Buddha
As your drive eastwards from the Great North Road, now less
lovingly referred to as the A1M, across the lower valley of the river Trent,
you might be forgiven for being slightly unimpressed with your surroundings.
The landscape is a little too flat, a little too Fen-like, to hold your
interest for long. A place of massive concrete cooling towers and
post-industrial decline, on the edge of the once prosperous Nottinghamshire
coal field. I strongly suspect that nobody will ever describe this landscape as
picturesque. A certain bleak grandeur perhaps, but it isn't an area that is
going to feature strongly in major collections of picture postcards.
The town of Gainsborough hits you before you fully realise
that it is a town at all. Crossing the river over an elegant nineteenth century
bridge, you are quickly directed left, past a crowded and slightly jaded row of
Victorian warehouses; a run-down hang-over from when this small settlement was
England's most remote inland port. It surely can't be the most inspiring visual
gateway to a town, cruising past tyre sales specialists and neon-lit car sales
forecourts, before being directed into a large tarmac car park that seems to
largely back on to pubs and shops that are trying to out-compete each other in
their collections of old cardboard and scruffy wheelie bins. From here you must
proceed on foot, and although it obviously isn't the up-market end of town,
there are still a few architectural gems hidden away. The odd Georgian
townhouse, complete with blue plaque reminding you that Gainsborough was once
the centre of the known world. Or at least the bit of the known world that
centres on this quiet corner of north-western Lincolnshire. For it was here at
Gainsborough that King Alfred the Great married his lady Ealswitha, when the
town was one of the capitals of the kingdom of Mercia. There are other blue
plaques here too, affixed to the sides of buildings that fringe the car park,
and each is worth a quiet moment to pause and read.
Then you turn a corner, and there it is before you,
Gainsborough Old Hall, a picture in black and white. It suddenly appears, like
a great half-timbered spaceship, unceremoniously plonked down amidst a mass of
undistinguished Victorian and modern architecture. Three great ranges of late
medieval craftsmanship that has few equals anywhere in England, and one of the
best preserved and most beautiful manor houses to survive from the Middle Ages.
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| Gainsborough Old Hall |
Over the centuries the house has been many things, and has
suffered many fates. First built in the second half of the fifteenth century as
a luxurious manor house for the aspirational Burgh family, it was the scene of many
a distinguished visitation. In October 1483 king Richard III stayed at the
hall, on his way from York to London, and the following century Henry VIII
spent three days at Gainsborough in 1541, meeting here with his privy council.
However, such high profile visits were not to last. By the end of the sixteenth
century the house had passed into the ownership of the Hickman family, who had
little use for a building of such antique style and uncomfortably monumental
proportions. The family moved their main residence elsewhere, and the house
fell into decline. In the following centuries it was used as a public meeting
space, as a theatre, as gathering place for the local Freemasons, and even as a
soup kitchen for the needy, until by the time of the Second World War large
parts of the building were deemed to be in very serious danger of collapse. It
was only then that its true significance was recognised, and local people
banded together to form the 'Friends of the Old Hall', fighting to see that the
house was preserved and restored.
Today Gainsborough Old Hall is run by Lincolnshire County
Council's heritage service, but as soon as you walk through the door it becomes
obvious that local people still play a very active part in its care and management
- and clearly love the place. Now complete with gift shop and excellent cafe,
the house has been restored to its former glory, telling its own story, but
also the role it has played in the rise and fall of the town itself. The Great
Hall is now much as it was when first built, with one of the most sumptuous
medieval timber roofs that you will ever see. The old kitchen, with its two
massive fireplaces, and covered servery, is probably the best preserved example
of its type in England. You simply won't find better. All of the house, from
the cosy wood panelled seventeenth century dining room, to the massive Tudor
spiral staircase, simply oozes history.
Then, as you sit contemplating the beauty of the late-Tudor
wall paintings over a cup of good coffee, your eyes may fall upon the ancient
timbers of the wall. If you look carefully at the vertical timbers you will see
a small teardrop-shaped burn mark, set right in the middle of the solid oak
beam. Almost worn away during the restoration and cleaning of the medieval
timbers, and the passing of five centuries, the little burn mark sits at eye
level in splendid isolation. You would be forgiven for not noticing it, particularly
when surrounded by other such obvious splendours, and if you did, for explaining
it away as somebody long ago being careless with a candle. However, once you
have noticed it, you begin to see other examples elsewhere in the house. The
passageway that leads to the Great Hall, for example, appears to have burn
marks on almost every timber, the buttery window is surrounded by burn marks,
and the vertical timbers at the bottom of the second stairway are literally covered
in dozens of such marks. A house packed full of hundreds of burn marks. And
once you start to see such marks you just can't help seeing them everywhere; in
just about every old or ancient house that you might visit. These strange
markings are what have come to be known as 'taper burn marks', and the story
behind them is strange indeed.
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| Taper burn marks, Gainsborough Old Hall |
***
Many of these burn marks are so obvious, and appear in such
numbers, that they couldn't help but be noticed by several antiquarians and
writers. However, most of these observers were only seeing small collections of
marks in isolation, rather than any larger grouping of material - and quite understandably
passed the marks off as being the result of accidents. Made by the clumsy
placing of a candle, or incautious children playing with fire. They most
certainly didn't consider them to have been created deliberately. Even the
prolific collector of country folklore and local history, George Ewart Evans,
writing in the mid-twentieth century about a house he had once owned, saw them
as inconsequential. Talking of the beam above the fireplace in his Tudor house,
he stated that "there is a vertical
scar that had obviously been burned into the wood. It is about three inches in
length, and tapers towards its top, giving it the appearance of a candle flame".
