Shrines
View allAll Photos Tagged Consecration
At Pico Sacro the day before the second full Moon of January 2018
Nikon D700 Nikkor AIS ED 300mm @f/5,6 (x2 teleconverter, equiv. 600mm), cropped
Distance to observer 1,7 km
Hail Hekate, Goddess of All Creation,
Ruler of the natural cycles of the earth,
Who reigns over time
Bless this Sacred Place
May the days of my life
Be forever under your guidance,
Bless this Sacred Place
And all
The days,
The weeks,
The months,
The sabbats,
And the seasons
Of my life.
Hail Hekate, Goddess of All Creation,
Ruler of the natural cycles of the earth.
Not of the princes and prelates with periwigged charioteers
Riding triumphantly laurelled to lap the fat of the years,—
Rather the scorned—the rejected—the men hemmed in with the spears;
The men of the tattered battalion which fights till it dies,
Dazed with the dust of the battle, the din and the cries.
The men with the broken heads and the blood running into their eyes.
Not the be-medalled Commander, beloved of the throne,
Riding cock-horse to parade when the bugles are blown,
But the lads who carried the koppie and cannot be known.
Not the ruler for me, but the ranker, the tramp of the road,
The slave with the sack on his shoulders pricked on with the goad,
The man with too weighty a burden, too weary a load.
The sailor, the stoker of steamers, the man with the clout,
The chantyman bent at the halliards putting a tune to the shout,
The drowsy man at the wheel and the tired look-out.
Others may sing of the wine and the wealth and the mirth,
The portly presence of potentates goodly in girth;—
Mine be the dirt and the dross, the dust and scum of the earth!
Theirs be the music, the colour, the glory, the gold;
Mine be a handful of ashes, a mouthful of mould.
Of the maimed, of the halt and the blind in the rain and the cold—
Of these shall my songs be fashioned, my tales be told.
“It is a quarter to 3. The last Amen of the Mass has just been pronounced… and I am coming to kiss your hands… while telling you that everything went according to your wishes, and that God blessed me. My Mass began at 1.30. As I had estimated, the whole work lasts only 45 to 50 minutes at most, watch in hand. The performance was perfect, even admirable in several places – without the least little hitch… In all, we were more than 130 singers and players. Unless I am greatly mistaken, the general impression produced by the work is beyond what I could have flattered myself I would obtain… For the moment, I want only to thank and bless you for having inspired me with good thoughts and helped me to work for God!”
So wrote Liszt from Esztergom on 31 August 1856 in a letter to Princess Carolyne Sayn-Wittgenstein in Weimar. He was describing the performance of his Gran Mass during the ceremony of the consecration of the Cathedral – the occasion for which the work had been commissioned by the Primate of Hungary, archbishop János Scitovsky. Gran is the German name for Esztergom, and in Hungary the work is referred to by its Hungarian name: Esztergomi Mise.
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The "Horns of Consecration" on the East Propyleia at Knossos Palace (1900-1350 BC), six km south of Heraklion, Greece, represent a sacrificial bull. The ancient legend of the minotaur, the labyrinth, and King Minos is associated with Knossos.
“Jewelry, such as poems, reveal a state of being.”
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Great Sampford, Essex
The beautiful church of St Michael the Archangel at Great Sampford is not the first church to stand on the rising ground at the centre of the village overlooking the cornfields along the valley of the river Pant. It is possibly sited on an ancient place of cult or religious significance. The proximity of the Stow farm may be of some importance, for the word ‘Stow’ in Old English can mean a ‘holy place’ or ‘place of assembly’. A pre-Conquest church, presumably of timber and thatch construction, followed perhaps, by a simple stone-built church, was replaced by the 13c on the same site by a major church building of which one of the transepts remains as the vestry of the present church which was built between 1320 and 1350. The original dedication of the church, if different, is not known as the first documentary reference to St Michael occurs as late as 1540 in a Sampford will. Dedications were sometimes changed and the use of the proper style, St. Michael the Archangel, is in fact quite rare. However, dedications to St. Michael or St. Michael and All Angels are numerous and were popular as the Archangel is an important figure in Christian tradition and art, symbolising the victory of God over evil, as an intercessor for the sick and as a leader of the Church militant. Churches dedicated to him, as at Great Sampford, are often found on hill—top sites or on high ground .a possible allusion to St. Michael’s pre-eminence in the Angelic Host of Christian belief. His Feast Day is 29th September.
Knowledge of the origins of the Christian Church in Essex relies largely on the fragile but growing evidence of archaeology and landscape interpretation. An ill-defined and mobile pattern of contemporaneous pagan and early Christian practices in the Roman era comes into historical focus with the missionary endeavours of the Roman and Celtic Churches when such names as Augustine, Mellitus and Cedd are prominent in Essex history. Within that tradition there are various, as yet unproven, theories about the establishment of a church at Great Sampford.
On entering the church the first impression that the visitor receives is of its elegant dignity; the next, the incongruence of its scale in such a tiny rural community. An interesting aspect of this enigma is the search for a convincing explanation of its status, from the mid-13c until 1907, as a deanery church serving twenty-one surrounding parishes in the Freshwell Hundred and in part of Uttlesford. It may have been a consequence of an early ‘minster’ (i.e.: missionary) role or as the result of a parochial compromise in an area with more important communities such as (Saffron) Walden. We do not know. However, it is a fact that the missionary work of the early minsters often extended to and beyond the boundaries of the administrative hundreds and became the sites of the hundredal centres themselves. There may well be historic linkages, not yet understood, between the Freshwell and Uttlesford Hundreds and the Sampford Deanery that relate to the early status of the church at Great Sampford.
The earliest historical fact about St. Michael’s is the grant by William Rufus, son and successor of William the Conqueror, of the church at Sampford along with the subordinate chapel at Hempstead with their lands and tithes to Battle Abbey in 1094. According to Philip Morant, the most famous of Essex historians, this was a formal confirmation of the Conqueror's original royal grant. This act of confirmation was a necessary and regular practice in regard to the efficacy of grants and early charters which were frequently forged. The church at Hempstead was within the jurisdiction of the vicar of Great Sampford until as late as 1979. Great Sampford remained in the hands of Battle Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. In 1836 it passed to the newly-established Church Commissioners. In 1982 Great Sampford was combined with the parish of Little Sampford.
