The parish church of St Michael at the North Gate in Oxford was a popular city church that has experienced regular remodelling through its nearly one thousand years of history. The early eleventh century tower is the oldest building in Oxford, and marked the northern gate to the city, a popular entrance that opened onto the main market area and, unlike the other entrances, did not require crossing water to approach. It is possible that the early church was originally detached from tower, and then rebuilt on the site of the wall which was moved forward.

For a small fee, the tower can be climbed and it offers a wonderful view of the city.

One of the most interesting objects in the church is in the museum in the tower, it is a “Sheela-na-gig”, which was once attached to the tower between the windows overlooking the north gate.

The interior of the church features a variety of styles from many periods, which reflects the continual use over so many centuries.

The Lady Chapel in the north aisle seems to have been built during the thirteenth century, and there are records that indicate a Chantry of St Mary in the church at this time, although there are no remaining traces of it from earlier than the fourteenth century.

The church has many wonderful examples of stained-glass windows, including some 13th century examples that are the oldest examples in Oxford. A stained-glass window of particular interest is from the late fifteenth or early sixteenth century, and features one of the very few remaining images of a ‘Lily-Crucifixion”.

There are fifteen known existing examples of lily-crucifixions in total, all English, all from between the fourteenth and sixteenth centuries, and three of the fifteen can be found in the Oxford area.

The image was probably connected to the Annunciation, and to a popular medieval belief that the Annunciation and the Crucifixion took place on the same date: 25 March, or ‘Lady Day’.

In ‘The Lily-Crucifixion in Late Medieval English Art’, the author suggests a possible attempt to introduce the image of Christ, as second member of the Trinity, into the popular Annunciation scenes of the time. He concludes:

‘It is an image which compresses elements of the Annunciation and the Resurrection, both of which were celebrated amongst the Joys of the Virgin, associated with the annual celebration of Lady Day and the wider ritual world of the Marian guilds and other confraternities.’

It is currently placed in the centre window of the Lady Chapel and flanked by two images of seraphim. These companions are the only other surviving images of what was once a larger set that was devastated by fire in 1953.

Thankfully, a mid-twentieth century vicar of the church included an image of the set in one of his later editions of ‘The Story of the Church of St. Michael at the North Gate’ , as shown below:

The set seems to confirm the connection of the Lily-Crucifixion to the Annunciation, and it is tempting to suggest that the image might be connected to the earlier Chantry of St Mary mentioned above. If so, it offers the local historian an insight into the beliefs of the medieval community that created it and worshipped beneath the images. But this must be cautiously approached as it is not certain that all of the original images are represented in the set, nor that the Lady Chapel was the original location.

One of the items that I find particularly curious is the arms of the See of Oxford. This is shown in the Lady Chapel:

I found the same image carved on the pulpit in St Margaret’s church in Binsey:

It seems uncertain who the three “demi-virgins” are. I’ve read the suggestion that it might represent St Frideswide, the patron saint of Oxford, and her “two companions” who accompanied her during her flight from Oxford in the story of her life. This seems unlikely. Another suggestion is that it represents St Frideswide, St Margaret and St Catherine, as the two other saints were mentioned in the story of St Frideswide as the saints she prayed to when a holy well sprung forth. This seems possible, but I’m still not sure. A third suggestion for the trio was suggest by the priest at St Thomas the Martyr, Oxford, in his weblog; he suggests St Frideswide, St Margaret and St Etheldreda. This seems possible, but I also find it not really convincing. It’s something I’d like to explore deeper.

Finally, here are a few additional examples of some of the fine stained-glass.

St Michael at the North Gate is one of the most historically important and interesting churches in Oxford, and very well worth a visit.

See the entire gallery of my photographs of the church here:
http://www.robertmealing.com/photography/recent-photographs/st-michael-at-the-north-gate/

See many more at her site: http://isabellethibeault.wordpress.com/

Fabulous.