Ewart Evans then noted that "similar
scars occur on the lintel-beams of many houses of this period, and they are
sometimes explained as taper burn made by the flame of a wax taper that was
fixed in brackets attached to the beam". However, not satisfied with
such a suggested origin, he went on to propose that these burn marks were in
reality the result of red hot pokers being applied to the timber, "not wielded though by irresponsible
youngsters but by sober paterfamilias who mulled beer by heating a poker in the
fire and plunging it into the copper beer muller, but not before he had first
either tested or partially cooled the poker on the lintel beam".
It is clear the Ewart Evans had noticed that there were some
quite fundamental problems with the traditional interpretation of these burn
marks. A candle could only be accidentally knocked over if there was a shelf or
a bracket for it to sit upon. A wax taper could only leave a scorch mark where
there was a bracket for it to be fixed in. In most of the cases he observed
these fixtures were simply not present. There was no shelf, there was no
bracket or taper holder, and the marks were to be found isolated in the middle
of an otherwise plain lintel. However, his own ingenious response involving the
red-hot poker and the mulling of ale by sober sturdy yeomen also failed to
stand up to scrutiny. And whilst he had noted that these marks were not just to
be found in his own Suffolk cottage, but were commonplace across the country,
he really hadn't fully considered the implications of this. Whilst his sober
'paterfamilias' might be mulling their ale and testing their pokers across the
length and breadth of the land, quite possibly for many, many centuries, they
would most certainly be largely confining this activity to the general region
of the fireplace. The problem for Ewart
Evans theory of course, is that when people began to look at these markings in
a systematic manner, the burn marks began to be found all over the buildings.
There was certainly a marked bias towards the beam over the
fireplace, at least at first glance, but these taper burn marks began to be
recorded almost everywhere; and often in some very odd and unusual places
indeed. Whilst shallow burns on door surrounds and doors could be plausibly
explained away by the fumbling of a candle as the door was opened in badly lit
conditions, it was less easy to explain the markings that were turning up on
roof timbers, roof plates and even the treads of stairs. It was even more
difficult to explain away a small number of markings that were actually
horizontal across the timbers, rather than vertical, indicating that they had
been made before the timbers were even incorporated into the structure. Close
examination of certain buildings began to suggest that, whilst the markings on
the lintel above the fireplace may have been the most obvious taper burns in
the building, they were far outnumbered by the quantity found elsewhere.
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| Evidence of re-cutting. Gainsborough Old Hall |
With the growth of interest in the study of early buildings,
and the beginnings of large scale and systematic surveys, the number of these
marks being recorded rose dramatically. It wasn't uncommon to discover thirty
or forty such burn marks in a single building, and in one or two notable cases,
several hundred. In fact, given the number of supposed 'accidents' that our
ancestors had had with candles and tapers, it began to look rather surprising
that any medieval, Tudor or Jacobean house had survived to the present day at
all. The carelessness of people living in largely thatch and timber buildings
appeared to be beyond belief. And that of course was the problem - it was
beyond belief. The idea that all of these markings could be the result of
accidents, and accidents in some very unusual parts of the buildings, soon
began to appear rather unlikely.
However, it wasn't until the turn of the millennia that
anyone seriously suggested that these marks could have been made deliberately.
The idea appears to have been first seriously suggested in 1997 by Virginia
Lloyd, who was then completing her studies on the idea of ritual protection of
East Anglian buildings at the University of Durham. Although Lloyd's original
work passed largely without comment, it was reintroduced in a more widely read
paper in 2001, and the debate that followed can be described as sometimes
intense and heated. Many people had been looking at old buildings in detail for
decades, and the idea that they had all generally overlooked these markings, or
simply misinterpreted them, didn't go down too well. However, pioneering research
carried out by John Dean and Nick Hill was published soon afterwards; research
that largely put an end to the debate. Dean and Hill had actually carried out a
series of scientifically based experiments aimed at replicating these burn
marks, and better understanding how they had been created. The results were
most certainly surprising, and fully vindicated and supported Lloyd's idea that
the markings might be deliberate. The experiments indicated that the creation
of a typical taper burn mark wasn't actually something that could be achieved
either easily or accidentally. In the first instance, the candle or taper had
to be placed against the timbers at a very specific angle - about 45 degrees -
and the creation of each mark could take anything up to fifteen minutes. If the
angle is too steep the candle goes out, too shallow and the burn mark becomes
too elongated. What is more, to achieve the distinctive hollow seen on many of
the markings the flame had to be removed, the resulting charcoal scrapped away,
and then the flame re-applied to the wood - a fact that neatly explained the
tool marks seen on many examples. Whilst a few die-hard researcher still
question whether these marks were made deliberately, they are now a very
insignificant minority, with Lloyd's theory now being almost universally
accepted.
***
Understanding
and accepting that the markings were deliberate simply left the question of
when the marks were created? Just because a mark was to be found on timbers in
a medieval or Tudor building, it didn't necessarily follow that they had been
applied in the medieval or Tudor period. Like the graffiti inscriptions found
on an old castle or church, the burn marks could have been applied at just
about any point between the construction of the building and the moment of
discovery. An idea of exactly when the marks had been made would also, it was
hoped, give a clearer idea as to why they were there in the first place.
Initially a number of researchers suggested that the marks were all largely
confined to the post-reformation period in England, beginning in the second
half of the sixteenth century, and carrying on all through the seventeenth
century. Jonathon Duck, who carried out a study of such markings in houses from
southern Cambridgeshire, went as far as to argue that the burn marks were most
probably a direct reaction to the religious changes associated with the
reformation itself. However, as is so often the problem in the early years of
any new field of study, the limited information that was available was really
only showing one small part of a much, much bigger picture. Essentially, if you
largely only look at post-reformation houses - then post-reformation houses is
where you are going to find the markings.
