A Brief History of St. Michael’s Church…at St. Michaels (Part Two)

Last week we ended (perhaps a bit abruptly but who’s checking) with a mention of various mediaeval bits of stained glass in the Butler Chapel.
The Butler Chapel, itself, was founded in 1480 by John Butler of Rawcliffe Hall.
Worth a mention at this point is the gargoyle carved into the exterior window boss of the Butler Chapel. Unfortunately the weather hasn’t exactly been gentle with the sandstone, but it’s still quite clear that this hooded peasant has his feet planted firmly against the wall above his head, his arms down by his ears and his big, bare ar…bottom exposed to the general public.


Exactly why the Butler Chapel windows are decorated in this manner is a mystery. One possibility is that the figure’s an acrobat whose robes have ridden up in mid-performance. (Yeah…right.) Another is that, because windows were positioned above garderobes (or poop chutes) in mediaeval times, our peasant might be performing his ablutions away from the congregation. (And onto a nearby grave…)
Whatever the truth, it’s certainly a cheeky performance. (Copyright Mediaeval Jokes Shane Richie Inc.)
Sticking with the Butler Chapel a bit longer, I’d just like to throw this image into the scrum.


We’ve no idea who this is meant to be. Is it some king or other? Possibly a bishop? Perhaps even old Butler himself? Whoever it is, there’s a few of these heads about, looking considerably more kempt than the rest of the carvings, so perhaps they’re relatively modern? If anybody reading this knows who they’re meant to be…well, you know where the comments box is.
Onwards and upwards, and St Michael’s church tower was built about two decades earlier than the Butler Chapel, in 1459 when John Singleton donated forty shillings for the building of a steeple.
He also donated ten shillings towards the bells, one of which, dated 1458, most likely resulted from this donation. According to the ‘Victoria County History’: “There may be portions of an older structure in the north wall of the chancel and at the west end of the south aisle adjoining the tower, the masonry of which may date from the thirteenth century.”
Yeah, we reckon that’s about right, although the masonry is probably earlier even than that. Pre-conquest, we’d hazard a guess at. The stonework of the tower clearly shows that it was built onto an earlier ground floor structure and, as the diagram showing the church’s layout below demonstrates, said structure is/was/always has been crooked to the main body of the church.


Those dates are the ones supplied by the Victoria County History incidentally, not necessarily ours. However, invariably, when you get a tower (or at least the lower half of tower) built skewed to the main body of a church like that, it’s because the tower (or rather the lower part of it) was originally a much earlier, less architecturally aesthetic church in its own right, the main bulk of the church being tagged to it later.
Usually.
It’s probably much the same in this case, the lower part of the tower possibly being the original pre-Norman Saxon church from which the village of St Michael’s takes it name. In fact, if you look in the churchyard, there’s a sundial standing on the base of what would once have been the churchyard cross.


Take a look at that base. Three steps, see? That’s typically Saxon, is that. (They’re a bit on the knackered side too, having been stapled together with big iron bolts if memory serves, testament to how worn they’ve become over the centuries.)
Similar to St. Helen’s (the parish church of Garstang), in 1856 during repairs to the plasterwork in St Michael’s sanctuary an early fourteenth century mural was discovered. Despite being damaged the faint image of Mary’s haloed head (along with those of several apostles) can still be seen watching Christ’s feet as he ascends into heaven. Unfortunately, when we went to take a photograph it was bucketing down outside and the church itself was in pitch-blackness. So we didn’t bother.
I think (and you can correct me if I’m wrong about this) there are a few words in English accompanying the scene, indicating that the text was taken from the King James Bible. The fact that it was whitewashed was probably down to Cromwell or someone, so perhaps St Michael’s did bear direct witness to some turbulent history after all.
On which uplifting note, it’s time to stop.

Murder and Skulduggery in the Fylde & Wyre

We’re only one night after Halloween (well...we are at the time of writing this, and that's what counts) so we’ve decided to take this opportunity (mainly because John Steventon requested it in one of the comments boxes and we're always happy to oblige wherever possible) to include a small collection of grisly tales on this board.

