Nunburnholme

Travelling west I passed through a number of picture-perfect Wolds villages before arriving at the church on the outskirts of Nunburnholme. I wasn’t sure what to expect from this neat little church that is thought to have its origins in the dark ages.

Walking into the church I was met by this bizarre-looking tower arch framing a wonderful Anglo-saxon cross shaft…oh yes!

The church has elements from the 12th, 13th and 14th centuries. It was restored in 1872, the chancel arch is mainly made of chalk and had suffered from movement and decay, apparently quite a number of the carvings were ‘improved’ during the restoration. The two faces on the capital pictured above show the original and restored versions side by side. I’m not sure what went on when restoring the tower arch..the faces!

The Cross shaft is thought to date to the mid 9th century and was discovered during the 1872 renovations.

Description

East side – a helmeted warrior seated on a stool with a sword in his left hand. Below the warrior is thought to depict a crucifixion scene or Odin with his two ravens.

North Side – a celtic priest with a book satchel, below the priest is another, now headless, priest who is thought to be saying mass. Below the priest are 2 small figures who may be Sigurd and the animal headed Regin eating rings taken from the dragon Fafnir.

West Side – a pair of birds facing each other beneath which is a depiction of the virgin and child. In the bottom section (no photograph) there is a headless seated figure underneath which is a centaur with possibly a head slung over its right shoulder.

South Side – two spiral ornaments and a pair of hands holding an arch beneath which is a beast and then a draped figure of a saint. The bottom section depicts 2 intertwined beasts.

W. G. Collingwood

Walking around the outside of the church, the blocked doorway may be Anglo-Saxon or Saxo-Norman. The window came from the old Norman tower, the arch and decoration above the window was added during the restoration.

I left the church and set off to continue my journey leaving the lovely church and the chalk hills behind me. This will be my last post from the Wolds for a while but I’m sure I’ll be returning to this wonderful part of the country fairly soon.

Sources

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. YAS Occasional Paper No.9 2012

Anglian and Anglo-Danish Sculpture in the East Riding. W.G. Collingwood. Yorkshire Archaeological Journal. YAS. Vol. 21. 1911

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave 1997

Yorkshire – A gazetteer of Anglo-Saxon & Viking Sites. Guy Points. 2007

Postscript

From my friend Pat O’Halloran ‘there’s an exhibitionist figure on the arch often referred to as a sheela na gig. ‘

Nice Porch

Kilham was once the premier market town on the Wolds. In the late 1700s a canal was cut linking Driffield to the Humber Estuary and the port of Hull. This brought about the decline of Kilham and the rise of Driffield as the primary market town of the district. The large church at Kilham reflects the town’s past wealth and status.

The porch is a stunner, every surface is carved. Rita Wood has this to say ‘When the surface was coloured and lit by sunlight from above: the effect would have been even stronger then now (and rather like a Bridget Riley painting).‘

The church is very nice but, apart from the porch, it failed to grip me in the way others on my tour have.

I enjoyed this 19th century bull ring located in the old market place below the church.

At Thwing

I arrived at Thwing, the lovely church is tucked-away at the back of the village but before I say anything about the church I have to mention the significance of Thwing in British prehistory.

A mile or so NNW of the village is Paddock Hill. The site was identified as a cropmark and was excavated by Yorkshire Archaeologist Terry Manby between 1973 & 1987. What Manby discovered was a site that had been utilised since the Mesolithic period. The site was then used throughout the Neolithic period. In the late Neolithic a henge monument with a chalk outer bank approximately 60m in diameter was constructed.

The site was remodelled during the Bronze age, the ditch was re-cut and a timber circle approximately 17m in diameter was erected. In the later Bronze age the site was remodelled once again to create a circular enclosure 115m in diameter with a substantial ditch and rampart.

The site then fell out of use for a millenium until a Romano-British square enclosure with hut circles was built on the site. The ring earthwork was re-occupied from about 700 AD onwards and an area east of the centre used as a cemetery. A palisaded enclosure was constructed with timber buildings.