As awareness
of these markings grew they began to be discovered in medieval buildings as
well. In fact, they were turning up in just about every medieval building that
was being looked at in any detail. As previously mentioned, at houses such as
Gainsborough Old Hall, they were literally being recorded in their hundreds. Similarly,
at the remains of Sissinghurst Castle in Kent, now in the care of the National
Trust and justly famed for the gardens laid out by the writer Vita Sackville-West,
the remaining south range of the building contains several hundred burn marks
laid across the timbers. Whilst much of the building certainly dates to the
second half of the sixteenth century, an earlier core survives intact - encased
within the later building. Taper burn marks are to be found on the timbers from
both periods of construction. At Knole House, in Sevenoaks, Kent, a massive
archaeological and conservation project being carried out by the National Trust
also recorded burn markings high up in the late medieval roof structure, and on
surviving medieval wall timbers now hidden behind a partition wall inserted in
the early seventeenth century. The massive house once served as a palace for
the Archbishop's of Canterbury, before passing to the Crown under Henry VIII,
and burn marks have now been recorded on just about every building phase from
the late medieval through to the early seventeenth century - where they were
discovered on beams hidden beneath the floorboards. As further investigations
take place, the older buildings are found to be just as likely to contain these
marks as the later ones.
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| Taper burn marks, Knole. |
However,
there is one category of medieval buildings that have survived to the present
day with often only minor changes and amendments, and the chances are that,
wherever you are reading this, you are sitting quite close to one. There are
over ten thousand surviving medieval churches in England, and limited surveys
of just a small percentage have shown that here too the markings are present. The
most common location of the burn marks would appear to be upon the church door,
although examples have been recorded on East Anglian rood screens. It is also
likely that there are many more out there awaiting discovery, as no detailed
examination of church roof timbers has taken place specifically aimed at
identifying such marks. The cases of these burn marks having been identified on
church doors, largely internally but occasionally externally, are fairly numerous.
Good examples are to be found at Bungay, Blythburgh (both discussed below) and
Needham Market in Suffolk, Burrough Green in Cambridgeshire, Siston in Gloucestershire
and Runwell in Essex. Although Timothy Easton suggests that burn marks are
often to be found near 'peep-holes' in church doors, citing as an example that
at Saxtead in Suffolk, it is not something that has been widely seen elsewhere.
Jonathan Duck also suggests that such markings are largely to be found on the
inside of the churches north door, but again far more examples have been
located on the south doors than those of the north. As more are discovered our
understanding of where they are to be found may change.
As well as
churches there are also a few more modest medieval structures that have
survived, and where taper burn marks have also been recorded. Appletree
Cottage, on Bury Lane in Epping (Essex) was originally constructed in the late
fifteenth century as a probable forester's cottage associated with nearby Waltham
Abbey. Although the house was extended in the late sixteenth century, and
suffered many not always sympathetic later alterations and subdivisions, the
majority of the late fifteenth century timber frame survives pretty much intact.
Recent large scale renovation by the owners, based around returning it to a
single structure, was able to reveal many of the hidden timbers and noted a
number of taper burn marks on the beams. In most cases these were single
markings, locate in the centre of individual timbers, and despite extensive
examination of the whole framework, it is clear that the marks appear only on
the late fifteenth century structure - and not on the timbers of the later
extension.
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| Taper burn marks above a C16th fireplace. |
More
recently, extensive renovation work on the Guildhall of the Holy Trinity in
Finchingfield, Suffolk, revealed no less than thirty individual taper burn
marks on a single bay of the original mid-fifteenth century timber frame - with
the early sixteenth century gate-house at Lower Brockhampton, Herefordshire,
and the similarly dated roof timbers of the long gallery at Layer Marney Tower
in Essex, also both containing fine collections of multiple taper burn marks.
Likewise, the timbers used to form the tower of Jericho Priory (Blackmore
church) in Essex also have many taper burn marks on them, located especially
near the joints. The tower timbers have been securely dated using dendrochronology
(tree ring dating) to the late fourteenth century, with many of the individual
timbers being felled in the year 1392, making these amongst the earliest dated
examples to have yet come to light. However, it is possible that even earlier
examples do exist. Ongoing work by researcher Alison Fearn on the medieval
manor house at Donington Le Heath (Leicestershire) has examined two sets of
taper burn marks on timber door surrounds, both of which have been
dendrochronologically dated to the second half of the thirteenth century.
So it has
become very clear that these markings are to be found on buildings probably
going all the way back to the thirteenth century. Unfortunately, this still
doesn't answer the fundamental question. Just because these markings are being
recorded on dozens of medieval buildings, does this conclusively prove that the
marks are medieval in origin? It must be admitted that it doesn't. It could
still be argued that the timbers have been burnt at a much later date, and that
the houses may already have been regarded as ancient at the time they were
applied. In short, the age of the actual building is rather immaterial. It is the
age of the burn mark that is important.
Whilst the
actual age of many of the taper burn marks simply can't be proved one way or
the other using scientific methods, there are examples that very clearly can be
dated by other means. Rather than having an actual date inscribed next to them,
as very occasionally happens with early graffiti and similar markings, these
burn marks can be fairly precisely dated due to a natural quirk relating to the
timber that they are burnt into. Almost without exception the timber used in
early buildings was oak. Anyone who has ever tried their hand at oak carpentry
will know that the wood is a real pleasure to work with when freshly felled -
or 'green' as it is known. However, as oak dries out and seasons it becomes
increasingly hard, and after several centuries will quickly blunt any axe, saw
or chisel that is applied to it. However, oak also has one other very
noticeable characteristic. During the seasoning process, and most usually
during the first one or two years after felling, it cracks and warps. The
warping is what is often responsible for many of the twisted looking walls and
uneven floors in old houses, giving them much of their character. The cracks,
however, follow along the grain of the wood, and can end up being quite wide,
and it is these cracks that can be used to date some of the taper burn marks
that are being recorded.
