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This is the story of the church of Our Lady, which stands
just inside the east wall
of the Roman town of Silchester, and by chance on a spot enclosed as sacred in
pagan times. It was not the first place of Christian worship at Silchester,
however: that honour belongs to a small basilica with westerly apse, rudimentary
transept and narthex which most scholars regard as indeed a church. Its site
lies in the middle of the wide polygonal area opening out to the west of St.
Mary's, the 100 acres of the late Roman town; nothing can be seen there now.
No church, hall or mill is recorded in Domesday Book (1086) for either of the
Silchester manors, of which the more northerly accounts for the curious kink of
the Hampshire-Berkshire boundary. The nearest church mentioned was at Mortimer,
(St. Mary) wholly Victorian now, but with the gravestone of a Saxon thane to
mark its antiquity. Nor do we even hear of a rector until 1294 - the
well-connected pluralist, John de Knovill. In his day, the living was estimated
to be worth 16 marks (£13.13.4d.), well over the poverty-line of 10 marks. It
remained at that level for three hundred years or more, and it is no wonder that
in 1541 a farmer was paying the curate.
HISTORY FROM STONE
The church has been much altered, and in the usual default of documentary
assistance we depend on architectural detail for understanding its development.
Since the decayed mortar rendering of the exterior has been removed, it has been
possible to see a comer of re-used flat Roman bricks to either side of the pair
of buttresses at the west end, and another to the upper right of the priest's
door in the chancel. These belonged to an original aisle-less nave about 45 by
22 ft. overall, longer than Padworth near by and larger than Nateley Scures near
Basingstoke. The first St. Mary's probably had a rounded east end like these,
perhaps shouldered as at Padworth. It may have been built when the two Domesday
manors coalesced in the same ownership, by 1167 that is, when the Bluet family,
which had held one manor of William d'Eu since the Conquest, acquired the other.
A fragment of the original font, square with arcaded sides and standing on four
stump pillars (of which a scalloped capital remains) is consistent with a
mid-12th century date. This is also the date of the timber hall revealed by
recent excavations in the arena of the Roman amphitheatre to the north of the
church, the first manorial residence, though perhaps only a temporary refuge.
By about 1200, the population had grown and a north aisle
was built, completed or remodelled about 1230 when the present north doorway was
inserted, and a south aisle built in the plainest Early English style. At the
same period, a long chancel, with priest's door was thrown out eastwards,
obliterating the original sanctuary in order to provide a fitter setting for the
Mass. The church thus attained its present ground plan except for the porches,
but was nevertheless very different in appearance from the St. Mary's of a
century later on. The roof was probably thatched; there would have been no
bell-turret like that of today; and all the windows would have been lancets like
those at the west end of the north aisle and in the chancel.
The Bluet male line failed in 1316, when Sir John left a widow with a
life-interest
in his estates and two young daughters, Margaret and Eleanor. The
marriage-rights were valuable, and were sold to William de Cusaunce, a royal
official. In 1323 the two girls were married, Margaret to a kinsman of his, also
William, and Eleanor to Edmund Baynard. By 1348 the first couple were dead; old
Lady Bluet, since remarried, also died in that, the first year of the Black
Death. Eleanor, resident at Silchester, prudently obtained permission to have a
private oratory at her house for a twelvemonth.
It is probably Eleanor's effigy that lies in the south
aisle. These folk were all well-to-do - the effigy is metropolitan - and not surprisingly they might well have
wished to modernise the church, reconstructing the south aisle with a pitched
roof (probably all the roofs were now tiled) to take large windows of c. 1320-50
in the beautiful Decorated style, with its reticulated or net-like tracery that
is English Gothic at its best. As part of the same programme, similar windows
were inserted at the west end of the nave and in the north aisle, where the low
eaves of the continuous nave-aisle roof imposed a square-headed rather than a
pointed form on the north window.
The lady is shown as a widow; and since Edmund Baynard was alive as late
as 1359, we cannot say that this chapel was established as a chantry for her
soul, because the architectural style forbids; it may well have been a Lady
Chapel. On the other hand, the recess with its ogee arch is original, and may
have been intended, say, for Margaret, buried elsewhere. No record survives of a
Silchester chantry, even though one in four parishes of Winchester Diocese had
an intercessory institution of some kind. There would certainly have been
candles and soul-masses here, according to whatever the endowment provided.
