 hours a day, so someone will have to unlock and lock them, or be available to lend the key, which is a responsibility and time-consuming. I've never been responsible for the upkeep of a church, nor have I ever carried out any longterm voluntary effort; a reader of this blog could accuse me of sitting on my sofa tapping away at my laptop demanding that other people get up and do something while doing nothing myself, and I would have to plead guilty to this charge. So I'm going to try not to be too self-righteous. Forgive me if I don't altogether succeed.

Getting into churches really shouldn't be something we even have to consider, let alone write bad-tempered blogs about: nearly all churches should be accessible (during the day, most days) as they're part of our common heritage. They belong to everyone. Our ancestors paid for them and built them, presumably on the understanding that they'd be available to later generations. I accept that a few that contain portable valuables will have to have restricted access, but the others should be accessible, preferably by being kept unlocked, or, if there's a good reason why they can't be left open, reasonable  arrangements for visitors should be made. Permanently locking visitors out of churches is like putting razor wire around village greens.

Perhaps this sounds idealistic but impractical; if churches were open, wouldn't they be robbed and vandalised, and probably burnt to the ground for good measure? But (as I understand) insurers recommend that churches are kept open, because potential burglars and vandals will be deterred by the possibility that someone might walk in and see them. Determined burglars won't be put off by a lock anyway and will break in, causing damage.

Perhaps you're still not convinced. So answer me this: if open churches are going to be robbed and vandalised, why is it that the majority of churches are unlocked* and yet remain largely unrobbed and unvandalised? Consider the case of two churches not too far from Icknield country, St Paul's Walden and Kings Walden. As their names suggest, they're just a few miles from each other (but belong to different benefices). They're both country churches, with just a few nearby houses. I've visited the former many times over the decades, and I've derived great pleasure from doing so. It seems to be always open. The latter, on the other hand, seems to be always locked. I found it open once, about 25 years ago, but since then although I've tried the door when I've been passing several times at different time of the day and week, it's been locked. No information is provided about where the key might be found. What are the custodians of Kings Walden church frightened of? I can't believe that the various villains living in the locality who leave St Paul's Walden alone would decide to descend on Kings Walden, reducing it to an empty and probably charred shell, should it open its door. The answer must be that these villains are much fewer in number, and less active, than some people suppose.

It's the fear, rather than the real likelihood, of crime that keeps churches locked. What message does a locked church send? It says: This is a private club. Keep out. We don't want your sort, thank you very much. (This probably isn't the intended message, but nevertheless this will be what at least some people hear.) If churches are made inaccessible then they're going to lose their place (if they haven't lost it already) at the heart of the community. No one is going to 'get into' churches, as I did in my late teens, if they can't get into them. Why would anyone care about buildings that shut their doors against them? If churches want to become peripheral, forgotten and unloved, permanently locking themselves is a pretty good way of going about it.

A couple of years ago I visited a church in Suffolk on a Sunday afternoon. It was locked, so we phoned the churchwardens, who weren't available, and then the vicar, who agreed to let us in. They arrived a few moments later, so obviously hadn't had to travel far, and let us in, but did so with extraordinarily bad grace. All our pleasantries were rebuffed. They just sat with a face like thunder while we looked around, feeling about as welcome as a couple of recently off-duty chimneysweeps at a white tie ball.

It sounds a bit precious, but it was rather an upsetting experience. I wrote a letter about it, and the wider problem of locked churches, to the papers; only the Telegraph published it. The next day several letters were published in response, mostly saying that I was a naive fool. The one I remember best came from a Lady Something, dripping with patrician contempt for someone like me who presumed to have the right to enter what she clearly regarded as her own personal fiefdom. If she opened her church, people like me would be able to go in, and who knows what mischief we'd get up to. (A couple of days later, more letters on the subject were published, this time mostly taking my side. I even had a phone call from the churchwarden of a church somewhere in Leicestershire who'd taken the trouble to track down my number to say that his church was always open, and that I'd be welcome any time. The online comments were also about fifty-fifty pro and anti locking.)

I'm very grateful to the custodians, even the Lady Somethings, who look after our churches. It must be an at times onerous job, and I'm not sure that I'd be able to do it. Without them  churches would be in an even more perilous state than they are. Could those in charge of locked churches please advertise the whereabouts of keyholders, or times at which the churches are open? I always find that a pleasure shared is a pleasure more than doubled, and I'm sure that the custodians of the many open, welcoming churches get great pleasure out of their communal pride in their buildings, and sharing them with visitors. What pleasure does a permanently locked church bring?