For perhaps a thousand years, even more, the Church at Sampford pursued its mission and, like others of medieval foundation, did not escape the consequences of religious, political and parochial events or circumstances. An astonishing flowering of spiritual faith and social commitment led to the building and re-building of these lovely churches. This phase was followed by the painful disruption of the Reformation, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, all of which led to anxious change and despoliation. In the course of these events much of the magnificence of the church at Great Sampford and its furnishings was lost or abandoned. All his was compounded by periods of neglect and the chronic problems of maintaining a great building in a small village bereft of wealthy resident patrons.
The loss, confiscation or sale of the rood, images, church plate and "such other goods as could be spared" was mirrored by decay of the fabric as is evident from the Parochial Inventories and Visitations of the l6c and l7c. The l7c saw the introduction of new arrangements for the railing of the Lord’s Table and seating for the congregation, a school was held in the south transept and the village musicians performed in a gallery under the tower. The inevitable ‘restorations’ by the Victorians led to the removal of furnishings, the installation of new pews, patterned floor tiling and the stripping of the stucco from the exterior walls of the church to expose the original flint and rubble surfaces. In more recent times the spiral staircase in the tower was removed and the roof structure of the south aisle replaced. We are, fortunately, left with a church of beauty and distinction.
It is hoped that the following brief notes on the architectural features and minor objects and details of interest in the church will help visitors to enjoy their visit.
The significance of St. Michael the Archangel in the village scene is apparent from the scale of the building, its strong profiles and conspicuous English Gothic idiom of the Decorated period. Internally, the major architectural theme is that of a restrained, uncomplicated elegance that is enhanced by the ample light admitted by plain glass windows. A dominant feature is the fine range of trefoiled, cinquefoiled and sexfoiled lights of the nave, chancel and aisle windows all dating from the period c. 1320-50. The cusped tracery of the windows is complemented by the symmetrical refinement of the arcading which is only lightly embellished by mouldings and carved capitals, typical of the period, and among the best in the county. Although not devoid of interesting detail, there is nothing to detract from the simple elegance and spatial qualities with which the fenestration and graceful arcading endow this fine building.
In 1769 Peter Muilman referred to the church at Great Sampford which "stands pleasantly on a small eminence by the roadside". Pleasantly indeed, the church is handsomely set in the Essex cornfields and seen to advantage from the high ground on the opposite side of the river. Close to, the sturdy profiles and somewhat severe external textures, relieved by some decorative areas of knapped flint flushwork, offer little hint of the quality of its Gothic interior. The main structure is built with random-faced flint and rubble set in lime mortar with limestone and clunch dressings. The roof is tiled and slated. The prominent west tower was built in the mid-l4c and, like the south aisle, has an embattled parapet. The south porch is of the same period. Unhappily, the window tracery of the 13c transept has been lost and is now disfigured by brickwork of two phases which seem to date from the late-18c to early-19c. Conspicuous in the churchyard are the fine lime trees planted in about 1835. The only monument of significance is the obelisk near the east wall of the churchyard which commemorates members of the Watson Family of Sampford. Colonel Jonas Watson was a distinguished soldier who was killed in action at the siege of Cartagena in 1741. But spare a moment to look at the adjacent grave stone of William Ruffle who died in 1881, a village worthy who served Great Sampford as shopkeeper, constable, clerk and in other public offices for over half a century.
External details of note are a rare series of consecration crosses of varying designs around the church, an early scratch dial, now displaced and seen on a doorstep in the north wall, a benchmark and the slot for the surveyor’s bench on the south-west buttress of the tower and miscellaneous graffiti mainly in the porch. Other details of interest include the rainwater heads, the vigorous carvings on the label of the south transept and niches in the south transept and the north and west walls. The clock on the church tower was installed in l9ll to mark the coronation of King George V.
On entering, visitors will appreciate the impressive dimensions and architectural refinement of this handsome village church. Standing in the centre of the nave the dominant curvilinear idiom of the Gothic styling will be apparent. The nave is flanked by north and south arcaded aisles with plain two-centred arches datable to the l4c. The piers of the north arcade are quatrefoil in plan with slender engaged shafting; those of the south arcade are octagonal in plan. All of the piers have moulded bases and capitals.
The 14c west tower is constructed in four stages. Internally it is open to the nave under a two-centred moulded arch. There is access to the belfry but, sadly, the brick-built circular Tudor staircase was removed about fifty years ago. The carved head of a woman recovered from this staircase, although it presumably originated from elsewhere in the church, can be seen in the vestry. But the finest aspects of this church are to be seen in the early chancel which is remarkable for its size and the splendour of its architectural expression. It dates from the first decades of the l4c. This fine chancel is framed by an exceptionally large east window of five cinquefoiled lights, the curvilinear bar tracery and verticality of which enhance the powerful impact of this aspect of the building. Most interesting, and presumably deriving from the deanery status of the church, there is a series on the north and south walls of twenty-one stalls recessed under a canopied arcade with mouldings and cusping. At the east end of the south arcade there are the piscina and sedilia. The chancel arch, of the same period and sprung from the capitals of clustered shafts, shows residual traces, near the base on either side of the step, of a former stone screen which is possibly significant in view of the rare stone screens in the nearby churches of Stebbing and Great Bardfield. Note also the small blocked low window by the north side of the arch. The panels behind the altar on which the Creed, Lords Prayer and Commandments are painted were made in 1837 for the church at Danbury and brought to Great Sampford in 1894.