THE LAST MEDIEVAL CHANGES
If there had been an intention to modernise the chancel as well, it was
overtaken by events. In 1349, five or even six rectors held office successively;
and although one of them was displaced, the other changes arose from the
incidence of the Black Death, naturally heavy among the clergy, though not all
can have taken up residence. It was not until Rector Ashton's time (1361-94),
probably, that anything could be done in the chancel. Then a low side window was
inserted, unglazed, on the south to provide a better light for the priest at his
devotions. Not until the best part of a century had passed was the large
Perpendicular east window installed in place of the original triple lancets; the
increase in light must have been dramatic. The dominant verticality of its
mullions contrasts strongly with the Decorated tracery elsewhere; the flatness
of the arching between the mullions and the rather perfunctory cusping indicate
a date well towards the end of the 15th century. Similar cusping on the
mullion-arches of the square-headed window on the north side (where it replaced
a lancet) suggests a
contemporary improvement, perhaps required because there were clergy now on both
sides of the chancel. The detail of the windows is best examined outside, where
the three square-headed examples form a simple instructive sequence (north
aisle, south side and north side of chancel, in that order).
In the absence of a chancel-arch, the screen is particularly important in
dividing
the priestly part of the church, with its own entrance, from the nave where the
laity
would gather to hear the Mass with its Latin liturgy; they knew when to make
responses, when to say their private prayers in their mother-tongue, when to
stand and kneel; there would have been no, or few, seats. The laity confessed
and communicated seldom, and then - like Roman Catholic laity still today - in
one kind only: the chalice was for the clergy. This screen is one of the finest
in Hampshire, and was doubtless the last pre-Reformation gift of the Baynard
manorial family; it dates to the period of Henry VIIl's marriage to Katherine of
Aragon (1509-33), bearing the rose and pomegranate badges.
AFTER THE REFORMATION
The Bible in English was in church use as early as 1536, but Henry VIIl did
little
to alter the character of worship. Under Edward VI, Puritan changes took hold.
In
1548 it was ordered that all should receive Communion in both kinds, and in 1549
came the first fully English liturgy. Out went images and colour, out went much
stained glass, out went the stone altar, and out went mass-vestments. The
requirement to remove the new Lord's Table to the chancel or even the nave for
Communion was perhaps the reason why our screen, already bereft of the Holy
Rood, was taken out and stored in a barn nearby, to be found and replaced before
1845 in the time of Rector Coles. Much that characterised the Puritan period has
in its turn been swept away, but the Lord's Table and pulpit, dating from the
Commonwealth period, remain. Also retained as a particular treasure is the
Communion Cup of 1573 with its paten, bearing the London hallmark for 1572 and
the maker's stamp.
The growth of population led to galleries being constructed in many churches.
Nately Scures, not surprisingly in view of its tiny scale, had a west gallery as
early as 1591. There was a west gallery at Silchester too, where the village's
few musicians -music came always from on high - accompanied the old metrical
versions of the psalms that constituted virtually the only singing heard. There
was also a gallery in the south aisle, raised in height and roofed with three
gables and windows like a cottage. These look identical, in an old photograph,
with that surviving at the west end of that aisle, inserted in place of the
original lancet to lighten a comer made dark by the galleries above. The 2+-inch
bricks are of the same pattern as those in the north wall of the churchyard,
dated 1680; that, accordingly, may be the date of the galleries. The bell-turret
must be earlier, though we know nothing of the three bells existing before 1742;
and the massive buttresses at the west end must be later still.
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| The Piscina |
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The North Porch |
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| The canopied pulpit |
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Intricate carvings on
the screen |
The church known, say, to Rector Shipley (1743-69, the
only one of our rectors to
become a bishop) was thus very different both from the medieval building with
its
dark, rich colours extending even to the arcades - a rustic version of the rich
schemes seen today chiefly in high Anglican churches such as All Saints,
Margaret Street in London - and also from the present St. Mary's, the creation
largely of Rector Fiennes (1865-80). 'Uncouth' was the word applied to the old
church at Stratfield Saye not far distant (pulled down in 1754), 'in common with
many that disgrace this part of Hampshire'. For this we have to blame not merely
the local builder's vernacular style, but also the 18th-century tendency to
exalt the sermon and the prayer-book liturgy at the expense of the Sacrament and
the sublime: indeed the Sacrament was offered somewhat seldom, and frequent
Communion is our legacy of the Victorian Oxford Movement.
