Angels & Dragons: Introduction

St Mary’s, the “Lady of the Vale”, is at the heart of the most northerly parish of Leicestershire, a finger of land wedged between Nottinghamshire and Lincolnshire. Its spire, 210 feet high (64 m), is a landmark in the low-lying farmlands of the Vale of Belvoir. Visitors to the church are inevitably drawn to its chancel, packed with monuments of importance both as works of art and as a record of Tudor and Jacobean England. They may also look at the carvings of allegorical beasts at the tops of columns in the nave, but few will have lingered over carvings hiding in the darkness of the aisles and in the height of the clerestory, save perhaps for the carving of the sinner with his tongue and eye being eaten by a two-headed serpent seen in the north aisle.

There is much to look at: a Jacobean pulpit, a Tudor font (another in the Lady Chapel is said to be Anglo-Saxon), a 13th Century piscina, and next to the organ shallow niches where a side altar once stood. There are Victorian stained-glass windows and one window with reclaimed medieval stained-glass. There is the village War Memorial and around the walls of the aisles and chancel numerous memorial plaques and a series of heraldic hatchments.

Outside, gargoyles project from tower and aisle. Approaching the south porch, you can’t miss two beautifully realistic gargoyles mounted on the south transept, popularly known as the ‘Bellman’ (or ‘Tollman’) and ‘Alewife’, seeming to welcome us to the market and to the church ale. There are many other carvings on the outside, faces on the aisles and transepts, faces crowded along the frieze round the parapet of the tower, arrays of figures sprouting from the clerestory. A pair of binoculars will help.