The treasures of Meon Valley churches

I have only recently discovered the website of Hampshire History, which offers all sorts of fascinating snippets about the history and historical artefacts of our lovely county. It was where I learned about the Tournai font in the church of East Meon, which I wrote about in my last History Girls post. But finding that led me on to other discoveries about the treasures of the churches of the Meon Valley. Many of the church buildings are of course treasures in themselves, as I have already shown, but there are also some especially interesting artefacts, to some extent hidden within the churches, that I thought were worth sharing.

If you are interested in the treasures of other Hampshire churches, do have a look at http://www.hampshire-history.com/category/architecture-artefacts/churches/church-treasures/.

Today I am going to look at a few of the items in the churches of Soberton, Corhampton, Exton, Warnford and East Meon.

[All photographs are © David Hughes]

Soberton

St. Peter’s church in Soberton is originally Norman but was extended and rebuilt during the 13th century, then again in the 15th and 16th, with further additions in the 19th century. A small tower of an earlier date was replaced in 1525 by a larger structure and it is here that there is a carving – high up, so hard to see – that allegedly gave rise to a legend that the tower was built by servants!

The carving has a skull and two heads, together with a key and what might be a milking pail, though some think it is a purse. According to the mediaeval legend, the tower was built by a butler and a dairymaid, represented by the carvings of the two heads, and this idea is borne out by a plaque in the tower, which says:

This Tower Originally Built By Servants Was Restored By Servants 1881

Whatever the truth of the legend – and it does sound unlikely! – the Victorians evidently believed in it sufficiently to be able to persuade domestic servants across Hampshire to raise £70 to have the tower restored. How very bizarre!

St. Peter’s does also have another memorial with a potentially intriguing story behind it. In the 13th Lady (or Curle, named in honour of Walter Curle, Bishop of Winchester 1632-1647) Chapel, there are two fragments of a headstone, each with the outline of a tulip flower carved into the corner. 

The dedication is to a man called Robart, with a date of 1712 and, although nothing is known about him, there has been speculation that he might have been caught up in the “tulip mania” of the mid 17th century. At that time, tulip bulbs were much sought after and they were bought and sold like any other valuable commodity, especially in the Netherlands. 

Prices eventually reached silly heights before the market collapsed.

  

     

Corhampton

In Corhampton’s wonderful Saxon church (for more about it, see my History Girls post for October) is a fabulous and rare Saxon sundial, or rather tide dial.

The word ‘tide’ was used to denote a time period and survives today in terms such as ‘eventide’ or ‘yuletide’. In Saxon times, the day was divided into eight tides, each about three hours long. The Corhampton dial is set into the wall immediately to the right of the church’s porch. The dial is divided into the eight tides, rather than the usual twelve hours. In the middle of the dial is a hole where the gnomon would have been positioned. The gnomon is the piece that projects the sun’s shadow onto the dial and would probably have been made from metal. The dial seems to pre-date the building and may even date back to the 7th century, when Bishop Wilfrith was trying to convert the “heathens” in the Meon Valley. It could have been used right up until the Norman conquest, when the use of such dials seemed to fall away.

Exton

The village of Exton forms, with Meonstoke and Corhampton, a group of three small communities that straddle the River Meon a few miles south of the river’s source. In Exton’s 13th century church of St. Peter and St. Paul there is a memorial plaque to John Young, who was Dean of Winchester from 1616 to 1645. Why does he have a memorial here? A Scot, born in 1585, he lived at a time of great political upheaval and terror in the country during the English Civil War. He was apparently a great diplomat, and was dean for thirty years until he was removed by Cromwell and retired to his estates near Exton, where he died in 1654 and was buried in Exton’s church.

What is rather fascinating is that John wrote the epitaph for his memorial ten years before his death, and he included in it a cryptic message.

Towards the bottom of the plaque is the following line, with certain letters capitalised:

VenI VenI MI IesV IVDeX VenI CIto

The Latin here is: Veni, veni mi, Iesu, Iudex, veni cito, which translates as: Come, come my Jesu, Judge, come quickly.

But this line is a chronogram, which is derived from the Greek χρονος meaning “time” and γραμμα meaning “letter”, and is an inscription in which a date is hidden. The idea is that, taking the highlighted capital letters, you interpret them as Roman numerals to work out the encrypted date. So, V is 5, C is 100, M is 1000 and so on. From what I have read, the letters don’t have to be in the correct order! As I understand it, the date here is supposed to be when John wrote his epitaph. So if he died in 1654, in theory, the hidden date should be 1644. However, try as I might, I have so far failed to make the Roman letters spell out 1644! Please, if anyone else can solve the puzzle, do let me know…

There is another, almost charming, memorial in Exton’s church: a headstone with an inscription to Richard Pratt of Preshaw (a few miles from Exton), who died in 1780. We must deduce that Richard was a bookish sort of chap, for the carving on his headstone shows a man with an elegant bookcase behind him, but a figure who we must presume is Death is summoning him away from his reading.

