The Chosen Hill church scratchings

At the turn of the 19th/20th centuries, a pencilled notice was visible above the south door of St Bartholomew's church on Churchdown Hill. Very possibly it still is, obliterated by layers of scribbles, scratchings and daubings. The notice read: "Non scribe Ecclesiae Muris Quia Deus Dominus Tuus In Ecclesia Habitat". Which translates as "Write not on the walls of the church for the Lord thy God abides within". Given the continued rampant defacement, perhaps something more on the lines of "Don't write on the fucking walls" might have got the message across.

  The south doorway, where pencilled signatures of the early 20th century make an odd accompaniment to carved Norman studded chevrons.

I have to confess though that I love church graffiti. Not that I condone the daubing and etching of sacred buildings, but the historical graffiti is fascinating and it's one of the most direct and personal relics our ancestors have left us. It often shows considerable patience and stone-working skill, and beautifully proportioned letterforms – largely lost skills, which show up the casual wall scratchers of today as rank amateurs with no sense of beauty or proportion.

Perhaps not surprisingly, some of the best historic graffiti is found in places where people could scrape unobserved. Isolated churches, where bored people had to hang out for long periods, are a rich source of them, especially when they're not overlooked by any roads or buildings. Perched as it is on the top of a sacred mound at the corner of an iron-age hillfort, high above the surrounding countryside and quite a steep trek even from its adjacent village, St Bartholomew's on Churchdown Hill (or Chosen Hill as it's called locally) has acquired quite a collection of graphical scrapings from every age of its history. They adorn more or less every part of the church, inside and out.

When it comes to unobserved spots, St Bartholomew's church is pretty impressive in its isolation, perched on top of the ancient ramparts of Chosen Hill.

For sheer flagrant cheek, it's hard to beat the contribution of Thomas Badger, who carved his name in crude capitals deep into the stone of the chancel arch, in a way that cannot fail to have led an incensed vicar straight to the culprit – unless perhaps this part of the wall was covered up by furnishings in his day. His vandalism is currently exposed for all to see.

One of the things that intrigues me most though is a symbol which appears over and over again all over this church, but particularly on the north side, and which I will name the Churchdown Sigil. It comprises a lozenge with an arrow through it – invariably pointing upwards, although it has a few variations such as multiple arrows or multiple lozenges. The best example can be found in the north porch, just to the left of the door, where it appears alongside another intriguing pattern based around a quartered cross.

The Churchdown Sigil (right) and the quartered cross

The guidebooks describe it as a mason's mark, and that certainly seems very reasonable. I've seen masons' marks on other churches which look very like it. But masons are skilled stoneworkers and most of the examples of this symbol are a bit amateurish, as if they were carved by somebody who didn't have the right tools or skills. There's also the sheer number of them – sometimes several times on the same block of stone. An obsessive amateur copier of mason's marks? Or something else? If anybody has seen this symbol on any other churches I'd be interested to know.

Alongside this figure of a bird and someone's initials are more examples of the Churchdown Sigil. A small one and the point of a much larger one, plus an incomplete one (far right).

The north porch (pictured at the top of this post) has some of the best of Churchdown's amateur chisellings as well as the highest concentration of sigils. The porch is an unusual two-storey job with a priest's lodging above it, which was added to the church in the 13th century. Some of the graffiti is probably not far off being contemporary with it, and in fact it's possible that some of the carvings pre-date the porch on stones re-used from elsewhere. A good example of this can be seen on the outer walls of the porch where the base and lid of two Crusader coffins, complete with incised cross, have been used as building blocks. (I have a Joe Orton-style mental image of the masons turfing some poor benighted skeleton out of its coffin so they can nab the decorative lid.)

Here's a rather nice fleuron, bunged in for no apparent reason as if someone was practising and got bored half way through the second one.

Much of the graffiti in the porch is highly enigmatic, and the more you stare at it, the more you see different ways of viewing or interpreting it, especially as it's often hard to distinguish the lines of a carved image from natural marks or chips and scrapes in the stone. I think it's always important to look at these things with an open mind and be prepared to come up with your own thoughts about them, rather than taking anyone's view as established fact – even when it's in a respectable guidebook.

