St Mary’s, Woodham Ferrers, Essex The church of St Mary’s in Woodham Ferrers, Essex dates back to the 13th and 14th centuries. It has a faint doom painting above the chancel arch and a few remnants of paintings on the columns. These are dated to the 14th century. In terms of protective marks, St…
St Ethelbert and All Saints, Belchamp Otten, Essex The church of St Elthelbert and All Saints stands in the village of Belchamp Otten in Essex near the Suffolk border and in the Stour valley. It dates back to the 12th century and is quite simple inside. The only graffiti to be found is on the…
Popular Magic: Cunning Folk in English History Owen Davies, Hambledon Continuum, 2007. A densely packed handy reference for all your folk magic queries. This deceptively slim octavo volume is, as we now expect from Professor Owen Davies, about as tightly packed with condensed information as it is possible to get. A pleasure as an immersive…
St Mary and St John, Hinxton, Cambridgeshire The church of St Mary and St John dates back to the 12th century. The south chapel, which holds most of the graffiti, dates mostly to the 14th century. Unusually for churches, the most common symbol in St Mary and St John is not initials and names but…
All Saints, High Laver, Essex The church of All Saints, High Laver, dates to the 12th century. It has been much restored, which probably accounts for why the only graffiti visible is on the 14th century font. This has quite extensive graffiti with several compass circles, a heraldic shield and some initials and dates. There…
St Giles, Great Hallingbury, Essex The church of St Giles dates back to the 11th century with a 14th century tower and evidence of roman bricks in the chancel arch. The north aisle and porch dates to the late 19th century, as does the decoration of the east wall. However, the church is more…
St Edmund, Abbess Roding, Essex St Edmund’s church in Abbess Roding dates to the 14th century with amendments and additions up to the 19th. There is only a scattering of graffiti throughout the church and doorways. It mostly consists of names and initials with one date in the 18th century and one in the 19th….
St Mary the Virgin, Dedham, Essex The village of Dedham is on the River Stour is where John Constable went to school and the church of St Mary the Virgin has one of his paintings to prove it. The village was a wealthy wool town and spent some of those riches on its church which,…
St John the Baptist, Glastonbury, Somerset The church of St John the Baptist in Glastonbury, Somerset dates back to the 15th century in its current building, but there has been a church on the site back to 950 CE. It was much restored in 1856 by Sir George Gilbert Scott, which is presumably why there…
St Mary, Buttsbury, Essex The Pevsner entry for St Mary’s, Buttsbury describes the church as ‘small and alone’, which is accurate for a village church with no village in sight. St Mary’s was built in the 14th century with the tower added in the 15th. There is no graffiti inside the church, other that…
Dartington Hall and Old Church Tower, Devon The buildings visible today around the Great Hall on the Dartington estate can be dated to all centuries from the 14th to the 20th. This recording exercise has concentrated primarily on the medieval buildings, but has taken account of all periods of graffiti and the phases of building…
Church Folklore Church Folklore, A Record of some Post-Reformation Usages in the English Church, now mostly Obsolete. The Rev James Edward Vaux M.A., F.S.A Griffith Farran & Co. London 1894 ‘When we search into the religious records of the past we cannot help being, at times, painfully struck with what appears to us a gross…
St Mary the Virgin, Henham, Essex The church of St Mary the Virgin in Henham, Essex dates back to 13th century. The tower is dated to 1325 and the south porch to the 15th century, as does the font. The south porch is where most of the graffiti is to be found. It…
St Mary Magdalene, Wethersfield, Essex St Mary Magdalene church in the Essex village of Wethersfield dates back to the 12th century, although it is believed that there was a Saxon church on the site before then. Perhaps the church’s most unusual feature is the Samson Post at the base of the tower. The Historic England…
Of Shadows: One Hundred Objects from the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic Simon Costin and Sara Hannat. Strange Attractor Press, London 2016 This sumptuous collection of wonderfully atmospheric photographs portraying just 100 of the many, many, curious objects housed in the Museum of Witchcraft and Magic in Boscastle, North Devon is a…
Everyday Magic in Early Modern Europe, Kathryn A. Edwards. Ashgate 2015 This volume of papers, though led and edited by Kathryn Edwards of the University of South Carolina, represents a pan-European area of research, with contributors from the UK, Finland France and Spain as well as ‘outsider’ input from the US and Australia. It…