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| Sissinghurst Castle |
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| Taper burn marks cross seasoning splits. |
So, having
established that these markings are to be found in very large numbers, on
buildings dating all the way back into the high Middle Ages, and that they were
deliberately applied to timbers sometimes during construction, it simply leaves
the question as to why it was done? What was the perceived function of these
markings that clearly made them so important to our ancestors. Why did they
invest a fair deal of time deliberately scorching and setting fire to the beams
in a newly built house? What, in short, do the markings mean? Well, given the
relatively short time that such marks have been subject to scrutiny by
archaeologists and building historians, and the fact that new examples are
being catalogued almost every week, it is hardly surprising that there is more
than one current interpretation. And all of the current interpretation centre
not on the burn marks themselves, but upon the objects that created them - the
candles.
***
The feast of
the Purification of the Virgin, or Candlemas as it was more commonly known
amongst the medieval congregation, was an important event in the church
calendar. The celebration took place in early February, forty days after
Christmas, and was regarded by many as marking the end of the dark winter
season. Although not of the same official importance in the eyes of the Church
as either Easter or Christmas, Candlemas was highly significant to all those
taking part - as everyone was obliged to. As the name suggests, candles and
light played an important part in the festival, and over time took on the
central role in the events of the day. Eamon Duffy, writing upon the
significance of the event in the minds of the medieval parishioners, notes that
according to the legend of St Brendan, the feat of Candlemas was the one day in
the year when the betrayer Judas "was
allowed out of Hell to ease his torments in the sea".
Like so many
medieval church festivals, the feast of Candlemas was preceded by a day of
fasting, in which all but the old and infirm were expected to confine
themselves to nothing but bread and water. The following day, on the feast
itself, every member of the parish was expected to attend, when a great
procession would take place around the church, and oftentimes the churchyard as
well. Each of the congregation were expected to carry a candle, which records
suggest were sometime bought in bulk by the parish in the weeks leading up to
the event. The candles, which were then blessed, were expected to be offered to
the parish priest, or laid before the altar or image dedicated to the Blessed
Virgin Mary, along with the gift of a single penny from each individual taking
part. However, it is also clear that candles blessed during the ceremony were
also taken away by the members of the congregation, and that these 'holy
candles' were deemed particularly powerful. Such a belief in the power of these
holy candles probably stemmed for the Candlemas prayers of the church itself. The
very first of the five 'Candlemas prayers' unequivocally made clear the power
of the candles, stating that "wherever
it shall be lit or set up, the devil may flee away in fear and tremble with all
his ministers, out of those dwellings, and never presume again to disquiet your
servants". It could hardly be a clearer message to the medieval
worshippers; the holy candles would drive away the devil and protect your home.
However, it
wasn't only the Candlemas ceremony that would have linked the power of light
and candles with spiritual power in the minds of the medieval congregation.
There were many other areas of religion and church life that could also have
influenced thoughts and beliefs concerning the power of the wax. The most
obvious, and one that every churchgoer would have had a direct interest in, was
that of the Paschal candle. This candle was the largest that would burn in any
church or cathedral, and was part of the Easter ceremonies of rebirth and
renewal. On the evening before Easter Sunday (or in some cases Maundy Thursday)
the entire congregation would gather in the church and, as darkness fell, every
light and flame would be extinguished, signifying the darkness of the world
created by the death of Christ. Then, just as Christ was told of being
resurrected, the light was kindled anew. The first flame to be lit was the
great Paschal candle, and from this all the other candles and lamps were
restored, flooding the church with light once more. The Paschal candle itself varied in size
depending upon the wealth of the parish, and was often paid for by public
subscription. In 1483 the relatively wealthy parish of St Andrew in Canterbury
paid for a paschal candle made of eight pounds of wax, whilst a few years
later, in 1507, the parish of Mildenhall in Suffolk purchased a paschal candle
of only three pounds in weight. Even these candles were modest compared to
some, with records recording paschal candles that were of thirty or more pounds
in weight, requiring special mechanisms to aid in their being lit. However, few
could compare with that made for Westminster Abbey in 1557, which used no less
than three hundred pounds (136 kilos) of wax.
The candles
themselves were often decorated with ribbons or painted in coloured wax, and
even the more modest examples could be made to look far more impressive with
the addition of an elaborate candle-holder. In some cases these candlesticks
were also decorated to look like the candle above, giving the impression that
the whole thing was far bigger than it really was, and such candle extensions were
known as a 'Judas'. The paschal candle itself was then used to lead a
procession around the church and to the
font, where the waters within were blessed anew. The candle was lit during all
services of the Easter season, and continued to be used throughout the year during
baptism services, clearly linking it in the mind of the medieval congregation
with birth and re-birth. Tapers lit from the paschal candle were believed to have
particular power, and wax spilled from the paschal candle was regarded as a
particularly potent charm for the protection of children and mothers-to-be.
The power of
candles may have been associated with the protection of children and infants,
but they also played an important role at the other end of life's journey. The
burial service was one of the most important ceremonies that any medieval
individual would be involved with, albeit the last one they would personally
take part in, and candles played a central role. Even the name for the ceremony
itself - funeral - is supposedly taken from the Latin 'funeralis, in turn
derived from the Latin term for a torch or taper (funis), and referring back to
a period when burials took place under cover of darkness - following a
torch-light procession to the place of burial. The planning of the ceremony was
certainly not something left to chance, with many medieval wills very clearly
stipulating what was required as to where the person wanted to be buried, what
was to take place at the funeral itself and the commemorations that followed,
and offerings were made to the church to ensure that this took place.
