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Wellow church (2005).
WELLOW. It has its tall maypole on the green, and lies in a charming setting under Wellow Park, winding ways abounding in glorious trees.
At one of its lovely spots a wooded lane comes from Rufford to Wellow Dam, a placid pool in a wayside common; another delightful lane has splendid views of Sherwood Forest as it climbs to the edge of the park, bringing us to a field with the moated site of a fortified house that belonged to a lord of the manor in the 13th century.
The much-restored little church has a sturdy 14th century tower with a corbel table under 15th century battlements and pinnacles. The nave arcade is about 1300, and one of its corbels is like the head of a monkey. Several windows are medieval, and a lancet comes from the close of the 12th century. Under the tower is a font bowl at which Norman children were baptised, now used no more. The modern stone pulpit has a figure of St Swithin.
The Adventure of the Stone Man
WEST BRIDGFORD. Here, across the Trent Bridge from Nottingham, are the famous county cricket and one of the county football grounds.
West Bridgford church in 1900.
With its rapid growth from an old village to a pleasant place of over 13,000 people, has come the growth of the church, and the small building of long ago is now the southern part of a spacious place. The 15th century tower (with earlier masonry in its base) still stands at the west end of the old nave, and into the old porch have been built two 14th century windows from a vanished wall. Here still is the 14th century arcade, and in the old chancel (now a chapel) are lovely canopied sedilia with quaint tracery. The old aisle has its double piscina and a 13th century lancet; the font is 600 years old.
The two 14th century east windows of the old chancel have lovely new glass showing St Giles with his hind and St Hugh with a swan at his feet, holding a model of Lincoln Cathedral. Four panels in each window tell the story of Jesus, showing Mary as a child, the Nativity, the shepherds in the field, Simeon and the Madonna; the Wise Men, the Return from Egypt, Jesus in the workshop and with the Doctors. A charming medieval window which was above these two now rests in the porch, and a modern copy is in its place. The east window of the new chancel glows richly with beautiful glass of the Crucifixion and six saints.
Fine roofs with bosses of leaves and flowers and heads look down on us everywhere. On the roof beams and on the chancel arch of the old part of the church is a strange company of stone heads of animals, human grotesques, and a quaint fellow like a Red Indian with feathers round his head. Rivalling these is the fine modern gallery under roofs and on arches, showing heads in medieval headdress, queer creatures with human faces, and musical angels.
Chancel screen in West Bridgford church (2004).
The charming woodwork is old and new. The chancel screen of about the year 1400, still in its original place with an extension at one end, has rich tracery tipped with flowers and leaves, and a cornice adorned with heads of humans, a lion, a muzzled dog, and a fox running away with a goose.
The fine little modern screen between the old chancel and the new has a rich cornice with cherubs and vine and grape. The modern reredos has exquisite carving of vines and olive branches growing round a great canopy, and two angels in niches with a crown of thorns and a sphere; and three recessed panels have a striking painting of the Good Shepherd against a golden sky, a lamb on His shoulder, a sheep at one side entangled in thorns, and a holy lamb on a mountain top, triumphant.
In the abundance of detail in the small carved panels on the backs of the chancel stalls are a little Elizabethan ship in full sail and a man on the quayside leaning on the wind, a quaint fish in waves, a goat nibbling leaves; one charming scene shows a man returning to his cottage at the end of the day, his head bowed, his scythe on his shoulder, while the sunflowers are closing their petals with the setting sun, and the crescent moon appears. Carved in relief on the stall ends are birds, a crouching animal and a monkey, a squirrel, a wild boar, a bear with a rugged staff, an ass feeding, a workman sawing a plank, a man resting his head on his hand, and angels at prayer.
Within a 14th century recess belonging to the old chancel and now in the new, lies the sadly battered figure of a mail-clad knight with crossed legs. Known as the Stone Man of West Bridgford, he has found a peaceful resting-place after a strange adventure, for until 1893 he had been standing a long time on duty as a boundary stone in a field near the spot where Melton Road and Loughborough Road meet. We cannot be sure who he is, but he is over 600 years old, and may be Sir Robert Luteril, a lord of the manor.