The Critters in British Churches

 
 Green Man Exeter Cathedral 
 
I came across a delightful article written by a British "church-crawler", although an unconventional one. Author Richard Mabey enjoys rummaging around in old British country churches in search of carvings of creatures, real and fantastical. While there are dragons and mythical Green Men there are also the birds and animals of the local fens and forests of the time, a natural landscape which no longer exists in much of Britain. Those who gathered to worship the Creator on Sunday's lived alongside these domestic and wild creatures during the rest of the week and represented them in the decoration of their churches. Even angels had wings which were more akin to the local birds of the air than otherworldly beings. As Mabey describes his jaunts:

...on damp Sunday afternoons we often venture out, searching for the green language. All Saints, Dickleburgh is something of an ark. Lions and wildmen protect the angels on the octagonal font. Instead of a gallery of saints, the rood screen has a cast of figures that seems to have come out of Aesop’s Fables: a rabbit caught by its hind legs, a fox with a goose in its jaws. 

Out to the west, along what is still known as the “shoreline” of the Fens, the great wool churches are full of local wildlife. On the bench ends and choir stalls at Mildenhall there is a bestiary of what was then England’s largest and wildest wetland. There are fishes, beavers, stags racing through the reeds and herons stabbing eels. 



 Eucharist and Spiritual Nourishment, 1987.
 St. Andrew's Cathedral Victoria BC artist Charles Elliott

Evocative. Sadly, we haven't done anything like this is Canadian churches, despite being a country which has been and still is rich in wildlife. The exceptions are in churches which have honoured Native tradition and art, but those are few and far between. Our forbearers were more likely to emulate European design or were Protestant enough to forego decoration altogether.

Church buildings are closing in droves these days, so commissioning artwork which honours the Creator and creatures is unlikely to become a movement. Thank God that there is still evidence of the co-existence of humans and other species from another time in Britain.