Teacup: storms in

 

Back in February this year, before the world went mad, someone took offence to the bells of St Nicholas Chapel. Seemed bell ringers had moved there to practice while St Margaret's was being repaired or some such story making too much campanological disturbance ... They only went and sprayed what you see here, and yes, it was still there in October (now slow yew down ...). I don't know if they caught the culprit but I did come across another story about poor old St Nick and his bells. Someone was irate that the bells no longer chimed the correct time, this guy liked the bells, for a change, indeed he had done away with clocks and watches and relied on the chapel to tell the time and was not too impressed with only ten chimes at midnight ... the Council, I read, were looking into it having only just found that they were responsible, I quote "... regarding that law, you learn something new every day!” You do indeed.

Homes ancient and modern

 

The area around St Nicholas chapel was cleared of its quaint little buildings and yards, OK it was a quasi slum as you can see from the old photo below taken from the roof of the chapel many years ago (thank you internet; I don't know the date but clearly back when everything was black and white and smokey). You don't just demolish buildings but a whole community as well, hence the museum to try and keep some memory of it alive. Anyhow modern housing has been built to replace what was removed. It seems to be weathering in nicely, though I doubt they'll build a museum to it.

 

 

Most of the houses, chapels, schools, small businesses and yards in the foreground have gone but those terraced houses way off in the distance are still there around Loke Road. The graveyard trees are also still there as you can see above.

1749 and all that

Today's post bring us four hundred years forward from the 14^th century medieval to the 18^th century and the Enlightenment (I wonder what happened to that?). St Nicholas chapel has several gates which are never locked as far as I know. These however are the finest of the bunch with this fancy wrought iron decoration. I struggled at first to see what the number was until I read this gate was installed in 1749 when it all became clear(ish). I'm going to guess that somebody came into a tidy sum and wanted to pave the way to eternal salvation with a gift of fine iron work (from iron gates to the pearly gates), well I hope it was worth it. The design is secular and not sacred, we have clearly moved a long way from Old Nick creeping out of the brickwork to these floral scrolls.

These gates, indeed all the gates and boundary walls of St Nick's are considered listed buildings of historical and architectural interest, they have their own listing quite apart from the building itself.

Though I'm sure 1749 was filled with exciting and important events the only one of any importance is that the first recorded game of baseball was played at Kingston-upon-Thames. I don't who won but you can be sure the game was fixed (Say it ain't so, Joe!) as the Prince of Wales was playing. Britain, with George II as king, a man who could barely speak English, was up to its colonial expansion as usual in North America and India. This was then considered a good thing but has recently been declared to be a bad thing by those who decide these matters, mainly liberal, white, middle class, wet behind the ears, woke, EU-remainer, eco-fearing, bedwetting pro-maskers and assorted lock down loonies employed (if that is the word) in Universities and other publicly funded sinecures mainly, but by no means exclusively, the BBC. 

Oh and all you vaxxers (who wait so patiently, peace be upon you), can celebrate the birth of your hero and saviour Edward Jenner on May 17 of this fine year. Jenner it was who started us on the path to eradicating smallpox. If you want and have the security clearance you can go see vials of smallpox held in secure vaults, you could weigh some out if they let you. Your friendly Sars-Cov-2 lacks all such tangible properties, never having been isolated, purified or indeed been anything other than an RNA profile in a Chinese publication and yet each day hundreds of thousands of 'tests' are performed to find the presence of something completely unsubstantiated (The Fat Controller even admits 93% are false positives! 93%! He has no shame but then this year's attacks on liberty have had nothing to do with the 'virus'). Millions of you have overturned, thrown out without a thought, three centuries of Enlightenment and science and become fearful of miasmas and fanciful tales of horror spread by old wives in the press, the TV and, yes, Government. You, like penitents of medieval times, welcome, indeed crave, the punishment of lock downs and the hair shirts of face nappies, you have sinned and you deserve it. Well, shame on you, you ought to know better.

