Pipe Aston, Herefordshire

B and I have been to see the carvings at Pipe Aston before. But that was in the days before the Dawn of her Enthusiasm for the Romanesque. So it was interesting to see the look on her face when she realised what she's seen then, but not Seen. The carvings here are pretty bloody impressive, some of the best.

She immediately started making comparisons between the style and designs here and the marvellous font we saw at Stottesdon. These are top notch Herefordshire school carvings. And yet this is apparently a tiny church in a hamlet in sight of the back end of beyond.

 

Here's a large bird apparently pecking a smaller bird while a doggish creature spews what I take to be foliage at them. It's part of the carving on the tympanum. There was so much to draw... but it was frustratingly cold and windy so this was the only element I attempted outside. 

Here's the tympanum as captured by John Salmon.

There's our favourite, the Lamb of God, in the centre, with his little leg bent round cutely to support his pole with the cross. The cutely bent horizontal leg seems to be a diagnostic Romanesque feature.  He's also got some kind of radiating nimbus thing going on, but without any circular halo. Flanking him is the winged ox and leggy eagle of (I imagine) the evangelists. Not to mention more animals with tucked-under tails, plenty of patterns, a bit of planty swirlyness. The stones supporting the tympanum are serpenty and planty. Even the chevrons over the top are obviously excellent - they're single stones smoothed into a 3-d shape in a most satisfying fashion. The tympanum is in three parts but they seem different colours, almost as though it's not been broken accidentally but were always separate. Though that would seem a bit odd, given the strange angle. But who knows.

Inside, there's more Norman goodness. It's even said that the planty paintings on the walls are original, which seems quite crazy but perhaps it's true. What took my eye though was the sculptural goodness of the curious tapering small font. It's carved with two animals - one is a wormy tailed wyvern with two little front legs and wings. He's biting the tucked-under tail of the animal in front of him. I originally assumed that one would be a dragon but he's apparently four legs and a tail, and perhaps more of a lion. He's spewing out foliage and does not look best pleased at his tail being nipped. The circular scene fitted nicely in my new long sketchbook:

 

From the NLS's amazing map website

This is the 6 inch 1884 map of the village. Sometimes I wonder if a little bit more prior research could be a good idea... we had no idea this Motte was here, so close to the church. It must surely explain something - maybe this spot wasn't so remote as it might appear. It's called 'Aston Tump' and the Scheduled Monument Record  says it was constructed in the 1130s - a timber castle. There's a stream which flows down the hill here, forms a little moat round the motte and then pops out by the church - we stood and watched the water so doubtless we'd have noticed the 6m high motte if only we'd been expecting it! Never mind. The CRSBI page for the church suggests the carvings are also from the 1130s. So that's rather interesting. I am treating myself to a copy of Thurlby's book on the Herefordshire school which they cite.

Avebury, Wiltshire (II)

More detail from the Norman font at Avebury:

Someone with a commercial eye would be selling scarves, lampshades, those paper things you can put round cakes... the possibilities are endless. I wonder if you're allowed to hawk round the stones. I bet there were always people selling souvenirs and greasy snacks at Avebury - it must always have been an interesting and strange place to be. Imagine when the ditch looked like this! It's scarcely believable. The font (pushing a mere millennium) is a spring chicken compared to the 4500 years of the bank and ditch.

By the way, don't think those are dragons being molested by Saint Whoeverthatis (Michael, probably). They've only got front legs and so must be wyverns, a different species entirely.

Image copyright Rhiannon 2015

Kencot, Oxfordshire

This is the excellent Norman tympanum over the doorway at St George's in Kencot. You don't expect to come across an astrological symbol on a church. I don't really understand what it's doing there. But then so many of the symbols seem quite obscure. I like Arthur Collins' 1914 Symbolism of animals and birds represented in English church architecture. But even he doesn't make any particularly convincing suggestion. He does say that Virgil had centaurs at the gates of hell. But to be honest they were probably on the side of the baddies, not there to put arrows down the devil's mouth, as the carving below suggests. And an archer is mentioned in Revelation 6:1-2. But he was sitting on a white horse, rather that being half man half horse. So I still have no idea. But I like the carving anyway and I liked the style of the lettering (and we haven't often seen writing at all).

I was quite pleased with this effort. In fact I sent it off with some others to be printed on postcards. I did notice 'Sagitarius' wasn't spelt right but I thought it was ok because that's How It Was. I'd stood there and copied the style of the writing really carefully.

Actually that's How It Wasn't. I just didn't notice there was another T between the centaur's head and the bow. My sister enjoyed pointing it out to me. This is a bit of a shame.

Images © Rhiannon 2014

Dragons and Wyverns

It cannot be said that I'm totally wasting my time dashing all over the place, because I am actually learning a thing or two. For example, here we have my previously visited tympanum from Harnhill.

I've been reading John Vinycomb's 'Fictitious and Symbolic Creatures in Art', which you can download from Project Gutenberg. And so my previous confusion about our reptilian friend's lack of back legs is explained - he's not a dragon, he's a wyvern. Wyverns only have two legs and a nice tapering tail. There's even something called a lindworm which doesn't have any legs at all, but it can have optional wings, which probably makes up for the limblessness a bit.

I had childishly found it quite amusing that St Michael appeared to be wearing one of my dreadful school uniform skirts, unflatteringly flared and knee length. But, it turns out this is also totally deliberate. It suggests Michael is an Archangel. I think it's a bit of a management position if you're an angel.

Here's the relevant bit from the bible. It's from Revelation, which is a particularly Imaginative book if I recall correctly.
And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, and prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him.

So in this case, 'dragon' has rather negative connotations, it represents evil and bad behaviour, and various other saints can be found poking or standing on the creatures - St Margaret, St Andrew, St Sylvester - and St George of course.

But when you're British, you know it's not all black and white like this. Dragons have their positive connotations too. It's interesting to look at how dragons were viewed in the era when the tympanum was carved. Check out the wyverns on the Bayeux tapestry - they're right by the bit you may be familiar with, where Harold has got an arrow in the eye. There's a wider image here in which you can see the red wyvern being held up, and a lighter one being trampled. These excellent (perhaps hollow) banners were those of the Saxon army. So the Saxons obviously viewed dragons positively. Perhaps when I've seen dragonlike creatures on carvings like that at Colerne, it shows that they weren't all evil and naughty at all.

Of course, the dragon is famous today for being on the Welsh flag. And this connection with the Celts can be proved to go back to 800 AD, since an allegorical tale of red and white dragons can be found in the Historia Brittanum (look at section 42 ). The dragons represent the native peoples and the Saxon incomers. Of course, it's possible (nay, likely) that dragons were important symbolically before this too.

To add to confusion, the Normans seem to have seen themselves as dragons too - there is a 12th century poem by Stephen of Rouen called Draco Normannicus.

And much later on, Henry VIIth, the first Tudor king, had a dragon as one of his emblems, because he was trying to convince everyone he was the right man for the job, ruling over both England and Wales. He claimed uninterrupted descent from the Princes of Britain - people (or legendary figures) like King Arthur and Cadwallader.

So in short, everyone likes to have the dragon as their symbol. And that is because dragons are excellent, and not just symbols of evil and badness. Anyone who has been brought up on Ivor the Engine and little Idris must agree.

saint and wyvern image © Rhiannon 2014