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35. Another similar cross is to be seen in the little churchyard of the
curious old church of St. Mary at the other, the northern, extremity
of the town, and immediately looking on to the street. St. Mary’s is
altogether different in appearance from the noble, upstanding
church of St. Sampson, but none the less interesting on that
account. It is a huddled-together old building, with a squat tower, or
remains of a tower, and altogether on a miniature scale. Queer little
dormer windows start out of its broadly-sloping roofs, and they and
the south porch are things of delight in the picturesque way. The
interior is an affair of very slender Late Perpendicular nave piers and
arcade, contrasting with a stern, sturdy Norman chancel-arch.
Proceeding still northward beyond this point, the Thames is seen,
here reinforced by its confluence with the river Churn; and if we care
further to proceed a few yards, the Thames and Severn Canal will be
found.
A strange belief exists among the people of Cricklade, to the effect
that any native of the town possesses, as his or her birthright, the
privilege of selling anything without a licence in the streets, not only
of Cricklade, but of any other town in England and Wales. This
belief, although unsupported by any evidence, has been handed
down from time immemorial. It would be curious if any native-born
inhabitant of Cricklade were to test this by selling any articles in
(say) the streets of London, without first providing himself with a
hawker’s licence, so that this traditionary right could be proved still
effective, or otherwise. The privilege is said to have been conferred
by some unspecified king, in acknowledgment of Cricklade having
given shelter to his Queen “when in distress.”
In this connection we may profitably turn to the old farm-house,
once a manor-house, in Cricklade, by the banks of the Thames,
called “Abington Court,” once the property, as we have already seen,
of the Dean and Chapter of Salisbury. This is said to have been
formerly a Royal hunting-box, and tradition further tells us that
Charles the Second was the last monarch to use it. History does not
tell us of any Queen in distress at Cricklade, nor of any Queen ever
36. here; but kings have ever been accustomed to maintain many
queens (so, without offence, in these pure pages, to call them) from
the time of Solomon and David, throughout the ages, and until
modern times. It is a kingly privilege, not often allowed to lapse; and
it is quite within the bounds of possibility that there was at some
time one of these uncertificated consorts at Abington Court, and that
here she gave birth to a child, and that this particular (or shall we
say, this not very particular?) king thereupon celebrated the occasion
by conferring the curious privilege already discussed.
There is something in this ancient house which seems to support
the theory: a substantial something in the shape of a large and
elaborately-carved old oaken four-poster bedstead, fine enough to
have been used by such distinguished personages. No one knows
how it came here, but here it remains, and goes with the property.
Tenants may come and go, but the bedstead, left by the last royal
occupant, stays.
An exceptionally interesting spot exists at a distance of a mile-
and-a-half to the north of Cricklade town, in the neighbourhood of
Latton and Down Ampney. You will not easily discover this
interesting spot, because no map marks it, no guide-book tells of it,
and only very few among the older generation of the rural
agricultural labourers cherish any recollection of it. The younger folk
know nothing whatever of this historic landmark, which is so
insignificant and elusive a thing that one might readily be in the
same field with it, and yet not see it. It is the pure and never-failing
spring of St. Augustine’s Well, once famed in all the country round
about; either by that name, or by the alternative title of the “Lertoll
Well,” or stream. This pure and cooling fount was long credited with
medicinal virtues, less because of any properties in the water itself
than because it was blessed by Saint Augustine. For it was to these
parts that Augustine came, somewhere about thirteen hundred and
twenty years ago, for his conference with the dignitaries of the
native British Church. Augustine, accredited by the Pope, Gregory
the Great, to England, on a mission to reconvert the Anglo-Saxons to
Christianity, in addition sought to reconcile the early British Church,
37. which had continued to survive in Wales, with the Church of Rome;
and to that end he arranged a conference on or near this spot,
beyond the then boundary of Saxon England, in the territory of the
British clan known as the Hwiccas. Had Augustine been a different
manner of man, the proposals he had to offer for a fusion of the
Churches would probably have been entertained; but although long
since canonised, he was really very little of a saint, and by no means
the eager missioner he is generally represented. He came to
England, in the first instance, only because he was sent, very much
against his inclination, by his spiritual head, whom he dared not
disobey; and his haughty, intolerant temper brought these ideas of
unity to naught. At the place of meeting was an oak-tree, for many
centuries afterwards known as “St. Augustine’s Oak,” but long since
utterly decayed and vanished away. It is said to have been felled
about 1825, and the site of it is supposed to be a small group of
farm-buildings, rebuilt in modern times, known as the “Oak Barn.”
