Siddington
- Harvest Festival
The second page I ever did
was titled Siddington
and was concerned solely
with the village church. There is more to Siddington than the
church but I do seem to have difficulty going beyond and this
page returns to All Saints to record something unusual.
However, here is the village
smithy - now a maker of wrought iron furniture ...
... and the Smithy Cottage.
Cottages in Goostrey that
have their brickwork painted to look like a timber framed building
(cf. Siddington Church), and with the original thatched roof replaced
with slates (note the discrepancy between the gable wall and the
position of the slate roof).
The cottages sit opposite
this pub where, in the restaurant at the rear, we had an excellent
lunch (and I also had a couple of pints of well-kept Pedigree).
St Luke's, Goostrey has
not seen fit to paint its brickwork in imitation of timber framing.
They did the thing properly, however, in 1792 when the existing
'old wooden church' was totally replaced with the current edifice.
Simple, elegant and bang
up to date for its time it still retains ...
... at least this link with
the previous structure, which may not have been the only one erected
on the site as, according to a notice in the porch, they trace
the church's existence back to a deed of 1220 and a minister named
Abel.
This, many times regenerated,
stump of yew, at least 12ft in circumference, looks as though
it may even have been an old tree at that time.
Between Goostrey and Siddington,
"There's Jodrell Bank", and possibly an embryonic Cheshire
Cheese being nurtured.
The west door of All Saints,
Siddington, clearly shewing the 'timbers' painted over the brickwork.
Churches decorated for Harvest
Festival typically have floral displays, examples of local produce
eg. baskets of fruit and/or vegetables, sheaves of corn, etc,
in rural and semi-rural churches, but town churches would have
food in all guises including manufactured, packaged and branded
products like tins of beans, sliced loaves, etc.
Siddington church seemed
undecorated on first entering, until we began to notice more and
more the corn dolly decorations we had been expecting.
Here a cross surmounts the
screen while corn-dolly angels twirl gently in any draught.
Corn dollies are the English
version of a worldwide phenomenon of weaving stems and even heads
of 'grasses' into decorations and 'fabrics'. Additional to the
technical manipulation of the material is the superstition and
belief of the good harvest that would ensue from the gods of the
earth and harvest by retaining heads of the past crop/s with stems
made up into an object of decoration and veneration. As in many
prehistoric traditions that have survived in some form to the
present day the early church appropriated the custom and practice.
Siddington's decorations
are provided by the local 'corn-dolly-man' the sympathetically
named Ray Rush who lives next door to the church and provides
interesting lectures and demonstrations of his arcane art.
Undoubtedly his piece-de-resistance
is this decoration of the organ loft. Note the music notation
above the console mirror.
Decoration of the cill of
the war memorial window. Note Colonel Wilfrith Elstob VC, DSO,
MC of the Manchester Regiment.
Another decorated window-cill
...
...and door-curtain pelmet.
Outside, in the churchyard
...
....
... confirmation of approaching
autumn.
But this prospect, on the
way home, had all the appearances of a summer sky.
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