St Michael's Church, Duntisbourne Rouse

St Michael's, Duntisbourne Rouse
St Michael's, Duntisbourne Rouse
	Location in Gloucestershire
	Coordinates: 51°45′12″N2°01′21″W / 51.7532°N 2.0226°W
OS grid reference	SO 9853406059
Location	Duntisbourne Rouse, Gloucestershire
Country	England
Denomination	Anglican
History
Status	Parish church
Dedication	Saint Michael
Architecture
Functional status	Active
Heritage designation	Grade I
Designated	28 November 1958
Administration
Deanery	Cirencester
Archdeaconry	Cheltenham
Diocese	Gloucester
Province	Canterbury

Last updated November 07, 2019

St Michael's Church is an Anglican church in the Cotswold village of Duntisbourne Rouse, Gloucestershire, England. It dates from no later than the 11th or 12th century and, since 1958, has been designated a Grade I listed building.^[1] It is an active parish church in the Diocese of Gloucester, the archdeaconry of Cheltenham and the deanery of Cirencester.

Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition which has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation.

The Cotswolds are an area in south central and south west England comprising the Cotswold Hills, a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment, known as the Cotswold Edge, above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jurassic limestone that creates a type of grassland habitat rare in the UK and that is quarried for the golden-coloured Cotswold stone. It contains unique features derived from the use of this mineral; the predominantly rural landscape contains stone-built villages, historical towns and stately homes and gardens.

Duntisbourne Rouse is a village and civil parish in Gloucestershire, England. It lies in the Cotswolds, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 70.

History

Duntisbourne Rouse is one of a few settlements in the vicinity named after Dunt, a Saxon chief. Following the Norman conquest, the land was owned by a knight named Le Rous.^[2] The church dates from no later than the late 11th or early 12th century,^[1] although the nave is now thought to have been built in Saxon times.^[2]^[3] The chancel is from the 12th century and a tower was added in the 16th century.^[1] The church underwent restoration in the 1930s, by Sidney Gambier-Parry.^[2] It was designated a Grade I listed building on 26 November 1958.^[1] The Grade I listing is for buildings "exceptional interest, sometimes considered to be internationally important".^[4]

Anglo-Saxons Germanic tribes who started to inhabit parts of Great Britain from the 5th century onwards

The Anglo-Saxons were a cultural group who inhabited Great Britain from the 5th century. They comprise people from Germanic tribes who migrated to the island from continental Europe, their descendants, and indigenous British groups who adopted many aspects of Anglo-Saxon culture and language; the cultural foundations laid by the Anglo-Saxons are the foundation of the modern English legal system and of many aspects of English society; the modern English language owes over half its words – including the most common words of everyday speech – to the language of the Anglo-Saxons. Historically, the Anglo-Saxon period denotes the period in Britain between about 450 and 1066, after their initial settlement and up until the Norman conquest. The early Anglo-Saxon period includes the creation of an English nation, with many of the aspects that survive today, including regional government of shires and hundreds. During this period, Christianity was established and there was a flowering of literature and language. Charters and law were also established. The term Anglo-Saxon is popularly used for the language that was spoken and written by the Anglo-Saxons in England and eastern Scotland between at least the mid-5th century and the mid-12th century. In scholarly use, it is more commonly called Old English.

Norman conquest of England 11th-century invasion and conquest of England by Normans

The Norman conquest of England was the 11th-century invasion and occupation of England by an army of Norman, Breton, Flemish, and French soldiers led by the Duke of Normandy, later styled William the Conqueror.

The nave is the central part of a church, stretching from the main entrance or rear wall, to the transepts, or in a church without transepts, to the chancel. When a church contains side aisles, as in a basilica-type building, the strict definition of the term "nave" is restricted to the central aisle. In a broader, more colloquial sense, the nave includes all areas available for the lay worshippers, including the side-aisles and transepts. Either way, the nave is distinct from the area reserved for the choir and clergy.

Architecture

Exterior

The church is constructed of rubble limestone with herringbone stonework on the north and east walls, and stone-slate roofs. There are doorways to the north (now blocked) and south. The south door has a triangular head and is covered by a porch which has a chamfered segmental arch. The south wall of the nave contains two lancet windows and a two-light Perpendicular window with a square head, added in the 15th century.^[1] There are no windows in the north wall.

Limestone Sedimentary rocks made of calcium carbonate

Limestone is a carbonate sedimentary rock that is often composed of the skeletal fragments of marine organisms such as coral, foraminifera, and molluscs. Its major materials are the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different crystal forms of calcium carbonate (CaCO₃). A closely related rock is dolomite, which contains a high percentage of the mineral dolomite, CaMg(CO₃)₂. In old USGS publications, dolomite was referred to as magnesian limestone, a term now reserved for magnesium-deficient dolomites or magnesium-rich limestones.

The herringbone pattern is an arrangement of rectangles used for floor tilings and road pavement, so named for a fancied resemblance to the bones of a fish such as a herring.