The British clergy had heard unfavourably of Augustine’s
domineering spirit, and went with suspicion to meet him. They had
agreed, however, when they proceeded to this oak, which must have
been a notable landmark, that if he received them standing, they
would listen favourably to his proposals; but if he sat when they
presented themselves, thus receiving them as inferiors, they would
refuse to discuss the question of unity.
Augustine received them sitting, and the conference broke up. He
is said to have performed miracles here, at this meeting, and to have
touched the eyes of the blind with the water of the Lertoll stream, so
that their sight was restored; but none of these prodigies availed
with those slighted native clergy.
It is remarkable, however, that an obscure tradition lingers among
the peasantry of the neighbourhood to this day, to the effect that
the water of this stream is “good for the eyes.” You will not find this
tradition in books; it is just a belief handed down from father to son
in the course of some forty generations.
38. The spring is situated in a meadow to the north of the Cricklade
and Maisey Hampton road, and bubbles up and runs unheeded
away, in these material, sceptical times; but those days are not far
removed when the peasantry of Gloucestershire and Wiltshire
resorted to it, for cure of their ailments, and filled bottles with the
treasured water, for home use.
40. CASTLE EATON—KEMPSFORD—BY THE THAMES AND SEVERN
CANAL TO INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE—LECHLADE—
FAIRFORD—EATON HASTINGS WEIR—KELMSCOTT—RADCOT
BRIDGE.
A mile or so below Cricklade, the river Ray flows into the Thames,
from the direction of Swindon. Opposite, on the left bank, stands
Eisey Chapel, on its little knoll amid the meadows. It is the place of
worship of the hamlet of Eisey, a little collection of cottages removed
out of sight from the river; and is just a small rustic Perpendicular
building, with a bell-cote. Water Eaton, which is not on the water,
and Castle Eaton, which does not possess a castle, come next, both
deriving the name from ea = “water”; the first named of the two
therefore given its name twice over. The “water” of Water Eaton
refers perhaps to the old manor-house, rather than the church, the
manor-house being in sight of the stream. The prefix to the name
must have been added in Saxon times, when the Romanised British
were driven out and the descriptive nature of the name “Eaton”
forgotten. Although not spelled in the same way as Eton by Windsor,
the two mean precisely the same, and have fellows in very many
other “Eatons” throughout England.
42. THE OLD BRIDGE, CASTLE EATON.
Water Eaton manor-house, of heavy Georgian architecture and
dull red brick, with characteristically prim rows of heavily-sashed
windows, is unimaginative but decorous.
Although Castle Eaton has now no castle, and not even the
discoverable site of one, here was formerly situated a stronghold of
the Zouches. It is a very quiet village, of a purely agricultural type,
and generally littered with straw and fragments of hay. Here the
Thames was until quite recent years crossed by a most delightful old
bridge, that looked like the ruins of some very ancient structure
whose arches had been broken down and the remaining piers
crossed by a makeshift affair of white-painted timber. “Makeshift” is
perhaps hardly the word to be properly used here, for it seems to
indicate a temporary contrivance; and this bridge, if not designed in
43. keeping with the huge, sturdy, shapeless stone and rubble piers, was
at any rate sufficiently substantial to have existed for many
generations, and to have lasted for many yet to come. Alas that we
should have to write of all this in the past tense! But it is so. Twenty
years ago, when the present writer paid his first visit to Castle
Eaton, the old bridge was all that has just been described—and
more; for no pen may write, nor tongue tell, of the beauty of that
old, time-worn yet not decrepit, bridge, that carried across the
Thames a road of no great traffic, and would have continued still
safely to carry it for an indefinite period. It was one of the expected
delights of revisiting the Upper Thames, to renew acquaintance with
this bridge, sketched years before; and it was with a bitter but
unavailing regret and a futile anger that, coming to the well-
remembered spot, it was seen to have been wantonly demolished,
and its place taken by a hideous, low-pitched iron girder bridge,
worthy only of a railway company; and so little likely to be
permanent that it is observed to be already breaking into rusty
scales and scabs beneath its hideous red paint. The ancient elms
that once formed a gracious background to the old bridge stand as
of old beside the river bank; but the old bridge itself lies, a heap of
stones that the destroyers were too lazy to remove, close by, on the
spot on which they were first flung. No description, it has been said,
can hope to convey the beauty of Castle Eaton Bridge, for the old
stone piers were hung with wild growths, and spangled and stained
with mosses and lichens. A sketch of one end of it may serve; but it
once formed the subject of a painting by Ernest Waterlow, and in
that medium at least, its hoary charm has been preserved. Let a
photograph of its existing successor be here the all-too-shameful
evidence of the wicked ways of the Thames Conservancy with this
once delightful spot in particular, and with such spots in general. We
cannot frame to use language too strong for a crime so heinous
against the picturesque.