The vestry, formerly a chapel, is of great interest as a surviving major element of the previous church of the late - 13c (however when I visited this was locked). In the east wall there are good coupled windows of two trefoiled lights with two quatrefoil and sexfoil circular openings, interesting examples of pierced plate-tracery. The large brick-filled window in the south wall is of the mid-13c with good mouldings and the surviving arch and shafting in the splays. Below this window, fragments of medieval glass were found buried in the ground outside. The contemporary archway in the west wall has some intriguing carved capitals richly adorned with robust oak-leaf foliage and vibrant figures including an owl, snail, pig and a human face in a good state of preservation. One is assumed to be a representation of a ‘Green Man’ a symbolic figure of English folklore. The north wall has four quatrefoil openings. There is, under the south window, a triple gabled recess with crockets and linear moulding, pinnacles and a neat acanthus motif which was probably once a fine tomb of an important local family, perhaps a member of the de Kemesek family. It is said to have served as a fireplace in the time when the vestry housed the village school! The battened and studded oak door leading into the chancel is 16c.
The open church roof structures are well worth close study. The best is in the vestry which is roofed with twelve pairs of collared scissor-braced trusses supporting the steep-pitched rafters on moulded wall plates. The chancel roof is also of trussed-rafter construction of seven cants, as is that of the nave roof which also has three tie-beams which may have been installed at a later date, perhaps when, as we know from church records, the roof was repaired in the 16c. The lean-to roof of the north aisle is attractively braced with graceful curved members sprung from a good moulded wall-plate. Unfortunately, the original roof of the south aisle has been replaced by a modern structure, but three of the amusing stone corbels which supported it remain. The trussed-rafter roof of the south porch with seven cants should be noted as it rests on extremely fine early moulded plates. Visitors should not miss the intriguing carved medieval wooden head which is fastened onto the wall above the chancel arch at the north-west corner facing the nave. This appears to have been repositioned, perhaps from a figure that was once part of church statuary. On the south side in the clerestory will be seen an attractive 15c Perpendicular style rectilinear and cinquefoiled window of three ogee lights which was devised to throw light onto the former rood.
Originally the church would have been resplendent with a comprehensive range of wall paintings for visual instruction depicting scenes of biblical or religious significance. A few fragments survive, having been discovered during restoration work in 1979, above the arches on the walls of the north arcade. Although faint and incomplete the two remaining paintings are of interest. One represents the seven deadly sins in the form of a diagrammatic tree which is comparatively rare. The other may be of St. Christopher, a saintly figure normally positioned, as possibly here, opposite the church entrance as a reassuring gesture to the worshippers. There are traces, too, possibly of another period, that suggest a dragon was depicted which would imply an association with St. Michael to whom the church is dedicated or, possibly, St. Margaret. Traces of colour in the wall plaster of the vestry may eventually yield further paintings.
Worthy of note are some special features beginning with the door at the church entrance. This is thought to be contemporary with the building of the church in the early l4c and, although damaged at the base, is still a fine example and retains the original wrought iron strap-work and studding. According to expert opinion it is the most elaborate of all saltire-braced doors in Essex. The boards of which it is constructed are pegged together. The font in the south aisle has a plain moulded octagonal bowl of the 15c. Its stem is earlier and has complex decoration which combines ogee-headed panels with intricate tracery on a chamfered 14c plinth. The Victorian pews were recently detached and the nave flooring paved. The beautiful series of kneelers worked with flower motifs were recently embroidered by local people. The lovely embroidered runner on the step of the sanctuary was made in 1990 and is an exact copy of the Victorian runner it replaced.
It is valid to observe that St. Michael’s benefits aesthetically from the absence of monumental clutter which, although sometimes historically useful, can be detrimental to the architectural purity of the building as a whole. The only remaining monuments of antiquity in the church are the tomb slabs (Calthorp and Burrows) of the 17c and 18c in the chance]. They commemorate a family whose name persists at a local farm and another of textile merchants who lived opposite the church. There is another (Gretton) in the south aisle. The pulpit, the provenance of which is unknown, is Victorian. There are also a few notable pieces of furniture. These include a 17c desk with a writing slope and cupboard which once served the school in the church. There is also a standing cupboard or hutch of the late 16c and a 16c church chest, iron-banded with strap hinges and an interior ‘till’ which may have been built-in as a response to a Parochial Visitation of 1686 which ordered it to be provided and lockable. The modern portable altar at the east end of the north aisle was given to the church by an anonymous donor in 1991. The small bronze of the Madonna and Child is of German provenance.
The five church bells which were once rung for church services as well as for special village occasions like harvest and gleaning can no longer be pealed. This is because of structural weaknesses in the belfry though they are still hung on the original stocks. Nowadays one is chimed for church services, as a Sanctus bell and used to ring the hours for the clock. The first, third and fourth bells were cast by William Land in 1624; the second (which bears the Royal Arms and a medallion with a bust of Charles II) by Henry Yaxley in 1684; the fifth by John Hodson in 1664. The church plate includes an interesting early Elizabethan silver cup of 1562 with a paten cover of c1567 and another paten dated 1630. None of these is inscribed although they carry makers' marks. An electro-plated flagon of 1854 was purchased by the vicar for five guineas in 1856. The organ, installed in 1976, is said to have come from a nonconformist chapel and to have been built in c1830 by G.M. Holdich. The eagle lectern in the south aisle was placed in the church in 1909 as a tribute to the incumbency of the Rev. Robert Eustace, vicar from 1850 to 1905.
Almost every ancient church has a range, most of which cannot be satisfactorily explained, of markings and graffiti, ostensibly symbolic figuring, idle scratchings and numerous initials and dates. Great Sampford has a generous quota of such. Of genuine interest is a 3-men’s (or 9-men's) Morris cut into the second stall on the north side of the chancel inside the altar rail. These are gaming boards of some antiquity, the play having affinities with ludo and allegedly used to relieve the boredom of long sermons or tedious ritual. On the opposite side one of the sedilia has a set of unexplained grooves, possibly another game.
