Above: the village was deserted in the mid-afternoon heat, as if everyone were taking shelter. A few houses, one pub, and a church dedicated to All Saints. Entering the church from the dazzling light and oppressive heat, I stepped down into a space that was both cold and very dark, so that I had to pause for a minute to let my eyes adjust.
The nave had Norman arches on one side and fourteenth-century gothic arches on the other. Walking along the south aisle I had to go carefully as the floor was uneven and I still felt giddy from the heat. Every window in the building was filled with stained glass, which explained the gloom.
Above: the church had been restored by Bodley in 1895, resulting in this magnificent reredos in the chancel. You can see the whitewash on the walls is starting to come off. Persistent smell of damp.
Above: between the nave and the south aisle was a mysterious tomb with a medieval brass on top. I say it is mysterious because the brass is fourteenth-century in style, but the inscription dates it to the reign of Henry VIII nearly two hundred years later. The knight in the brass is heroic in style, under a triple-arched gothic canopy, the armour looking incredible - tremendous sword, dagger, belt etc.
Above: on the right you can see a translation of the Latin inscription. I think William D'Alison has reused someone else's monument to bolster his claims to chivalric status. We think of the Tudors as being "Renaissance" and "early modern" but in remote areas such as this they were still firmly in the feudal world, even though Bastard Feudalism had substituted monetary contracts for feudal service.
William D'Alison would not have been bothered about using an image in fourteenth-century armour rather than the more showy Augsburg armour of the time of Henry VIII. Chivalry looked back to a golden age, and sought to revive that age (the court at Richmond was "the rich mount of England's honour" etc). A spectacular brass image such as this would have been famous in the local area, and by incorporating the knight into his tomb William D'Alison was appropriating the unknown hero's chivalric prestige.
Above: presumably this is William D'Alison's coat-on-arms on the side of the tomb - unless he has stolen someone else's heraldry as well. We are accustomed to thinking of heraldry being strictly regulated by the College of Arms, but this was not always the case. In remote counties families would often just set up their own coat-of-arms and claim ancient usage whenever challenged.
In any case, symbols of identification predate formal heraldry by many centuries. A great deal of work needs to be done in this area, particularly the way in which family identification devices (brands!) developed into the heraldry of the later middle ages. No-one now believes heraldry just appeared out of nowhere as a way of identifying knights in armour.
Above: other heraldry in the church was interesting. This quartering shows naked figures carrying shields emblazoned with the crusader cross (heraldry within heraldry!). Looking at them reminded me of a lecture by a world authority on the crusades where he described the progress of the First Crusade - when the knights travelled down through Syria their pack-mules died so they carried their armour in sacks, then became so tired and thirsty they threw their armour away and eventually had to fight naked.
The figures seem to be carrying funny-looking weapons that reminded me of ceremonial knives kept in a church in the south of the county.
Above: on a later representation of the coat-of-arms the naked figures seem to have acquired beards.
Above: in the north aisle was this gold-framed watercolour of the brass, but without D'Alison's inscription. Hanging in the half-light it resembled an icon. It made me think about the durability of an image once it has been created and released into the collective consciousness.
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