The pictures of church doors are: firstly, the north door of Little Hormead church, Herts, much the best door in the county. It dates from c1150, and has superb ironwork. It is currently undergoing conservation and inaccessible, but is usually accessible via a keyholder.  The photo is from the website of Hugh Harrison Conservation. Secondly, the 14th century west doorway and door of South Mimms church, Herts, with decorative nailheads.  The church is usually locked but accessible via a keyholder. Thirdly, the 15th century south door and doorway of Reed church, Herts. Lastly, the 14th century south door and doorway of Clothall church, Herts. Reed and Clothall are open at all reasonable hours.

*See The Digital Atlas of England Foundation (www.digiatlas.org) http://www.digiatlas.org/?page_id=39, the most comprehensive survey of its kind and a superb resource, which reveals that across the country 58% of churches are generally open, which another 12% advertise a keyholder. In Hertfordshire, 66% are generally open (but only 3% advertise a keyholder). See also https://hertfordshirechurches.wordpress.com/locking-guide/

from another admirable website, Hertfordshire Churches in Photographs, which does exactly what it says on the tin plus a bit more. 

The Grimes Graves Venus - fertility symbol or fake?

The Grimes Graves Venus - British Museum

Writing about the Verulamium Venus last week set me thinking about other famous and not so famous Venuses. The Willendorf Venus is probably the best known of the Paleolithic carvings of (often pregnant) women that were presumably made as fertility symbols ('fertility symbols' is a very simplistic description, but it will do for now).

The Venus of Willendorf - Naturhistorisches Museum, Vienna

Several dozen of these figures, the oldest yet discovered being about 35,000 years old, have been found elsewhere in Europe, but none turned up in Britain until 1939.

In July of that year (incidentally, just when Sutton Hoo was being excavated too) archaeologist A.L. (Leslie) Armstrong was digging at Grimes Graves, near Weeting in Norfolk. Grimes Graves is a Neolithic flint mine which operated between about 3000 BCE and 1800 BCE; the flints were distributed by means of the Peddars Way and Icknield Way and used to make tools. Armstrong discovered at the bottom of a mineshaft the Venus figurine sitting on a flat slab of chalk. Nearby were also found a skilfully made chalk bowl, and a sculpted chalk phallus, along with some other artefacts. 

Grimes Graves Venus and phallus - British Museum

These objects were interpreted as being offerings to the Great Goddess, Mother Nature, as thanks for the flints that She had provided, and perhaps in the hope that She would continue to provide if rewarded with offerings. The flat slab of chalk was seen as an altar, and the crudely carved figurine of a heavily pregnant woman, together with the phallus, were taken to be inducements to encourage Her to 'grow' flints in what the Neolithic miners might have thought of as Her womb. 

This all seemed consistent with discoveries of other prehistoric Venuses elsewhere in Europe (and other parts of the world). Some archaeologists formulated the theory that ancient religion was dedicated to worshipping a Mother Goddess rather than God the Father; some went further, and claimed that prehistoric societies were matriarchal rather than patriarchal, with women in charge. Some archaeologists, such as Marija Gimbutas, dedicated their careers to propagating this theory.* It's certainly in some ways a very attractive idea: surely the world must have been a better place when women were in charge - aren't most of the world's problems (we might think) caused by wannabe alpha males? - and maybe if women could be more powerful in the future the world could once again become just and peaceful. As Ronald Hutton drily puts it in Pagan Britain, 'Whether or not there was an "Age of the Goddess" in Neolithic Europe, there certainly was one among European intellectuals in the mid twentieth century.'

The trouble was that all the evidence that could be interpreted to support this theory could very easily be interpreted in other ways. Believing this theory involves an awful lot of wishful thinking rather than hard evidence. Consequently the Great Goddess has drifted out of the critical mainstream in recent decades.

What of the lumpy and ungainly but not unendearing Grimes Grave Venus? The executors of Armstrong's will donated her to the British Museum in 1959 after his death the previous year, and she was put on display where she remained until at least 1998. But there had been doubts about her authenticity (and that of the other artefacts) right from the start (though these apparently didn't reach print until as late as 1986). Rumours circulated at the excavation site, and in the relatively small world of British archaeology, that she was a fake. 