This guide has so far been concerned mostly with events, architecture and objects of beauty or interest. More important are the people, clergy, church officers and villagers who have worked for and worshipped in the church. They all emerge from the obscurity of the past through the church records and the village archives as personalities or in human situations which help us to share their hopes, commitment or despair. The clergy, ever since Thomas de Sampford, dean in 1163, have served the church and ministered to the people throughout the ages and struggled with the traumas of turbulent and anxious times. The churchwardens, like Richard Petytt and John Mylner in the l6c and their successors, have striven to preserve the church from decay and neglect and carried out their onerous and multifarious duties with devotion if not always with alacrity. There have been too the countless parishioners whose recurring family names fill the registers recording the joy of marriage and birth and the sadness of illness and death. They are all part of the story and the reality of the church and its life in the village. They too were familiar with the building we admire. They sat in the pews and looked upon the beauty that is now our heritage. Their responsibility has passed to successive generations, and now to us. We hope that they would have approved of this little booklet and that it will play its part in safeguarding the continuity of that inheritance.
St Peter, Stow Bridge, Norfolk
Stow Bridge, or Stowbridge as it is often given these days, is a hamlet across the River Ouse from Wimbotsham and Stow Bardolph, from which parish it was carved.
Pevsner didn't spot that it existed, and consequently The Buildings of England contains no reference to this charming little church of 1910.
It is built of glazed terracotta bricks, an idiom which would unfortunately come to be used for municipal toilet blocks for much of the next fifty years, but here there is enough detailing to give more of the effect of a dolls house.
Intriguingly, about half a mile back towards the river there is a house which appears to be the conversion of a large 19th Century church with a chancel. Was this the original Stow Bridge chapel of ease to Stow Bardolph, and the 1910 church its more sensible and smaller replacement? If Pevsner had been here, we might know.
NB: A little research, always a dangerous thing, tells me that the mystery building was probably Stow Bridge Baptist Church.
"... And therefore we beseech Thee, O Lord, give bountifully this grace to this Thy servant, whom Thou hast chosen to the ministry of the supreme priesthood.."
Visit this location at Catholic Archdiocese of Lepanto & Mater Dolorosa Church in Second Life
Great Sampford, Essex
The beautiful church of St Michael the Archangel at Great Sampford is not the first church to stand on the rising ground at the centre of the village overlooking the cornfields along the valley of the river Pant. It is possibly sited on an ancient place of cult or religious significance. The proximity of the Stow farm may be of some importance, for the word ‘Stow’ in Old English can mean a ‘holy place’ or ‘place of assembly’. A pre-Conquest church, presumably of timber and thatch construction, followed perhaps, by a simple stone-built church, was replaced by the 13c on the same site by a major church building of which one of the transepts remains as the vestry of the present church which was built between 1320 and 1350. The original dedication of the church, if different, is not known as the first documentary reference to St Michael occurs as late as 1540 in a Sampford will. Dedications were sometimes changed and the use of the proper style, St. Michael the Archangel, is in fact quite rare. However, dedications to St. Michael or St. Michael and All Angels are numerous and were popular as the Archangel is an important figure in Christian tradition and art, symbolising the victory of God over evil, as an intercessor for the sick and as a leader of the Church militant. Churches dedicated to him, as at Great Sampford, are often found on hill—top sites or on high ground .a possible allusion to St. Michael’s pre-eminence in the Angelic Host of Christian belief. His Feast Day is 29th September.
Knowledge of the origins of the Christian Church in Essex relies largely on the fragile but growing evidence of archaeology and landscape interpretation. An ill-defined and mobile pattern of contemporaneous pagan and early Christian practices in the Roman era comes into historical focus with the missionary endeavours of the Roman and Celtic Churches when such names as Augustine, Mellitus and Cedd are prominent in Essex history. Within that tradition there are various, as yet unproven, theories about the establishment of a church at Great Sampford.
On entering the church the first impression that the visitor receives is of its elegant dignity; the next, the incongruence of its scale in such a tiny rural community. An interesting aspect of this enigma is the search for a convincing explanation of its status, from the mid-13c until 1907, as a deanery church serving twenty-one surrounding parishes in the Freshwell Hundred and in part of Uttlesford. It may have been a consequence of an early ‘minster’ (i.e.: missionary) role or as the result of a parochial compromise in an area with more important communities such as (Saffron) Walden. We do not know. However, it is a fact that the missionary work of the early minsters often extended to and beyond the boundaries of the administrative hundreds and became the sites of the hundredal centres themselves. There may well be historic linkages, not yet understood, between the Freshwell and Uttlesford Hundreds and the Sampford Deanery that relate to the early status of the church at Great Sampford.
The earliest historical fact about St. Michael’s is the grant by William Rufus, son and successor of William the Conqueror, of the church at Sampford along with the subordinate chapel at Hempstead with their lands and tithes to Battle Abbey in 1094. According to Philip Morant, the most famous of Essex historians, this was a formal confirmation of the Conqueror's original royal grant. This act of confirmation was a necessary and regular practice in regard to the efficacy of grants and early charters which were frequently forged. The church at Hempstead was within the jurisdiction of the vicar of Great Sampford until as late as 1979. Great Sampford remained in the hands of Battle Abbey until the Dissolution of the Monasteries in 1539 when it was transferred to the Dean and Chapter of Canterbury. In 1836 it passed to the newly-established Church Commissioners. In 1982 Great Sampford was combined with the parish of Little Sampford.
For perhaps a thousand years, even more, the Church at Sampford pursued its mission and, like others of medieval foundation, did not escape the consequences of religious, political and parochial events or circumstances. An astonishing flowering of spiritual faith and social commitment led to the building and re-building of these lovely churches. This phase was followed by the painful disruption of the Reformation, the Commonwealth and the Restoration, all of which led to anxious change and despoliation. In the course of these events much of the magnificence of the church at Great Sampford and its furnishings was lost or abandoned. All his was compounded by periods of neglect and the chronic problems of maintaining a great building in a small village bereft of wealthy resident patrons.
The loss, confiscation or sale of the rood, images, church plate and "such other goods as could be spared" was mirrored by decay of the fabric as is evident from the Parochial Inventories and Visitations of the l6c and l7c. The l7c saw the introduction of new arrangements for the railing of the Lord’s Table and seating for the congregation, a school was held in the south transept and the village musicians performed in a gallery under the tower. The inevitable ‘restorations’ by the Victorians led to the removal of furnishings, the installation of new pews, patterned floor tiling and the stripping of the stucco from the exterior walls of the church to expose the original flint and rubble surfaces. In more recent times the spiral staircase in the tower was removed and the roof structure of the south aisle replaced. We are, fortunately, left with a church of beauty and distinction.