A porch is a term used in architecture to describe a room or gallery located in front of the entrance of a building forming a low front, and placed in front of the facade of the building it commands. It can be defined more simply as a "projecting building that houses the entrance door of a building or as a vestibule,

The tower to the west is of ashlar.^[1] It sits on a chamfered plinth and has two stages, with a saddleback roof. There are small slit windows on the north and south sides. An inscription reads "THIS WAS BUILT BY JOHN HADEN MASON JOHN FREEMAN AND JOHN HOSKINS BEING WARDENS A.D. OI 1587".^[1] The church sits on a steep slope and there is a crypt in the ground beneath the chancel.^[2]

Ashlar Finely dressed stone and associated masonry

Ashlar is finely dressed stone, either an individual stone that was worked until squared or the structure built from it. Ashlar is the finest stone masonry unit, generally rectangular cuboid, mentioned by Vitruvius as opus isodomum, or less frequently trapezoidal. Precisely cut "on all faces adjacent to those of other stones", ashlar is capable of very thin joints between blocks, and the visible face of the stone may be quarry-faced or feature a variety of treatments: tooled, smoothly polished or rendered with another material for decorative effect.

A saddleback roof is usually on a tower, with a ridge and two sloping sides, producing a gable at each end.

A crypt is a stone chamber beneath the floor of a church or other building. It typically contains coffins, sarcophagi, or religious relics.

Interior and fittings

The internal walls are limewashed and the floor is stone.^[2] The nave is without aisles and has timber panelling on the walls.^[1] It has panelled box pews and bracket lights with brass ornaments from the Victorian era.^[2] The Jacobean pulpit is hexagonal, constructed of carved wood, and there is an octagonal stone font. The doorway from the nave to the tower has a pointed arch.^[1] The tower has an internal staircase leading to its two bells; one from the 14th century and one from the 15th century.^[2]

An aisle is, in general (common), a space for walking with rows of seats on both sides or with rows of seats on one side and a wall on the other. Aisles can be seen in airplanes, certain types of buildings, such as churches, cathedrals, synagogues, meeting halls, parliaments and legislatures, courtrooms, theatres, and in certain types of passenger vehicles. Their floors may be flat or, as in theatres, stepped upwards from a stage.

A box pew is a type of church pew that is encased in panelling and was prevalent in England and other Protestant countries from the 16th to early 19th century.

In the history of the United Kingdom, the Victorian era was the period of Queen Victoria's reign, from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. The era followed the Georgian period and preceded the Edwardian period, and its later half overlaps with the first part of the Belle Époque era of Continental Europe. In terms of moral sensibilities and political reforms, this period began with the passage of the Reform Act 1832. There was a strong religious drive for higher moral standards led by the nonconformist churches, such as the Methodists, and the Evangelical wing of the established Church of England. Britain's relations with the other Great Powers were driven by the colonial antagonism of the Great Game with Russia, climaxing during the Crimean War; a Pax Britannica of international free trade was maintained by the country's naval and industrial supremacy. Britain embarked on global imperial expansion, particularly in Asia and Africa, which made the British Empire the largest empire in history. National self-confidence peaked.

The walls of the chancel were decorated in the early 13th century with paintings done in red ochre that only survive in fragments, most complete on the north wall. It has a stylised masonry and six-petalled flower pattern.^[2] The choir stalls have misericords carved with grotesque heads and vine leaves; they date from the 15th century.^[1] It is not clear whether the misericords were originally installed in this church, or imported from elsewhere.^[5]

Ochre (English) or ocher is a natural clay earth pigment which is a mixture of ferric oxide and varying amounts of clay and sand. It ranges in colour from yellow to deep orange or brown. It is also the name of the colours produced by this pigment, especially a light brownish-yellow. A variant of ochre containing a large amount of hematite, or dehydrated iron oxide, has a reddish tint known as "red ochre".

A misericord is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer.

Grotesque Extravagant style of decoration discovered at the start of the Renaissance in the "Grotto" in Rome, Neros Palace.

Since at least the 18th century, grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus is often used to describe weird shapes and distorted forms such as Halloween masks. In art, performance, and literature, however, grotesque may also refer to something that simultaneously invokes in an audience a feeling of uncomfortable bizarreness as well as sympathetic pity. More specifically, the grotesque forms on Gothic buildings, when not used as drain-spouts, should not be called gargoyles, but rather referred to simply as grotesques, or chimeras.

An organ was donated to the church by the sisters of New Zealand modernist writer Katherine Mansfield.^[6]

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References

Footnotes

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 "Church Of St Michael", Heritage Gateway, English Heritage, retrieved 5 September 2010
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Verey (1982), pp 81–84
↑ "Parish of Duntisbourne Rous", ParishConnections.org, Parish Connections, 2008, retrieved 5 September 2010
↑ "Listed Buildings", English Heritage, 2010, retrieved 19 August 2011
↑ Remnant (1969), p. 48
↑ "Organ Plaque", katherinemansfieldsociety.org, Katherine Mansfield Society, 2008, retrieved 5 September 2010

Bibliography

Remnant, G. L. (1969). A Catalogue of Misericords in Great Britain. Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-817164-1.
Verey, David (1982). Cotswold Churches. Alan Sutton. ISBN 0-904387-78-X.