The carved figures that watch over St James's church
The extraordinary carved figures that watch over St James's Church - their origins, their symbolism, and what they tell us about the medieval craftsmen who made them.
This article is being prepared from original research by Rosemary Arnold and will be added shortly.
One carving from St James's has a story of its own, told in a report called "Grotesques at Somerton" in the Valley News of October 2015 (p.20, lower left, continuing upper right).
A visitor had been told that a grotesque playing the bagpipes lay at the foot of a buttress on the south side of the church. Among some broken pieces there, crosses and bits of pinnacle, was a paler stone that someone said looked like "a headless, stuffed chicken". Looked at more closely, it seemed to show a bag and two chanters, though the head was missing.
The visitor, Myal Harper, a maker and player of medieval bagpipes, identified it as a bagpiper with a double chanter, and suggested it could have been carved at any time between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries. These are his interpretations, as reported; they have not been confirmed by a specialist study. The report adds that nobody was sure where on the church it came from, "off the tower maybe", and that the piper had been "taken to a safer place", in the hope that it might one day be put on display.
We do not know where the carving is now. We will not show a picture of a different carving in its place.
Did you grow up in Somerton, or does this article bring back a memory? Do you spot something that needs correcting or adding? Rosemary Arnold and Della Paviour would love to hear from you.