It is hoped that the following brief notes on the architectural features and minor objects and details of interest in the church will help visitors to enjoy their visit.
The significance of St. Michael the Archangel in the village scene is apparent from the scale of the building, its strong profiles and conspicuous English Gothic idiom of the Decorated period. Internally, the major architectural theme is that of a restrained, uncomplicated elegance that is enhanced by the ample light admitted by plain glass windows. A dominant feature is the fine range of trefoiled, cinquefoiled and sexfoiled lights of the nave, chancel and aisle windows all dating from the period c. 1320-50. The cusped tracery of the windows is complemented by the symmetrical refinement of the arcading which is only lightly embellished by mouldings and carved capitals, typical of the period, and among the best in the county. Although not devoid of interesting detail, there is nothing to detract from the simple elegance and spatial qualities with which the fenestration and graceful arcading endow this fine building.
In 1769 Peter Muilman referred to the church at Great Sampford which "stands pleasantly on a small eminence by the roadside". Pleasantly indeed, the church is handsomely set in the Essex cornfields and seen to advantage from the high ground on the opposite side of the river. Close to, the sturdy profiles and somewhat severe external textures, relieved by some decorative areas of knapped flint flushwork, offer little hint of the quality of its Gothic interior. The main structure is built with random-faced flint and rubble set in lime mortar with limestone and clunch dressings. The roof is tiled and slated. The prominent west tower was built in the mid-l4c and, like the south aisle, has an embattled parapet. The south porch is of the same period. Unhappily, the window tracery of the 13c transept has been lost and is now disfigured by brickwork of two phases which seem to date from the late-18c to early-19c. Conspicuous in the churchyard are the fine lime trees planted in about 1835. The only monument of significance is the obelisk near the east wall of the churchyard which commemorates members of the Watson Family of Sampford. Colonel Jonas Watson was a distinguished soldier who was killed in action at the siege of Cartagena in 1741. But spare a moment to look at the adjacent grave stone of William Ruffle who died in 1881, a village worthy who served Great Sampford as shopkeeper, constable, clerk and in other public offices for over half a century.
External details of note are a rare series of consecration crosses of varying designs around the church, an early scratch dial, now displaced and seen on a doorstep in the north wall, a benchmark and the slot for the surveyor’s bench on the south-west buttress of the tower and miscellaneous graffiti mainly in the porch. Other details of interest include the rainwater heads, the vigorous carvings on the label of the south transept and niches in the south transept and the north and west walls. The clock on the church tower was installed in l9ll to mark the coronation of King George V.
On entering, visitors will appreciate the impressive dimensions and architectural refinement of this handsome village church. Standing in the centre of the nave the dominant curvilinear idiom of the Gothic styling will be apparent. The nave is flanked by north and south arcaded aisles with plain two-centred arches datable to the l4c. The piers of the north arcade are quatrefoil in plan with slender engaged shafting; those of the south arcade are octagonal in plan. All of the piers have moulded bases and capitals.
The 14c west tower is constructed in four stages. Internally it is open to the nave under a two-centred moulded arch. There is access to the belfry but, sadly, the brick-built circular Tudor staircase was removed about fifty years ago. The carved head of a woman recovered from this staircase, although it presumably originated from elsewhere in the church, can be seen in the vestry. But the finest aspects of this church are to be seen in the early chancel which is remarkable for its size and the splendour of its architectural expression. It dates from the first decades of the l4c. This fine chancel is framed by an exceptionally large east window of five cinquefoiled lights, the curvilinear bar tracery and verticality of which enhance the powerful impact of this aspect of the building. Most interesting, and presumably deriving from the deanery status of the church, there is a series on the north and south walls of twenty-one stalls recessed under a canopied arcade with mouldings and cusping. At the east end of the south arcade there are the piscina and sedilia. The chancel arch, of the same period and sprung from the capitals of clustered shafts, shows residual traces, near the base on either side of the step, of a former stone screen which is possibly significant in view of the rare stone screens in the nearby churches of Stebbing and Great Bardfield. Note also the small blocked low window by the north side of the arch. The panels behind the altar on which the Creed, Lords Prayer and Commandments are painted were made in 1837 for the church at Danbury and brought to Great Sampford in 1894.
The vestry, formerly a chapel, is of great interest as a surviving major element of the previous church of the late - 13c (however when I visited this was locked). In the east wall there are good coupled windows of two trefoiled lights with two quatrefoil and sexfoil circular openings, interesting examples of pierced plate-tracery. The large brick-filled window in the south wall is of the mid-13c with good mouldings and the surviving arch and shafting in the splays. Below this window, fragments of medieval glass were found buried in the ground outside. The contemporary archway in the west wall has some intriguing carved capitals richly adorned with robust oak-leaf foliage and vibrant figures including an owl, snail, pig and a human face in a good state of preservation. One is assumed to be a representation of a ‘Green Man’ a symbolic figure of English folklore. The north wall has four quatrefoil openings. There is, under the south window, a triple gabled recess with crockets and linear moulding, pinnacles and a neat acanthus motif which was probably once a fine tomb of an important local family, perhaps a member of the de Kemesek family. It is said to have served as a fireplace in the time when the vestry housed the village school! The battened and studded oak door leading into the chancel is 16c.
The open church roof structures are well worth close study. The best is in the vestry which is roofed with twelve pairs of collared scissor-braced trusses supporting the steep-pitched rafters on moulded wall plates. The chancel roof is also of trussed-rafter construction of seven cants, as is that of the nave roof which also has three tie-beams which may have been installed at a later date, perhaps when, as we know from church records, the roof was repaired in the 16c. The lean-to roof of the north aisle is attractively braced with graceful curved members sprung from a good moulded wall-plate. Unfortunately, the original roof of the south aisle has been replaced by a modern structure, but three of the amusing stone corbels which supported it remain. The trussed-rafter roof of the south porch with seven cants should be noted as it rests on extremely fine early moulded plates. Visitors should not miss the intriguing carved medieval wooden head which is fastened onto the wall above the chancel arch at the north-west corner facing the nave. This appears to have been repositioned, perhaps from a figure that was once part of church statuary. On the south side in the clerestory will be seen an attractive 15c Perpendicular style rectilinear and cinquefoiled window of three ogee lights which was devised to throw light onto the former rood.