Perhaps one of the most curious to interpret is the figure, now extremely faded, on the door jamb of the porch's outer door. William T. Swift's book Some Account of the History of Churchdown, a valuable local history resource published in 1905, includes a description which Swift most likely got from the Rev. Dr. F. Smithe, who was vicar at the time he was researching the book, and who took a tremendous interest in the church's history. In their view it represents "a gaunt figure, or emblem, of Death – having the long hair and breasts of a woman; the fleshless arms are extended; in one hand an hour-glass is held, to denote the brief span of man's life, and in the other hand, to signify the grave, is an aspergès, which was used when the sprinkling of Holy Water upon the corpse (at the grave-side) was enjoined in the rubrics of the Old Uses or Service Books, such as that of Sarum."

Far be it from me to question the judgement of Dr Smithe or W.T. Swift, but to me it looks patently obvious that this is a mermaid. As faded as she is, she clearly has a scaly fish's tail, and underneath her is a symbol which looks very much like an anchor. Whether that could be an hourglass in her hand I couldn't say, but the other thing, an aspergès?! I'm not sure where these gentlemen are coming from in their "female Death" interpretation, but I think they might have got a bit tangled in a Biblical mindset. Last time I saw a priest asperging, he was using what appeared to be a pastry brush.

Given that she seems to be a mermaid, it may be fair to assume that the objects she's holding are a comb and mirror, since the majority of English pre-Reformation mermaids are depicted with them –  though admittedly the comb looks more like a television aerial. 

Another very striking image is what appears to be a face of Christ, with radiating aureole, chiselled into a lump of blue lias. Swift/Smithe reckon this to be pre-Reformation, and may well be right. And yes, all around this Christ-head you can see crude but distinctive Churchdown Sigils, some with multiple arrows.

Not all of St Bartholomew's wall chisellings are illicit; this official one (below) is rather nice too. The original Norman tower of the church fell into a dilapidated condition and was rebuilt in 1601. The rebuilding is commemorated by an engraved stone tablet at the back of the nave, incised with big bold letters and prahper Glahhsterrsh're spelling.

"This Belhows was buyldede in the yeere of our Lode God 1601". Plus additions.

The outside of the church has loads of carved grafitti – some of it quite brazen, other examples more subtle so that you spot different things every time you look. The oldest dated piece of graffiti I've found so far on the outside walls was apparently done in 1624.

Names and initials on the west wall of the tower dating back to 1624, not long after the tower was built. The Badger family have been at it again.

The church guidebook (an exceptionally good one, by the way) mentions a scratch dial on the outside north wall of the chancel, but this is very faded indeed and you need sharp eyes to spot it – all that's really visible is the hole for its long-lost gnomon. Another little enigma of this extraordinary church is why anybody would carve a scratch dial on the north wall, where it would have been as much use as a chocolate teapot. Most likely it was originally on the south wall and the stone block got moved during a past rebuilding: there are numerous re-used carved stones all over the fabric of this church, which point to the likelihood of an earlier building on the site whose stone was recycled. The fact that it's so weathered backs up the idea that it could be very old. Either that or it was etched by somebody with no sense of direction and a very poor grasp of physics.

 The northerly scratch dial. (NB This photo has been tarted up in Photoshop to enhance the outlines, otherwise, honestly, you wouldn't be able to see a damned thing.)

I feel like I've barely started extolling all the delights of St Bartholomew's Church so there will definitely be more to come. It always seems to be omitted from any books about interesting historic churches, but it seems to me to be a very special place and much underrated. Not to mention its position on a pre-Christian sacred hill where the powers still flow, and its magnificent views over the Severn Valley.

Sources:
Swift, William T., Some Account of the History of Churchdown (1905).
Waters, Gwen, A History and Guide to the Churches of St Bartholomew and St Andrew, Churchdown (church pamphlet, 1989, 2004).