There is also a Teesside connection to Thwing. After the Domesday survey the land was granted to Robert de Brus.

Back to the church

This plaque dating to 1686 sits over the north entrance to the church

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Pevsner tells us that this drum shaped font with a regular lozenge pattern was found at Sewerby. He also thinks that the pattern was carved some time later, Rita Wood doesn’t explicitly state this but implies it.

There is a lovely chancel arch and the usual capitals, I’d probably make more of these if they were on a more northerly church but they seem to be fairly standard on the Wolds churches so I won’t bore you with details.

A lovely Squint or Hagioscope. This allowed members of the congregation who were unable to see the altar, the medieval version of the cheap seats, to watch the priest lift the eucharist.

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I took a walk around the outside of the church and was confronted by this beautiful tympanum set over the south doorway, it represents the Agnus Dei, the lamb of god, and it’s a stunner. The elongated lamb appears more fox-like than anything, I guess the sculptor wanted to fill the whole space, I love it.

There are other bits and bobs dotted about the walls but that tympanum has me smiling.

The site has one more surprise for me as I leave, a lovely Shap Granite erratic boulder at the side of the lane.

Sources

Heritage Gateway

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave 1997

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. YAS Occasional Paper No.9 2012

On the road to Thwing on the Thong

I decided that it was time to make a break from John Piper, his photographs had set me on my path but there are many more churches with ancient carvings in Yorkshire that he hadn’t photographed. So I chose to head to Thwing.

I chose Thwing for two reasons, there is a ancient church there and I really like the name. Eilert Ekwall, the godfather of English place name etymology, has this to say about the origins of the name.

Thwing Apparently OScand pvengr ‘a shoe lace’, a word related to OE pwang. Thwing is at a long ridge, which may have been called ‘the Thong’.

The Concise Dictionary of English Place-Names.

So, on a beautiful sunny day I set off for Thwing. I think I’ve mentioned before that I use the Google maps app to navigate when driving. It is perfect for random wanderings as it seems to be set to ignore straightforward A-B routes in favour of minor routes which sometimes seem like little more than farm tracks. The app seems to have a particular affinity for B roads especially if they are called Mill Lane, I saw a lot of Mill Lanes over the course of my journey.

On my way to Thwing I was approaching Weaverthorpe, I could see a church on a hill overlooking the village. The church wasn’t on my list but there was something familiar about it so I stopped to have a look around.

The church is one of a group of Wolds churches that were rebuilt or restored in the 19th century by Sir Tatton Sykes. His aim was to create centres of ‘christian art and worship’ and to further this he employed the best architects and craftsmen of the day. There are 17 Tatton Sykes churches in East Yorkshire.

There is a lovely sundial set into the tympanum above the entrance. It announces that the church was built by Herbert of Winchester, father of William of York. This dates the church to around 1122. Herbert of Winchester was Herbert Fitzherbert, the king’s chamberlain, his son William was Saint William of York.

Inside the church is this beautiful drum font. Later in the day I was to see a very similar font at Rudston, Rita Wood comments that the pattern is laid out with the ‘usual eccentricity’.

The church and its setting are beautiful. Wandering around the outside of the church I was quite taken by these lovely doors and their fittings, the plain tympanum also has a wonderful simplicity.

The reason why the church seemed so familiar – a John Pipe photograph.

Sources

The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names. Eilert Ekwall. 1974

Leaflet – Sykes Churches Trail. East Yorkshire Historic Churches Trust

Drawing of the Sundial http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/gatty/sundials/49.html

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. YAS Occasional Paper No.9 2012

John Piper made me do it – Romanesque East Yorkshire Pt.1

I’ve been thinking quite a lot about Romanesque stone carvings recently so decided to take a trip into East Yorkshire to seek out a couple of sites. My previous brief explorations of Romanesque East Yorkshire were inspired by a series of images taken by John Piper so once again I allowed Piper to be my guide. Scrolling through the Tate’s collection of his photographs I found an image of a font in the church at Langtoft. A combination of the image, and the Scandinavian sounding name of the village, gave me a destination.