Originally the church would have been resplendent with a comprehensive range of wall paintings for visual instruction depicting scenes of biblical or religious significance. A few fragments survive, having been discovered during restoration work in 1979, above the arches on the walls of the north arcade. Although faint and incomplete the two remaining paintings are of interest. One represents the seven deadly sins in the form of a diagrammatic tree which is comparatively rare. The other may be of St. Christopher, a saintly figure normally positioned, as possibly here, opposite the church entrance as a reassuring gesture to the worshippers. There are traces, too, possibly of another period, that suggest a dragon was depicted which would imply an association with St. Michael to whom the church is dedicated or, possibly, St. Margaret. Traces of colour in the wall plaster of the vestry may eventually yield further paintings.
Worthy of note are some special features beginning with the door at the church entrance. This is thought to be contemporary with the building of the church in the early l4c and, although damaged at the base, is still a fine example and retains the original wrought iron strap-work and studding. According to expert opinion it is the most elaborate of all saltire-braced doors in Essex. The boards of which it is constructed are pegged together. The font in the south aisle has a plain moulded octagonal bowl of the 15c. Its stem is earlier and has complex decoration which combines ogee-headed panels with intricate tracery on a chamfered 14c plinth. The Victorian pews were recently detached and the nave flooring paved. The beautiful series of kneelers worked with flower motifs were recently embroidered by local people. The lovely embroidered runner on the step of the sanctuary was made in 1990 and is an exact copy of the Victorian runner it replaced.
It is valid to observe that St. Michael’s benefits aesthetically from the absence of monumental clutter which, although sometimes historically useful, can be detrimental to the architectural purity of the building as a whole. The only remaining monuments of antiquity in the church are the tomb slabs (Calthorp and Burrows) of the 17c and 18c in the chance]. They commemorate a family whose name persists at a local farm and another of textile merchants who lived opposite the church. There is another (Gretton) in the south aisle. The pulpit, the provenance of which is unknown, is Victorian. There are also a few notable pieces of furniture. These include a 17c desk with a writing slope and cupboard which once served the school in the church. There is also a standing cupboard or hutch of the late 16c and a 16c church chest, iron-banded with strap hinges and an interior ‘till’ which may have been built-in as a response to a Parochial Visitation of 1686 which ordered it to be provided and lockable. The modern portable altar at the east end of the north aisle was given to the church by an anonymous donor in 1991. The small bronze of the Madonna and Child is of German provenance.
The five church bells which were once rung for church services as well as for special village occasions like harvest and gleaning can no longer be pealed. This is because of structural weaknesses in the belfry though they are still hung on the original stocks. Nowadays one is chimed for church services, as a Sanctus bell and used to ring the hours for the clock. The first, third and fourth bells were cast by William Land in 1624; the second (which bears the Royal Arms and a medallion with a bust of Charles II) by Henry Yaxley in 1684; the fifth by John Hodson in 1664. The church plate includes an interesting early Elizabethan silver cup of 1562 with a paten cover of c1567 and another paten dated 1630. None of these is inscribed although they carry makers' marks. An electro-plated flagon of 1854 was purchased by the vicar for five guineas in 1856. The organ, installed in 1976, is said to have come from a nonconformist chapel and to have been built in c1830 by G.M. Holdich. The eagle lectern in the south aisle was placed in the church in 1909 as a tribute to the incumbency of the Rev. Robert Eustace, vicar from 1850 to 1905.
Almost every ancient church has a range, most of which cannot be satisfactorily explained, of markings and graffiti, ostensibly symbolic figuring, idle scratchings and numerous initials and dates. Great Sampford has a generous quota of such. Of genuine interest is a 3-men’s (or 9-men's) Morris cut into the second stall on the north side of the chancel inside the altar rail. These are gaming boards of some antiquity, the play having affinities with ludo and allegedly used to relieve the boredom of long sermons or tedious ritual. On the opposite side one of the sedilia has a set of unexplained grooves, possibly another game.
This guide has so far been concerned mostly with events, architecture and objects of beauty or interest. More important are the people, clergy, church officers and villagers who have worked for and worshipped in the church. They all emerge from the obscurity of the past through the church records and the village archives as personalities or in human situations which help us to share their hopes, commitment or despair. The clergy, ever since Thomas de Sampford, dean in 1163, have served the church and ministered to the people throughout the ages and struggled with the traumas of turbulent and anxious times. The churchwardens, like Richard Petytt and John Mylner in the l6c and their successors, have striven to preserve the church from decay and neglect and carried out their onerous and multifarious duties with devotion if not always with alacrity. There have been too the countless parishioners whose recurring family names fill the registers recording the joy of marriage and birth and the sadness of illness and death. They are all part of the story and the reality of the church and its life in the village. They too were familiar with the building we admire. They sat in the pews and looked upon the beauty that is now our heritage. Their responsibility has passed to successive generations, and now to us. We hope that they would have approved of this little booklet and that it will play its part in safeguarding the continuity of that inheritance.
St Andrew, Westhall, Suffolk
I'm currently preparing a new page for Westhall at suffolkchurches.co.uk - I'm parking the old one here so it doesn't get lost forever.
Listen: come with me. We’ll set off from the Queen’s Head at Blyford, a fine and welcoming pub across the road from that village’s little church. Perhaps we’ll have just had lunch, and we’ll be sitting outside with a couple of pints of Adnams. You’d like to stay there in the sunshine for the rest of the afternoon, but I’m going to take you somewhere special, so stir yourself. You are probably thinking it is Holy Trinity at Blythburgh, Suffolk’s finest church a couple of miles away on the main A12. But it isn’t.
Nor is it St Andrew at Wenhaston, a mile away across the bridge, and home of the Doom, one of Suffolk’s greatest medieval art treasures. You’ve already seen that.
