HIGHLIGHT: Hawkedon’s church and inn
Footpaths take me out of Stansfield, climbing the rounded fields – the River Glem glinting down to my right – for the hop to Hawkedon in the next valley. The village announces itself via its church, whose tower rises above the trees like so many of the pilgrim points along my route, as I join a quiet lane.
Fifteenth century St Mary’s, Hawkedon, stands in splendid isolation, encircled by its stone churchyard wall, and surrounded by the expansive village green. Unlike every other village I have passed through, where the houses cluster in a tight-knit huddle around the church and pub, Hawkedon is spread out. It feels rather like a moorland village in the north. Its name means ‘Hill of the Hawks’ in Old English.
In the churchyard the grave of the sadly appropriately named John Alexander Stiff bears the inscription: ‘I’d rather be fishing’.
I walk in through the time- and weather-worn south porch at St Mary’s, the saint’s niche in the frieze empty, and find a grand church full of unvarnished oak: moulded ceiling, a great supporting beam, and pews all adding the sense of organic growth over centuries.
Splinters of the shattered English pilgrim tradition survive in St Mary’s. Above the east window, a dark panel, the remnant of a wall painting, features a scene of the Transfiguration, when Jesus took the disciples Peter, James and John up a mountain, and his face and clothes became dazzlingly bright.
The image is almost invisible today, but a sketch made when it was discovered in 1855 shows St James in his pilgrim hat. And, in the window beneath it, in which fragments of glass probably smashed during the reign of Henry VIII’s son, Edward VI, have been pieced together, there is a pilgrim scallop shell.
The poppy-head pew end carvings also suffered. On one, three moustachioed men have been defaced, on another a figure defeating two lions has been blinded, on a third a finely-dressed lady’s features are wiped away.
The lower panels of the rood screen survive, with traces of the scenes painted on them. One depicts the 4th century martyr St Dorothy, patron saint of florists, with her basket of flowers. On the other is what may be St James the Great in his pilgrim hat, or perhaps St Roch (or Rocco), to whom prayers were offered in time of plague.
On the southern fringe of the green is Hawkedon Hall, a lovely 17th and 18th century timber-frame and plaster house painted dusky pink. In its garden are the surviving base and shaft of a 14th or 15th century stone cross. It was once used, according to local legend, as the village barter post. Just to the north is a fine old inn, the 15th century Queen’s Head
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