Eltham Palace, London Eltham Palace in south east London has had a long history. It was given by the Bishop of Durham to Edward II in 1305 and used a royal residence from then until the 16th century. Out of favour as residence from then on it fell into disrepair until only the great hall and…
Duxford Chapel, Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire Duxford Chapel in Cambridgeshire is managed by English Heritage. It was built in the 13th century as a hospital but by the 14th century it was in use as a chantry chapel. It had already fallen into disuse by the time Edward VI dissolved the chantries in 1548. Eventually it was taken…
St Mary and St Andrew, Whittlesford, Cambridgeshire The church of St Mary and St AndrewSt Mary and St Andrew, Whittlesford dates back to the 12th century12th century with chancel works happening in the 13th century and the south aisle being rebuilt in the 14th. The first item to note is outside. On the south side…
A brief digression on Merchant Marks As part of my lockdown activities (because there are very few locked buildings you can attempt to record from the outside) I took time to catch up on my reading for several historic periods where I felt my knowledge was thin. Immersed in the 18th century and the Exeter…
The Ghost: A Cultural History ‘Ghosts are woven into the very fabric of our lives’. The evolution of a persistent human fear. In the catalogue of things that might be of enough concern for magical countermeasures to be necessary, the ghost is perhaps one of the most persistent. In this highly readable and entertaining book,…
The Decline of Magic: Britain in the Enlightenment Michael Hunter, Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2020 The English Protestant faith, having outlawed Catholicism and banned all forms of ‘Superstititious’ Catholic practices, apparently found itself in the latter part of the 17th century in a spot of bother with the freethinkers. Beleagured by controversies…
The Routledge History of Medieval Magic The Routledge History of Medieval Magic Sophie Page & Catherine Rider (Eds) Routledge 2019. A giant compendium of magic. This thick volume of papers brings together recent writing on a wide range of magical topics by both established and new scholars in the discipline. Its range is immense. Richard…
Hopital des Pelerin, Pons, France (2/2) Interior The interior of the pilgrims’ hospital consists of a wide open hall with two sets of columns down its length. There are a couple of side rooms at the far end and a door to an arcade and courtyard leading to what would have been the herb garden…
Mummies Cannibals and Vampires by Richard Sugg, Routledge, second edition, 2016. An enormous heap of curious information. Does that suggest that your devoted reviewer has been less than wholly entranced by Richard Sugg’s opus? It is all too terribly true. Dr Sugg (his Twitter handle) has amassed a large amount of information on a completely…
The Archaeology of Ritual and Magic. Ralph Merrifield, Batsford, 1987 The Daddy of them all. ‘ what is needed is an open mind and appreciation of the great diversity of human behaviour’ In 1987, Ralph Merrifield, retired archaeologist and recognised authority on Roman London, set out to publish, for the first time, a systematic review…
Grimoires, A History of Magic Books. Owen Davies, OUP 2009. ‘…for many down the millennia and across the globe no books have been more feared than grimoires.’ Thus Owen Davies introduces his exhaustive history of Magic Books, a complex and extensive survey of what, once one begins to pursue it, seems an endless road. That…
Magical House Protection: the Archaeology of Counter-Witchcraft. Brian Hoggard, Berghahn, 2019. A solidly researched synthesis of the archaeological information to date. Brian Hoggard’s 2019 book presents a thorough and vastly increased collation of information on the specific area of magical house protection, a subject first introduced to the public as barely more than a single…
The Book of English Magic. Philip Carr-Gomm and Richard Heygate. Hodder, 2009. Fun and games for a wet weekend in lockdown (or any other time) I was slightly surprised when I first opened my copy of this book and found that it was written not by historians but by a psychotherapist (Carr-Gomm) and a man…
St Michael, Great Sampford, Essex (3/3) Chancel Graffiti This is the third and last post about St Michael, Great Sampford. The chancel has 26 seats set in stone bays. The Historic England listing states that they were said to have seated a Knight Hospitaller who were supposed to have built the church. The most prominent…
St Michael, Great Sampford, Essex (2/3) North Aisle Graffiti Following on from the previous post about St Michael’s church in Great Sampford, Essex, this post will concentrate on the graffiti in the north aisle of the church. The protective marks in the north aisle mostly consist of compass drawn circles with a single Marian mark…