In the 18th and early 19th centuries, St. Mary's was light, with plain latticed
windows, whitewashed walls and white boarded ceiling, and white-painted fence
around a Lord's Table now back at the east end but bare of candlesticks,
crucifix, flowers, etc. and with the painted panels of the Ten Commandments,
Creed and Lord's Prayer as a reredos. Nor was there as yet a surpliced choir in
the chancel. Nave and aisle were packed with tall box-pews, and the pulpit was
on the right for the sake of daylight and the stove near by, with seats facing
it on both sides under the parish clerk's eye. The stovepipe led out through the
Decorated tracery of the south window of the south aisle, and appears in an old
photograph. The north aisle was known as 'Mortimer's Hole' because folk at
Mortimer West End were allowed to worship there until the new parish in Oxford
Diocese was created, and St. Saviour's church was opened in 1856.
THE RESTORATION
Rector Coles (1812-65) had seen to the replacement of the chancel-screen
and the recasting of a bell; but it was a fabric in bad order that Rector
Fiennes, inherited. Like many young clergymen of his day, Fiennes was deeply
imbued with the ideals of the Oxford Movement, which was everywhere being given
expression in the restoration - sometimes, as at Mortimer, the complete
rebuilding - of churches according to the romantic medievalism of Pugin and the
Ecclesiological Society. The result at Silchester is, happily, restrained; and
except always for the colour of the true Middle Ages, St. Mary's was brought
back to something like its 15th-century state. By early 1872, Fiennes had
remodelled the chancel; but the work 'served only to bring out into more hideous
contrast the unsightly and defective condition' of the remainder, as he noted in
the Vestry minute-book. Money was collected; the Wellington Estate provided £400
worth of timber for the roof; and all, including the benches which now replaced
the box-pews, a new south porch and a rebuilt north porch, was complete for a
total of some £1,250.
Bishop Wilberforce preached at the opening on April 23, 1878. The architect
was T. H. Wyatt, a Past-President of the Royal Institute of British Architects,
a
man with Hampshire connexions and with over 150 restored or rebuilt churches
to his name; he was assisted by Walter Spiers, and the builders. Wheeler Bros.,
were a Reading firm.
Since that date, the fabric has been carefully maintained, sometimes by private
munificence (such as the restoration of the bell-turret in memory of Mr. and
Mrs.
Tom Hartley of Silchester House, in 1968); but an ageing fabric is no light
responsibility for a numerically small parish. If this Guide has been helpful to
you, please help us to build up our funds for our continual task. Betjeman was
not alone, perhaps, in remarking that 'it was through looking at churches that I
came to believe in the reason why churches were built'.
DOORWAYS
The north doorway, c. 1230, has a hood-moulding with dog-tooth ornament
which originally came down to stops at impost-level; the imposts are simply
moulded in the style of the south arcade. The door is medieval, and some of its
furniture. The south doorway, with continuous roll-moulding outside, probably
belongs to the 14th-century rebuilding of the aisle. It opens into the Victorian
porch.
The north aisle pier with trumpet-scallop capital answering to the slight
chamfer of the arches has a base with a double roll and deep groove between; it
cannot well be earlier than c. 1200. This arcade has no responds, unlike the
south aisle arcade of c. 1230 in plain Early English style. Here the arches have
a bold chamfer and a hood-moulding (cut away when the bell-turret was inserted
and damaged when the west gallery was constructed). The two arcades form an
interesting comparison.
NORTH AISLE
The west lancet of c. 1230 has an unusual moulding at the top
of the inner arch. The east window in the Decorated style contains scraps of
ancient glass. Turreted canopies in yellow and white resemble those in windows
of New College chapel, Oxford, of 1386. On the left a bishop's mitre in red is
the
only trace of the instructive figure-subjects with which the windows would all
at
one time have been filled. Glass with the arms of the manorial families is
described by Camden in 1586, but has long since disappeared. The font,
octagonal on a simply-moulded stem, is too plain to be dated more closely than
later 14th-earlier 15th century. The remarkable corona above, given in memory
of Karin Battiscombe in 1985, is fine modem blacksmith's work: the artist,
Giuseppe Lund, learnt his craft at Mortimer. The design of shoots growing from
seeds to maturity symbolises the passage of the seasons and thereby the passage
of human life from babyhood. On the north wall are boards carrying the Ten
Commandments once set up behind the altar in pursuance of James I's order of
1604 (though these were painted later), and also the Creed and the Lord's
Prayer, 'fit companions' for the Commandments, painted for 16s. in 1712. There
are also two boards relating to the charity established by Richard Hyde in 1671.