The will of
Richard Lynne, of Bassingbourn in Cambridgeshire, was made in his lifetime and is
particularly detailed with regard to his wants and requirements. As a man of
means, and a gentleman, he requested that he be buried in the church itself,
beneath a 'convenyent marbill stone'
with a brass of himself laid into it. However, after dealing with his family
and personal possessions, much of the rest of the will is taken up with issues
surrounding candles. Richard required, as was traditional, four wax tapers or
candles burning around his body within the church, each of which was to be a
pound in weight. He was also unusually specific about what would happen to the
remains of the four candles once he was buried. These were to be gathered
together and reformed into one new candle, which was then to be placed before
the altar of 'Our Lady there to be spent'.
Lynne also left a generous bequest of candles to the church. Each year the
churchwardens were to have made twenty one pound tapers, to be burnt before the
rood screen upon all the principal feasts of the church - with additional wax
to ensure that they were 'new made'
for the great festivals. What is particularly unusual about the will of Richard
Lynne is that he specified what should happen to the four 'burial candles'
after his funeral was over.
Within a
year of making his will Richard Lynne was dead. Even seen through the
relatively clinical lens of the parish churchwardens accounts, the story of the
Lynne family of Bassingbourn is a tragic one. In 1507 Richard and his wife
Alice had paid for the burial of three of their children, together in the
parish churchyard. All three are likely to have been victims of the first major
recorded outbreak of the 'sweating sickness'; a usually fatal and fast acting
disease, whose cause is still something of a mystery to this day. It was said
that the victims could be 'well at
dinnertime and dead by suppertime', and that children and young people were
particularly vulnerable. Sadly, only two years later the same parish account
books record the further deaths of three members of the Lynne family, again all
buried at the same time, suggesting another epidemic of some sort had struck.
This time, along with at least one other of their children, Alice was left to
also arrange the burial of her husband Richard. In common with other funeral
services of the time, and in spite of Richard's generous requests to the
church, the churchwarden's account note that Alice was charged the sum of
eleven shillings and four pence for the torches used at the funeral.
No matter
what your status within the community, candles and torches were expected at any
funeral, and in most cases these were organised by the church itself. However, this was no simple act of charity,
and surviving members of the family, such as poor Alice Lynne, were expected to
pay for them, sometimes over a number of years. Indeed, even after the
reformation the funeral right was one that stuck very much to tradition,
despite the best efforts of the church to change it. It was a time for the
ringing of bells, for solemn procession, for the distribution of money and
bread amongst the parish poor - the Dead Man's Dole - and for candles, torches
and tapers. Whatever other changes the reformation tried to make to the
services of the church, the candles of the funeral service appeared largely
sacrosanct, whether you could afford them or not..
In a time
before any form of social care beyond the alms of the church and generosity of
your neighbours, an individual could make provision for their funeral by
becoming a member of a 'Guild'. Although trade guilds existed, there were just
as many guild organisations that were purely religious and social in nature.
Some were open only to certain types of people, such as single men or maidens,
whilst others were open only by direct invitation of the members - and tended
to be fairly aspirational in nature - and by the later Middle Ages the city of
London boasted almost two hundred such guilds. In addition to the membership
fee, the guild members were expected to undertake particular religious
obligations, such as the repair and maintenance of a particular chapel or
altar, or paying for the upkeep of a light or lights before a particular image.
However, as well as financial costs and spiritual benefits, there were also
clear potential secular benefits to membership. For example, the Guild of St
Katherine, based at St Botolph's church in London, not only paid out 14d a week
to guild members who found themselves in 'unmerited
poverty', but also allowed members to borrow from guild stocks on giving
certain sureties for repayment. More importantly guilds would often offer to
pay for the burial of members who had died in poverty, and even members who
passed away in reasonable financial conditions could expect the all important
lights, candles and tapers to be provided for from guild funds. The burial of
guild members could be elaborate ceremonies, with the richer guilds expecting
everyone to attend in full guild livery. The Guild of St John the Baptist, in
Spalding (Lincolnshire), also stipulated that every members funeral was to be
accompanied by 6 wax candles, 'to be
carried either by poor men or boys', and that their own bellman would
announce the death throughout the town. The Guild of St Anthony, based at St
Margaret's church in Kings Lynn, stated that the Dean of the guild was to
supply the candles for each burial of a brother, but each member was bound to
pay half a penny towards their provision.
The candles
used in the funeral service were seen as particularly powerful, burning around
the body until the moment of burial, and whilst they were a powerful emblem of
the flickering fragility of the human condition, it was also believed that they
'put all the powers of darkness to flight'.
In Ireland until very recent centuries it was believed in some areas that a
minimum of five candles was required around a corpse as protection against evil
spirits and the devil. After the burial the candles that had been set around
the body were removed. However, in many cases they were preserved, to return to
the church for the "month's mind" - a service of commemoration
designed to hasten the journey of the soul through purgatory, that took place a
month following the burial. These
candles were particularly associated with the spirit of the departed, and what
happened to them in the month between burial and the month's mind service, and
what happened to them subsequently, is unclear in many cases. Like the 'holy
candles' of Candlemas, perhaps these too were taken home by the individuals
family and close friends?
There is
also one particular 'folk' practice associated with candles that may have a
very direct bearing upon the taper burn marks found all over historic
buildings. These are the activities that took place in the home and are
associated with yet another Christian festival - that of Twelfth Night. Twelfth
Night was the last day of the twelve days of Christmas, and marked the official
end of the festive season, and has many traditions and customs associated with
it to this day. In many areas it is considered incredibly unlucky to have any
Christmas decorations still hanging after Twelfth Night has passed, and
particular cakes and foodstuffs were shared with family and friends. The
festival is also strongly associated with the driving away of demons and evil
spirits. In parts of Germany it was a tradition until well into the seventeenth
century for children to run room door to door, beating them with sticks, to
drive out any evil spirits that might be lodged inside. In England the festival
was marked in a more sedate manner. Several sources recount the practice of
householders moving from room to room with a lit candle, to drive away evil
spirits, and the marking of a cross with the candle flame on each ceiling as a
deterrent to witches. It is only a small step, albeit one without a clear documentary
source, from marking crosses on the ceiling to marking the house timbers
themselves.