St Michael, Great Sampford, Essex (1/3) You only need to walk around the exterior of St Michael in Great Sampford to realise that it has a history of rebuilding. Somewhat unusually this rebuilding was mostly confined to the 14th century. The church had been under the jurisdiction of Battle Abbey in Sussex and the Knights…
Dull, with intervals of brilliance: The Handbook of Folklore, Traditional Beliefs, Practices, Customs, Stories and Sayings. Charlotte Sophia Burne, London 1913. I have to admit to readers that, even in a sternly enforced lockdown, I found this book hard to get into. My usual practice on reviewing a book is to read it (or re-read:…
St Giles, Great Maplestead, Essex St Giles church in Great Maplestead was built in the 12th century with major additions in 13th and 14th centuries. In the 16th century, the Deane family, who lived in nearby Dynes Hall, added a small south chapel in the church. It holds their monuments. The most splendid monument in…
St Bartholomew, Churchdown, Gloucestershire St Bartholomew’s church in Churchdown is, in the way of many English village churches, actually at the top of steep hill. The church dates back to the 12th century with the usual additions and modifications through the centuries. The tower is 17th century. The carvings on the arch of the south…
St Andrew’s, Willingale, Essex St Andrew’s church shares a churchyard with St Christopher’s church. St Andrew’s (full name St Andrew and All Saints) was the church for the parish of Willingale Spain as opposed to the parish of Willingale Doe which had St Christopher’s as its church. St Andrew’s was given to the Priory of…
St Peter and St Paul, Bardfield Saling, Essex The church of St Peter and St Paul in Bardfield Saling (also known as Little Saling) dates to the 14th century. It is notable as being one of only six churches in Essex to have a round tower. The organ is an 18th century chamber organ and…
St Martin’s Cathedral, Leicester Leicester Cathedral was built from the 12th to the 15th centuries and much altered and restored in the 19th century. Until 1927 when it was consecrated as Leicester Cathedral, it was the parish church of St Martin of Tours. It is now famous as the resting place of Richard III. …
All Saints, Ashdon, Essex (2/2) All Saints church has a number of apotropaic marks on its stonework. It has several of one particular type – the eight pointed star. This has shown up in other churches (most notably in St Mary and St Clement, Clavering). It is described in MB Jackson’s book, Ciphers and Scripts….
Saint-Vincent-le-Paluel, Dordogne, France This small church can be found in a hamlet in the Dordogne. The inside of the church has been restored , and no graffiti can be found on the interior walls, although some vestiges of paint can be found in the vicinity of the altar. The carved wooden altar back is impressive,…
Holy Trinity, Littlebury, Essex Holy Trinity church dates back to Norman times. The south and north doors are 12th century. The tower is 14th century. It was heavily restored in the late Victorian period with the chancel being completely rebuilt when the organ was installed and the crucifixion scene painted. The font cover dates to…
St Andrews, Helions Bumpstead, Essex St Andrew’s in Helions Bumpstead is an unusually light church. In part this is due to the south wall of the nave, rebuilt in the 16th century and, to repeat the lines about Hardwick Hall, it is more glass than wall. This superfluity of daylight is also reflected by the…
Bath Abbey, Bath and Northeast Somerset The Abbey Church of St Peter and St Paul, better known as Bath Abbey, has been undergoing a £19.3 million programme of major works, funded largely by the Heritage Lottery Fund, in order to repair the Abbey’s collapsing floor, install a new heating system using the nearby hot springs…
The Abbey Church of Holy Cross and St Lawrence, Waltham Abbey, Essex The Abbey Church of Holy Cross and St Lawrence is more familiarly known as Waltham Abbey Church. There is evidence that there was a church on the site as far back as the 7th century. The church was rebuilt and enlarged in Saxon…
St Mary, Bures, Suffolk The village of Bures is divided by the River Stour and, as the river functions as the border between Essex and Suffolk, the village is part in Suffolk and part in Essex. The church of St Mary falls on the Suffolk side of the border. It is always nice to see…
St Mary the Virgin, Little Sampford, Essex There are some churches where setting, exterior and interior combine to form a whole that achieves way more than the sum of its parts. St Mary the Virgin in Little Sampford is one such gem and I would urge anyone to visit whether they are interested in graffiti…
