Discoveries in early modern history

On an impulse driven by the desire for refreshment in the midst of an unbearably hot summer, at the beginning of July I made a mad dash from Lincolnshire to North Wales to visit the shrine of St Winefride, a 7th century virgin martyr said to have been decapitated by a spurned lover, only for a spring to emerge from where her head had landed.

You are allowed to bathe (fully clothed) in the outer pool of the spring, shown below, three times a day. The water is very cold, but in the bright sunshine you soon get used to it and don't want to leave. Those bathing are a mixture of people, with some clearly looking for a cure. Many have been attributed to the spring over the centuries.

As a historian, for me one of the most fascinating things about the shrine is its post-Reformation history. It faced serious opposition from Protestants, and not just of the puritan persuasion. In 1637 the Chief Justice of Cheshire ordered the statue of Winefride defaced and that pilgrims should be reported to the assizes. In 1640 Charles I's Secretary of State, Sir Francis Windebank, prevented the building of an inn nearby for pilgrims. During the Civil Wars the organs and windows were attacked. In 1656, it is said, Father Hugh Evans, stationed in Holywell, was arrested and beaten, although I haven't yet been able to trace the reference.

Yet Winefride still won out - the pilgrims kept on coming, with royalist John Taylor reporting in 1652 that the well was frequented daily by rich and poor, sometimes including Protestants, with one being sent by his parish for a cure. This was a period in which taking the waters at places like Bath was becoming increasingly fashionable (Mary of Modena came to Holywell, while Catherine of Braganza visited Bath and Tunbridge) so perhaps desperate Protestants were able to square this somehow with their conscience by thinking of it in a less miraculous way.

There are some fascinating objects in the little museum attached to the shrine, including this 8th-century chest which once contained some relicts of St Winefride:

This chalice veil has a design that echoes 17th-century stumpwork but I believe is of later date:

Then there is a relic of Oliver Plunkett, one of the victims of the Popish Plot of 1681:

A fascinating place - I shall return!

References:

Colleen M. Seguin, 'Cures and Controversy in Early Modern Wales: The Struggle to Control St. Winifred’s Well', North American Journal of Welsh Studies, Vol. 3, 2 (Summer 2003), pp. 1-17

On Friday I met up with my brilliant tutor group for the Advanced Diploma in Local History and gave them a tour of some of the lesser-known historical highlights of Oxford in its churches and colleges.

We started appropriately with one of Oxford's oldest buildings, the church of St Michael at the Northgate, with its Anglo-Saxon tower, rivalled only by the one at Oxford Castle. St Michael's has some fragments of medieval glass, like this angel:

We next popped into Lincoln College to see the magnificent 17th century glass windows commissioned by Archbishop John Williams with the famous image of Jonah and the Whale:

We then visited the university church of St Mary the Virgin with its ornate baroque Laudian porch (defaced by the roundheads during the civil war) and saw the pillar where Archbishop Cranmer was chained. There was a nice memorial stone to all the Oxford martyrs, both Catholic and Protestant.

All Souls followed with its magnificent view of the Radcliffe Camera, towers by Hawksmoor, ornate clock (augmented by crane in this photograph!) and some more very fine medieval glass.

We stopped for tea and cake at the Grand Cafe where I celebrated passing my viva (now with idiosyncratic slavic-style customer service) before finishing off with Magdalene College, with its gargoyles, free-standing medieval statues in the white hydrangea filled cloister which I liked to think inspired its fellow C.S. Lewis (Oscar Wilde another alumni).

Having enjoyed hearing the choir practising while we toured the cloister and visited the gardens and the river, we finished off in the chapel before heading home.

The chapel contains a John Piper window and a striking west window of 17th century sepia glass of the last judgement, contemporary with the Lincoln windows.

On our way home we passed the carving of a faun and a lampost said to have inspired C.S. Lewis. There is such a wealth of historical detail in Oxford to inspire anyone!

Today I visited Heckington church in Lincolnshire, which is adorned inside and out with amazing sculptures. The outside is strewn with protective grotesques, which if in Somerset would be called hunky punks, but in the East Midlands, they are known as babewyns.

Here's a few of them I managed to get close enough to to photograph.