The Littledean cherubs

The other day I stopped off at Littledean churchyard on the way back from somewhere else. My reason for stopping was quite simply that I was stuck behind a double-decker bus trundling along at 20 miles an hour and it was driving me bonkers, and as the church looked old and curious I thought it was worth pausing there rather than grinding my gearbox any further.

Littledean is an interesting place on many levels. It's an ancient crossing-over point where many old tracks meet. It sits on the cusp of the Forest of Dean but it overlooks the lush valley where the River Severn does a lurching loop in the shape (so some say) of a Celtic torc. Among its many curiosities are an 18th century prison housing, amongst other things, the world's largest collection of Quadrophenia memorabilia, and which was also the site of Gloucestershire's last witchcraft trial (as recently as 1906). The beautiful old house Littledean Hall traces its roots into Saxon and Celtic times and has enough hauntings to bliss out the most demanding paranormal investigator, and, of particular interest to my Sulis Manoeuvrings, it has in its grounds the remains of a Romano-Celtic temple sited over a spring and thought to have been dedicated to Sabrina, the goddess of the River Severn. So a return visit is in order, but in the mean time I want to focus on Littledean churchyard and its chubby-cheeked cherubs.

Littledean church is a funny looking thing, so you can see why it appealed to me. It originally had a spire but it fell down in a gale in 1894 and has been replaced by a little squat wooden structure on top of the tower. The church is essentially 14th century (parts of it are older) but has had a few alterations, and is dedicated to the Saxon saint St Ethelbert (that would most likely be the canonised King Æthelberht II of East Anglia, who was around in the 8th century AD).

As a lifelong lover of old gravestones, however, it was the abundance of quirky cherub-topped monuments which caught my attention here. The best ones mostly date from the 18th century and some may be the work of one local stonemason or a small group of different masons with similar tastes. They belong to a distinctive style of Forest of Dean headstone but I can only really let them speak for themselves.

His 'n' hers matching gravestones in varying states of dilapidation. These belong to Thomas and Frances Hobbs and date from the 1750s.

A lovely job from 1744 in memory of James Overd and his daughter Sarah. I like the way the relic of old ivy twig makes it look like the cherub on the right is sucking a straw.

All right, there's no cherub on this one (grave of E. P. 1759) but it has lots of other interesting details. A winged hourglass symbolising the flight of time is encompassed by an ourobouros symbolising eternity, flanked on either side by deathly symbols of crossed bones and a pick and shovel. Underneath is the cheery slogan "When God cuts short the thread of life/Then fatal Death Parts man & Wife"

An earlier headstone dated 1686, and it's interesting to see the difference in design, both in terms of the stylised flowers and fruit and the cherubic hairdo. The inscription is damaged but commemorates John Adams and his daughter (her name is lost).

Another older one, by the look of it, with a decidedly ugly cherub.

Not as ugly as this one though. Yipes! Grave of thomus, son of James and Mary Morgun [sic], dated 1700.

And over time the carving becomes more realistic. This stone for Sarah Horner who died in 1795 aged 59 has a cherub which gives the impression of being a likeness of a real person, with lovely leafy drapery issuing from the centres of two flowers at the top and passing through a pair of rings.

Succulent cherubs and blossoms on a tomb which commemorates "John Reynolds one of ye Keepers of ye Forest of Dean who died May 1740 Aged 47 Yrs" and Ann, his wife, who died in 1756.

Moving forward to 1822, and on this headstone for John Grindell of Greenway we have cherubs straight out of a late 1960s rock band.

I'm rather fond of this one with its little fat-faced cherub holding a book in its spindly arms. It's in a different style from anything else in the churchyard and marks the grave of William Rock (died 1716) and Thomas Bugbe (died 1739). It's not clear what the connection is between them or why they were buried together.

Beyond this, Littledean is a closed door which invites your curiosity but doesn't yield up its secrets lightly. Perhaps appropriately, I've never seen so many walled up doorways in one church - I counted at least three!

Of snorkelling imps

A trippy skip through the medieval English imagination, as expressed in carvings on old churches and elsewhere, taking in the fretfully bizarre and bordering on the loony. This is the first of an occasional series.