45. THE THAMES AND SEVERN CANAL, NEAR KEMPSFORD.
Let us recapitulate the facts, and draw the indictment more
exactly against that sinning body. We shall thus ventilate a righteous
indignation, and help to create a healthy public feeling against all
such damnable doings, by whomsoever done. We are, of necessity,
in this country of change and of an increasing population, faced with
a continuous defacement of places ancient, beautiful and historic;
and it behoves us to use our utmost efforts to preserve what we
have left. What, then, shall we say of such absolutely unnecessary
outrages as this? Shall we not revile the whole body responsible,
from the Board and the Secretary down to the chief engineer and
the staff of underlings who did the deed? The Thames Conservancy,
in fact, has been a most diligent destroyer of the beauty of the river;
slaving early and late and overtime in that devil’s work, but
remaining supremely idle where the encroachments of private
persons, or the uglifications by waterworks companies, and modern
46. mill-and factory-builders are concerned. It is the Thames
Conservancy that has repaired the banks of the river and has
reinforced the walls of its weirs and lock-cuts, with hideous bags and
barrels of concrete, that retain their bag-and-barrel shape for all
time, and so render miles of riverside sordid in the extreme. We
simply cannot afford these ways with the river.
The church of Castle Eaton is in a modest way a remarkable
building. It is a moderate-sized Early English structure, chiefly
notable for retaining its original stone sanctus-bell turret on the roof.
The interior discloses nave and chancel only, with a shallow
elementary north aisle, built out from the original building, and
supported upon two wooden pillars on stone bases. This extension—
a half-hearted addition—was itself made several centuries ago,
apparently for the purpose of affording additional seating
accommodation at some period when the population had increased.
But it has greatly shrunken since then; and in these times when the
towns have superior attractions for all wage-earners, it still continues
to shrink.
A very curious old oak post, some seven feet high, and carved
with a spiral pattern, stands at the end of one of the pews, and
seems to mark what must have been the old manorial pew; bearing
as it does on its ornamental head a shield of arms, dated 1704,
probably that of some bygone local family. The whole affair looks
remarkably like a part of some old four-poster bedstead, but it may
be one of the supports of a former western gallery. A half-length
fresco figure of the Virgin—the church being dedicated to St. Mary—
is to be seen on one of the walls, and a very large, and apparently
fine, brass of a knight was once in the church. But this has been at
some time destroyed, and the stone indent itself is now to be found,
flung out of the building and used as a paving-stone, outside the
west door.
Road, river, and canal now all make for the village of Kempsford,
which does not derive its name from some ancient, prehistoric
Kemp, but from “Chenemeresford,” said to signify “the ford on the
47. OLD
WOODWORK
, CASTLE
EATON.
great boundary”; that is to say, the river. And
Kempsford is situated in Gloucestershire, here divided
from Wiltshire by the Thames, which forms the natural
frontier of many counties along its course, from
Thames Head to the sea.
