A visit to St Mark's Church, or the Lord Mayor's Chapel

Despite being born, raised and resident in Bristol, there are lots of buildings in the city I don't know well, or indeed at all. One is the 13th century church on College Green, just off the city centre, which has had several names during its long existence.

Founded in c1230, it started life as Gaunt's Chapel, adjacent to Gaunt's Hospital and part of St Augustine's Abbey. It was then known for centuries as St Mark's Church, both before and after its purchase in 1539 by what is now Bristol City Council, following the dissolution of the monasteries. Since 1722, when it became the official church of the Lord Mayor and the city corporation, it's generally gone by the name of the Lord Mayor's Chapel.  

Its elusive nature is in part because until recently, it was often closed to the public. My sole previous visit was on one of the Bristol Open Doors weekends, back when you didn't have to buy a wristband and the whole point of the initiative was that it was free to visit places that were usually out-of-bounds, giving it a vaguely illicit, 'mass trespass' feel that's been lost now you're required to pay for the privilege. 

For the last year, however, the Chapel's been open from Thursdays to Saturdays, and as I recently found myself in town with no need to hurry home to the dog, I decided to revisit it.

Another reason for not having been there more often could be that it's relatively easy to walk past it without really noticing it. For a start it's in the middle of a rank of shops, so that with the exception of the frontage, you get little idea of how the building looks.

(About that frontage: it's a rebuild dating from the 1820s, when the cast-iron viaduct was built over Frogmore Street to raise the level of Park Street and improve its gradient. The original was removed to Sheep Wood in Henbury, to provide a picturesque folly in the back garden of some wealthy Bristolian whose identity is in dispute.) 

To see it better - or at least, its south elevation - you have to go down a little alleyway, itself easily overlooked. 

Because of this tucked-away appearance, when you go inside, there's a Tardis effect. 

16th century Tudor roof

The Chapel of Jesus, or Poyntz Chantry, built c1523 by the Poyntz family of Iron Acton ... 

.. with its contemporaneous floor tiles from Seville

The Chapel of St Andrew, with 17th century wrought-iron screen and gates by Bristol blacksmith William Edney, removed from Temple Church following the latter's bombing in the Bristol Blitz  

The Lord Mayor's Chapel is filled with treasures. Its collection of 16th century French stained glass was purchased by the council in the early 19th century and so, to me at least, is somewhat less interesting for not being original - presumably those windows went the way of most mediaeval glass during the Reformation. Most of the panels seem to be made up of fragments of this earlier glass mixed with far more modern work, as in the East Window. 

Likewise, the corbel tables contain mostly 19th century corbels carved when the Chapel was restored, although there are some that date from the 13th century, that were found in the rubble infill of walls when the new Choir vestry was constructed. 

Also originating in the 19th century are these - well, I've seen them described online as horses holding shields, but looking at their foreheads and their tails, I'm sure they're unicorns, which have an association with Bristol dating back to 1529, when the city was granted a crest supported by a golden pair of the beasts. 

Rather older is the font, which has been dated to the late 13th or early 14th century ...

... and fragmentary wall paintings  (c1500), which were discovered by chance in 1824. From left to right they depict the Resurrection, the Nativity, and the appearance of Christ to Mary Magdalene in the garden. 

But the best thing about the Chapel is the proliferation of mediaeval and early modern tombs and memorials, some of which are dedicated to women.

Necessarily early are the effigies of the founders of Gaunt's Chapel, Maurice de Gaunt who died in 1230 and his nephew, Robert de Gourney, who died in 1269, their feet resting on a dog and a lion respectively. 

Unknown merchant, dating from c1360 and erroneously identified as Henry de Gaunt as early as 1531

Sir Maurice Berkeley of Uley or Stoke Gifford, who died in 1464, and his wife, Ellen (1475)

Bishop Miles Salley, died 1516

Willian Birde, Lord Mayor of Bristol, died 1590

Elizabeth James, died 1599

(Look at that fabulous winged death's head mask)

Sir Richard Berkeley of Stoke Gifford, died 1604

The tomb of George Upton Esq, 1553 - 1608

Thomas James, died 1619  

 

John Aldworth (died 1615) and his son, Francis (died 1623)

William Swift, 1571 - 1623

John Cookin

died aged 11 in 1627

Dame Mary Baynton, 1623 - 1667

I've saved my favourite tomb till last. It was erected by Sir Baynham Throkmorton of Tortworth in memory of his wife, Lady Margaret, who died in childbirth in 1635, at the age of 25. 

Sir Baynton was the great-grandson of Sir Richard Berkeley of Stoke Gifford (tomb above). He's depicted on the tomb but not in it: he married twice more, and is buried in St Margaret's Church in Westminster. In any event, it's Margaret that draws the eye with her daisy emblem on her chest, her baby in one arm, her free hand in her husband's. 

Seeing the tomb again, I found that although I'd remembered lovely Margaret quite clearly, I'd completely expunged Sir Baynton in the intervening years. 

The other thing I like about it is the fascinating graffiti on it, dating from thirty years after its installation to the late 20th century. 

Now all I have to do is visit Sheep Wood to find the original Chapel facade. Maybe in the New Year. 

Ay, now am I in Arden

All I've ever really wanted, since I was a child, is a house with a garden that has a high wall around it and a door in the wall. Not too much to ask, you'd think. 

Oh, and windows with stone mullions, and a window seat. And crooked walls. Though the fact I've never lived, even temporarily, in a house with just one of these features makes me suspect it's almost certainly an unachievable dream, especially this late in the day. 

