A step back in time in Rutland

We took a step back in time this week to visit a tiny Rutland village called Lyndon. It’s located just south of Manton and it’s on Google Maps, but there are few signposts and just a single-track road.

The village is a mixture of stone-built houses with either thatched roofs or Collyweston slate and the church is near the highest point surrounded by a small wood with some fine specimen trees, including a couple of sequoia, a Cypress of Lebanon and a Scots pine.

The village has only 70 dwellings, a population of around 100 and all but a handful of properties are owned by the Lyndon Estate. Here is a village organised in the manner that most villages would have been 100 or more years ago. The “lord of the manor” owned the lot, you paid your rent, you paid your respects and you probably worked for your landlord (or one of his mates).

We were there to visit the church, a trip organised by Peterborough U3A, and it’s a lovely little church, named after St Martin, patron saint of France and founder of the monastic movement. The church was built in the 13^th and early 14^th centuries and (like most churches) was restored during Victorian times. The tower is 14^th Century and still has large sections of the original mediaeval rendering intact.

Cat (above) and man (below) on the
south side of the church)

There are four large gargoyles incorporated into the drainage system from the nave roof. They look slightly out of proportion on a relatively small church. There’s a large cat (probably a lion) and a man on the south side and, on the north side, there’s a large eagle head (very nicely carved) and an arsehole with the drainpipe placed in the bum-hole. This is directly opposite the head of the man, so we have his head on the south side and his bottom on the north. That’s mediaeval humour for you!

Inside the church, there are other, crude carvings of faces which look like skulls or apes. The church is wonderfully light thanks to the clear glass windows. There’s just one small stained-glass window in the west wall of the tower which was installed during the Victorian renovation.

I liked the memorial from the First World War. It lists the 14 men from the village who went to war. None were killed in action, although one died later from his wounds. There’s a list of priests, starting with Magister Stephen de Sandwich in 1234, but ending at the Reformation when Henry VIII seized church property and Lyndon was incorporated into Peterborough Diocese.

We were offered a chance to go up the church tower, but it involved putting in place and climbing an old, heavy ladder into the bell loft and no-one took up the challenge. There are four bells, dating back to the reign of Elizabeth I, with a couple re-cast in the Victorian restoration. They can still be rung, and teams of bell-ringers visit the church from time to time.

Eagle (above) and arsehole (below) - mediaeval
humour at its best.

The font is 12^th century. It’s a square stone bowl with crudely carved animals around the outside. It was found buried in the churchyard during the Victorian restoration. There’s also part of a cross displayed in the west window of the south aisle, which was possibly part of the village cross that once stood by the crossroads. It’s been dated to 1130.

When the Victorian restoration took place, they installed pews, an organ and an alabaster pulpit – very unusual for a village church. There’s also alabaster reredos (altar screens) depicting the four evangelists in the centre and a couple of gruesome Old Testament Bible stories either side. There’s the Passover on the north side, with dead children lying everywhere, and Moses and the bronze snake on the south side. This story (from Numbers) is a warning to moaning minnies everywhere. The children of Israel are being led across the wilderness, they’re getting fed up of eating manna and have no idea where they’re going, so they do what anyone would do – complain about the lack of clarity from their leader and ask for a more varied diet. Jehovah responds by sending down poisonous snakes to bite them (which is a little harsh), but then gives Moses an antidote in the form of a metal snake which will cure snakebite if the victim looks upon it.

The evangelists – Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – are depicted as a winged man with a book (Matthew), a winged lion (Mark), winged bull (Luke) and an eagle (which comes with wings as standard) for John.

Moses and the metal snake

The four evangelists

The angel of death. You know it's Egypt because
of the pyramids.

One of Lyndon’s famous sons was the squire Thomas Barker (1722-1809) who kept detailed, daily weather records from the age of 14 for the following 60-plus years. He recorded pressure, temperature, wind, rainfall and general weather conditions; but also nature’s changes – the seasonal appearance of leaves, flowers and birds; and the success and failure of his beehives and condition of livestock. In 1749 he described a tornado that struck Lyndon. The recordings survived and are now a valuable historic record for the study of climate change. Thomas is buried in the churchyard, but his grave has been lost.

I was chatting to the two women who served us with tea and coffee. I asked how they managed to keep things going in a village of just 100 people, it was hard enough in a village of 1,500 to find people to fill the various voluntary positions. They said that the three of them basically ran the church and there was a core of five people who did everything in the village that needed to be done.

They knew Thorney and one of them once had relatives farming in Thorney before going on to Whittlesey. Being of farming stock, they’d lost land when Rutland Water was flooded to create a reservoir. Two things grated – the poor price offered in compensation and the fact that, although you could see the lake from Lyndon, their water came via Severn Trent.

One lady was called Clare and it was clear from the minutes of the Parochial Church Council annual meeting (pinned outside) that she was Lady Clare Conant, resident of the manor house and owner of the village and surrounding land. The estate has been in the same family since the reign of Charles II (almost 400 years). Two brothers, wealthy sheep farmers from Harringworth, bought the estate and built two manor houses within sight of each other – one next to the church and the other on a high point about half a mile away. The houses are identical and they are smaller replicas of Thorpe Hall, the Carolean mansion house near Peterborough. The Conants are now in residence, but the family name is much changed over the generations – apparently, they were very bad at producing male children.

After tea and scones, Clare Conant took us for a walk around the village, including the garden of the manor house. It has some fine trees, a view toward Rutland Water and a bamboo and water garden, although the water wasn’t flowing. The village is very pretty. I had a look on the estate’s website and one of the thatched cottages – the Old Post Office (three bedrooms and one en-suite) was offered for £1,400 per month. That  would just about get you a one-bed flat in an OK part of London.

The only stained glass in the church

Crudely carved face in the south porch