No. Within a few miles of the pub sign (notice that it features St Etheldreda, whose father King Anna was killed in battle on the Blyth marshes) there is a third of Suffolk’s finest churches. It is the least known of the three, partly because it is so carefully hidden, so secreted away, and partly because Simon Jenkins, inconceivably, unforgivably, missed it out of his book England’s Thousand Best Churches.This may yet have serious consequences, as we shall see.
Blyford is on the main road between Halesworth and Dunwich, but we are going to take a narrow lane that you might almost miss if you weren’t with me. It leads northwards, and is quickly enveloped by oak-buttressed hedgerows, beyond which thin fields spread. Pheasants scuttle across the road in front of us; a hare watches warily for a moment before kicking sulkily back into the ditch (we are on foot perhaps, or bicycle). Occasional lanes thread off towards the woods and the sea.
After a couple of miles, we reach the obscenity of a main road, and cross it quickly, leaving it behind us. Now, the lane narrows severely, the banks steepening, trees arching above us. They guard the silence, until our tunnel doglegs suddenly, and an obscure stream appears beyond the hedgerow. Once, on a late winter afternoon, my dream was disturbed here by a startled heron rising up, its bony legs clacking dryly as it took flight over my head. I felt the rush of its wings.
This road was not designed for cars. Instead, it traces the ancient field pattern, cutting across the ends of strips and then along the sides, connecting long-vanished settlements. The lane splits (we take the right fork) and splits again (the left) and suddenly we are descending steeply into a secret glade shrouded in ancient tree canopies. The lane curves, narrows and opens – and here we are. Still, you might not notice it, because the church is still camouflaged by the trees, and the absurdity of the neighbouring bungalow with its kitschy garden may distract you; but to your right, in a silent velvet graveyard sits St Andrew, Westhall. It has been described in one book as Suffolk’s best kept secret.
I hope that I can convey to you something of why this place is so special. Firstly, notice the unusual layout of the building as you walk around it. That fine late 13th century tower, not too high despite its post-Reformation bell-stage, organic and at one with the trees; the breathtaking little Norman church that spreads to the east of it. And then, to the north, a large 13th century nave, thatched and rustic. It was designed for this graveyard, for this glade. Neither has changed much. Beyond it, the grand 14th century chancel, rudely filling almost the entire east end of the graveyard. Perhaps as we step around to the north side the same thing will happen as happened to me one muggy Saturday afternoon in July 2003 – a tawny owl sat watching me on a headstone, and then threw itself furiously into the air and away.
Your first thought may be that here we have two churches joined together – and this is almost exactly right. You can see the same thing on a similar timescale at Ufford, although the development there is rather more subtle than it is here.
Here at Westhall, there was a Norman church – an early one. Several hundred years later a tower was built to the west of it, and then the vast new nave to the north. A hundred years later came the chancel. Perhaps the east end of the Norman church was rebuilt at this time. Mortlock thinks that there was once a Norman chancel, and this may be so. The old church became a south aisle, the particular preserve perhaps of the Bohun family. They married into the famous Coke family, who we have already met at nearby Bramfield.
And so, we step inside. We may do so through the fine north porch; it is a wide, open one, clearly intended for the carrying out of parish business. It was probably the last substantial part of the church to be built, on the eve of the Reformation. The door appears contemporary. Or, I might send you round to step in through the Norman doorway on the south side, into the body of the original church.
You expect dust and decay, perhaps, in such a remote place. But this is a well-kept church, lovingly maintained and well-used. Although there are a couple of old benches scattered about, most of the seating is early 19th century, with that delightful cinema curve to the western row which was fashionable immediately before the Oxford Movement and the Camden Society sent out their great resacramentalising waves, and English churches were never the same again.
If you step in from the south, then you are immediately confronted with something so stunning, so utterly wonderful, that we are going to pretend you cannot believe your eyes, and you pass it by. Instead, draw back the curtain, and step into the space beneath the tower. Walk to the western wall, and turn back.
You are confronted with the main entrance of a grand post-conquest church, probably about 1100. Surviving faces in the unfinished ranges look like something out of Wallace and Grommit. Above, an arcade of windows, the central one open. Almost a thousand years ago, it would have thrown summer evening light on the altar.
As you step back into the aisle, it is now easy to see it as the nave it once was. The northern wall has now gone, replaced by a low arcade, and you step through into the wideness of the modern (it is only 600 years old!) nave.
Here, then, let us at last allow ourselves an exploration of Suffolk’s other great medieval art survival. This is Westhall’s famous font, one of the seven sacrament series, but more haunting than all the others because it still retains almost all its original colour.
The Mass panel is the most familiar, because it is the cover of Eamonn Duffy’s majestic The Stripping of the Altars. The other panels, anti-clockwise from this, are Last Rites, Reconciliation, Matrimony, Confirmation, Baptism, Ordination, and the odd panel out, the Baptism of Christ.
The font asks more questions than it answers. How did it survive? Suffolk has 13 Seven Sacrament fonts in various states of repair. Those nearby at Blythburgh, Wenhaston and Southwold are clearly from the same group as this one, but have been completely effaced. Other good ones survive nearby at Weston and Great Glemham, at Monk Soham, at neighbours Woodbridge and Melton, neighbours Cratfield and Laxfield, at Denston in the south west and at Badingham. We don’t know how many others there might have been; probably not many, for most East Anglian churches have a surviving medieval font of another design. The surviving panels were probably plastered over during the long puritan night (the damage to the figures is probably a result of making the faces flush rather than any attempt at iconoclasm) but they were also all probably once coloured. So why has only this one survived in that state?
The other feature of the font that is quite, quite extraordinary is the application of gessowork for the tabernacled figures between the faces. This is plaster of Paris which is moulded on and allowed to dry – it can then be carved. It is sometimes used on wood to achieve fine details, but rarely on stone. Was it once found widely elsewhere? How has it survived here?
If it was just for the font, then St Andrew would still be an essential destination for anyone interested in medieval churches. But there are several other features that, in any other church, would be considered equally essential.