A diversion into Prehistory

Driving into the Wolds I passed through the village of Duggleby. I stopped briefly to say hello to the Great Barrow of Duggleby Howe, formerly known as Odin’s Howe.
Dating from the Neolithic, the Great Barrow sits at the centre of a concentric ditched enclosure with an external diameter of 370m making it one of the largest Neolithic monuments in Britain. The enclosure, discovered in 1979, is only visible as a cropmark.

Back to the Romanesque

Moving on to Langtoft I arrived at the lovely church located on the outskirts of the village and was greeted by one of my favourite signs ‘Church Open’.

The church is very nice, Nikolaus Pevsner tells us that the tower is early C13 and that the church was thoroughly restored in 1900-3

To be honest I wasn’t here to admire the church, I was here to see this gem, a drum shaped baptismal font.

The font came from the nearby deserted Medieval village of Cottam. All that remains of Cottam are a series of cropmarks and a ruined brick-built church.

Pevsner describes the carvings on the font as primeval, I like that. Rita Wood describes this panel as a complex threefold tree (probably a Tree of Life, the heavenly reward)…In this tree, two parts rooted in heaven, entwined with one standing on earth. The tree of life or world tree is an archetype which occurs in almost all major belief systems. It generally represents a link between different realms, a cosmic axis.

This scene depicts the fall of man, Eve is tempting Adam with forbidden fruit while the serpent looks on.

This carving represents the crucifixion of Saint Andrew on his X-shaped cross.

Rita Wood tells us that this is a carving of a combination of a bird and a snake. I think it could just as easily be a Wyvern. The combination of a rooster and a snake is known as a Cockatrice. The Cockatrice is mentioned in the bible, it is said to have the ability to kill with just one look, the only animal immune to its glare is a weasel.

This carving depicts the martyrdom of Saint Lawrence. Lawrence was martyred by placing him upon a large iron grid set over hot coals. Whilst undergoing this horrible procedure Lawrence is reputed to have said to his torturer, “you can turn me over now, this side is done”. For this the catholic church made him the patron saint of cooks and comedians.

The final carving depicts St. Margaret of Antioch bursting out of the gut of a dragon. Margaret survived being swallowed by the beast because she was wearing a crucifix. The cross irritated the beast’s gut causing it to split and expel the saint. Margaret was finally killed by beheading.

I took a walk around the outside of the church. During the restoration of the church, most of the original stonework was redressed I was however able to find a few bits of graffiti including one possible Marian mark. The overlapping Vs of the mark are thought to represent the Virgin Mary.

Sources

John Piper’s photographs of Yorkshire

Duggleby Howe aerial view via Google Earth

Map Image

The Archaeology of Yorkshire. An assessment at the beginning of the 21st century. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.3. 2003

The Buildings of England. Yorkshire: York & the East Riding. Nikolaus Pevsner & David Neave. 1997

Romanesque Yorkshire. Rita Wood. Yorkshire Archaeological Society Occasional Paper No.9. 2012

Willy Howe

Willy Howe is a large, tree-covered,  Neolithic round barrow in East Yorkshire. Local folklore tells the tale of a farmer returning home late one night  and hearing music coming from the Howe. On investigation he found a door which neither he or anyone else had seen before.  He opened the door and looked inside, he saw a table groaning with food and a group of hobs making merry.  The hobs spotted him and invited him in and offered him a drink. He took the drink and then rudely dashed off with the cup the drink was served in. The hobs gave chase but as soon as he crossed the first stream, the Gypsey Race, they gave up and returned to their feast.  On arriving home he saw that the cup was a fabulous gold vessel. He presented the cup to King Henry I who later passed it on to his brother-in-law King David of Scotland

The Rudston Monolith

..an old man asked me if I’d ever been to the Rudston Monolith? ‘Not yet’ I replied, at which he went silent. The old man mysteriously told me that there was much more to be found than could be seen there, and that it all would be revealed should I just ‘check out the Gypsey Race’.

Julian Cope. The Modern Antiquarian. 1998ce