Spen Valley Wanderer
Bere Regis Church, Dorset
Bere Regis is a quiet Dorset village, partly encircled (and therefore bypassed) by the busy A35 Dorchester-Poole road. In the south-east corner of the village, just off the main street and edged by a small and well-maintained housing estate, is the Church of St John the Baptist. The church’s external walls are built of brick and flint, laid out in an eyecatching striped and chequerboard pattern.
The first church on this site was in the mid-eleventh century, a cross-shaped building that subsquently disappeared with the additions and alterations of later centuries. There still are a few tantilising traces of this original church, though: some Saxon long-and-short-work (alternate horizontal and vertical stones) in the east wall of the nave; a corbel that would have supported the original nave roof; and two voussoirs (wedge-shaped stones used in arch-building).
The next major building work was around a hundred years later, with the addition of the south aisle; and around fifty years after that (towards the end of the twelfth century) a north aisle was added. The three-bay arcade created to accomodate the south aisle has some interesting carvings on the column capitals, including a depiction of the medieval sport of bear-baiting, a man holding his mouth wide open (obviously suffering from toothache), and another with his hand on his forehead as if in surprise (but in fact enduring a headache).
In the thirteenth century the Turbeville family became lords of the manor, and would remain so until the early eighteenth century when the family line became extinct. If the family name has faint literary echoes, all becomes clearer when one imagines Bere Regis as the Kingsbere of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, and the Turbevilles as the D’Urbevilles, the once-great family whose fate is intextricably linked with that of the tragic herione Tess in his novel Tess of the D’Urbevilles. Hardy depicts the real-life Turbeville tombs (in the south aisle) in the novel when Tess visits Kingsbere Church and realises the tombs’ symbolic significance:
“They were canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced and broken; their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the reminders that she [Tess] had ever received that her people were socially extinct, there was none so forcible as this spoliation.”
Further building work in the fourteenth century — the widening of the south aisle and extension of the south arcade — was probably paid for by the Turbeville family. But it was another local dignitary who funded the church’s crowning glory: the nave roof. John Morton was born in nearby Milborne Stileham circa 1420, and under Henry VII occupied some of the great offices of state, including Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. His visually stunning and elaborate church roof was installed around 1486. There is some evidence that the previous roof had been destroyed in a fire. Whatever the reasons for its creation, the roof is a masterpiece. Made entirely of oak, it is a symphony of intricate carving, painting and gilding. Projecting from the hammer beams are twelve lifesize figures, the wall-plates are decorated with carved and painted heads, and the roof bosses depict coats of arms and other heraldic devices.
Though some authorities argue that the full-length figures depict saints in monastic attire, the consensus is that they are in fact the Apostles. The churchwarden accounts for 1738 lists a payment to “Benjamin Moores for cleaning and oiling the Apostles — 4s 0d”, and several of the figures can be recognised by their apostolic symbols: St Peter, wearing a mitre, and carrying keys and model church; St John, with book; St Philip, carrying his pilgrim staff; and Judas, with his money bag.
Whether with the naked eye or through binoculars (or even laid down and viewed directly from below, for the more agile), take plenty of time to marvel at the skills of those unknown medieval craftsmen.
Bere Regis Church, Dorset
Bere Regis is a quiet Dorset village, partly encircled (and therefore bypassed) by the busy A35 Dorchester-Poole road. In the south-east corner of the village, just off the main street and edged by a small and well-maintained housing estate, is the Church of St John the Baptist. The church’s external walls are built of brick and flint, laid out in an eyecatching striped and chequerboard pattern.
The first church on this site was in the mid-eleventh century, a cross-shaped building that subsquently disappeared with the additions and alterations of later centuries. There still are a few tantilising traces of this original church, though: some Saxon long-and-short-work (alternate horizontal and vertical stones) in the east wall of the nave; a corbel that would have supported the original nave roof; and two voussoirs (wedge-shaped stones used in arch-building).
The next major building work was around a hundred years later, with the addition of the south aisle; and around fifty years after that (towards the end of the twelfth century) a north aisle was added. The three-bay arcade created to accomodate the south aisle has some interesting carvings on the column capitals, including a depiction of the medieval sport of bear-baiting, a man holding his mouth wide open (obviously suffering from toothache), and another with his hand on his forehead as if in surprise (but in fact enduring a headache).
In the thirteenth century the Turbeville family became lords of the manor, and would remain so until the early eighteenth century when the family line became extinct. If the family name has faint literary echoes, all becomes clearer when one imagines Bere Regis as the Kingsbere of Thomas Hardy’s Wessex novels, and the Turbevilles as the D’Urbevilles, the once-great family whose fate is intextricably linked with that of the tragic herione Tess in his novel Tess of the D’Urbevilles. Hardy depicts the real-life Turbeville tombs (in the south aisle) in the novel when Tess visits Kingsbere Church and realises the tombs’ symbolic significance:
“They were canopied, altar-shaped, and plain; their carvings being defaced and broken; their brasses torn from the matrices, the rivet-holes remaining like martin-holes in a sandcliff. Of all the reminders that she [Tess] had ever received that her people were socially extinct, there was none so forcible as this spoliation.”
Further building work in the fourteenth century — the widening of the south aisle and extension of the south arcade — was probably paid for by the Turbeville family. But it was another local dignitary who funded the church’s crowning glory: the nave roof. John Morton was born in nearby Milborne Stileham circa 1420, and under Henry VII occupied some of the great offices of state, including Lord Chancellor and Archbishop of Canterbury. His visually stunning and elaborate church roof was installed around 1486. There is some evidence that the previous roof had been destroyed in a fire. Whatever the reasons for its creation, the roof is a masterpiece. Made entirely of oak, it is a symphony of intricate carving, painting and gilding. Projecting from the hammer beams are twelve lifesize figures, the wall-plates are decorated with carved and painted heads, and the roof bosses depict coats of arms and other heraldic devices.
Though some authorities argue that the full-length figures depict saints in monastic attire, the consensus is that they are in fact the Apostles. The churchwarden accounts for 1738 lists a payment to “Benjamin Moores for cleaning and oiling the Apostles — 4s 0d”, and several of the figures can be recognised by their apostolic symbols: St Peter, wearing a mitre, and carrying keys and model church; St John, with book; St Philip, carrying his pilgrim staff; and Judas, with his money bag.
Whether with the naked eye or through binoculars (or even laid down and viewed directly from below, for the more agile), take plenty of time to marvel at the skills of those unknown medieval craftsmen.