We shall find the best way from Castle Eaton to
Kempsford, little more than a mile distant, to be across
the meadows and to the towing-path of the Canal,
here and onward to its beginning at Inglesham, a very
beautiful stretch of water-way; overhung, as it is, by
noble trees in places, and rich in rushes and water-
lilies. When the Gloucestershire and other County
Councils, together with the local Rural District Councils,
procured an Act of Parliament for taking over this
neglected waterway, great hopes were entertained of
reviving an undertaking which had never been
remarkable for its financial success, and it was fondly
hoped thereby to break the “monopoly” held by the
railway. A trust was formed in 1895 by those public
bodies interested, and it was agreed to guarantee £600
annually for thirty years for repairing and working the
canal. The Great Western Railway was thus rid of an
incubus, and the ratepayers of these various districts
find themselves saddled with an utterly
unremunerative expenditure that no commercial firm
would have had the folly to assume. For not only were
the repairs of Sapperton Tunnel exceedingly costly, and
the general overhauling of the canal expensive, but no traffic worth
the mention has been induced to come this way. Those squanderers
of public money were heedless of the facts of modern business, and
forgot to consider that in these latter days time is more than ever
the essence of the contract in worldly affairs. Less able than ever,
therefore, are canals to compete with railways. So once more, after
a fugitive period of activity, we see the Thames and Severn Canal
returning to its old neglected condition.
49. KEMPSFORD CHURCH.
Kempsford church-tower is prominent across the meadows, and
we find it to be a notable and interesting church, and the village a
place of aristocratic appearance, where humble cottages are few and
the manor-house imposing. This is as it should be in a place with its
history: the manor having once belonged to Edward the Confessor,
who gave it to Harold. William the Conqueror conferred it upon one
of his knights, and in the course of the centuries the property came
to Henry, Duke of Lancaster, whose son-in-law, John o’ Gaunt,
50. Shakespeare’s “time-honoured Lancaster,” once resided here, greatly
favouring this one of his many manors, of which the number
scattered all over England was so great that it would have been
distressingly hard work for him to visit them each and all in the
course of a year.
The only son of Henry, first Duke of Lancaster, was drowned here,
and his sorrowing father is said never again to have resided at
Kempsford. On the north door of the church is nailed a horseshoe, in
allusion, it is said, to one cast by his horse on his departure, and
immediately nailed up here by the inhabitants. It is, indeed, often
said to be the original shoe, but that is an absurdity. A curious other
horseshoe legend and observance is to be noted at the town of
Lancaster, John o’ Gaunt’s ancient palatine seat. There, where the
two principal thoroughfares of the town cross, is “Horseshoe Corner,”
so named from the horseshoe let into the roadway, and renewed in
every seven years; in memory, says tradition, of a shoe cast there by
his horse.
Kempsford church consists of a long and lofty aisleless nave, with
tall central tower. The nave is Norman, with Norman doorways and
Perpendicular windows, and very beautiful, gorgeous, and
impressive.
The ancient manor-house, frequently styled “the Palace,” came at
last into the possession of the Hanger family, Earls of Coleraine, one
of whom wantonly destroyed it.
The Thames and the Thames and Severn Canal, running almost
side by side at Kempsford, now abruptly part company again, and
meet only three-and-a-half miles farther on, at Inglesham. The canal
is the more easily followed, since the windings of the Thames in
those miles add certainly another mile and a half to the distance,
and are to be followed only with extreme difficulty by canoe, or
afoot through many fields. Hannington Bridge, crossing it nearly a
mile and a half below Kempsford, is the first bridge of any
importance, and is a solid, stolid modern masonry building,
eminently practical and unimaginative, serving to carry the road
51. from Highworth to Fairford across. The remains of an old weir on the
way give pause to the exploring canoeist at most seasons; and a
small tributary, the river Cole, hailing from Berkshire, is seen on
approaching Inglesham.
There are no churches in these surroundings more interesting
than the humble little building at Inglesham, one mile from
Lechlade, in an almost solitary situation. It is quite a rustic church,
chiefly in that best period of gothic architecture, Early English, and it
is so far removed from restoration, or even adequate care, that it is
almost falling to pieces. Damp and neglect have wrought much
havoc here, and the zealous concern of the Society for the
Preservation of Ancient Buildings, by preventing any large scheme of
repair, seems not unlikely to result, at no distant date, in the entire
dissolution of the structure.