Armstrong's excavation notes from the day when she was discovered are inadequate; on this day the other experienced excavators were absent from the site (apparently because Armstrong had sent them away); the objects look as if they could have been newly carved; their arrangement around an 'altar' just seems too good to be true; although other stone phalluses have been found in Britain, and round objects that might be intended to represent testicles have also been found, as far as I know (but I'm not an expert) no other phallus representing penis and testicles together has been found; no other Venus figurine has been found in Britain. What's more, one of the excavators, Mrs Ethel Rudkin, is known to have carved at least one other small chalk figurine.

In 1983 Kevin Leahy of Scunthorpe Museum met the then 91-year-old Ethel Rudkin. She had been a close friend of Armstrong and a fellow excavator on the Grimes Graves dig. She told Leahy that in 1939, on the day of the discovery, she had been sitting in the car waiting for Armstrong. When he appeared he handed the Venus figurine and phallus to her, asking her to look after them while he went back to the pit. While he was away, she took a nearby piece of chalk and fashioned an approximate copy of the Venus and placed it next to the real one on the car seat. When Armstrong returned and saw what she'd done he was furious. The situation escalated into a row and the end of their relationship.**

Rudkin produced, from under her bed, the copy she'd made in the car 43 years ago and presented it to Leahy as a donation to his museum. (If it's still there I don't know.) However, she insisted that she had no doubts about the authenticity of the figurine found by Armstrong.***

So is the figurine a forgery? As Rudkin showed, it's not hard to carve similar sculptures. Did Armstrong fake the Venus himself, presumably as a way of gaining publicity for his dig and academic kudos for himself? This could explain his anger when presented with Rudkin's copy (perhaps believing that she was mocking him), and why he'd sent the other diggers away. He seems to have kept hold of the figurine for the rest of his life; did he want to keep it away from objective scrutiny? On the other hand, if he was going to forge the figurine, why not forge excavation notes too? What's more, I can't find any suggestion that he was ever suspected of underhand activities, and it seems unlikely that a respected archaeologist would have behaved in such a way.

The consensus of opinion is that Armstrong wasn't the forger, but that he was hoaxed. Someone else made the figurine and placed it for him to find, either as a good-natured joke, or possibly maliciously (though I've no idea why anyone would want to do this). Could this someone have been Rudkin? It's obviously impossible to say. But if I'd perpetuated a famous hoax I'd want, sooner or later, to have my skill and audacity recognised, if only after my death. It's hard to imagine that the hoaxer, if there was one, didn't boast about it to friends, or write something down about it, rather than let their name and their part in the sting vanish. Maybe, however, the hoaxer's intention was to eventually come clean, but they were prevented from doing so because they died; after all, this was summer 1939, and many of the people at the Grimes Graves dig would have gone off to fight in the following months and years, and some of them would have been killed.

On the British Museum website the Curator's Comments end: 'It is unlikely that their status [ie of the Grimes Graves artefacts] will finally be settled until similar objects are found elsewhere, or someone writes their memoirs.' These comments are dated 1990, when it was possible that someone involved in the dig was still alive and might yet spill the beans; a quarter of a century later that possibility has all but disappeared. So we'll just have to wait and see if another British prehistoric Venus ever emerges from the ground.

But is it possible that in the last quarter of a century a scientific test has been developed that could confirm the figurine's status? I have an idea that there is a method of dating objects by determining how long light has been playing on their surfaces. I don't know if this can be used on chalk carvings, but if it can, wouldn't it be good if we could find out if the Venus is 4000 years old, or a mere 76?

And wouldn't all this make a terrific television documentary, one with factual voiceovers and talking heads alternating with slightly dodgy reconstructions with actors no one's ever heard of playing the protagonists? There's the added excitement of having two parallel narratives, one in which the figurine is genuine, the other in which she's a fake. In the former, I can envisage a scene in which Armstrong discovers the Venus with great elation, but then in a dramatic reversal of fortune has the big row with Rudkin in the car. In the latter, the skulduggery of the villain (or villains) will be very entertaining - we could be cheering them along or booing them, whichever the screenwriter decides. It's got everything: a love interest (Armstrong and Rudkin), passion, betrayal, a plucky hero (Armstrong, in version A), a roguish crook (Armstrong, in version B, or Rudkin, or A.N.Other), forgery, men in tweed jackets chewing pipes, and all set against a background of the impending war. And at the climax (assuming that the scientific test is a reality) the truth about the Venus will be revealed. Either she's a fake, so it becomes detective story, or she's real, which is even more exciting. I shall be content with just a small percentage of the proceeds in lieu of a fee when it gets made.