Beckford, Worcestershire

How I love this alien creature, committed to stone in the 12th century and still defying interpretation. In body it appears to be a centaur, with a sequence of deep-carved dots all down its side and onto its flank. But what the heck are those snail-like appendages at the back of its head? Antennae picking up the vibrations of the cosmos? Or just a very weird hairdo? It has an enormous, bulbous eye, carved in monstrous relief, its little mouth open in surprise. And it appears to be wearing a chevron T-shirt. What's also intriguing, but not visible in this shot because the carving goes round the pillar and it's not really possible to see the whole thing all at once, is that it bears a spear. Not that it's carrying one exactly, but there is a tall, pointed, upright spear levitating just beyond its outstretched hand.

This is just one of many 12th century carvings in Beckford parish church, and they show a wondrous diversity. I don't know whether it indicates that the Norman-era stonemasons had a sense of humour, or were consolidating now forgotten myths, folktales and visions, or whether there were a lot of groovy mushrooms growing in the vicinity at the time. Part of the bargain in enjoying this legacy of imagination is that we have to wonder, and not excessively analyse.

Beckford, Worcestershire

What's going on here then? This is the same chancel arch that hosts our little alien friend above, but on the opposite side. The pillars have these carved capitals bearing a chevron design – the Normans liked their chevrons – but while the capital on the right bears a spiral design with a certain Celtic/Saxon flavour, the larger one on the left has an upside-down and folded-up snake in it, bearing a rather miffed facial expression (as well he might).

Beckford, Worcestershire

And here's the centrepiece of Beckford church – the tympanum above the main door, featuring a horned ass, a bird perched on a cross opposite a levitating disc, and a rather stiff-legged cow type thing with five horns. Well, why not?

Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire

This is the carving I call the snorkelling imp, but God only knows what it is. Tewkesbury Abbey is famous for its carved roof bosses, but this is one of its lesser known carvings and is easily missed. It actually sits outdoors overlooking the site of a destroyed chapel on the north side. I don't think it belongs in its current position and has probably been stuffed into this niche for decoration. It has a flat top, and its fluted base looks like it may once have been the base of a pillar or something of that ilk.

Hawkwood College, near Stroud, Glos

OK, so this screaming corbel isn't medieval or on a church, but it clearly echoes the style of medieval church carvings. It's perched high on the gables of Hawkwood College, a magnificent adult education establishment between Painswick and Stroud which started life as a Victorian-Gothic manor house and is an incredibly atmospheric place to spend a weekend. The house was built in the 1840s.

Stanton Drew, Somerset

The church at Stanton Drew is quite an interesting place despite being eclipsed by its megalithic neighbours – it sits slap bang on an alignment between the Cove standing stones and the stone circles. Among its features are these lovely gargoyles. These examples look too fresh to be "originals" from the church's foundation, but they do echo the style of some very weathered medieval gargoyles on other parts of the church.

Stanton Drew, Somerset

Stanton Drew, Somerset

Stanton Drew, Somerset

On the very top of the tower, this is one of the original medieval gargoyles at Stanton Drew. A very Celtic-looking stylised face with bulbous eyes, and with long hands holding its mouth open.

Overbury, Worcestershire

This final batch of weirdness can be found on St Faith's church in Overbury, a village on the slopes of Bredon Hill and just up the road from Beckford. This glorious old church is very well worth a visit, the inside being full of 12th century carvings. The tower is 15th century, and has four "guardians" at the corners, all different. Their position would suggest they were gargoyles but I see no evidence that they were ever designed to carry water, so I guess they're best described as corbels. Fairly standard monster here, a lion-footed bat with sharp teeth.

Overbury, Worcestershire

Another of the 15th century guardian corbels, this time in the form of a winged devil of very menacing aspect. It's a little hard to see in this photo, but he has a face in his belly, which is a motif you sometimes see in medieval images of the devil (unless that's somebody else's head he's holding). I like his little goose legs.

Overbury, Worcestershire

A little below one of the "guardians" on the tower is a cheeky little extra, a little fox-type creature hiding under a ledge on the corner buttress. It has a very long fox tail but it doesn't have a fox's face, unless it's very weathered, so perhaps it's another mythical beast. Or a ferret.