The meeting of the canal and river at Inglesham Hound House is
marked picturesquely by the grey round tower of the Hound House
itself, and by a row of tall poplars. The Round House is nothing but a
glorified lock-keeper’s house, situated beside this, the first lock,
where the canal sets forth on its way toward Stroud and the Severn.
A mile farther downstream lies the town of Lechlade, across the
lovely level meadows, with the tall spire of its church glinting whitely
in the sun. It is an exquisite view, and so alluring that you are in
haste to make acquaintance with Lechlade itself, that promises so
romantically. But let us not hurry. Rather that distant view than
Lechlade at close quarters; for although it is in very truth an
inoffensive town, it is also sufficiently true to remark that it is
dulness incarnate, and that this mile-long glimpse will be found the
better part.
52. INGLESHAM CHURCH.
At Inglesham Round House there are plentiful facilities wherewith
to refresh the body and to employ the uncultivated mind; for the
lock-keeper’s domain includes a number of apologetic sheds and
shanties devised for the benefit of picnic-parties; and anything
eatable or drinkable likely to be called for by parties on picnic, or
boating, or merely padding the hoof, is obtainable, together with the
mechanical music of melodeons or other such appliances that will
serve you with pennyworths of minstrelsy, as more or less
appropriate sauce. Here also is a greatly-patronised camping-
ground, generally plentifully occupied with tents in favourable
summers. The river Coln here also flows into the Thames from
Fairford.
It is a pretty spot, with its hunchbacked lock-bridge, and the not
unhandsome modern foot-and tow-bridge that spans the Thames,
helping to compose a picture. It is the Ultima Thule of the Oxford
man’s “Upper River”; the farthest point to which it is generally
navigable for small boats.
Passing Inglesham Round House, and proceeding over the foot-
bridge to the right bank of the Thames, toward Lechlade, we enter
53. Berkshire; crossing over the stone single-span Lechlade bridge into
the town and into Gloucestershire.
The town of Lechlade takes its name from the little river Leach
which rises at Northleach, fourteen miles in a north-westerly
direction, and gives its name to Northleach, East Leach Turville, and
East Leach Martin. Although Lechlade—i.e. “Leach-let,” the outlet of
the Leach—thus obtains its name, that little river flows into the
Thames at a considerable distance away, two and a half miles below
the town, at Kelmscott.
INGLESHAM ROUND HOUSE.
The disastrous persons who derived “Cricklade” from “Greeklade,”
and invented a university of Greek professors there, made
“Lechlade” a rival seat of learning, where Latin was taught, and gave
its original name as “Latinlade.” Fuller tells us how this imaginary
university—in which he seems to have believed—ended by migrating
to Oxford. He is quite poetic about it. “The muses,” he says, “swam
54. down the shores of the river Isis, to be twenty miles nearer to the
rising sun.”
Other, and equally weariful, persons made Lechlade, “Leeches-
lake,” the home of the College of Physicians (“leeches”) relegated to
this obscure town—which, of course, it never was.
It is now hardly conceivable that once upon a time there was a
considerable traffic in cheese upon the upper Thames, between
Cricklade, Lechlade, Oxford, and London; but such was the case.
This was formerly a great cheese-producing district, as it might well
be now; and, as roads were bad everywhere and railways were not
yet, the only method was to load the cheeses on barges, and so
float down-stream.
Lechlade is very well on week-days, in the quiet way of all such
decayed townlets, but on Sundays it is not to be recommended.
Dulness stalks its streets almost visibly, and the only sounds are the
argumentative tones of the preacher in the Wesleyan chapel (a
building with black doors and gilded mouldings, after the fashion of
a jeweller’s shop) at one end of the street, whose raucous voice can
be distinctly heard at the other: not unlike that of a man quarrelling
outside a public-house.