Warnford

There is yet another interesting headstone, in the church of Our Lady in Warnford, a mile and a half north of Exton, along the River Meon, a church that is set, alone and alongside the ruins of the old manor house, in the middle of a mediaeval park. (I referred to the reason for this is my History Girls blog for June.) This headstone is a great deal older than Richard Pratt’s: it is 13th century and has no inscription. But the simple cross on the stone apparently marks out the grave as that of a crusader.

East Meon

I introduced the wonderful All Saints Church, in East Meon, in my last History Girls post, but promised to say a little more about the astonishing Tournai font. But, first, an interesting, if not mediaeval, story about a small stone plaque that sits on the church’s east wall. It was originally on the floor of the church and, when it was removed, underneath were found the remains of four men were found. All were buried standing up…

The men were apparently parliamentary soldiers, billeted in East Meon in 1644 before fighting in the battle of Cheriton.  It is said, but can hardly be verified, that they were the ones who stole the lead from the Tournai font to make shot for their weapons. (The existing lead lining is a later replacement.)

On the plaque are simply the words ‘Amens Plenty’. I wonder why?

And so to the Tournai font.

The font was carved in the 12th century by the sculptors of Tournai from the hard blue-black limestone from the banks of the River Scheldt in what is present-day Belgium. It arrived in East Meon in around 1150, just as the original church was being completed, and was probably a gift from the then bishop of Winchester, Henry of Blois, who was a grandson of William the Conqueror. Henry was King Stephen’s brother, the Chancellor of England and the richest and most powerful man in the country after the king.

Two sides of the font have images of birds and dragons, floating above a row of pillars.

The other two sides show the story of Adam and Eve.

As I understand it, this side shows, from the right, God creating Adam, and then Eve from Adam’s rib. Then Eve is tempted by the snake, which looks more like a dragon with its fangs! And finally Eve tempts Adam with the apple.

On this side, Adam and Eve are being expelled from the Garden of Eden. Is the angel with the sword barring the miscreants’ way back into Paradise? On the left, an angel is teaching Adam to dig and Eve is busy spinning (what a giant distaff she has!).

There are in fact four Tournai fonts in Hampshire, the other three being in Winchester Cathedral, St Peter’s church in St. Mary Bourne (near Andover) and St. Michael’s church in Southampton, with only another three in the whole of the rest of the country, so Hampshire is privileged to have so many!

The Heart of Westminster Abbey? Poets' Corner and Writing Women by Fay Bound Alberti

Westminster Abbey 

In October I had the opportunity to visit Poets' Corner in Westminster Abbey, before the doors opened and the tourists poured in. I was recording with the Rev. Giles Fraser, who was presenting a series of programmes on Radio 4 about the heart. Giles had recently undergone major heart surgery, and it had got him thinking about all aspects of the heart in history and culture. Other guests included Rowan Williams and Susie Orbach, and I had the pleasure of talking about the heart in science and medicine and history. You can listen to the programme here.

It was extraordinary to be in the Abbey when it was virtually empty, save for the occasional hum of a vacuum cleaner. We visited Poets' Corner, the name traditionally given to the South Transept of Westminster Abbey because of the high number of poets, playwrights and writers buried and commemorated there. The first poet to be interred in Poets' Corner was Geoffrey Chaucer, and the site has become famous for the number of romantic poets, interred or commemorated there.

In my interview, I talked about the meanings of the heart as a romantic organ, still connected to authenticity, truth and emotion, even though we now place emotions in the mind. And the ways in which we still regard ourselves as driven by heartfelt feelings, even though the tyranny of neuroscience insists the brain is first. I wrote a book about the 'two hearts' that exist, the poetic and the medical, and you can find out about that here.

Writing women are lacking at Poets' Corner - a problem I have written about here. The photos below (permitted by a kind security guard), show the commemoration of Percy Bysshe Shelley, and William Shakespeare, amongst a wall of marble white men. We stopped for a time at the plaque to Shelley, because his mythology, as a radical, a poet and a Romantic, is so bound up in his heart.

Adele Geras and Anna Mazzola have both written in this blog about Shelley - whose heart was snatched from the funeral pyre and kept, it is said, by his wife in a silken cloth for many years before being buried with their son after Mary Shelley's death. There is no memorial to Mary Shelley, the daughter of Mary Wollstonecraft, though she was a successful writer in her own right, best known for her novel, Frankenstein.

Shelley's plaque, visible top right 

Of the few women who did make the cut, Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806 - 1851) is an interesting case because she, like many Romantic and Victorian writers, suffered with heart complaints, in addition to believing that the heart was the centre of emotions, the self and even the soul.