Income from this endowment was distributed on February 24th and Good Friday to
twelve parishioners who did not qualify for the poor-rate ('the collection'). In
1968 the Charity Commissioners revised the terms to allow a wider range of
grants within the parish, the land having already been sold at the instance of
Rector Evans (1948-59), with the Commissioners' agreement, to increase the
endowment. Hyde's Platt, built as a small local-authority housing-estate now
stands there; the house itself, a typical yeoman's dwelling, half-timbered and
thatched, was still let in 1956 but was in a bad condition, and was demolished
soon afterwards.
NAVE
The four great arch-braced posts at the west end do not now carry the weight of
the bells; when they did so, the working of the timbers had its effect on the
west
wall, which had to be buttressed outside. The five bells are now in an iron
frame
resting on girders which span the nave. Rector Paris (1719-42) left 'fourscore
pounds to new cast the three bells and to add two others so that there may be a
[fitt] and compleat sett' - work entrusted to the Aldworth (Wilts.) foundry then
owned by John Stares. The bells are appropriately inscribed and dated 1744,
except one recast by Taylor of Oxford in 1848. There are a 6 cwt. tenor and
others of 4 3/4, 3 3/4 3 1/4 and 3 cwt.
How Silchester acquired its earlier three bells is unknown. As at Heckfield a
few miles away, they may have been bought from a scrap-metal merchant dealing in
materials from the suppressed religious houses of the district, in that case
Little Marlow priory of Benedictine nuns (its bells and lead together were
valued at less than £5). The benches which replaced the old box-pews have later
ends well-carved with Bible plants by Ellen and Henry Sealy, in memory of her
mother, widow of Henry Newnham-Davis who died in 1909 (N.side: chestnut;
palm-branch; flag; apple; rose. S.side: olive; oak; mulberry, sycamore; thorn;
bulrush; hazel; and cucumber). The Newnham-Davis family, like others, settled in
Silchester when improved communications brought the village within easy reach
of London. They embellished St. Mary's; and as late as 1952, on his return from
Antigua, Bishop Newnham-Davis presented a new chalice and paten to replace a
chalice of Russian Orthodox origin lent during the Second World War and since
passed on to the Russian Orthodox church in Bayswater, London. In passing, note
too the bright touches of colour provided by the hassocks, worked in
cross-stitch by the ladies of the parish and friends to their own designs, a
series completed for the Queen's Jubilee, 1977. The pulpit, cut down by at least
one stage (for the parish clerk), is assignable on the grounds of its complex
mitred panelling, which reflects domestic fashion, to the Commonwealth period,
and as a plain design is a rarity: Tadley near by, for example, has a pulpit of
1650, but its style is still Jacobean, like our tester or sounding-board, the
gift of James Hoare, 1639. The fate of the earlier pulpit is unknown.
The chancel-screen has eight openings on either side. Its frieze of fifteen
feathered angels is unique; they are reminiscent of St. Michael on the gold coin
called an Angel, which may have provided a model: here they carry labels on
which the letters of a text would have been painted. Amid the tracery on the
left-
hand side, note the pomegranate (rather hip-like, but showing its seeds as it
heraldically should) in the fifth and eighth panels from the north - the badge
of
Aragon, and frequently seen in Henrician work before the divorce of 1533. The
rose in the fourth panel is, curiously, a single rather than the double Tudor
bloom
- an error which would presumably have been corrected in the painting, for
although the screen is lustrous dark oak now, and has been reasonably well-restored, before the Reformation it would have glowed with colours. There are
mortises above the doorway for the figures of the Holy Rood, Christ crucified,
flanked by Mary and John. The screen is not in its original place; like its
predecessor, it would have been set at the opening of the chancel. Note finally
that above it, on the north wall, the sawn-off end of a beam is visible. This
beam
may have run across the chancel to carry the royal arms, which by an order of
1660 had to be prominently displayed in every church.