Although
such an act does appear to have strong links to the practice of applying taper
burn marks to house timbers, there were also other times when candle flames
came into direct contact with a building, and very strange time they were too. The
act of 'candle writing' is little known about, and knowledge of this strange
and eerie phenomenon tends to be limited to only a very few specialists. It was
first highlighted by historian Timothy Easton, who was called in to examine a
number of very unusual markings that had come to light on a ceiling in a
Suffolk farmhouse. What Easton came across was a plaster surface that had been
extensively and elaborately marked using the flame of a smoky candle, which
left dark lines, shapes and dots of soot on the pale plaster. Some of the marks
created by the soot were clearly recognisable as quasi religious symbols, and
have been recorded elsewhere amongst more formal written charms and acts of
folk magic. Names are also present amongst the soot writing, and Easton has
been able to date some of them back to the seventeenth century. To date only a
few dozen examples of such candle written ceilings have been discovered, most
usually again in larger properties, and it unclear whether the marks were
intended to remain on show, or were to be concealed beneath distemper or
lime-wash.
The use of
recognisable symbols that turn up elsewhere in folk magic has led to the
suggestion that candle writing was the work of the local wise man, or 'cunning
man', and Easton has argued that they were created as a form of written charm;
but a charm that was written onto the very fabric of the building. Combined
with the fact that such markings are only usually found in the upper areas of
each house, most usually attic rooms and bedrooms, has also led to the
suggestion that the charms may well be linked to sleeping disorders, nightmares
and sleepwalking - acts that were often believed to be caused by evil spirits.
However, such an interpretation may be over complex when discussing such candle
writings, and it is clear that not all such examples had anything to do with
folk belief or charms, but were rather acts that may be considered akin to
vandalism. A character in Thomas Herrick's play Hesperides, published in 1648 - at about the same time Easton's
candle written ceilings were created - lists everything that was required of a
house for a happy retirement. His needs weren't great, needing but a small
house and watertight roof, 'and seeling
free, from that cheape Candle Bawdry'.
Nearly four decades earlier Ben Jonson's comic play 'The Alchemist'
premiered in London performed by The Kings Men. Towards the end of the play the
character Lovewit returns to his London house, which in his absence the Butler
has turned into a den of iniquity. "Here
I find", states Lovewit, "the
emptie walls, worse than I left them... the seeling filled with poesies of the
candle; and Madame, with a Dildo, writ o' the walls".
Although the
role of candle writing may still be ambiguous, it is also clear that wax had an
ambiguous place in the medieval mind, and that its association with candles -
be they those of the Candlemas ceremony, Christmas, or the great Easter Paschal
candle - led to it having a spiritual value far above what was warranted by its
actual cost. Nowhere is this better demonstrated than amongst the offerings
made by pilgrims to the great shrines of medieval England.
In the fifteenth century it is recorded that sailors who had
survived a life threatening experience near the Lincolnshire port of Skegness
made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving to the relatively minor shrine of St Edmund located
at nearby Wainfleet. Here they presented the saint with a ship modelled of wax
and a generous offering to provide a candle to burn each day during mass. In
similar vein, a group of fishermen from the Suffolk port of Dunwich presented a
great anchor made of wax to St Edmunds shrine at Bury St Edmunds in
thanksgiving for their safe deliverance from a great storm. Such models in wax formed only a very small
percentage of the votive, or ex-voto, offerings made at shrines and parish
churches throughout England. By far the most common form of offering, still
seen in catholic countries to this day, were images and models of parts of the
body – often of the area that had been cured, or for which a cure was being
sought. Eamon Duffy, giving numerous accounts and instances of these ex-voto
items, describes them as "a standard
part of the furniture of a shrine". As well as acting as
offerings and prayers of thanksgiving, these items acted to advertise the
particular saints efficacy and power, and even as a visual reminder of the
specialisation that individual saints offered to certain maladies. As Thomas
More recorded in his accounts of the shrine of St Valery in Picardy, who was
regarded as being particularly efficacious in matters relating to the sexual
organs, “all theyr offrynges that honge
aboute the walles/none other thynge but mennes gere and womens gere made in
waxe”.
Contemporary accounts make it clear that the ex-voto
offerings at the shrine of St Valery were unusual only in respect of what they
depicted, although other recorded offerings were also perhaps a little out of
the ordinary. In 1285 it is recorded that King Edward I had made an offering of
wax candles at the church or St Mary, Chatham, of a total length equal to the
combined heights of the royal family, and the following year sent a wax image
of a sick gerfalcon to the shrine of St Thomas at Canterbury. More
common though were the ex-voto offerings recorded as being present at many of
the major shrines of Europe. Alongside the numerous chains and shackles of
freed prisoners and crutches from healed cripples were many hundreds of wax
models of hands, feet, limbs and heads given by those who had received or were
seeking a cure for their ailments. The numbers present at some shrines was so
great that at least one pilgrim, visiting the popular shrine of Rocamadour,
accused the monks of actually making them themselves. Whilst images and
presents of wax from poor pilgrims might be expected, being all that they could
afford, the fact that such wax images were also presented by kings and nobles
indicates that there was a clear importance attached to the material itself. Much
of this wax would eventually be converted into candles, the burning of which
would carry the prayers of the benefactor straight to heaven. Indeed, such was
the power associated with candles that they could become holy relics in their
own right. The 'holy taper' of Cardigan Priory in Wales was reputed to have
burnt constantly for a period of nine years, without ever diminishing itself.