Born in Durham, Elizabeth was a successful poet, having written since the age of six years old. Like many early feminists, she was a social reformer and campaigner against the slave trade, and an avid admirer of Mary Wollstonecraft.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's Poems (1844) brought the poet great success, and attracted the attention of the poet Robert Browning, with whom she eloped, much to her family's displeasure, despite the fact that she was then 40 years old, Elizabeth suffered from numerous ailments, including spinal problems, lung problems and heart trouble.

The nineteenth century was a time when scientific medicine identified many different kinds of heart defect, and Barrett Browning was not alone in suffering from heart complaints. She discussed her cardiac trouble with her friends, including the feminist writer and early sociologist Harriet Martineau, who also believed that she suffered from a heart defect. I have suggested in another article that it was better to be diagnosed with a cardiac complaint than with the gynaecological condition that seems to have caused Martineau's debilitating symptoms.

Besides the shame Martineau felt at her 'women's troubles' being openly discussed, there was something rather prestigious in her day about having a weak heart: it was the mark of a sensitive and creative soul in an age where the heart was still seen as the emotion centre; only with the birth of Cardiology in the early twentieth century was heart disease principally associated with poor living, fatty food and too much stress. Unfortunately, Martineau is not memorialised anywhere in the country, let alone at Poets' Corner, despite her remarkable contemporary influence.

And what of Elizabeth Barrett Browning? Despite periods of intense ill health, Elizabeth lived happily with Robert in Italy, though she was disinherited by her family. They had one son, called Pen. Elizabeth died in 1861, apparently in her husband's arms. Her family refused to allow her remains to be buried with Robert, when he died in 1889 and was interred in Westminster Abbey. Her name, however, is inscribed on the base of her husband's headstone.

I will leave you with Barrett Browning's poem, 'My heart and I', which seems remarkably apposite, given the subject of the heart, and because she had suffered for so many years before her death.

ENOUGH! we're tired, my heart and I.
We sit beside the headstone thus,
And wish that name were carved for us.
The moss reprints more tenderly
The hard types of the mason's knife,
As heaven's sweet life renews earth's life
With which we're tired, my heart and I.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning's inscription at the foot of her husband's stone. 

I won't be posting until the new year now, so I wish you all much love and happiness and heartfelt feelings over the festive period. You can visit my website and find out more about my writing and research here.

In a Country Churchyard - by Katherine Langrish

The curfew tolls the knell of parting day,

         The lowing herd winds slowly o'er the lea,

The ploughman homeward plods his weary way,

         And leaves the world to darkness and to me.

Now fades the glimm'ring landscape on the sight,

         And all the air a solemn stillness holds,

Save where the beetle wheels his droning flight,

         And drowsy tinklings lull the distant folds;

Save that from yonder ivy-mantled tow'r

         The moping owl does to the moon complain

Of such, as wand'ring near her secret bow'r,

         Molest her ancient solitary reign.

Gray's 'Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard'


History is all around us.  The nearest place to find a date, outside a book, is probably in a church or a churchyard.  On a recent walk through our village churchyard, I came across the memorial stone of one Joseph Lyford, pictured above.  He 'departed this life' in 1809,  and his stone is elegantly and gracefully carved with scrolls, flowers and cherubs. Perhaps he was a landowner: there is a hamlet called Lyford a mile or two over the fields.

The older part of the churchyard is all leaning headstones and ivied tombs. We certainly have plenty of owls, and Gray's 'moping' is a lovely word to describe the sound (if not the likely emotion) of any owl intent on hunting the mice and voles which undoubtedly live in the undergrowth.

Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade,

         Where heaves the turf in many a mould'ring heap,

Each in his narrow cell for ever laid,

         The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.

The breezy call of incense-breathing Morn,

         The swallow twitt'ring from the straw-built shed,

The cock's shrill clarion, or the echoing horn,

         No more shall rouse them from their lowly bed

Churchyards are supposed to be spooky places, but I like ours, especially on a sunny spring day with the crocuses and snowdrops blossoming on graves where they were planted years ago.

Gray's Elegy is set in the evening, of course, when thoughts would tend to melancholy.  I don't know if you've read it, or re-read it lately, but it's a long and beautiful poem.  Gray 'considers', as the modern poet Geoffrey Hill says, 'the outnumbering dead': and wonders not only at the way in which death levels all pomp and state, but also about the forgotten or unrecognised talents and abilities of those who lie beneath:

Perhaps in this neglected spot is laid

         Some heart once pregnant with celestial fire;

Hands, that the rod of empire might have sway'd,

         Or wak'd to ecstasy the living lyre.