Last week, my friend Kate took me out of town into the countryside to visit a couple of churches which might be good subjects for the upcoming essay on medieval parish churches. Highest on my list was to visit Shorthampton. Neither of us were familiar with the area or the roads, but thanks to the GPS on my iPhone we were able to find our way to the little church which sits in the middle of a little hamlet of a few houses and barns. Shorthampton feels remote. I can only imagine that when it was built eight hundred years ago the hamlet must have been larger than it is today. It was a misty, cold, wintery day; and the stillness enhanced the feeling of isolation.

Shorthampton was built as a chapel-of-ease to the parish of Charlbury, a town a few miles to the east. A chapel-of-ease allowed a small remote community access to worship without making a longer journey into their main parish church. In 1109, the Benedictine monks at the Abbey of Enysham in Oxfordshire were granted Charlbury and its hamlets, including Shorthampton. Whether a church existed at this time is unknown, but the present building was built by these monks. The earliest existing reference to the chapel is from 1296, and it seems that the monks continued to care for it until the dissolution of the abbeys in the sixteenth century under Henry VIII. The chapel managed to survive, and in 1555 was placed under the care of St John’s College, Oxford.

In 1903, a restoration of the chapel was started, and it was then that the wall-paintings were discovered. An expert on the subject, Mr Philip Mainwaring Johnston, was invited to uncovered the paintings beneath the Puritan’s whitewash, which had hidden them for 350 years. I was lucky enough to obtain a copy from the Bodleian Library of the article Johnston wrote for The Archaeological Journal in 1905 reporting his findings and, most excitingly, containing copies of the several sketches he made when the paintings were first revealed.

One of the most striking paragraphs from the article expresses his delight on exposing one of the paintings:

“The colours are extraordinarily fresh, and the whole painting looked, when uncovered, as though it had only lately been executed — thanks to the blessed whitewash of the Reformers!”

The irony of the paintings being preserved by the very ones who tried to erase them, you can only imagine my surprise when reading that! Johnston gives a very detailed account of the paintings, and when compared to his sketches, I am left with a feeling of concern verging on horror as I see how much of the content has been lost in just 100 years; that is, assuming we can trust Johnston’s sketches and descriptions.

There are remains of paintings on nearly every wall.

The chapel at Southampton is particularly interesting, not only because of the quantity of paintings preserved in one place, but also because of the subjects of the paintings. While there are traditional representations such as a Doom above the chancel arch, and St Thomas Becket, who was an incredibly popular English saint during the middle ages, there are also paintings of St Sytha (St Sitha, or St Zita), St. Eligius (St Loy), and a very unusual depiction of a story from the apocraphal Infancy Gospel of St Thomas in which Christ as a child brings clay birds to life. Luckily, each of these images was also included in the sketches by Johnston, so it is especially interesting to compare them.

St Sytha

Of all the paintings, I find this the most interesting.

Who was St Sytha?

St Sytha (or Zita as she was known in Italy, where her legend developed), was a poor but good girl from a Christian family who became a housekeeper to a family who were wealthy from the weaving trade in Lucca. In every way she became the model of how a proper servant should behave, and was even supposed to have said “a servant is not holy if she is not busy; lazy people of our position is fake holiness.”

She became known for her acts of piety and charity, and although she was not canonised as a saint for several centuries after her death in 1272, she became the patroness of domestic workers. It seems likely that Lucchese merchants brought the saint with them to England in the fourteenth century; and there were additional connections between Lucca and England, including a shrine to the English St Edmund in Lucca Cathedral.

Sitha is typically represented carrying a bag, from which she would share food with the poor; and keys, to show the trust with which she was eventually given by the family that employed her. The bag can clearly be seen in the image but the keys are difficult to determine, even in this detail:

Here is another detail:

Here the drawings by Johnston prove very illuminating. Compare the above images with the drawing from 1905:

The differences in detail are remarkable.

Could the images have degraded this much in 100 years? The quote of Johnston at the opening of the post was actually describing this particular image. “The colours are extraordinarily fresh, and the whole painting looked, when uncovered, as though it had only lately been executed”.