CHANCEL
The Perpendicular east window, with its Clayton & Bell 'Ascension' presented
in memory of Henry Newnham-Davis who died in 1873, replaced an original
group of three lancets, the outer jambs of which were found, packed with rubble,
when the wall-paintings were restored in 1971-2. They have been left exposed
as part of the history of St. Mary's. The paintings belong to the original
chancel
of c. 1230; the scheme consists generally of a masonry pattern executed in red
ochre and sprigged with flowers; in the jambs, some blocks are filled with
yellow
ochre wash. In the comers of the east wall, high up, a rapidly-sketched coat of
arms containing a pair of conjoined wings, badly preserved, may be seen. As
befits work executed at the expense of the manorial family, as this would have
been, this is a Bluet 'signature' (at Lacock Abbey, Wilts., their main home, it
can
be seen on a roof-boss of the cloisters). The side-walls have carried, beneath
the handsome running scroll which closed the design, a sequence of large figured
panels, of which traces of one can be seen between the first and second lancets
on the south side. Faint indications of a larger haloed figure bending over a
smaller suggest the subject of St. Anne, the Virgin's mother, teaching her to
read, a favourite medieval representation from the apocryphal gospel of James.
Other scenes from the life of the Virgin, given the dedication of the church,
would have occupied other panels. Damage to the scheme, caused by the insertion
of the low side window, remains obvious. Of any redecoration nothing seems to
survive.
The chancel lancets, originally three on either side, are grouped so that a pair
lights the sanctuary on north and south. They are filled appropriately with
glass,
presented by Fiennes, showing the Four Evangelists. The surviving westerly
lancet, now beyond the screen, has an interesting composition of 1922 in memory
of Henry and Ellen Sealy (who carved the bench-ends). Stuart G. (Newnham-)Davis's
design shows St. Helen, mother of Constantine, and incorporates fragments of
ancient glass from Reims Cathedral (damaged in the Great War), an amethyst and
three slices of cornelian. In the sanctuary notice the remains of piscina or
wall-drain for rinsing the chalice after Mass, its bowl long since torn out, on
the right of the altar which (after some years' use in the Church Room in the
rectory grounds) is once again the seventeenth-century Lord's Table. To left and
right in the sanctuary there are square recesses, rebated for stout doors. The
mass-vessels would have been kept in the right-hand cupboard, the sacred
elements in the other; indeed the Blessed Sacrament is reserved there. In
commemoration of Christ's entombment, this cupboard would have served as an
Easter Sepulchre, where from Maundy Thursday to Easter Day the consecrated host,
Christ's Body, would have been watched over. The chairs beside the altar are not
of great note, and are unsafe.
Two monuments on the north wall invite attention. The first, commemorating
James Butler, Viscount Ikerrin (Peerage of Ireland) who died in London in 1712,
in his fourteenth year, is by James Hardy of Piccadilly (unsigned). The boy was
the orphan grandson of Lord and Lady Blesinton whose family had bought the
manor in 1704. The verse at the end is from the Roman poet Martial, and means
'To the surpassing, life's course is short, and old age comes seldom'. There is
a
tradition that James was robbed and murdered while accompanying his tutor, who
was on a visit to the Fleet Prison where his brother-in-law was confined for
debt, and his body thrown into the Fleet Ditch. This was certainly the fate,
seven years later, of that supposed tutor. Rector Betham (1698-1719), a man of
numerous family, scholarly, and builder of the fine Queen Anne parsonage, now a
private house. But there is no corroboration of the circumstances of James's
death.
The second monument commemorates Rector Paris (1726-42), Senior Fellow
of Trinity College, Cambridge. The cryptic remark in the epitaph, De quo nisi
opera loquantur siletur — "about whom there is silence unless his works speak'
— refers to his bequest concerning the bells (page 18). He was generous besides,
leaving at Silchester £20 to buy 'four or five cows that give milk and those to
be given as far as they go one cow to one family the poorest most numerous and
such as shall want it most'. Opposite this monument is a tablet to the memory of
Mrs. Rebecca Taylor, Paris's sister and housekeeper at Silchester, whose bequest
in 1757 was a silver paten still among the church plate. Among other memorials a
tablet records members of the Paice family, including George, aged only 12, who
in 1736 died 'through an unfortunate blow to the temple by a schoolfellow';
there is also a brass to Percy Bamard Cooper, killed at Vlakfontein in the
Transvaal, 1901, in one of the guerilla raids by Boer commandos which
characterized the last phase of the South African War; he was a member of the
Manor Farm family of the day, and would have grown up here. There are First and
Second World War memorials with five and six names respectively, and a tablet to
Lt-Col. J. B. P. Karslake, 1942, an antiquary in whose honour the village opened
the Calleva Museum in 1951 as a contribution to the Festival of Britain. Rector
Adams (1925-43) is commemorated by a wooden plaque near the pulpit; except for
Rector Paris, Rector Evans is the only one of our rectors otherwise to have a
memorial at Silchester.