It was only finally extinguished when someone forswore over it, and thereafter
refused to light ever again. Despite perhaps being one of the less impressive
of medieval relics, the unlit taper became an object of minor pilgrimage
throughout the later Middle Ages, netting the priory a reasonable annual
income, and with numerous miracles ascribed to its power.
And the
power of candles and wax wasn't always limited to beneficial effects. Early
written texts of more formal magic, such as the 'Key of Solomon' and the Tudor necromancer's manual attributed to
Paul Foreman (now preserved in Cambridge University library), all emphasise the
use of candles and 'holy candles' in the ceremonies to summon spirits and
demons. Once summoned, such spirits they believed could be bound to do one's
bidding - for good or ill. Paul Foreman goes further still, when he writes of
making a candle 'of virgin wax, or wax
which was never wronged before', into which the spirit itself is conjured
and constrained. It was also widely believed that if a witch dropped wax from a
burning candle into someone's footprint upon the ground, then the victim was
likely to have their feet rot off - although it must be admitted that no actual
cases of this occurring, or claiming to have taken place, have so far come to
light. However, that didn't stop the accusations. In 1490 a woman by the name
of Johanna Benet was called before the Commissary court in London accused of
attempted murder of a neighbour. She had, it was alleged, named a candle after
her victim and then as the candle slowly
burnt down "the man must waste away".
Half a century later, in 1543, Canterbury resident Joanna Merriwether was
accused of attempting harm to a young woman of her acquaintance called
Elizabeth Celsay. Joanna was reported to have "made a fire upon the dung of the said Elizabeth: and took a holy candle
and dropt upon the said dung" which would, she had assured her
neighbours, result in the buttocks of "the
said maid to divide into two parts".
Wax in all
its forms was also used to form into dolls and images of individuals which,
once deformed and concealed, or injured with pins or iron blades, were believed
to cause illness or harm to the person whose likeness they bore. Although
traditions vary from region to region, these dolls, often know as 'poppets',
were also believed in extreme cases to be able to bring about the death of the
subject. That such beliefs were widespread is attested to by a number of
surviving examples that have been discovered hidden away in old buildings. The
fascinating Museum of Witchcraft and Magic, in Boscastle, Cornwall, is home to
the world's biggest collection of artefacts relating to European witchcraft and
related folklore, and has a large number of these wax dolls and images amongst
its many strange and curious artefacts. Although the provenance of some of the
items has been lost, it is clear from the diversity of the collection that the
creation of these unusual objects continued until very recent times indeed. However,
such maleficent use of wax, like so many other forms of supposedly harmful
charms and curses, was simply an inversion of recognised beneficial charms and
beliefs. A corruption of the power that both the church and congregation
believed were contained within the holy candles.
Perhaps more
importantly, and fundamentally, candles brought light into darkness; they drove
away the uncertainties of the night, and cast away the shadows from the dark
corners of the house - and the mind. Their link with the most holy ceremonies
of the church, and the fact that the church itself even linked the wax with the
power to drive out the devil and his minions, would have simply reinforced the
concept that it was the flame of the candle that held real and tangible power.
This was a power that the church also linked to individual dwellings, not just
to protect them from evil, but notably to be drawn upon at specific times. Holy
candles were directed to be lit at times of illness and, in a well attested
practice that continued in some areas until the early years of the twentieth
century, during thunderstorms. It is this linkage between the candles and
thunderstorms that has suggested the second possible interpretation of the
taper burn marks that are being recorded all across the country.
***
With fire being one of the greatest threats to communities
prior to the modern period, and most major towns and cities in England
suffering at least one major catastrophe between the fifteenth and seventeenth
centuries, it is easy to understand why people wanted to protect their homes
from uncontrolled outbreaks. In some cases it was believed that disastrous
fires had been the result of supernatural acts, most specifically malevolent
acts of witchcraft. The links between witches and fires was a strong one, as is
clearly shown in the background of the late sixteenth century woodcut 'Hort
an new schrecklich abenthewr Von den unholden ungehewr', where a burning house is shown surrounded
by gleeful witches. The addition of the burn marks to the timbers may
have been regarded as both denying witches entry to the building via the portal
onto which the marks were scorched and, at one and the same time, inoculating
the timbers from further burning. However, as with most ritual protection
markings, such a single interpretation may be too simplistic an approach.
Whilst witchcraft may have been seen as 'a' possible fire-creating threat it
was by no means the only one - and most certainly not the best documented.
The natural phenomena of lightning strikes was feared throughout
the Middle Ages, and the effect of a direct hit on a tall church tower or house
could lead to devastating damage and the outbreak of a major fire. Whilst
traditional weather lore may have contained a great many truths the arrival of
a great storm, the sudden gathering of storm clouds upon a day that had
otherwise been clear and fair, was still regarded with apprehension and
suspicion. Once again witches were sometimes blamed for such extreme weather,
acting as conduits for devilish or demonic powers, and physical measures were
sometimes taken to counteract such apparent evils. The sound of the ringing of
church bells, themselves having been blessed when first installed, was believed
to drive away demons, and the storms that they brought with them. The practice
of ringing away the storm is widely documented until relatively recent
centuries, and wasn't undertaken without a certain element of risk. Gathering
together in the tallest building in the area during a thunderstorm, and then
grasping wet ropes that were attached to large metal bells suspended high
above, was fraught with obvious dangers. In France the practice was only
finally outlawed in the eighteenth century, but only after over one hundred deaths
had been recorded between the years 1753 and 1786.