Overbury, Worcestershire

As for this one – again tucked away on a buttress on the 15th century tower – it's too weathered to see exactly what's going on. It appears to be a human figure with an animal crawling over them. Whether it's a dog on a lead, or whether the dog is eating the person, it's hard to tell. I thought at first the figure was a woman as it appears to be wearing a dress, but on second thoughts it looks like a peasant's smock, so probably a bloke. Maybe it's a shepherd and the animal is a sheep? Who knows. Just visible to the left of the person's head is another, smaller animal, which appears to be crawling over the person's hair/hat. All very intriguing.

Deorhurst: grove of glorious beasts

River Severn at Deerhurst.

An isolated flood-prone plateau between the sluggard River Severn and the eternal old track now baptised the A38. A long straight lane ending in a curl before it glances the river bank. A menagerie of wild beasts in stone and legend, and the oaken tracks of Kings. A place of orchard cottage dreams, of roses and lawns and white violets, demurely hosting two Saxon churches barely 100 yards apart.

Deerhurst crouches off the modern beaten track, a secret spot about equidistant between Tewkesbury and Cheltenham. It gets minimal through-traffic because its roads, so close to the unbridged River Severn, don't really go anywhere. It's mostly open meadows and flood plains these days, but its older name, Deorhurst, reveals a "grove of wild beasts".

This is the first of two articles about Deerhurst, as there's far too much interesting stuff in this village to cover in one go. Here we have a dander round the older of the two churches.

From this angle you can clearly see that the Priory Church of St Mary is a bit of a bolt-together job from different time periods. It's immediately obvious that the aisles on either side of the tower have been added later, the smooth ashlar making no attempt to blend in with the rougher rubblestone. If you look carefully you can see that the top part of the tower is also an add-on, although still very ancient. The lower part of the tower is the oldest bit. One of the giveaways is the use of stones stacked diagonally within the masonry, and with little attempt to arrange any of it in level courses – a building style that particularly characterises the Saxon period. Two sticky-outy carvings of dark age provenance are unfortunately too weathered and damaged to decipher.

You only have to get just inside the door to find the first of Deerhurst's wild beasts.

Is it a dog? Is it a dragon? From the front it even looks like a cow, but I wouldn't want to meet a cow with a set of fangs like that. Its nose certainly suggests it's a dog - reminiscent of the style of hunting dogs seen in Celtic artwork. It stands on guard by the door, along with its asymmetrically matching companion, as a label-stop inside the west porch of Deerhurst church. No ordinary church, you understand, but a proud, mutated but miraculously surviving edifice of a vital Anglo-Saxon monastic site. The doggy is of eye-watering antiquity – probably chiselled into being some time in the early 9th century.

At the opposite end of the church is another pair of beastie label-stops on a chancel arch. These look more dragon-like but also, it has to be said, like a cartoon hippopotamus (George from Rainbow?) They have tusks though, so perhaps they're supposed to depict wild boar. The church also has an interesting image of a domestic animal; the tomb brass of Sir John Cassey and his wife Alice (dated 1400) also depicts her pet dog, Terri. It's very unusual to find animals' names mentioned on old brasses.

Anglo-Saxon remains in Britain are rare. There are plenty of Norman parish churches around, but for something as old as Deerhurst priory to have survived is remarkable fortune. It hasn't got through history unscathed of course; the original church was smaller and simpler in shape. During the turbulent medieval years (when its wares were repeatedly plundered by greed-crazed monarchs) it got its chancel whipped off, its tower strangely bolted onto, its outer walls knocked through for an aisle extension and a monastic building shunted up its kisser. But with a bit of imagination and a floor plan you can still see the tall thin lines of the original Saxon building, and some of the ramshackle lopsided herringbone stonework which shows off its dark age credentials.

Plans reproduced from H. Massé's Tewkesbury and Deerhurst, published 1900.

Even within the Saxon period the church was undergoing changes. The earliest church was a simple rectangular job and may have been built in the seventh or eighth century, or possibly even earlier. During the next few centuries a west porch was added and the two side chapels appeared; and then in around 1000 AD the church was extended at both ends with a further souped-up porch in the west, which was built up to make a tower, and a semi-circular chancel added at the east end (now ruined).