Stepped buttresses

Buttresses are very common, almost ubiquitous, on church buildings of this age, we are talking a complete rebuild between 1371 and 1419 so, of course St Nick's has its share. They strengthen the wall and hold up the roof trusses preventing them from pushing out the walls. Between each buttress there's a window to let in the light and also a glass window weighs less than solid  stone or brick so keeping building's weight and costs down (every little helps). Obviously a tall spire needs supporting and good buttresses do the job.

In this picture you can see the second doorway on the north side. Behind this wall a pitched roof leads to the clerestory which to my regret I haven't got a good picture except for a slight peek in the one below. (This picture shows the clerestory from the other side). The clerestory is supported by internal pillars as I showed way back in this post.

Now no doubt you'll be delighted to hear that to all intents and purposes the church is  symmetrical so the south side looks much like the north save for a porch that I mentioned yesterday and the base of the spire.

...and I've just realised that this was rebuilt some twenty years after the Black Death killed a third to half the population of England, no taking silly test tests to see if you had the lurgy back then, no godforesaken masks either just: Attishu, attishu, we all fall down. No doubt twenty years from now they'll still be waiting for their precious vaccine while face masks will have become implanted hermetically at birth along with health passports courtesy of the Gates Foundation...

The west door, St Nicholas, King's Lynn

From Historic England "The elaborately carved door surround comprises a pointed-arch terminating in figurative head corbels, and containing two cusped door openings separated by a Y-tracery trumeau (mirroring the arrangement of the window tracery above), and two early-C15 doors (restored in 2012)". Now having read that you'll no doubt want to see the window tracery  ...

 

Such a fancy ornamented doorway with heraldic shields and beasts was clearly the main entrance at one time but not now, now you go in via porch way on the southern side... and I suppose you'll want to see the figurative head corbels or at least one of them; t'other is just a mess of eroded stone.

... to round off the day how about a pair of angels?

this one could do with a little restoration.

I can't let you go without posting this handsome chap; Old Nick himself creeping out of the stonework.

Figurative Heads, King's Lynn

On our way home from town we wandered around St Nicholas chapel which I've shown many times. This time we walked around the north side which for some reason we'd not visited. There'll be a few posts about this for the next couple of days so if 14^th century English church architecture is not your cup of tea you have been warned.

The people who detail listed buildings, Historic England, say the following about this doorway, "The north aisle has two late-C14 doorways: that in the second bay having a pointed arch, and carved figurative heads to the corbels of the hood moulding...", concise, dull but accurate and there's not really a lot more to say so I'll quit while I'm ahead.

Let us fade

This is St Nick's (chapel of ease) again, back in February and still in King's Lynn in case you were wondering. Quite why St N's is on St Anne's Street is probably something to do with there being a St Ann's fort at sometime just down the road though why name a fort after St Ann (with or without an e) is another question. It's my story, not much of a story I agree but it's all mine and I'll digress if I want to ... where was I? Oh yes all that end is now cleared away to become the subject of on-line forums filled with fading black and white photos and equally fading memories... and there's a museum, I think I mentioned, there's a museum. There's a car wash too, do you want to see the car wash? ... it's quite colourful ... at night.

St Nicholas Chapel, King's Lynn

While in Lynn this was the view that greeted me each day on my way to get the newspapers in Norfolk Street. Bit different from the usual streetscene.

The weekend in black and white is here.

St Nicholas' Chapel

There may be no Santa Claus (who can say?) but there is definitely a St Nick's with its impressive spire looming out of the evening gloom over the Fisher Fleet in King's Lynn.

Trifles make the sum of life

I've shown the old Customs House, the Purfleet and St Nicholas' Chapel (that's the spire peeking out in the background) before but they're worth another viewing this time from across the river. So what can I add? Oh yes, I remember now ... there's a new film out, some dire comedy based on David Copperfield, and the Lynn papers and media folk (for they are ubiquitous, even in Norfolk) are in a tizz that some of the film features the Customs House and it gives them a quite a frisson. Then last night the local, as in Hull, BBC news had a report featuring the same film and how it has bits of Hull in  it and doesn't that give you all a thrill (we don't do frissons in Hull) ... Bury St Edmunds also stars but we don't want to talk about that ... Oh go on then here's the trailer.

and then back to St Nick's ...