Lightning strikes could do far more than cause fatalities
amongst unwise bell ringers, and numerous city, town and village fires in the
medieval and early modern period were believed to have been the direct result
of lightning strikes. Few such strikes however were more devastating than that
which hit a church in Brescia, Italy, in August 1769. The strike ignited over
200,000 pounds of gunpowder that was being stored beneath the church, killing
over three thousand people and destroying over a sixth of the city in a matter
of seconds. Even in recent years the threat caused by lightning strikes to
churches has not been entirely removed with the installation of lightning
conductors. The great fire at York Minster in 1984 was, according to the
subsequent investigation, 'almost certainly' caused by a lightning strike. The result was a massive fire amongst the roof
timbers that left much of the Minster in ruins. The need to protect a building
against lightning strikes during the Middle Ages was therefore a matter of
greatest importance, and whilst prayers may well have been employed there could
be no possible harm in enhancing that protection with the addition of ritual
markings and objects.
The building into a structure of a piece of timber from a
lightning struck oak tree was traditionally carried out in many rural areas, in
the belief that lightning would never strike the same place twice, and using
oak in general was seen as an effective defence against fire. Charlotte Burne,
writing in 1896, tells of an oak tree located near Hanbury that had been struck
by lightning some three years earlier, "and people came from all around to get pieces of the injured wood, to
keep as charms to preserve their houses from a similar misfortune".
Whilst this might have been due to the tree's long-standing association with
lightning, perhaps initially derived from its association with Thor, the Norse
god of storms, it is just as likely to have been the result of the green timbers
general resistance to fire. An oak framed building that caught light may have
devastated the superstructure, but the frame itself was likely to remain intact
and standing after all but the most intense of conflagrations, with only the
thin outer layer of the frame timbers having been reduced to charcoal. The fact
that some of the burn marks and inscribed designs were created when the timber
was green might be significant in its own right, coupling the idea of the
sympathetic magical inoculation of the building and the use of green oak from a
lightning blasted tree.
 |
| Black Shuck (print by Tim Fox-Godden) |
Many of the examples of burn marks on church doors are so
obvious as to be easily seen by even the most casual observer and, perhaps as a
result, have become associated with a number of myths and legends that may
contain more elements of truth than may at first appear. Amongst these legends
is that of the burn marks on the
original medieval gates of Balliol College, Oxford, said to have been scorch
marks created during the execution by fire of the Protestant martyrs Litimer,
Ridley and Cranmer that took place nearby.
Perhaps the best known of the legends relate to events that reputedly
took place on the Norfolk and Suffolk border in the second half of the
sixteenth century. According to a pamphlet published shortly after the events,
a great storm arose on the 4th August 1577, leading the inhabitants of the town
of Bungay to seek shelter in the church. During the height of the storm, with
blinding flashes of lightning crashing around the town, a great black dog was
seen to bound into the church. The beast tore down the length of the aisle,
passing between two people who knelt in prayer, both of whom immediately
dropped dead. Another member of the congregation was "drawen together and shrunk up, as it were a peece of lether
scorched in a hot fire" but apparently lived. As the storm reached its
zenith the black beast bolted from the building - leaving only it's paw print
scorched into the church door. That same day the storm had badly damaged the church
at nearby Blythburgh, with lightning bringing down the whole tower onto the
congregation beneath - killing many. Again a great black dog was seen to enter
the church, bringing down the rood beam in his fury "and there also, as before, slew two men and a lad, and burned the
hand of another that was there among the rest of the company, of whom divers
were blasted". Again the great beast left only his claw marks burnt
into the timbers of the door.
Seen through modern eyes the events at Blythburgh and Bungay,
with their references to the burning of victims sheltering from the storm and
sudden deaths within the church, are wholly consistent with a lightning strike
or strikes upon the buildings. What is especially interesting is the
association made, albeit subsequently, between the probable lightning strikes
and the ritual burn marks upon the church doors; markings that were
specifically intended to protect against just such an event. If such markings
were applied to the church doors when the timber was green then, in at least
these cases, it would appear clear that at least some residual memory of the
purpose of the markings remained within the local community decades, or even
centuries, after they had been created.
Although both interpretations show marked differences, they
share many features in common - being the ability for the candle, whether it be
from the Candlemas ceremony or otherwise, to add a layer of protection to a
place, space or building. Eamon Duffy relates the story from the Tudor joke
book, 'A Hundred Merry Tales', which
clearly highlights how such candles were viewed in the minds of the everyday
folk. The story states that, following the performance of a religious play in
an unnamed Suffolk settlement, John Adoyne went on to terrify the community by
walking the streets wearing the demon costume he had worn on stage. On hearing
that the devil was walking abroad in his own town, the local squire "called up his chaplain and made the holy
candle to be lighted" to drive away the evil spirit. Although the
story was told in jest, perhaps even poking fun at the superstitions of the
'dim' country folk, it clearly demonstrates that the belief was widespread and
fundamental. And what was the churches attitude to such beliefs and practices?
We have little in the way of direct evidence to suggest it was proscribed or
officially frowned upon, and the existence of such burn marks on church doors
may even suggest that it sometimes had a blind eye turned towards it.
Essentially, if the church suggested via its own prayers that a candle could
drive away the devil, then it could hardly be surprised if people started to
take them literally.
So which of the interpretations is more likely? Are these
taper burn marks designed to drive away evil spirits, keep witches at bay, or
protect a building from lightning and fire? The evidence would seem to suggest
that all three answers may well be the case. Marks applied during the
construction phase of a house may well have been put there by the builders to
inoculate against fire, whilst marks applied in later years, or re-applied year
upon year, may have been the householders themselves, following the direction
they believed had been laid down by holy mother church, to drive out evil
spirits. In all cases the markings can be seen as 'warding off' evil - the
non-specific and spiritual evils that threatened the peace of the household,
and the very real evil of fire and thunderstorm. When the darkness came, and
the peace of home, hearth and family came under threat, then the people of
medieval England turned towards the light. The sought refuge in the power of
the blessed light of the holy candles, and drove away the shadows. In the dark
of the night, and in the heart of the storm, they fought fire with fire.