But Knowledge to their eyes her ample page

         Rich with the spoils of time did ne'er unroll;

Chill Penury repress'd their noble rage,

         And froze the genial current of the soul.

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,

         The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear:

Full many a flow'r is born to blush unseen,

         And waste its sweetness on the desert air.

 

Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast

         The little tyrant of his fields withstood;

Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,

         Some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood.

'Some mute, inglorious Milton - some Cromwell guiltless of his country's blood'! Marvellous and poignant: for the truth is that gravestones - set up for no other purpose than to commemorate the dead - can preserve so little.  Even the ones which haven't yet weathered or crumbled into illegibility have little room for more than a name and a date.   Churchyards are places of lost information as much as gardens of remembrance.

And yet:

... ev'n these bones from insult to protect,

         Some frail memorial still erected nigh,

With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck'd,

         Implores the passing tribute of a sigh. 

Like every churchyard, ours has its share of 'shapeless sculpture': but let's leave that unchronicled.  Instead, here are two recent graves, less than a decade old.  Plain and unadorned, especially compared to the elaborate Victorian tombstones. I never knew this couple, so I hope their family won't mind the photo appearing here.  But a gravestone is a public statement as well as a family monument, and to my mind these are the most touching inscriptions in the churchyard. 

The first one reads: 

ALWAYS A GENTLE MAN                              

GEORGE OBERMAN

HUSBAND OF LAURIE

The second one reads:

LIFE WAS AN ADVENTURE

LAURIE OBERMAN, (NEE RIGUELLE)

WIFE OF GEORGE

They died within a few weeks of one another, aged ninety and ninety-one, and their stones celebrate a man's gentleness and a woman's courage. I can't think of a lovelier way to be remembered.

Two memorials

Piazza della Signoria, Florence. Photo credit: Saliko

I first set foot in this (normally much more crowded) square when I was twenty, on the month in Florence that has shaped so much of my adult life and sensibility. I wasn't much less innocent than Lucy Honeychurch but fortunately witnessed no stabbing.

However, a violent death is commemorated in the Piazza della Signoria and tourists walk over the spot where it happened every day; not all of them stop and read the words on the memorial.

"Here, where with his fellow friars Brother Domenico Buonvicini and Brother Silvestro Maruffi, on the 23rd May, 1498, because of an unjust judgment, was hanged and burned Brother Girolamo Savonarola, was placed this memorial after four hundred years."

Although he was hanged before being burned, Savonarola (and his fellow friars) were still alive when dropped into the flames. As well as the ropes that hanged them, the friars hands were bound; the flames burned through the rope round Savonarola's right wrist and his hand appeared to rise in blessing.*

The three died convicted of heresy, Savonarola having been excommunicated by the Pope the year before. But his teachings have not died out and he has even been considered for Beatification by the Roman Catholic Church.

This is an almost contemporary painting of what many consider the martyrdom of Savonarola and his fellow-friars in the Piazza della Signoria, where the circular plaque above now sits.


Less than sixty years later, three more martyrs were burned for heresy and a memorial placed hundreds of years later. It happened in Oxford, my nearest city, and the victims this time were Protestants, tortured and executed by "Bloody" Mary Tudor.

This humble cross of stones marks the spot in Broad Street near enough to where first Hugh Latimer and Nicholas Ridley and, five months later, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Canterbury, were burned for their faith in 1555 and 1556. It was not until the 19th century that the Gothic Spire of the Martyrs' Memorial in St. Giles was raised.

It was recorded in John Foxe's Book of Martyrs (2nd edition 1563) that Hugh Latimer said as he burned, "Play the man, Master Ridley; we shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never be put out." It sounds remarkably well-composed for someone dying in agony.

The burning of Latimer and Ridley from Foxe's Book of Martyrs

Oxford is full of memorials to the three martyrs for Anglicanism. The tower you can see in the top right corner of Foxe's engraving is that of St. Michael at the Northgate in Cornmarket, where the door of the cell that housed all three men before their trials and death is said to be displayed. I must go and see it. Likewise this stained glass window:

It is in Christchurch Cathedral and commemorates all three martyrs, even though it is known as the Cranmer Window. They didn't die together but they are remembered together, unlike Savonarola's fellow-victims, whose names are not as well-known as those of Latimer and Ridley.

I never go to Florence, where I shall next be in April, without visiting Savonarola's plaque. I disagree with him about a lot of things, including Lorenzo de' Medici, the Bonfire of the Vanities etc. But his torture and death still move me and he must have been a powerfully charismatic figure. (I wrote about his followers in David, 2011).

The Martyrs' Memorial in St Giles leaves me cold but I do try to visit the little cross in the ground in the Broad as often as I am in central Oxford - I find it intensely moving.

*This information was provided by self-confessed "Savonarola-nerd" Anne Rooney.