SOUTH AISLE
The effigy, later fourteenth-century and probably that of Eleanor Baynard,
wears kirtle, open-sided cote-hardie with deep V-neck once painted vermilion,
and mantle; her head is covered by a substantial kerchief, and her neck and chin
by a wimple-like 'barbe' — in all, widow's weeds. Her feet peep out to rest
against a dog (damaged), and two winged angels support her head. In 1845, there
were traces on the back of the recess of a painting which showed the lady's soul
in an attitude of prayer rising heavenwards, borne up by angels. The character
of the ogee arch of the tomb-recess is somewhat clumsy, in keeping with the
rustic cutting of the corbel-heads supporting the roof-timbers, which include,
in the right-hand comer, one of the medieval craftsman's favourite subjects, Reynard the Fox, clutching a goose: a commonplace of rural life with, perhaps, a
deeper meaning in human terms. The head-stops around the inner arches of the
windows are scarcely more elegant, except one which seems different from the
rest. It is not easy to imagine this aisle as a chapel, so stripped it is; but
the piscina in the south wall tells of an altar under the east window, and the
two corbels at sill-level there will have carried statues. The out-of-place
head-stop, with flowing hair and the remains of a crown, on the left of the east
window, may have belonged to a statue of the Virgin. The mortuary use of the
chapel is illustrated further by a comer piece from an embattled frieze, now
reset over the outer door of the Victorian south porch. The cusped lozenges
contain the dim, painted remains of arms stated long ago to be those of the
Bluets, Cusaunces and Baynards, and what survives is consistent with that
statement. In the spandrels are minor motifs including a skull, a book and a
bird — a martlet, referring perhaps to the Valence Earls of Pembroke who were
overlords of part of Silchester in the 15th century. This is the only relic of a
large and important
Baynard tomb-chest. The south porch also contains, on the left walled-in, the
important fragment of the original font, supported by a few other worked stones.
Below the east window of the erstwhile chapel stands the parish chest dated
1724, bearing the initials of the churchwardens and three locks, one for each of
them to open, and one for the rector. The muniments are now in the safe-keeping
of the Diocesan Record Office at Winchester. The diamond-shaped painting of
amis is a. funerary hatchment, moved here from the chancel. Hatchments, still
exhibited outside grand houses within the last hundred years, were painted
according to strict rules which enabled the passer-by to know the rank, sex and
marital status of the deceased. The wholly black background — can be seen of it,
besides the mantling denotes widow, widower, bachelor or spinster; for a
surviving spouse, the background was half-white: on the left (dexter) side for a
husband, on the right (sinister) for a wife. Here the bearings are placed on an
inner lozenge to denote a woman, the widowed Countess of Blesinton who died
in 1774, and her own family arms, Fitzgerald, appear on the small escutcheon.
The main arms are of Stewart of Ramelton quartering Boyle, with Stewart
supporters and motto, and the Blesinton earl's coronet as crest; all Irish
peers.'
The west end of the aisle is occupied by the organ, given by Rector Langshawe
(1880-1913) about 1898. Though it bears the plate of Bates & Son of Ludgate-hill, that was a Victorian firm of barrel-organ makers in the main, and at most
will have sold, moved and set up an instrument which (as Bishop & White of
Southampton discovered when restoring it in 1982) is older, of c. 1770, and had
previously belonged to one of the churches at Tottenham, St. Paul's. It speaks
on
a 3-inch wind-pressure in a good sweet tone that can be rich and full.