However there were some more drastic changes in the 12th and 13th centuries which have altered the character and shape of the church, and some of the Saxon features were lost. Much of the original nave was knocked through to make way for a row of decorated arches.

The domestic building which adjoins the church is also a rude interloper in historical terms, but it is a gorgeous building. Built around the late 14th or early 15th century and much poked and prodded in the fashions of later eras, it's now a private farmhouse but the quadrangle it forms alongside the church was once a monastic cloister. The blocked doorway which once gave access between church and cloister also has beastie-heads as label-stops, but these face into the priory garden and are not accessible to the public.

The Priory farmhouse, joined onto the church at one end, is a surviving monastic relic. What is now a domestic garden was once the cloister (see plan above) still with an original Saxon door.

It isn't possible to put a date on the original foundation of this church. The first definite recorded reference to it is in 804 AD, when it was part of a monastery or abbey and received a gift of land from a bloke called Æthelric. It's highly likely that it was already well established by then, but nobody really knows for how long. It was at one time the principle monastery of Hwicce, the Saxon kingdom of the lower Severn. The churches of Hwicce originally adopted Celtic Christianity rather than the missionary Roman version.

It must have been an important place and it predates its close neighbour monastery, Tewkesbury Abbey, by some centuries. Information about the Deerhurst monastery is scarce but it seems at some late date to have become a Benedictine priory. One of its luminaries was St Alphege, or Ælfheah to give him his Saxon name, who began his monastic life at Deerhurst before going on to become Archbishop of Canterbury and later a martyr to marauding Danes at Greenwich and thus into a giddy spiral to canonisation. St Alphege is commemorated in a 15th century stained glass window at Deerhurst, and as it happens 2012 is his millennial year, having met his sainted demise in 1012.

Another slightly less high-flying martyr saint is associated with Deerhurst, but still important in his own way: St Werstan. He was a monk at Deerhurst at a time when it was ransacked by Danes. He escaped and fled up to the Malvern hills, where he founded a cell close to the site of St Ann's Well. The misery of Viking-harassment was far from over though, and the unfortunate Werstan was murdered in his own chapel. Legend has it that this atrocity was the reason for the founding of Great Malvern Priory; whether true or not, St Werstan is well commemorated in the windows of Great Malvern Priory church.

West doors. The inner one, though probably restored, is a beautiful example of a rounded Saxon arch. The outer one is an original Saxon doorway (from the church's later development, around 1000 AD) with a later medieval pointed doorway inserted into it.

Despite medieval alterations, Saxon features abound. The round-headed arches, the small triangular recess beside the blocked doorway half way up the wall (suggesting there was formerly a second floor in the church at this level, or at least a gallery) and most notably the twin triangular-headed windows at the top, which are exquisitely carved – all are surviving features of the earliest pre-Conquest church.

It's speculated that the Danes may have made an occasional raid on Deerhurst Abbey during the late Saxon period, and they were known to have a particular fondness for ransacking monastic establishments. The eventual fall of the Saxon royal dynasty was enshrined at Deerhurst, where King Edmund Ironside was obliged in 1016 to sign over most of England to the Danish King Cnut in a meadow by the Severn. The decline of Deerhurst as an abbey probably came about a few years later during the reign of Edward the Confessor, who handed it over to the French Abbey of St. Denis. It was downgraded to a priory, and then the notoriously exploitative King John came along and trousered all its revenues. Subsequent Norman dukes and monarchs helped themselves to whatever was left.

Detail of the triangular windows and their curious fluted decoration. There is an "upper room" hidden on the other side and the window is carved on that side too.

Another of Deerhurst's Saxon treasures is its font, decorated with beautiful panels of spiral scrolls in a style that shows a certain Celtic influence. It's made from local Cotswold stone (oolitic limestone) and like the other carvings in the church it dates from before the Norman Conquest. At some point in the subsequent centuries though it became detached from its home and ended up being used as a washtub in a local farmyard.