* in The Civilization of the Goddess, 1991, she says of the Grimes Graves Venus and her attendant objects, 'These were all placed in a spent shaft and are clearly a religious feature that must be accepted by even the most intransigent doubters.' An ironical comment given the severe doubts that now plague the artefacts.

** I'm sure I've read elsewhere that not only were Armstrong and Rudkin (though presumably this is her married name and at the time she would have been known by her maiden name) 'close friends' but were actually engaged, and that this row ended their engagement. But unfortunately I can no longer find this reference, so perhaps I've invented this detail.

*** My source for the story about Leahy and Rudkin is Lost Civilisations of the Stone Age by Richard Rudgley, Century, London, 1998. Rudgley however doesn't give his source for the story.

UPDATE 2020: The story of the Grimes Graves Venus has some remarkable parallels with that of an alleged 17,000 year old Venus excavated in Romania in 2019. https://www.romania-insider.com/romania-venus-paleolithic-statue-controversy

North Mymms (with a 'y') church

Having recently been to South Mimms, North Mymms seemed the obvious next place to visit. (Apparently South Mimms can be spelt with either an 'i' or a 'y', while North Mymms always takes a 'y'.) I'm glad I did. It's just a mile and a half from the M25, and a mere twenty from Charing Cross; what's more, traffic on the A1(M) rushes past only about 500 yards away. Yet it's almost rustic, set in rolling parkland; you're only distantly aware of the nearby maelstrom.

The church essentially dates from the early 14th century, and is in that subcategory of the Gothic style known as Decorated. Decorated (or 'Dec' as it's familiarly known) is pretty indisputably the best Gothic style; I continue to lament the fact that round about 1350 masons decided to switch to the more austere Perpendicular style.* What were they thinking?** At North Mymms the most noticeable feature of the Dec style is the net-like reticulated tracery in all the windows, but the architecture, attractive though it is, isn't really what makes this church worth going to see. 

In the north aisle there's a tomb-chest of the late 16th century, with the extremely striking figure of a woman incised on the top. The lines are picked out in what is said to be bitumen.

She is naively stylised, especially her face; I think the lack of sophistication in the design is one of the things that gives her so much charm. As well as being stylised, she's very stylish. The sinuous flowers on her sleeves and the cushion on which she rests her head make lovely linear patterns. Her small feet poke impishly out of the bottom of her dress; she has preternaturally long legs. There's an inscription, very worn, running around the edges, and on the sides of the chest some heraldry showing chained bears. The church guide booklet calls it the Beresford tomb, and claims that records state that it commemorates two sisters who died in 1584. The date can't be far wrong, but why one effigy for two people?

In the chancel there's a large monument to John Lord Somers, who was Lord Chancellor under William and Mary and died in 1716.

It's by the highly accomplished Flemish sculptor Peter Scheemakers (he carved the well-known figure of Shakespeare in Westminster Abbey). The woman represents Justice; she holds a pair of scales in one hand and brandishes a scroll (presumably containing laws) aloft with the other. She is dressed in a brilliantly carved and ebullient robe, and is perched precariously on a tomb. She's flanked by genial lions.

The base incorporates a marble door, which once gave access to the burial vault but now leads, tamely, simply to the vestry. I must admit I find this door disconcerting. It's too chthonic for me. It looks as if it might lead straight to (or straight from) the Underworld. There doesn't even seem to be a lock on it.

Next to the Somers monument is a brass; I'm not usually very interested in brasses - they're often too stereotypical - but this one's a corker. It shows a priest, William de Kesteven, who died in 1361 (so his brass is a fairly early example).

He appears to be levitating a chalice. (Originally the brass might have been horizontal rather than vertical, as it is now, which half explains his conjuring trick. But even so, there's often a spatial ambiguity in recumbent effigies, including those carved in the round on tombs: is the figure standing or lying? It might seem obvious that they're lying down if they're recumbent, and after all they represent dead people, but often some little details make it appear that they're standing, such as grass growing at their feet, so their feet are on the ground.)

At the top are intricate canopies; God sits in the central one with William's soul sitting on his lap. Above the canopies are roof tiles, completing an imaginary building.

There are several other monuments and brasses worth a look. I'll mention just one more, in the north aisle, of George Jarvis who died in 1716. His demi-figure is a bit baroquish; his left hand touches the right side of his chest. Normally it would be his right hand touching his heart. I can't explain this oddity. He looks like a southpaw reaching for his wallet.