There are areas in his drawings, perhaps a little so in this one, where he seems to purposely leave out part of the image as if to indicate that this part of the painting was damaged. I’m afraid I’m likely to think that indeed, the images have not been well preserved, and we are lucky to have these drawings as guides to what was once there. If they should undertake a new restoration, should they conserve the state that the images are in now? Or should they try to return them to what they were when first uncovered in 1903? I’m honestly not sure, I’ve no experience in how this is undertaken.

Miracle of the Clay Birds

Here is the painting of the miracle of the clay birds showing Mary, Christ and another child. It’s from the Infancy Gospel of St Thomas, which I’ve quoted below the image:

And when Jesus was five years old, there fell a great rain upon the earth, and the boy Jesus walked up and down through it. And there was a terrible rain, and He collected it into a fish-pond, and ordered it by His word to become clear. And immediately it became so. Again He took of the clay which was of that fish-pond, and made of it to the number of twelve sparrows. And it was the Sabbath when Jesus did this among the boys of the Jews. And the boys of the Jews went away, and said to Joseph His father: Behold, thy son was playing along with us, and he took clay and made sparrows, which it was not lawful to do on the Sabbath; and he has broken it. And Joseph went away to the boy Jesus, and said to Him: Why hast thou done this, which it was not lawful to do on the Sabbath? And Jesus opened His hands, and ordered the sparrows, saying: Go up into the air, and fly; nobody shall kill you. And they flew, and began to cry out, and praise God Almighty.

Here is Johnston’s drawing of the scene for comparison:

This drawing makes it even clearer that Johnston took great care to show not only what was there, but what was unrecoverable. There are large areas where he does not attempt to fill in the painting, and the same areas can be seen in the photograph above and this detail:

However, there is a striking difference in way the ermine trim ends on the wall-painting, but continues in the sketch. I’m not sure what to make of this.

St Eligius

Another interesting saint depicted on the walls is St Eligius, often called St Loy in England, or St Eloy. This is probably the latest of the paintings. According to this website from Columbia University:

“After embracing the religious life, he became known for his acts of mercy and concern for the poor, and he was invoked as patron saint of the poor and of poorhouses after his death. He was also adviser and confessor to several Benedictine convents,”

He was also the patron saint of blacksmiths and carriers. According to Wikipedia:

“St Eligius is the patron saint of goldsmiths, other metalworkers, and coin collectors… he is best known for being the patron saint of horses and those who work with them.”

The story of St Eligius that is depicted on the wall-painting in Shorthampton tells the famous and miraculous tale of the saint as a blacksmith trying to shoe the hoof of a possessed horse. The saint cut off the horse’s leg, shoed it, then reattached the leg while making the sign of the cross.

Here is Johnston’s sketch:

Compare the sketch to the current state of the wall-painting:

Here is a painting of the same scene by Botticelli, painted between 1490-92:

St Thomas of Canterbury
On the north wall of the chapel is a painting of St Thomas à Becket.

Sadly, if Johnston’s sketch accurately shows the painting as it was one hundred years ago, many details have been lost:

Hell Cauldron

The final sketch included in the article was from a section of the Doom painting which once stretched across the chancel arch. This painting, a scene of a “Hell Cauldron” where the damned are being boiled, was a warning of the fate that awaits the wicked:

Johnston describes the scene as:

“Against a black background a great metal pot with two handles, standing on legs, is depicted–just such a vessel as must have been a familiar feature in the farm-feasts and church-ale drinkings of the fifteenth century…

ten miserable little figures are crammed into the mouth of the pot, two of whom, with beards, are unmistakably men, while the rest, with characteristically monkish bias against the fair sex, appear to be intended to represent women. Below the pot is a nozzle of a pair of bellows, meant, no doubt, to be blowing up the flames; and on the right is a peculiarly hideous little goat-horned demon, with goggling eyes and great white teeth tootling upon a horn–perhaps in reference to the music that accompanied the parish ale-drinkings…

The humour of the whole scene is irresistible, if somewhat coarse and out of place to modern ideas. One must, however, remember that the Oxfordshire peasant in the fifteenth century required blunt speech, and would perhaps not have heeded a more delicate warning.