But the fates preserve us from a Sunday at Lechlade! It is fully
sufficient to skim through the place at such a time, and make for
some other that does not so completely figure the empty life. A
village is not dull, because it has no pretensions to being a town—
and country life is never dull. But at Lechlade the position is so
desperate on Sunday that, for sheer emptiness of other incident, a
large proportion of the population flock the half-mile that stretches
between the town and the railway-station, and hang, deeply
interested, upon the bridge, to witness the Sunday evening train
depart. It is a curious spectacle, and one that carries the mind of a
reminiscent reader back to stories of marooned castaways on desert
isles, gazing hopelessly upon the departing ship that has left them to
solitude and despair. That must needs be a place of an extreme
Sabbath emptiness where the grown-up inhabitants are impelled, by
55. way of enlivening the weary evening, to walk half a mile to witness
what seems an incident so commonplace to the inhabitants of places
whose pulses beat more robustly.
A STREET IN FAIRFORD.
The “pratie pyramis of stone,” as Leland styles the spire of
Lechlade church, is almost the only architectural feature of the
townlet, if we except a few mildly-pretty stone-built houses of Tudor
gables and mullioned windows; among which may be included the
“Swan” inn. None of these are included in the accompanying view of
the church, which, although graceful without, and promising interest
within, has been miserably treated, and swept clear of anything of
note. A few curious carvings are to be noted on the lower stage of
the tower exterior, including a singular bearded and capped profile
head and a hand grasping a scimitar. Although well done, they look
like the idle sport of some irresponsible person or persons, and do
not appear to have any particular meaning or local application.
The architecture of the building is of no great interest to
archæologists, being of somewhat late Perpendicular date, but a
charming example of tabernacle-work may be noted on one of the
piers of the nave-arcade, adjacent to the font. On the gable of the
nave, at the east end, is a figure of St. Lawrence, to whom the
56. ANCIENT CARVING,
LECHLADE CHURCH.
church is dedicated. He holds a gridiron, the
symbol of his martyrdom, in one hand, and the
book in the other.
Fairford is the centre of attraction in this
district. It lies away north-west, four miles
distant, at the end of the little railway from
Lechlade, on the river Coln. The Gloucestershire
Coln has its name spelled without a final “e” (for
what reason no man knoweth), and gives a title
of distinction to a group of villages—Coln St.
Denis, Coln Rogers, and Coln St. Aldwin’s—that
are famed for their beauty. But Fairford has
superior claims to notice, chiefly for the
celebrated stained-glass windows of its church.
“Fair-ford” may or may not derive its name
from its picturesque situation, but the beauty of
the ancient ford of the Coln, now and for long
past crossed by a bridge, might well warrant an assumption that the
name arose from an æsthetic appreciation of the scenery. Exactly
what it is like to-day may be seen by the view shown here, with its
noble church placed finely above the meadows.
Fairford is a village that was once a town, prosperous in the far-off
days when the wool-growers and the cloth-workers of the Cotswolds
made fortunes in their trades and founded families that came in time
to a dignified haven in the peerage; and at last declined and died
out, or have rejuvenated themselves with American marriages and
the dollars incidental thereto. This old process of founding families
by way of successful trading we may still see at work, in our own
times, under our own intimate observation, encouraged by the
institutions of primogeniture and a House of Lords, two most
powerful incentives to success.
57. LECHLADE.
Fairford nowadays stands aside from all these activities. Its day is
done, and except on those occasions when the motor-omnibus
between Lechlade and Cirencester plods through, and on the weekly
market-day, there is no stir in the place at all. Its fine church and the
famous windows alone bring strangers here. The church is due to
the munificence of the Tame family. John Tame, merchant, of
London, purchased the manor in 1498, and died twenty-seven years
later. He must have been a typical “new man,” with plenty yet to
58. spare of the abounding energy that had made his wealth in London,
for it was he who began, and nearly completed, the rebuilding of
Fairford church. We may well picture him, in our imagination,
hopeful of founding a family, as many other successful traders of
that expansive age had already done, or were doing. His immediate
descendants, however, failed him, and the name is extinct. It was his
son, John, who completed the church, and died in 1534.
Monumental brasses to the memory of these Tames, and of the third
and last, Sir Edmund Tame, are seen here, but their greatest
monument is the church itself, a beautiful example of the last
developments of Perpendicular architecture, in which the coarsened
mouldings, here and there noticeable, the curiously-set pinnacles of
the tower, and the character of the grotesques carved on the
exterior, alone hint of that new leaven in matters architectural and
spiritual, the Renascence, that was presently to overthrow ancient
architecture and much else.