The church is said to be largely untouched since the middle ages, but that didn't prevent the puritans from smashing things about a bit, as seen by yet another collection of glass fragments:

Frescos, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino

Madonna and child by Michele di Giovanni da Fiesole, Palazzo Ducale, Urbino, c. 1455

I've always wanted to visit Urbino, the stronghold of the successful condottiere and art patron Duke Federico da Montefeltro since reading Geoffrey Trease's Horsemen on the Hills (1971) as a child. In Italy, his 'pink palace' (actually more of a light-coloured red brick) is famous:

But it's bloody difficult to get to on your own steam - flight to Bologna, two trains and a bus ride from Pesaro. So I booked a tour with like-minded individuals receptive to the opportunity for the explosion of art and architecture this would provide.

He was a focused and ruthless man, an illegitimate son, who made a name for himself as a condottiere, then gained the Dukedom after the death of his half-brother - there is some suspicion he may have been implicated. The famous nose shown in the painting by Piero della Francesca was not natural - he lost an eye in a jousting accident and then ordered surgeons to remove the bridge so he could see better in battle with the one remaining eye. This just shows what a single-minded man he was.

The palace at Urbino is stamped with his personality, via his personal emblems, as is the rather beautiful renaissance palace at Gubbio where he was born. The order of the garter, which he received from King Edward IV, is everywhere.

He was buried in the Church of San Bernardino, just outside Urbino, which was constructed in a similar style to the palace at Gubbio, according to his wishes.

Federico was a great patron of Piero della Francesca, but this altarpiece at the church was looted by Napoleon and ended up in Milan.

Other della Francesca works associated with Federico are no longer at Urbino, having made their way to the Uffizi and other places, but some remain, including the Flagellation of Christ, which is said to refelct (and perhaps atone for) the murder of his brother Oddantonio who is the Christ figure in the painting.

The Madonna di Senigallia is also a star attraction, but impossible to study too closely due to the volume of Italian schoolchildren surrounding it. The Christ child wears coral for its protective qualities.

There is also a rather wonderful portrait by Raphael, known as 'La Muta' because she looks like she wants to say something, but can't:

All Saints Hillesden in Buckinghamshire has everything: a door pockmarked from a civil war siege, which the church survived, while the manor house was burned down by Oliver Cromwell's troops, and (it is said) thirty foreign mercenaries summarily executed. Despite this, quite a bit of old glass survives, including this rather wonderful piece of sixteenth-century Flemish glass telling the story of St Nicholas.

It captures all the bizarre details of the St Nicholas legends, with wonderfully expressive details:

There is a good explanation of what they represent here. Apparently this one above is the devil strangling a boy, who is then revived by St Nicholas.

I'm not sure whether this window was in the church when it was besieged, as another window is testimony to the destruction then wrought:

The 'Hillesden miracle' is the stain behind this statue of the Virgin Mary, which is said to represent the Virgin itself and be irremovable by scrubbing or painting. Rather a nice testimony for a church which is a great survivor.

I'm a great fan of small museums - the variety and value of the objects often impresses. Here you find Roman statuary, giant fossils (of course), medieval artefacts, items relating to social history like this set of stocks and memorabilia of local celebrity, the wonderful Victorian dialect poet the Rev. William Barnes.

But you have to pay attention: I almost missed this delightful late-seventeenth-century stumpwork box, had not a postcard of it caught my attention, followed by the chief curator showing me exactly where to find it, concealed under a cover. It was hard to photograph under a glass case, but I did my best, but postcards taken in optimal conditions still have their place!

I've seen plenty of 18th century chinoiserie in my time, but this room is sometime else - a marrying of the rococo style of the house with vivid European fantasies about China.

I've been to many Palladian mansions in my time, but none matches Stowe. I thought it would be comparable to Stourhead, but its about three times the size: you couldn't really cover it in less than a whole day. The gardens are dotted with all sorts of follies, from the many Greek temples, to the famous Temple of Worthies, to a gothic folly.

You had to buy tickets for the house separately but I'm so glad I did because it is equally stunning. I wanted to go after reading T.B. White's Mistress Masham's Repose which is partly inspired by the grounds. In the book they are secretly occupied by the last remnants of the civilisation of Lilliput and I can see why they would have thought the gardens a country in themselves, requiring treks of several days for little people to explore. When White was writing Stowe was one of many stately homes which had been put up for sale, becoming a school in the early 20th century, and the house White describes is in a sorry state of repair. Not so today when much effort continues to restore it to its former glories.

I wonder whether those schoolboys appreciate it! Spare a thought though for the ordinary people driven from the land for this vast 18th century vanity project - the church was left with no parishioners.

The only women who gets a look-in at the Temple of Worthies.