There is the screen. It is a bit of a curiosity. Firstly, the two painted ranges are clearly the work of different artists. On the south side are female Saints, very similar in style to those on the screen at Ufford. The artists helpfully labelled them, and they are St Etheldreda (the panel bearing her left half has been lost) St Sitha, St Agnes, St Bridget, St Catherine, St Dorothy, St Margaret of Aleppo and finally one of the most essential Saints in the medieval economy of grace, St Apollonia - she it was who could be asked to intercede against toothache. With the possible exception of St Margaret, modern Anglicans would think of all of these as peculiarly Catholic Saints, a reminder that St Andrew was built, after all, as a Catholic church.
The depictions on the northern part of the screen are much simpler (Pevsner thought them crude) and are probably painted by a local artist. Note the dedicatory inscription along the top on this side; it is barely legible, but the names Margarete and Tome Felton and Richard Lore and Margaret Alen are still discernible. I think the figures on this screen are equally fascinating, if not more so. They are all easily recognisable, and are fondly rendered. With one remarkable exception, they are familiar to us from many popular images.
The first is Saint James in his pilgrim's garb, as if about to set out for Santiago de Compostella. The power of such an image to medieval people in a backwater like north-east Suffolk should not be underestimated. Next comes St Leonard, associated with the Christian duty of visiting prisoners - perhaps this had a local resonance. Thirdly, there is a triumphant St Michael, one of the major Saints of the late medieval panoply, and then St Clement, the patron Saint of seafarers. This is interesting, because although Westhall is a good six miles from the sea, it is much closer to the Blyth river, which was probably much wider and faster in medieval times. It seems strange to think of Westhall as having a relationship with the sea, but it probably did.
Next comes the remarkable exception. The next three panels represent between them the Transfiguration; Christ on a mountain top between the two figures of Moses and Elijah. It is the only surviving medieval screen representation of the Transfiguration in England. Eamonn Duffy, in The Stripping of the Altars, argues that here at Westhall is priceless evidence of the emergence of a new cult on the eve of the Reformation, which would snuff it out. Another representation survived in a wall painting at Hawkedon, but has faded away during the last half century.
The last panel is St Anthony of Egypt, recognisable from the dear little pig at his feet. I wonder if it was painted from the life.
There is a fascinating wall painting against the north wall. It shows St Christopher, as you might expect. St Christopher was a special devotion in the hearts of medieval churchgoers, and usually sits opposite the main entrance so that they could look in at the start of the day and receive his blessing. As a surviving inscription at Creeting St Peter reminds us, anyone who looks on the image in the morning would be spared a sudden death that day. It is the other figures in the illustration that are remarkable, though, for one of them is clearly Moses, wearing his ‘horns of light’ (an early medieval mistranslation of ‘halo’).
There are a couple of other wall-paintings, including a beautiful flower-surrounded consecration cross beside the south door, and a painted image niche alcove in the eastern splay of a window in the south wall. This is odd; it should have a figure in it, but none appears to have been painted there. Perhaps it was intended to have a statue placed in front of it, but the window sill is very steep, and it is hard to see how a statue could have been positioned there. DD surmised that there had once been a stand, the base of which was canted in some manner, and that the sill had once been less steep (the base of the painting seems to suggest this). Whatever, it is very odd.
Between the painted niche and consecration cross there are surviving traces of a large painting; it seems to consist of the leafy surrounds of seven large roundels. Mortlock wondered if it might have been a sequence of the Seven Works of Mercy as at Trotton in Sussex, but there is insufficient remaining to tell.
Nicholas Bohun's tomb, in very poor repair, sits in the south-east corner; an associated brass gives you rather more information than you might think you need. A George III royal arms hangs above.
If you haven't lost your appetite for the extraordinary, come back up into the apparently completely Victorianised chancel. Chalice brasses are incredibly rare, because of their Catholic imagery. Westhall had two of them, although unfortunately only the matrices survive. Then, look up; on one of the roof beams is an image of the Holy Trinity, with God the Father holding the Crucified Christ between his knees. There is probably a dove as well, although that is not visible from the ground. Indeed, the whole thing is too small, as if the artist hadn't really thought about the scale needed for it to be seen from the chancel floor.
So there we are, I've let you in on Suffolk's best-kept secret. But I said earlier that I was afraid Simon Jenkins’s omission of this church might have serious consequences. Here is why: there is an ongoing programme of essential repairs, and the church has had to raise tens of thousands of pounds at fairly short notice. The parish has less than a hundred people living in it, and the congregation is barely in double figures. The church is clearly a national treasure, and its continued survival is essential; but it is difficult to convince people of this, because it has been missed out of what is increasingly being treated as a heritage wish-list. It was bad enough that Pevsner’s books were used as arbiters of what should survive when redundancies loomed in the 1970s; it would be appalling if the Jenkins book was used in the same way now.
"Multiply upon him Thy + blessing and Thy grace, so that Thy gift he may be fitted for always obtaining Thy mercy, and by Thy grace may be faithful"
Visit this location at Catholic Archdiocese of Lepanto & Mater Dolorosa Church in Second Life
A Service of Consecration of Bishops held on November 5, 2022, at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo by Miya Kim (Cal-Pac) for the WJ Conference.
A Service of Consecration of Bishops held on November 5, 2022, at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo by Miya Kim (Cal-Pac) for the WJ Conference.
A Service of Consecration of Bishops held on November 5, 2022, at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo by Patrick Scriven (PNW) for the WJ Conference.
A Service of Consecration of Bishops held on November 5, 2022, at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo by Patrick Scriven (PNW) for the WJ Conference.
A Service of Consecration of Bishops held on November 5, 2022, at Christ United Methodist Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Photo by Patrick Scriven (PNW) for the WJ Conference.
The Upper Basilica was completed in 1867 and is the larger of a series of religious buildings that were constructed shortly after the sightings of the Virgin Mary in Lourdes.
This Saturday, 8 December 2007, begins the 150th anniversary year of the Lourdes apparitions.
Those familiar with the story of Lourdes will recognise these scenes which are found in the Upper Basilica in Lourdes.