But the wonderful windows, twenty-eight in all, the finest and
largest set of old stained-glass windows in England, are our chief
concern at Fairford.
The question as to the foreign or English workmanship of these
windows has always been in dispute; unnecessarily, it would appear
to the present writer. They are, for the most of them, obviously of
Flemish origin; and a late discovery would seem to have at last
settled the point. In the west window of the south aisle will be
observed an executioner with a sword, on which is a monogram A.
An ape also appears in the window, for no very obvious reason,
except that it affords material for a pun; a form of humour greatly
favoured by the old craftsmen, as all conversant with ancient
churches well know. The monogram and the ape point to the glass
being the work of Aeps, a Flemish worker in this sort at the period of
the Fairford church-building.
The large figures of the prophets and apostles which fill the
windows of the aisles are so unmistakably Flemish that there should
never have been the least doubt about them. If there were any
59. room for incertitude, it would be in respect of the great west
window, the most remarkable of the series, which appears to
disclose no foreign element; but, as it in all other respects obviously
belongs to the general scheme, it may perhaps be called Flemish, in
common with the others.
FAIRFORD, FROM THE RIVER COLN.
A legend long current, accounting for these windows, says that
John Tame, asked to pilot a vessel containing them from Nuremberg
to Rome, turned his course to England instead, and in fact stole the
windows. Now, however fantastic this story, it probably contains this
much of truth, that it hands down a foreign origin; but that this glass
was acquired in any chance way is altogether unlikely, for it bears
every sign of having been designed for this church, and for the exact
position and size of the windows it occupies. The designs have been
ascribed by some to Albrecht Dürer, and an old manuscript goes so
far as to relate a visit paid by Vandyck to Fairford, when he said the
drawing was Dürer’s work. This, however, would seem to be
impossible, as Dürer was but twenty-three years of age when
Fairford church was in course of building.
The great west window affords the chief interest, illustrating as it
does the Last Judgment. The upper half, above the dividing transom,
displays the company of the blest, assembled round the central
60. figure of Christ in majesty, with St. John Baptist on His right hand,
and the Virgin on the left. Three half-circles, somewhat resembling
rainbows, surround these figures; the first a deep red band, filled
with representations of the seraphim; the second, yellow, with
figures of the apostles; the third, blue, filled with the cherubim.
Angels fill the outer spaces, quiring before the Throne. These be the
glorious surroundings of the good, the constant, and the true.
The Doom, occupying the lower portion of the window, is a
striking example of imagination applied to the subject of retribution
for sin. The Devil and his infernal host and the flames of Hell were
evidently very real to those who pictured these scenes of torment,
and to those who first looked upon them, and they could certainly
never have thought it possible a time would come when people
would either laugh at these ideas of a real personal Devil with
attendant fiends, or look upon them as curiosities; certainly without
any fear or awe.
Here, in all the grotesque drawing and vivid colouring
of which that age was capable, we see the rewards of
wickedness. St. Michael the Archangel, in the centre, is
shown, holding the scales of justice, wherein the souls of
the dead are being weighed. On the left of him is St.
Peter, with his key, standing at the gates of Paradise;
while on the right are seen the dead rising from their graves, and
the flames of Hell, a little subdued by the weathering of the
centuries, awaiting them. In the lower right-hand corner is a
representation of the Devil himself, with a head like a cottage loaf, in
the very opening of his own especial region, holding the red-hot
bars, and grinning out between them. Curious auxiliary devils are
shown, actively engaged in carrying the dead to torment; among
them the remarkable group illustrated here. The tall scaly devil on
the right, carrying one of the damned on his back, is a blue fiend;
the other, displayed in the act of lashing a woman just rising from
her grave, is a strawberry-coloured devil, covered with pips, and
glaring with eyes of flame.
61. Other fiends in green, in red, and in yellow, are pursuing shrieking
souls, or, having caught them, are seen flinging them into pits of
fire. Some of these places of torment are shown neatly enclosed in
masonry, like blast-furnaces. Another fiend, illustrated here,
regarding a woman clasping her knees, seems to be rather of an
apologetic, gentlemanly type. It is his business to be a tormentor,
but he looks genuinely sorry for it.