In 1844 it was rescued from this ignominious fate by the Dean of Westminster, who bought it for the nearby parish church of Longdon. There it remained for 25 years, until its lower portion apparently turned up in Deerhurst:

"A lady in the neighbourhood (Miss Strickland, of Apperley Court) found in a garden close to the river, in 1870, an upright carved stone. It occurred to this lady that the stone was in reality the stem or lower part of the font then in Longdon church, in Worcestershire, as the ornament seemed to be similar. The vicar of Longdon was then asked to give up the bowl portion which had been conveyed in 1845 from a Deerhurst farmyard to Longdon church. The request was graciously entertained, and Longdon church received in exchange a new font. The two portions – probably long separated – were then replaced as they are now to be seen in Deerhurst, and the font previously in use there was given to Castle Morton church." (Massé, Tewkesbury and Deerhurst, p.114)

And so it remains today, but more recent expert opinion is that the stem and bowl don't actually belong to each other at all. You can't blame Miss Strickland for her assumption though – the pattern really does match very closely, and they must be connected in some way or other.

Fittingly for a village named after a grove of wild beasts, Deerhurst has its own dragon legend. The legend was first recorded in 1719, but the best description comes from a guidebook by Samuel Rudder in 1799:

"In the parish of Deerhurst, near Tewkesbury, a serpent of a prodigious bigness was a great grievance to all the country, by poisoning the inhabitants, and killing their cattle. The inhabitants petitioned the king and a proclamation was issued out, that whosoever should kill the serpent should enjoy an estate in the parish, which then belonged to the crown. One John Smith, a labourer, engaged in the enterprise. He put a quantity of milk in a place to which the serpent resorted, who gorged the whole, agreeable to expectation, and lay down to sleep in the sun, with his scales ruffled up. Seeing him in that situation, Smith advanced, and striking between the scales with his axe, took off his head."

There are many theories for the serpent/dragon/worm legends that abound all over England. One possibility is an allegorical origin, with the Danish invaders being a good contender for the role of "serpent of a prodigious bigness". The pagan associations with serpent energy (tying in nicely with the spiral-patterned font) are a nice symbolic connection. Whether there ever was any actual physical manifestation of a marauding mythical beast, well, who knows.

There are a few more mythical beasts on the outside of the church in gargoyle formation. These are much later than the Saxon carvings and belong to the medieval period alterations, and they seem (although very weathered) to depict a more conventional kind of mythical beast, probably gryphons. The beasts are not themselves gargoyles; they appear either side of a large human or semi-human head with a startled facial expression (which is fair enough really) holding its gob open. Very curious.

Gargoyle at SW corner

Gargoyle at NW corner

The church is so full of exciting Saxon features that it's easy to overlook a slightly more recent historic treat which Deerhurst is exceptionally rich in. The churchyard is full of old gravestones dating to the 17th and 18th centuries. Some of these are exquisitely beautiful in their carving and typography. I will only include one sample picture but really you could make an article just about these, as they are so diverse and intriguing. They have done well to survive the all-too-frequent flooding from the nearby River Severn, most recently in 2007 when the whole churchyard was submerged.

 Grave of Thomas Cox, who died on the 19th of April 1696. One of many lapidary gems.

The churchyard is a wonderful place in its own right – quiet and secluded as far as humans go but alive with noise and activity from the crows who live in the tall trees on the north side. They are the custodians of the grove of wild beasts and the place positively reverberates with the skraaaaaa of their derisive laughter.

The magic of Deerhurst will be continued in part two ...

Sources:

Massé, H.J.L.J., The Abbey Church of Tewkesbury, with Some Account of the Priory Church of Deerhurst, Gloucestershire (London, Bell & Sons, 1900).

Gilbert, Edward, A Guide to the Priory Church and Saxon Chapel, Deerhurst, Gloucestershire (privately printed, 1956, revised 1977)

Laing, Lloyd and Jennifer, A guide to the Dark Age Remains in Britain (London, Constable, 1979).

Friends of Deerhurst Church

The Deerhurst Dragon: www.twistedtree.org.uk

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