Angels and Dragons: Faces at St Mary the Virgin, Bottesford

 

Angels and Dragons - front cover

Neil Fortey & Bob Sparham

 

The back cover

 

St Mary’s contains a great store of medieval carvings, post-Reformation tombs and other art. Visitors can see it all for free, but in the case of the carvings high on the clerestory you will need a pair of binoculars to see the detail of these spendid examples of the late-Medieval stone mason’s art. This book takes you on a tour of the church, concentrating on details of the carved faces of Kings, Earls, Countesses, saints, angels, dragons, mythical monsters and much more. Details hidden high up or in the gloomier parts of the church’s interior, emerge to meet us face to face.

This book is one of the outcomes of Project Gargoyle, which was a survey of images of faces found in parish churches throughout Leicestershire led by Robert Trubshaw. St Mary the Virgin, Bottesford’s parish church, was of interest because of its unusual size and because alongside its pre-Reformation carved images it also contains the alabaster and marble tombs and effigies of the Earls of Rutland and some of their medieval forebears. The eight earls’ tombs take us from the immediate aftermath of the Reformation through to the reign of Charles II. The last of the earls was elevated to a Duke in 1711 and is buried elsewhere.

After a brief Introduction in Part 1, the second section discusses the ages of the facial images from the 14th Century to Victorian, and looks at some of the oldest carved faces from the aisles of the church.

Part 3 takes us outside to look at facial images on the 15th Century tower, the exterior of the aisles and the clerestory. The in Part 4 the book examines the late medieval stone images seen inside the church in the clerestory and attached to the masonry of the nave.

Part 5 looks at the monuments in the chancel, starting with those of the medieval Barons of Belvoir Castle then moving on to the tudor and jacobean Earls and Countesses of Rutland.

Finally, Part 6 adds in the many faces in the stained glass windows and other monuments, as well as the octagonal carved font.

This is a fascinating church which marks the great events and changes in England from the time of the Plantagenets through to the present day, built on the site of Anglo-Saxon if not Roman origin.

Angels and Dragons is presented here via a series of PDF files: you will need Adobe Acrobat Viewer or an equivalent app.

In addition, all the images displayed in the book can be viewed in our digital Archive: click this link.

We still have copies available and we will be delighted to supply them to you. To buy the book please email [email protected]