May Visit to Herefordshire - Part 4: St Mary Magdalene, Broadwas

 

On the Friday, as mentioned in the last post, we were meeting friends for lunch in the Royal Oak at Broadwas - a super pub highly recommended! We shall return.

I was hoping, having left early, to spend 30 minutes in the church but as it turned out it was more like 25 as our friends turned up early!

Thankfully, I had seen most of the church although I did forget to buy a church guide as I left in a rush!

St Mary Magdalene is Grade II listed and the chancel is mostly C12th.  In 1344 a Chantry Chapel was founded in the present south chapel. There are later additions to the church and it was restored by Charles Hodgson Fowler who was the brother of the rector c1885.

In the churchyard is the base and stump of a C15th cross which was restored in 1900.  The base has a niche for a pyx or a lamp.

C19th chest tombs

Oontitoomps!

The bell turret dates from the late C19th.

The South porch dates to 1881 and replaced a former C14th one.

C12th doorway with weathered capitals which once showed human heads and a stiffleaf decoration.

Roll of Honour in the porch.

Jacobean rails in the bell turret

Font dating back to 1200

A church within a church!

The pulpit is dated 1632.

The Chancel

The Nave

I spent a lot of time looking at these C16th and C15th tiles which include much heraldry including the Berkeley coat of arms. Sorry a lot of photos but there were a lot of tiles much to my delight.

Early C18th ledgers - sorry about the wire snaking across it. There was another one but the sun was shining on it and I just couldn't get a decent photo of it.

Monuments

This was a memorial to Charles Hodgson Fowler who restored the church and his brother the rector and others.

I couldn't find much information on this lancet window although it looks like medieval glass to me.

Piscina in the sanctuary

East Window by Burlison & Grylle 1898

Organ Case 1798 by Trevor Tipple and Peter Hughes

I think these windows are by Burlison and Grylle too.

Outside were what many church guide books state are arrow sharpenings (ie grooves created when medieval archers sharpened their arrows on the church wall) but these days there seem to be other more likely reasons. James Wright, a Buildings Archaeologist, in his brilliant book "Historic Building Mythbusting" (History Press 2024) devotes a whole chapter to this topic.

I won't go into great detail but there are a number of reasons why these are not gouges created by arrows being sharpened.

• There were prohibitions against archery being practised in churchyards.
• In most cases churchyards were too small for this to be carried out even secretly.
• Many practice areas were in fields some distance from the church.
• Archers as part of their equipment carried whetstones to sharpen the arrows.
• Archers tended to use blunts made of horn, antler or wood and rounded steel piles to practise as Bodkin arrows when they were introduced were hard to remove from the butts.
• Trying to sharpen an arrow on the soft sandstone of some churches where the grooves are found would result in a blunt arrow not a sharp one!
• Some of the gouges/grooves are post medieval in origin.

There is evidence in Europe that scraping powder from holy sites such as churches and then mixing it with holy water or wine to create a potion to drink was used as a cure for diseases.

This does not necessarily mean that this happened in England in Medieval and later times but there are many references in medieval chronicles for such dust being used in miraculous cures.

To summarise, archaeological and documentary evidence does not corroborate the arrow sharpening theory. There are several possible folkloric explanations but it is probable that the most likely explanation is that the grooves and gouges on churches are the result of a long-forgotten form of folk medicine.

Graffiti

We came home on the Saturday lunchtime stopping off at the award winning Peter Cook's bakery near Bromyard for some croissants.

All photos taken by me with the Panasonic Lumix FZ330 bridge camera. (I don't particularly rate my photos but if anyone wishes to use one of mine or my son's I would be grateful for an email first - thanks).

Reference

Pevsner "Buildings of England Worcestershire" (First edition)

"Historic Building Mythbusting" by James Wright, The History Press, 2024.