Here is the scene as I found it last week:

Additional wall-paintings

I wonder if there aren’t more sketches somewhere? Perhaps the entire chapel was recorded, but only a select few images were chosen for the colour plates which must have been very expensive at the time. There are additional images such as the one Johnston described as Oxford’s patron saint, St Frideswide, supposedly depicted teaching children to read, ox by her side. However, a recent book on wall-paintings by Roger Rosewell supposes that the image is of St Anne in a scene of The Education of the Virgin. This is the painting now:

This Norman window displays what is probably the earliest paintings of them all, a simple oblong block pattern enclosing roses which once covered a large area of the church:

According to Johnston, above the small altar in the southern extension, was an image of the Agony in the Garden of Gethsemane where Christ is said to have dripped blood from his pores. These drops would have landed near the piscina which had been painted a deep red. Most of the wall was dedicated to a Doom, but it is nearly impossible for me to make anything out of it now. There is a description by Johnston of a Hell Mouth in this area, and I think that might be the circular area to the left of the drops of blood.

There are traces of other wall-paintings remaining, but the last I’d like to mention is the wing of a dragon, which would have most likely been part of a very large St George, or perhaps even St Michael, along the west wall.

Even with what I am assuming is a deteriorated state of the wall-paintings, I want to express how incredible it was to walk into this very small chapel out in the countryside, and be surrounded by the art of the people of this little hamlet, many hundreds of years after the images were painted. The chapel is dedicated to All Saints, and surely, the variety of saints on the wall attest to the name being well-founded. Many of the paintings are unusual and rare depictions of saints that reflect, if not the spiritual patrons of the laity, then perhaps the role models provided for the laity by the monks from Eynsham.

St Sytha reminds the people that even a servant can be holy, and their work can be a reflection of their goodness. They too have a saint to protect and watch over them. St Eligius is the hardworking blacksmith and protector of horses, who might have been a particular favourite of the area. St Frideswide, the Anglo-Saxon princess who founded a Minster church on the same spot now occupied by Christ Church in Oxford, was a local saint known for her ability to help the infertile, sick and crippled. She must have been a comfort and source of local pride.

Traditionally, the chancel was the area where the priest performed the most holy ceremonies of the Church, and typically it would have been the responsibility of the priest or in this case, monastery to care for that area. Today the chancel is completely remodelled and lacking in character.

The nave, however, was the people’s area. It was here that they would have met for social as well as sacred occasions, and would have spent many hours staring at the walls and contemplating the stories depicted there. Surely they would have enjoyed the beauty of the images, but they would have also learned the lessons that the wall-paintings were intended to tell. Over many years, the once-simple designs grew into elaborate tales of miracles and holy saints, and the paintings eventually covered most of the once-white walls.

I’m thankful that I was able to visit the chapel, and to share the images with you on this weblog. It’s wonderful that access is still open to visitors to come in, enjoy, and contemplate for a while. I’m especially thankful to Philip Mainwaring Johnston for the wonderfully full descriptions, and most importantly, the detailed sketches. I’ve included additional photos of corbel-heads from the nave, the Norman font, and additional images of the paintings in the gallery page here:
http://www.robertmealing.com/photography/recent-photographs/shorthampton/

I’ve always liked the lyrics in his songs, like these from Flowering Spade:

He has a flowering spade
Growing out of his chest
Full of magic and healing
She is a flowering spade
As she moves and she sways
You can see that she feels it

She’s off to dance with the goat boys
He’s of to sail through your wide open ocean
She learned to sing from a siren
He learned to swim from a drop in the water

There are words there are signs
Close your eyes there is magic inside you
Hear this box in your mind
building frames for to trace your desires

She learned to cook from a sailor
He learned to cry in an elephant circus
She found a recipe for flying
He’s growing flowers to understand dying

Rejoice
Hmmm…
Oh ma na na…

Oh oh
Rejoice
Oh ma na na…

Oh oh
Oh ma na na…

Oh oh
Rejoice
There’s no such thing as dying

Oh oh
Rejoice
Does anyone feel like flying

Oh oh
Oh ma na na…

Oh oh
Oh ma na na…

Ooo…

In this video, he talks about the inspiration for the song, and sings it in the studio. Not the best quality, but enough to give you a sense of his style.