OUTSIDE THE CHURCH
Most people go straight into a church, but there is always much of interest
outside. Structurally, note the brick comers of the aisleless Norman building to
either side of the great buttresses at the west end (and also to upper right of
the
priest's door in the chancel); on the left, looking at the west end, see the low
stub
of walling adjacent to the brickwork, all that remains of the first north aisle
of c.1200. Brickwork above is very different in character, probably 18th-century,
like
the buttresses. A few courses of bricks remain at the top of the south-aisle
walling, and remind one of the gabled superstructure of c. 1680. The details of
the window-tracery are best studied from outside all round.
On the ashlar blocks forming the back of the effigy-recess, two sundials are
incised: a stick in the central hole cast a shadow which told the approximate
time
for the priest's devotions, one rather better than the other. A stump of Roman
column west of the church supported a neat brass horizontal dial, for which a
member of the local Dicker family of clock-makers received a guinea. It was 4
inches square, and was inscribed TAKE HEED I TIME FLIES I ROME
PERISHED I SO WILT THOU 11760. It was stolen in the 1950's.
Two weathered stone coffin-lids close to the south porch were meant to be set
at ground-level in the open. One shows a male head in a quatrefoil forming the
top of a long cross stepped base. The other shows the heads of a man and wife,
above a long cross with floriated ends within a nimbus or halo. They are
thirteenth-century, and presumably of members of the Bluet manorial family.
The large yew near the north porch is 12 ft. 8 in. round at 4 ft. from the
ground,
and has displaced a gravestone of 1777. it was probably a replacement for
another smitten by age, and has been assigned an age of 380 years. The foliage
served to decorate the church at festival-time: in Sir Thomas Browne's
words, the yew was 'an Embleme of the Resurrection, from its perpetual verdure'.
English yew was regarded as unsuitable for bows.
The east wall of the churchyard is the Roman town-wall of Calleva Atrebatum,
erected in the third century A.D.; it was originally 9+ ft. thick at the base,
and
rose about 20 ft. to the parapet. The original face has long since gone, and the
herringbone-work is recent. The pond nearby is formed in the defensive ditch of
the Roman fortifications.
In 1959, when the weathercock blew down, it was replaced by a vane in the
form of a fish, to commemorate the Christian past of the Roman town. From
Gospel references (notably Matthew v.l9), the fish had become a symbol of
baptism by the second century, and by the third the component letters of the
word
for 'fish' - in Greek, K9YC, were being employed in the celebrated acrostic
lesos
Christos Theou Huios Soter: ' Jesus Christ, Son of God, Saviour'. And with that
we may fitly end.
THE WALL PAINTINGS
Enough survives of the mid- 13th century painted decoration in the
chancel
to allow one to visualise what the complete scheme of decoration would have
looked like.
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| A section of the wall
paintings |
The painting in the window splays of the south wall appears to have been
discovered either when the Church underwent extensive restoration in 1872
(Bishop Wilberforce preached at the re-opening in April 187820), during the
incumbency of Revd. the Hon. W.S. Twisleton Wykeham-Fiennes, or during
the incumbency of Rector Thomas Langshaw (1880-1913), 'who also did
much to preserve and beautify the church'. The rather heavy handed
overpainting or restoration (which was largely removed during the 1972
conservation work) was almost certainly the work of The Revd. Charles Eddy
who uncovered and 'restored' (or re-painted in the same manner) a scheme of
similar date in the chancel of Bramley Church, of which he was the
incumbent. (1869-92)
During the conservation work in 1972 (carried out by me as assistant to Dr.
E. Clive Rouse MBE FSA), the thick yellow distemper and some of the more
inaccurate overpainting of the red masonry pattern and roses was removed
from the two windows in the south wall. At that time, the scrollwork in the
north east and south east comers of the chancel as well as the rest of the
decoration on the south wall emerged from behind more of the thick yellow
distemper and areas of lime wash. It became apparent that the splays of the
windows of the north wall had not been over painted but were merely filthy,
and they were simply cleaned.
Cracks which had appeared on either side of the 15th century window had
been thought to be structural cracks. However, upon the removal of some of
the rubble infill, it transpired that these cracks were in fact the surviving
splays to the 13th century lancet windows, and the painted decoration upon
them was found to be in almost pristine condition. A continuation of the
painted decoration was found to survive on the north wall of the chancel
between and to the west of the windows still covered by later lime wash.
(Text taken from "St Mary the Virgin -
Silchester" by George C Boon F.S.A., F.R. His.S.)
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