St Mary the Virgin, Great Bardfield, Essex The church of St Mary the Virgin, Great Bardfield dates back to the 12th century. It is noted for its stone rood screen, one of only three in Europe. The screen has two angels facing out towards the nave and two demons facing in towards the chancel. Local…
St Mary’s Stebbing Essex (1/2) The light and airy church of St Mary the Virgin in the little village of Stebbing in the Uttesford district of Essex is one of those that appears to be way bigger than the size of population it serves. It stands on a ridge of high ground towards the south…
St Katharine, Little Bardfield, Essex The tower of St Katharine is pre-Conquest, but the tower arch is 15th century and this where the graffiti within the church is located. Despite it’s early origins, the 19th century interior restoration was extensive and very little graffiti was left at the end of it. While most of the…
St Mary the Virgin, Stone near Dartford, Kent In December 2016 the Kent Medieval Graffiti Survey (KMGS) surveyed the church of St Mary the Virgin, Stone near Dartford. Tucked away down a lane, off what used to be the main A2 road and now surrounded by modern housing developments is the lovely old church of…
St Mary the Virgin, Moreton, Essex The church of St Mary stands on a mound to the east side of the little village of Moreton in Essex. The construction of the current building dates to the 13th and 15th century with the tower being added in the late 18th century. The font is 12th century…
St Laurence, Ridgewell, Essex (2/2) St Laurence church has several compass drawn circle designs, including a very clear daisy wheel and an unusually long sequence of linked compass drawn circles. There is a large incomplete daisy wheel by the west door in the tower, it is obscured behind an old noticeboard. ” template=”/var/sites/r/rakinglight.co.uk/public_html/wp-content/plugins/nextgen-gallery/products/photocrati_nextgen/modules/ngglegacy/view/gallery-caption.php” order_by=”sortorder” order_direction=”ASC”…
St Andrew’s, Buckland, Hertfordshire The nave and chancel of this Churches Conservation Trust church date to 1348. The tower, south aisle, porch and south door are from the 1400s. There is a bird of unidentified species, several harps and a heraldic shield. Notable among the protective marks is a concentric circle made up of twenty…
St Mary’s, Great Dunmow, Essex Great Dunmow, in Essex, is famous for its Flitch Trials, where married couples can win a flitch (side) of bacon if they can satisfy a jury that they have not wished themselves unmarried for a period of twelve months and a day. Chaucer’s Wife of Bath laments that she never…
Hampton Court Palace, London (2/2) The previous post on Hampton Court dealt with graffiti in the Tudor areas of the palace. The 17th century areas of the building have their own graffiti too. Most of the graffiti is concentrated in two areas – The Kings Staircase entrance from the Clock Court and the East Front…
All Saints, Maldon, Essex The town of Maldon, of sea salt fame, has been a settlement on the Blackwater Estuary since Saxon times. The church of All Saints dates back to the 12th century. Its unique feature is a triangular tower. While there is not a huge amount of graffiti in the church there is…
St George, Anstey, Hertfordshire St George’s church, Anstey, dates back to the 12th century with additions and changes in the 13th to 15th centuries. It is thought that some stones used in the church’s construction came from the nearby Anstey castle. Violet Pritchard has made extensive notes on the church in her book, English Medieval…
Pew and Choir Stall Graffiti from Kent and a little from elsewhere Graffiti isn’t only found on stonework in churches, castles and houses. Alan Anstee of the Kent Medieval Graffiti Survey talks about some of the fascinating graffiti he’s seen on wooden church pews and choir stalls. When I was first asked to write something…
St John The Baptist, Higher Ashton, Devon The little church of St John the Baptist, at Higher Ashton in Devon would appear to be a place with an identity crisis. Pevsner and Cherry, the accepted guide to English buildings, refers to it as St Michael. Nicholas Orme, in his scholarly survey of English Church Dedications, finds…
St Nicholas, Castle Hedingham, Essex Castle Hedingham, despite being in Essex, was the ancestral home of the de Vere family, the Earls of Oxford. Not surprisingly, the village shows all the signs of medieval prosperity, which is also reflected in the large parish church. St Nicholas church dates back to the 12th century with some…
St Augustine of Canterbury, Birdbrook, Essex The main features of St Augustine of Canterbury in Birdbrook, Essex are the excellently carved pew ends in the nave and the arm rests in the choir stalls. They are carved in oak, by Ken Mabbit of the firm of H&K Mabbit, and were installed in the 1960s and 1970s. …