So at the end of what was quite a hectic few hours of touristic traipsing through the delightful street of King's Lynn it was time to head back to base and put our feet up before the return trip to Hull. But not before passing by St Nicholas chapel (which was now open) and having a goodly gawp inside. I promised musical angels and a literary connection to Hull and I try to keep my promises.

The first thing I noticed on entering was the warmth of the place, it was mafting to use a colloquialism, so warm it was positively unchurchlike. Electric heaters beamed out the calories like no-one was paying the bill and indeed no-one is, there's a large array of solar panels on the roof sucking up sunshine and warming us poor sinners down below. Any how I'm sure you can make out the roof beams in the above photo; each is decorated with an angel playing an instrument or singing from a hymn sheet. These carvings are over 600 hundred years old (the chapel was already old by then). As you can see this is no ordinary chapel, it oozes past opulence, the stained glass windows, the altar screen, the ornate and oversized baptismal font cover and last but not least the numerous plaques to rich benefactors (described by a really nice and helpful friend of St Nicholas as the "millionaires' row"). This delightful place reflects the enormous wealth of King's Lynn in the medieval period. It is now a community church being used for all sorts of events, musical, artistic both sacred and secular and seems to have found a new use for itself in the modern age. It is not just a monument to past religious devotion and finery (though it is that most definitely) it now serves a purpose and has a bright future.

I appreciate that this is not a very good photo so if you want to see all the angels there's this gallery of photos from the chapel's website, here.

You don't expect font covers to go missing (did nobody notice this thing leaving the building?), then turn up in an auction and finally return after a fund raising effort by the Friends of St Nick's but that is what happened to this ornate canopy. It's a copy of the original 17th century on which the Victorians destroyed. This dates from 1902 and is 17 foot in height and I suspect is screwed tightly to the floor.

This is a very rare consistory court, set aside in a corner of the chapel to try matters relating to church law.

And here as promised is the literary link to Hull. The memorial to Robinson Cruso and his family. Daniel Defoe visited King's Lynn and seemed to have had a good time: "Here are more gentry, and consequently is more gaiety in this town than in Yarmouth, or even in Norwich itself – the place abounding in very good company." Cruso is or was a common name in the area (the Corn Exchange, for example,  was built to a design by Cruso and Maberley of King's Lynn) so he no doubt purloined it for his wee book. The connection to Hull is that the fictional Robinson Crusoe set sail from Hull as I posted many years ago. Defoe, of course, could not have seen this particular memorial as he died in 1731. (Did I just debunk a local myth? Ooops!)

More memorials with attractive memento mori features.

This marble urn memorial to Sir Benjamin Keene dates from 1757 and is by Robert Adam, close inspection shows details of the Customs House and the Purfleet and goods being loaded from a ship.

Millionaires' Row. There's a saying that you cannot take it with you when you go so why not leave some of it hanging on the church wall (sorry chapel wall) to show the world what fine upstanding folk you have been.

St Nicholas Chapel of Ease

Approaching King's Lynn along the A17 you know you're nearly there when you can see the spire of St Nicholas chapel and the twin towers of St Margaret's on the horizon. (There's also a old concrete silo but that's not quite so attractive). St Nicholas chapel was built as a chapel of ease for the rich merchants and fisher folk of north Lynn as St Margaret's was too small to hold everybody and a bit of walk across town and you don't want to get your Sunday best dirtied by medieval squalor now do you? The building is mainly 15th century with some earlier bits. The lead spire dates from 1869 and is by our good friend Sir Gilbert Scott replacing a wooden one destroyed in the 18th century. (Sir Gilbert seems to have renovated every old church in the country) St Nick's is open to the public but we got there too early so we'll have to come back here later to see a surprising literary connection with Hull and angelic musicians.