Mere, Wiltshire

St Michael the Archangel, open [Jenkins ***], is a funny one; its got many elements that I like - brasses, misericords, a Christopher Webb window and ancestral connections, the two brasses memorialise John Betteshorne and John Berkeley 17th and 16th times great grandfathers - and yet I was left feeling ambivalent about it. I certainly wouldn't rate it as highly as Jenkins does but, at the same time, don't have enough experience of the county's vernacular to pass judgement. As it was open I think I'm going to have to come down in favour of it.

ST MICHAEL. A big, solid church away from the main street. The exterior is mostly Dec and of much visual variety. The chancel is of C13 date, partly early (buttresses and corbel-table), partly later (one two-light window with bar tracery which now looks into the N chapel, and the small single-chamfered doorway below it). Of the C13 also, apparently re-used, the fine large pointed-trefoiled niche with shafts in the S chapel. The Dec work is lavish and extensive. The N chapel was built as a chantry c.1325, but extended later in the C14, the S chapel was built, also as a chantry, c.1350. The N side has straight-headed windows of interesting tracery. Towards the W arches standing upside down on arches, towards the E ogee arches standing upside down on ogee arches. Only the E window is Perp, as is the chancel E window. The S aisle windows are also straight-headed, but have the more usual reticulation motifs. The chapel has flowing tracery to the S and to the E a Perp window re-lacing a Dec one to which the hood-mould with heads belongs. Lavish Dec N porch of two storeys. Niche above the entrance. Vault with a tierceron-star and bosses. The S porch is simpler and much rebuilt, but has a Dec doorway inside as well, whereas the N doorway is Perp. W tower with the lower part of its E wall probably of the CII. The rest Perp with polygonal buttresses ending in turret pinnacles (cf. Marlborough). Decorated battlements, three-light bell-openings. Ceiling inside with traceried panels, over-restored. The total height of the tower is 124 ft. Now the rest of the interior. Here the arcades of the chancel chapels have preserved their Dec appearance. Octagonal pier and arches with two sunk quadrant mouldings. The arch from the S chapel to the aisle corresponds in style; only the arch from the chapel to the W is Perp. On the E walls of the aisles one can clearly see that at the time the chapels were built the aisles were still lower and narrower. The aisle walls were then widened, and in the end the present aisle arcades were built - purely Perp. Five bays, tall piers with four shafts and four hollows, corresponding arches. The clerestory also is Perp. So is the panelled chancel arch. Single-framed nave roof, only the bay above the rood panelled with leaf enrichment in the centre of each panel. The angels along the wall plate are nearly all new. They hold the Instruments' of the Passion. 

FURNISHINGS. FONT. Octagonal, Perp, of Purbeck marble. Shields in cusped quatrefoils. - ROOD SCREEN. A spectacular Perp piece, very tall, of six-light divisions with transom and tracery below it as well as in the head. The original doors are preserved. Coving and loft are not original. - CHAPEL SCREENS. The finest that to the S chapel Tall, with eight-light divisions, articulated by mullions of different gauge. One arch for the middle eight lights, half-arches l. and r. The N chapel screen was the same, but has been cut down. The S chapel W screen simpler, with one-light divisions, but also good. - STALLS, with MISERICORDS. On the N side four angels, two of them recent copies; on the S side a man putting his tongue out, a flower, a bearded head, a leaf, an angel. - On two of the stall  ends are the arms of Gylbert Kymer, rector of Mere in 1449-63. - BENCHES. Simple, of 1638-41, with three knobs at each end, the middle one raised by a semicircle with a shell. - COMMUNION RAIL (S aisle E). C18. - SCULPTURE. Alabaster panel of the Adoration of the Magi; C15 (chancel, N wall). - TILES. Some C14 tiles in the S chapel. - STAINED GLASS. In the S chapel SW window excellent Dec glass, including older figures in their characteristic colours. - The N aisle W window by Powell’s, 1865, designed by Holiday. Excellent, in the Pre-Raphaelite style, but with the big canopies usual in the C14. - (S aisle W window. Medallion by Holiday. R. Hubbuck) - PLATE. Chalice, given in 1630; Flagon and Paten, 1699-1700; Chalice given in 1700; Flagon and Paten, 1700; two Patens, 17I3(?). - MONUMENTS. Brass to Sir John Betteshorne d. 1398, ‘fundator istius cantarie’, in the floor of his, i.e. the S, chapel, a 4 ft 3 in. figure. - Brass to a Knight, S chapel, half-hidden, probably Sir John Berkeley of Beverstone d. 1426. The figure must be c. 5 ft 3 in. long. - Between the chancel and the s chapel tomb-chest with three shields in cusped quatrefoils. Between and at the corners panelled bands. This is supposed to commemorate the first Lord Stourton d. 1463. - Nearly all the Georgian tablets have been banished. - Also some funerary ARMOUR (S chapel).