There are also some fragments of medieval stained glass in the north chapel, mostly heraldic, and three Victorian windows, containing those livid electric colours they were so fond of; but I'm rather partial to them too, so that's all right. In the north aisle there's an Edwardian window, (commemorating a death in 1905), a description that normally would make me shudder and move swiftly on, as the early 20th century was (on the whole) a low point in English stained glass. But I like this one.

The church guide says it's probably by Ernest Heasman (1874-1927), of whom I'd never heard but seems to be a Hertfordshire artist I should know about. (He's not mentioned in Martin Harrison's Victorian Stained Glass.) On the other hand, the indispensable website Church Stained Glass Windows attributes it to Herbert Bryans (1855-1925), a pupil of Clayton and Bell (the second best Victorian firm of stained glass manufacturers, after Morris and Co.). I like the hat in the second of these two pictures. 'Jewel-like' is a standard term to describe stained glass, and it certainly applies here.

North Mymms is an exceptionally welcoming church. It's not only open (despite being isolated and having just a few houses near it) but also has a portable billboard outside welcoming visitors. If only all churches were as friendly. Inside it's a bit murky, because the windows without stained glass have opaque glass. Why? But despite the literal gloom, it feels metaphorically bright and cheerful.

The church is more or less in the grounds of North Mymms House (or Place), a major Elizabethan building, which seems to be completely inaccessible (I think the gardens are open once a year, however). Distant views are the best you can hope for. But you can see this magnificent (?bronze) gate; I assume it's the one Pevsner dates to 1893-4 and calls 'extremely juicy'. A greater contrast to Scheemaker's gateway to the nether regions could scarcely be imagined.

* I make no apologies for being upset about something that happened over six hundred years ago.

** Some claim that they were thinking of the very recent Black Death, and that the exuberance of Dec was no longer appropriate. Maybe they felt that God had been punishing them for being too carefree, and that Dec was a visible expression of this blithe spirit. There's something penitential about some Perp buildings - all those endlessly repeating grid-like windows, for example, ground out like a thousand mumbled paternosters. There could be some truth in this, though as far as I know there's no documentary evidence for it. Against this theory it can be pointed out that early Perp, i.e. immediately after the Black Death, when you'd think they'd be most breast-beating, is often highly exuberant in its own way. The choir of Gloucester cathedral is an obvious example.

Stained glass and monuments in South Mimms (or is is Mymms?) church

South Mimms (sometimes spelt Mymms) is Hertfordshire's most recent colonial annexation. When Middlesex was deemed to no longer exist, in 1965, it was acquired by Herts, which means that it's been part of its new county for half a century. Strangely enough, when I visited earlier this week I didn't see any bunting out to celebrate this fact.

Equally strangely, even though it's practically on the hard shoulder of not only the M25 but also the A1(M) (road numbers with part of their nomenclature in parentheses are so much more classy than those common bracketless roads, don't you think?) it still feels like a village. The church, like so many in Herts (and elsewhere) was substantially restored in the 19th century (in this case by Street in the 1870s), but retains plenty of interest inside (some of it contributed by Street himself, who was much more than simply a ruthless restorer).

What caught my eye first on entering were the seven substantial fragments of stained glass in the windows of the north aisle and north chapel. (The photos below show them in order, from west to east.) They depict members of the extended family of Henry Frowyk, a wealthy City merchant, at prayer. They are donor figures; when individuals or families paid for windows (or paintings) like these they wanted to advertise their piety, wealth and taste by having themselves included in the finished artworks. The surviving fragments are all at the bottom of the outer lights of three-light windows; originally the figures would have been seen to be praying to God and the saints depicted in the larger parts of the windows, now lost.

The donor figures must have survived when iconoclasts turned up at the church one day to smash all images then seen as idolatrous. I wonder how the villagers of South Mimms/Mymms reacted? How did the surviving Frowyks react? (This was probably in the mid 16th century, under Edward VI, or possibly a century later, under Cromwell.) As the Frowyk family are there in the glass to be admired rather than worshipped, the iconoclasts let their images remain. So at least there's now something left for us to admire, though these fragments are a rather pathetic reminder of how much more has been lost.