St Lawrence Tower, Ashburton, Devon A visitor to Ashburton, approaching from the high ground of Dartmoor, might be forgiven for wondering why a small market town deserves two medieval churches with soaring Devon towers. The answer is simple, though it sounds as if it might be the start of a surreal pattern of riddling: one…
St Mary’s Priory, Little Dunmow, Essex (2/3) In the previous post of St Mary’s Priory in Little Dunmow, we looked at the graffiti round the doorway and the first two columns. This revealed the first of two graffiti described in Pritchard’s English Medieval Graffiti. The rest of the graffiti in the church is on…
St Mary’s Priory, Little Dunmow, Essex (1/3) St Mary’s Priory, Little Dunmow is a strange church. The windows on the north side are wildly out of proportion to those on the south and the tower looks like someone stole an italian campanile and glued it to one corner. Inside, there is an arcade of…
St Mary the Virgin, Tilty, Essex The church of St Mary the Virgin was originally the Chapel Outside the Gate of the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary in Tilty. Both abbey and church were built in the 13th century. When the abbey was destroyed in the dissolution of the monasteries only the church remained apart…
St Mary the Virgin, High Easter, Essex The parish church of St Mary the Virgin in High Easter is a large church in a small village. The church dates back to the 12th century with additions up to the 16th century. The roof and clerestory as well as the south porch all belong to the…
St Mary the Virgin, Manuden, Essex The church of St Mary the Virgin lies as the heart of the village of Manuden in Essex. St Mary’s is believed to date back to the 12th century, but the church itself was largely demolished and rebuilt between 1863 and 1864. This has limited the amount of available…
St Aldhelm’s Chapel, Isle of Purbeck, Dorset St Aldhelm’s Chapel at the southern point of the Isle of Purbeck is a strange place surrounded both by mystery and by the sea mist that drifts up the 100m cliff. It is surrounded by earthworks which may be the remnants of a pre-conquest Christian enclosure. However its…
St John the Baptist, Bere Regis, Dorset The church of St John the Baptist dates to the 12th century with additions for three centuries. The ceiling was paid for by Cardinal John Morton (of Morton’s Fork fame) in 1485. Morton was born in the parish of St John the Baptist. There are statues of the 12…
Kings College Chapel, Cambridge There is a danger in graffiti hunting that you focus so much on the details on the walls and columns that you can fail to appreciate the wider beauty of the structures you are visiting. Here’s a tip, if you go looking for graffiti in King’s College Chapel, before you do…
St Mary and St Clement, Clavering, Essex (3/4) Rood-loft Stairs Doorway To the south side of the chancel arch is a small doorway opening on to the stairs to the rood-loft. This is where Violet Pritchard found the short inscription, Amor Vincit omnia (love conquers all), which she records in her book ‘English Medieval Graffiti’….
St Mary and St Clement, Clavering, Essex (2/4) South Arcade The south arcade of St Mary and St Clement has an abundance of exciting graffiti. There are several compass drawn and hand drawn circle designs of varying complexity in the south arcade. The most notable of which are one large spiral within a compass drawn…
St Mary and St Clement, Clavering, Essex (1/4) The chancel of St Mary and St Clement was built in the late 14th century. The rest of the church was built at the end of the 14th and beginning of the 15th centuries. The roof is original, with angel carvings. The screen has traces of saints…
St Mary’s, Charminster, Dorset St Mary’s church at Charminster is an 11th century church, extended and improved in the 14th and 16th centuries by the local Trenchard family. The monogram of Thomas Trenchard made up of spirally intertwined Ts is visible in carvings and plaques throughout the church interior and exterior. The are two compass…
St Mary the Virgin, Cerne Abbas, Dorset The church of St Mary the Virgin, in Cerne Abbas, Dorset, was built in the 14th century and enlarged in the 1450s. It has a stone chancel screen, which dates to the 15th century. It has several unusual and interesting features including a gargoyle near the south…
St Mary’s Church and Tower, Berkeley, Gloucestershire St Mary’s is a Grade 1 Listed 13th century church, with the core of the current building dating from 1225 – 1250. All that remains of the earlier Norman church is the south door and the font, which was built for the total immersion of infants. To the…
St Augustine’s Tower, Hackney, London St Augustine’s Tower is a strange remnant of 16th Century Hackney still standing in the midst of a bustling shopping district, a couple of minutes away from Hackney Central Overground station. It has a complex history. It was built in the early 1500s as part of a…