Mere. From the top of its ancient Castle Hill one can look down on three counties, for one stands in Wiltshire at the boundaries of Dorset and Somerset.

A 17th century house holds out the Sign of the Ship, a network of scrolls, spirals, and flowering plants with a crown on top and a bunch of grapes at the end. The inn, like the sign, takes its name from the sailing ship badge of John Mere, who founded a chantry in the church in the 14th century. The house as it stands was built by Sir John Coventry, whom a Parliament of Charles the Second nicknamed Boanerges. Pepys mentions the loud-voiced knight, but his name is tacked to an Act of Parliament because of an incident of which he was a victim. One night he was waylaid in the London streets and had his nostrils slit, the outrage so angering the Commons that an Act was passed imposing the death penalty for such mutilation. It was called the Coventry Act.

A neighbouring inn has a more personal recollection of Charles the Second declaring that he dined there after the Battle of Worcester. It is certain that he slept at Zeals, the handsome house with the black hounds at the gate, half a mile away.

A more gracious memory clings to the Chantry, the long low Tudor house near the church, where old William Barnes the poet kept his small school. Its garden slopes down to a stream which escapes in a noisy fall through the garden wall, and trickles across the elm-shadowed meadow. By this stream the poet would sit with his beloved Petrarch. These lawns he kept trim with his scythe. Here is the sedate old coach house he turned into the workshop where he worked his lathe. These are the walls from which he took the apricots to carry to his friends. This was the haven where he tended the flowers, this the garden to which he bade so tender a farewell when he had to  leave it to seek a better place for his school at Dorchester:

Sweet garden! peaceful spot! no more in thee
Shall I e’er wile away the sunny hour.
Farewell each blooming shrub and lofty tree;
Farewell the mossy path and nodding flower ;
I shall not hear again from yonder bower
The song of birds or humming of the bee,
Nor listen to the waterfall, nor see
The clouds float on behind the lofty tower.

No more at breezy eve or dewy morn
My gliding scythe shall shear thy mossy green;
My busy hands shall never more adorn,
My eyes no more may see this peaceful scene.
But still, sweet spot, wherever I may be,
My love-led soul shall wander back to thee.

The church the 13th century built, keeping some traces of the Saxon masons, was rebuilt with greater opulence in 200 years, when they added the tower in emulation of those for which the west country is famous. The tower is impressive and 100 feet high, with carved parapet, pinnacles, and traceried windows. Inside it has a fine panelled arch and a remarkable ceiling, divided into panels great and small, the larger ones with moulded timbers and handsome bosses, divided again into smaller ones, all filled with delicate designs.

The church is one of the best in Wiltshire, spacious and lofty and light. The nave arcades have pointed arches and clustered columns. The clerestory is lit by traceried windows. The 15th century roof is supported by angels along its cornice, some clad in feathers. Nearly all the pews are resplendent with carving. The font follows the example of the 15th century woodcarvers in sculptured stone.