As you can see, the glass is in a poor state; in particular, the painted details (especially the faces and hands) have faded badly, so most of the heads look ghostly. But the colours are still bright, and I think you'll agree that there's plenty to enjoy in them. (I think the sixth window is my favourite.) The figures kneel at lecterns with open books; men are in the left lights, women in the right, except in the sixth window, which shows a couple. The windows reveal an age when religion permeated all aspects of life, but people didn't see why they shouldn't indulge in a little simultaneous shameless self-promotion.

Pevsner says that two of the windows are dated 1526, and I'll take his word for it. I can see that the first and third windows have what look like lower case Roman numerals (Arabic numerals weren't widely used at this time), but I can't read them. 1526 was the year before Henry VIII first set about trying to get a divorce, so these windows were made just before the English Reformation. Indeed, they very likely survived only 25 years or so before they were so piously smashed.

At first sight it looks as if the stained glass artist made a mistake in this window (above), as the (female?) figures are facing away from instead of towards the central window light, and thus are turned away from the saints they're worshipping. But if you look carefully at the writing underneath, even though it's more or less illegible you can make out that the letters are backwards. What's happened is that at some time the glass has been removed, probably for restoration, and then put back the wrong way round, so we're now seeing it as if in a mirror.*

The Frowyks also paid for the north chancel chapel, and maybe the north aisle, to be built. Henry Frowyk the Younger, who predeceased his father at about the same time the glass was made, is buried in the chapel.

This is a pretty standard though well done late Gothic affair, in the style known as Perpendicular. Henry's effigy rests his head on a very elaborate helm; is it topped by a bird? (It's hard to photograph adequately.) One of his gauntlets is on the 'ground' by his knees; it looks disconcertingly like the star of the old horror film The Beast with Five Fingers.

The monument of Henry the Elder in the chancel is much more interesting. 

This can't be more than a dozen or so years later than the previous monument (Pevsner says c.1540), yet the style, while retaining Perpendicular features, is very different. The basic layout is the same (minus the effigy), the arches are still pointed in Gothic style, and there are still quatrefoils on the tomb chest. But otherwise the detail is lavishly Renaissance. This is a remarkable transitional piece, showing (as Pevsner says) 'the gusto with which craftsmen at some distance from the Court threw themselves into the new Italian fashion.' Paradoxically, the medieval elements also show innate conservatism, using a style (i.e. Perpendicular) that was almost two hundred years old. Was it designed and/or made by one or two hands?

There are several other interesting wall tablets in the church along with other objects of note, such as the 16th century screens in the north chapel, and Street's rood screen. Outside, by the south porch is this 18th century tomb, complete with skulls carved in fine detail but poor perspective:

And at the far end of the churchyard we find this forbidding Doric mausoleum:

The Shell Guide to Hertfordshire calls it 'po-faced'. There are no visible inscriptions (but it was built c.1900 for the Cavendish-Bentinck family) which makes it seem all the more sinister and alien. It stands a few yards from the playground of a junior school; I hope the children's games of hopscotch (or whatever children play nowadays) aren't too overshadowed by this brooding building squatting just the other side of the fence.

I timed my visit to South Mimms (or should that be Mymms?) perfectly: the church was locked as I arrived so I set off to find the key, but I'd gone no more than a few paces when two very nice ladies arrived to do the flower arrangements, and they very kindly let me in. Then, when I'd finished looking around the churchyard and just as I was almost back at the car, it started to rain heavily, so I escaped a soaking. Then I was soon on the A1(M), being careful to once more savour those parentheses, and I was heading north to Icknield country.





* I wrote this so confidently, and felt so clever when I wrote it, but looking at the lettering again I'm no longer convinced that it's reversed. The figures are facing the wrong way, though, and there must be a reason for this. They've probably been moved from a different window.

John Piper's photo of Durham cathedral

I lived in Durham for a year, and have visited since quite often, but, as I mentioned in a previous post, I couldn't remember ever seeing this view of the cathedral. Had Piper climbed a tree in order to get this shot?

I asked my Durham Correspondent to investigate for me. It turns out that a tree (or, rather, trees) is the answer, though not in the way I'd surmised. This is the view from 40 South Street and it must have been taken before the trees grew on the river bank. Here's the same view now:

As you can see, you can glimpse the tops of the towers, but everything else is obscured by foliage. As my Correspondent remarks, while trees are a Good Thing, there is a case to be made for judicious pruning at times, and this is one of those times.

On the Tate website you can see several other Piper photos of the cathedral. The one chosen is the most arresting because of the very close cropping, and the use of a telephoto lens which foreshortens the image, creating an intriguing series of geometric shapes.