And now, to make matters worse, I want a moat, for which I blame Baddesley Clinton in Warwickshire, which I visited last weekend. Thanks, Baddes, for zapping that dream even further out of reach. 

Never mind. The real reason for my third foray to the Midlands in two months was to see Angela, friend from my undergraduate days, but having left Bristol early, I had time to visit this beautiful 15th century manor house, which I'd wanted to see ever since I first heard about it. 

As the house didn't open till 11am, I started with a wander around the gardens and grounds.

Look at this ancient vine planted outside the glasshouse but growing through the window and trained over the ceiling. 

Common Carder bumble bee

buff-tailed bumblebee on cardoon

three buff-tailed bumbles on cardoon

sheep grazing in the parkland

a rotten apple

There are several ponds of varying size, most containing quantities of duckweed, through which the ducks leave sinister black trails.

On the whole I prefer wild flowers to garden flowers, but every now and then, I fall for something spectacular, like these dahlias - I think they're called Black Narcissus. 

Inside the house, my eye was caught and caught again by the stained glass, most of which was installed by Henry Ferrers the Antiquary and dates from the 1600s.

In the kitchen there was the usual vintage kitchenalia, the usual fake comestibles and the usual priest hole (one of three). This one, the actual old garderobe shaft, leads to a narrow sewage channel, only four feet high, where in 1591, following a gathering of all the Jesuit priests and novices in the country, five remaining Jesuit priests, two novices and three Jesuit servants crouched for four hours while armed men pounded on walls above them, overturned furniture and tore off panelling in  search of them.

That they weren't discovered points to the ineptitude of the searchers - local thugs, apparently, who'd heard a rumour of the gathering and were after the reward money. 

Unbelievably, this colossal stone chimneypiece was once located upstairs, before being brought back down and installed in the Great Hall.

There's something so pleasing about ancient oak furniture and blue and white pottery

I'm not going to post photos of bedrooms with four-poster beds and artfully placed teasels so that punters don't sit on them; I'll stick with some other, more interesting rooms, such as this chapel. Before the Reformation, the Ferrers family, who gained ownership of Baddesley Clinton through marriage in 1517, worshipped in St Michael's, the mediaeval parish church close to the house - more about there later - but their loyalty to the Catholic faith meant they subsequently had to worship in private, and so they offered Mass in their domestic chapel. This version of it was recreated in the 1940s, the original chapel having previously fallen out of use and been used as a lumber room.

This is the Great Parlour, which was used as a studio in the second half of the 19th century, when the house was inhabited by 'The Quartet'. There's an interesting story attached to this group of people, namely, that in 1859 the wealthy novelist Edward Dering asked fellow-writer Lady Georgiana Chatterton for her niece, Rebecca Orpen's, hand in marriage. Lady Chatterton was hard-of-hearing and thought he was asking her to marry him, so accepted the proposal herself, despite being twenty years older than him. Edward, being too gallant to disabuse her, married her. Ten years later, they moved to Baddesley Clinton to live with Rebecca and her husband, Marmion Edward Ferrers, who owned it. Here they immersed themselves in the painting, writing, music, poetry and restoration of the house. Lady Chatterton died at the age of 70 in 1876, followed by Marmion in 1884. After a year of living together in the house with a Roman Catholic priest as chaperone, Edward finally got to marry his Rebecca, when they were 59 and 55 respectively. They had seven years together before Edward died in 1892, leaving Rebecca to live on for another 31 years.

In the library next to the studio there's a blood stain on the floor by the fireplace; allegedly, the blood of a priest murdered by Nicholas Brome, the owner of the house in the late 15th century. The story goes that he drew his sword and killed the priest in 1485  when he came home and found him 'chockinge his wife under ye chinne'. 

Except wouldn't there be more blood than that? I suggested to the NT volunteer stationed in the library that somebody was having somebody else on, and that was exactly the case: it was those naughty writers of the Quartet - 'you know what writers are like, they love a good story' - who spilled pig's blood on the floorboards for the entertainment of visitors. So while the murder really did happen, the evidence of it is fake - in fact, the part of the building housing the library wasn't even built until a century later.

Choughs featuring on a coat-of-arms

The courtyard

By now I was running a little late for my assignment with Angela, so I almost ran the several hundred yards up the lane to the Church of St Michael. The current building dates from at least 1305, but there's believed to have been a church on that site two to three centuries earlier. Until the 19th century, it was dedicated to St James.  

The painted table tomb of Sir Edward Ferrer, who died in 1535

I love the lectern with its simple etched decoration.

It's in the church that there's a final encounter with Nicholas Brome, who killed not one but two people during his life, having seen fit to avenge his father's murder by killing his assailant in 1471, 14 years before the murder of the priest. Being upper class, he got away with a fine for the first murder, and was pardoned by the Pope for the second, with the proviso that he renovated and extended the church. 

As part of his penance, he arranged to have his body buried vertically in the doorway of the church, so that people entering it would walk on his head. Hence the marker stone under the mat. 

And on to Angela in Coventry, where, after lunch at Fargo Village, we repaired to Charterhouse for ice cream by the River Sherbourne and a fine chin-wag, catching up on memories from 40 years ago and everything that's happened since we last saw each other. (Safer than a chinne-chock any day.)

Himalayan Balsam with Common Carder bumble ... 

... the bum of a tree bumblebee ...

... and the tree bumble itself 

Will be up that way again soon.