These are ornaments which many a church can show, but this church is rare in having a chancel completely enclosed by screens. It is surrounded on all sides by exquisite 15th century woodwork, and so lovely in its tracery that it is sufficient of itself to make Mere famous. The main screen has two tiers of open traceried panels and lovely fan-vaulting with the roodloft above as in medieval days. In an upright of one of the side screens is a peephole, and near it is a staple with the last link of a chain once holding a book. The seats of the old misericords are adorned with flowers and heads. Among them is an angel and another has a dragon pushing his way through leaves. Four golden angels stand on four posts, lighting with their candles the beautiful new altar which is the peace memorial.

The south chapel was built by Sir  John Bettishorne in 1350. Old grotesques support the modern roof, and there are fragments of tiles at the altar steps. In one of the fine traceried windows are four medallions of 16th century glass, with colouring subdued but beautiful, showing St Nicholas raising a man from the tomb, St Christopher with the Child, St Martin on a high-stepping white horse halving his cloak with a beggar, and a bishop with a hand raised in blessing. All are set in a background of leaves or flowers. In the middle of the floor, surrounded by a low iron railing, is the fine brass of Sir John himself. He is in armour with chain mail at its joints, gauntlets protected by knobs, and an elaborate belt with a pendant. His sword and dagger are at his side, his feet on a lion. It is a remarkably unblemished brass. Less fine, but still handsome, is the brass of his nephew Sir John Berkeley*, also in armour. 

There are two porches with rooms over them. The great porch has a vaulted roof whose ribs spring from small heads crowned with flowers and meet in bosses. Under a rich canopy at the entrance is St Michael; over the inner doorway is a battered Madonna. In the room over this porch is a queer possession for a church, a tiny piece of trimming from the bed in which Edward the Second was murdered in Berkeley Castle.

The greatest of all possessions of the church, however, is the alabaster carving of the Adoration of the Wise Men. It was found covered with bright paint in one of the gardens below Castle Hill, and is now restored and so highly valued that when we called it had gone away on exhibition. Other treasures are a carved table, some old seats, fragments of stained glass, and a chest of Shakespeare’s day.

Not far from Mere is Woodlands, a manor house of the time of Chaucer, so perfect of its kind, though small, as hardly to be matched. Its great hall is nobly roofed, some of the curved beams meeting in carved cusps. The tall windows, which have carved heads, admit the light to a minstrel gallery with linenfold panelling. Over the porch is a small room which has a big drawing, found on the original plaster wall, of a horse’s head with bridle and a well-arched neck. An adventure began at Woodlands which ended in an Act of Parliament (1755) known as Lord Hardwicke’s Act “for the preventing of clandestine marriages.”

Ridgeway Pitt, son of Thomas Pitt, first Earl of Londonderry and uncle to the great Earl of Chatham, bequeathed Woodlands to his sister Lady Lucy, who was brought up very strictly with her small cousin Miss Cholmondeley, by Miss Cholmondeley’s mother, Lady Essex.

One day the children, aged 13 and 14, were hurrying home late when they were passed by their uncle, who said “What will Lady Essex say to your being out so late!” They were frightened at what Lady Essex might say and expected to be punished. When they met two Westminster boys (the brothers Meyriek whom they knew) they stopped to tell their troubles. The boys suggested that they should all marry and escape to France. So romantic a fancy promised at any rate an escape from punishment, and the plan was accepted, though the ingenious young ladies insisted on first returning home to fetch two toys, a pretty bird which came out of its cage when the door was opened, and a dog that barked when squeezed.

Lady Essex could not have been watching from the window, for everything went well with them. A maid whom they commanded, and who foolishly obeyed them, accompanied them. The plan was carried out, and then events began to move. Lady Essex had been alarmed by  their absence and had made enquiries, and the happy married pairs were seized when boarding a ship for France. In later years their marriages were properly solemnised, and Lady Lucy Pitt became Lady Pierce Meyriek. The Meyricks lived at Woodlands and we may hope they lived happily ever after; but the Act of Parliament which was the epilogue to their adventure put an end to clandestine marriages, invalidated marriages of infants by licence without the consent of parents or guardians, and required the solemnisation of all marriages in churches.

* Actually his son in law.

Flickr.