And where better to start than with a severed head?
Anybody who knows anything about the Wyre’s ancient past (especially if they’ve read our ‘History of the Wyre from Harold the Elk to Cardinal Allen…excellent value at £9.95 and available from most of the outlets mentioned in the right-hand column of this board) will already be aware that in 1824 the skull of a young girl was unearthed at Pea Hall Wood in Pilling. It was wrapped in a piece of coarse woollen cloth along with a large amount of plaited auburn hair and two strings of jet beads.
In more recent times archaeologists discovered another skull at Briarfield Nurseries in Poulton, this time belonging to a thirty year old man. It was carbon-dated to the Bronze Age but, unlike the 1824 discovery, didn’t cause quite so much consternation amongst the locals. You see, the trouble with the skull at Pea Hall Wood was that it was discovered far too close for comfort to Bone Hill.
Bone Hill Baby Farm has to be one of the Wyre’s darkest historical secrets. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries well-to-do gentlemen (so it's reckoned) were known to journey here accompanied by their pregnant daughters and/or mistresses. For a fee any illegitimate off-springs would be discreetly ‘disposed of’.

As you’d expect, grim legends abounded, including ghostly lights that glowed around the house at night, blood stains being witnessed on the flagstones and the notion that it was impossible to dig in the orchard without uprooting any bones.
In the ‘Over Wyre Historical Journals’ our old colleague, the late-great Headlie Lawrenson relates the tale of how Miss A. Butler’s grandmother, the village midwife at the time, was awakened one night: “…by a stranger, who demanded she should accompany him to a difficult confinement. He took her to a lonely farm where, after the birth, the child was snatched from her and taken from the room. After she had attended the mother she wandered into the kitchen, where to her horror she surprised the man in the act of disposing of the child’s remains on the roaring peat fire.”
Sticking with the theme of decapitations, here’s a Fylde murder that you don’t often hear about. According to Kenneth Fields’ ‘Lancashire Magic and Mystery’ at St. Roberts church in Catforth, amongst other holy relics, is the severed head of a martyred priest. Unfortunately we don’t know anything about him or the nature of his death (other than that his head was chopped off, of course).
At Garstang in August 1664, another infamous murder took place, this time resulting in a ghost that still reputedly haunts Gubberford Bridge. (Naturally this makes the tale doubly fitting for our ‘Almost but not quite Halloween Edition’.)

It seems that, when Greenhalgh Castle (shown in the photograph above) was under siege from Cromwellian troops, one of their order, a certain Peter ‘Hallelujah’ Broughton (so called because of his God-praising battle-cry) was leaning on the parapet of the bridge when, to his surprise, he saw his estranged wife approaching. Five years previously she’d deserted him for another man but now seemed willing to patch-up their differences. Unfortunately, just as their passions were being rekindled, Captain Rupert Rowton (a cavalier, and therefore sworn enemy of Cromwell, living at Woodacre Hall) leapt out from the hedge and stabbed Mrs Broughton through the heart.
It soon transpired that, following the breakdown of her marriage, Mrs Broughton had fallen in love with Captain Rowton and had bigamously married him. Her desire for romance, however, still wasn’t satiated and, on the evening of her murder, she’d been planning to clandestinely meet with a third party, that being Captain Lord Alban.

Despite their political differences, Captain Broughton and Captain Rowton agreed to keep ‘schtum’ about the whole affair, burying Mrs Broughton/Rowton secretly on the bank of the Wyre where her flirtatious antics had been so abruptly curtailed. Only on his death bed did Peter Broughton reveal the whole sorry tale. Nowadays, at least according to George Mould’s ‘Lancashire’s Unknown River’: “In August each year it is said that the ghost of Peter Broughton’s errant bride comes to the neighbourhood of Gubberford Bridge and to the river bank to look for him.”
It might also be worth mentioning at this point that Greenhalgh Lane itself is apparently haunted, by a ghostly coffin that floats across the road at midnight and ends up in the ditch.
And there’s another murdered female said to haunt Garstang. Let’s return to Kenneth Fields’ ‘Lancashire Magic and Mystery’ for the story: “In picturesque Garstang lives the Boggart of the Brook, which is associated with the spirit of a murdered woman. She would beg a lift from any passing horseman, then when mounted behind him would unwrap her cloak and hood to reveal she was a skeleton. The shock of feeling her bony fingers would cause so much terror that the horseman would fall and inevitably die.” (All of which raises the conundrum of how he managed to relate the event to anybody afterwards…)

Again we’ve no idea who the woman was, or where she’s buried. However, in this instance, as with Mrs Broughton’s missing corpse, it’s probably a case of archaeology that you’d be better off not digging up.