St Felix, the Suffolk Lyonesse, and the Ramsey Relic Race

St Felix at Fritton

Today is the feast of St Felix, who according to Bede introduced Christianity to the kingdom of East Anglia in the first half of the seventh century. Working with the aid of the ill-fated King Sigeberht, he established churches, a school, and an episcopal see at a place called Dommoc (perhaps to be identified with the town of Dunwich, which has since disappeared almost entirely into the sea). Felix had help from the newly-founded church of Canterbury, and was consecrated as bishop by Honorius, the last surviving member of the Gregorian mission to England; he then proceeded to spread Christianity in the world of Sutton Hoo. Bede, in etymological mood, tells us (in Historia Ecclesiastica, II.15):

Bishop Felix... came to Archbishop Honorius from the Burgundian region, where he had been raised and ordained, and, by his own desire, was sent by him to preach the word of life to the nation of the Angles. Nor did he fail in his purpose; for, like a good farmer, he reaped a rich harvest of believers. In accord with the meaning of his own name, he freed the whole province from its ancient iniquity and infelicity (infelicitate), brought it to the faith and works of righteousness, and guided it to eternal felicity (perpetuae felicitatis).

Effigy possibly of St Felix, in Norwich Cathedral

Felix was bishop for seventeen years, until his death on 8 March 647/8. His relics were preserved at Soham, but the shrine and community there were destroyed in the ninth century by a Viking raid. In the eleventh century Cnut gave permission for the monks of Ramsey Abbey to take possession of Felix's relics (as king of England Cnut was involved in a number of such events, probably as a strategic form of reparation to the English church for Viking attacks). There's a memorable story in Ramsey's own chronicle, the Chronicon Abbatiae Ramesiensis, which claims that when the Ramsey monks were sailing home with Felix's relics through the Fens they were pursued by the monks of Ely, also in a boat, eager to have the precious relics themselves. A miraculous fog descended, in which the Ely monks lost their way, and our Ramsey heroes were able to escape with the relics. Rivalry between Ramsey and Ely, two great Fenland monasteries, is a regular feature of their medieval history, and since Soham is closer to Ely than it is to Ramsey you can see why the Ely monks might feel a little aggrieved! It's a great story (though generically typical), but even the Ramsey chronicler who records it expresses doubts about its veracity - with engaging frankness, he says 'the reader is not required to believe the story, provided that he feels it to be certain that every part of the relics of St Felix were translated to the Church of Ramsey, and honourably deposited there'. As indeed there's no reason to doubt.

St Felix in Norwich Cathedral

I was in Suffolk last spring, and visited Dunwich, which was then full of daffodils:


These are the ruins of the thirteenth-century priory of Greyfriars, the only part of the medieval town which survives. Coastal erosion has encroached on everything else that remains of what was once a substantial settlement. It's still going on at a fast rate - Wikipedia has a fantastically evocative list of the buildings which have been swallowed by the sea, including a picture of a church which was standing in 1904 and is now lost except for one single gravestone. The cliffs are getting ever closer to Greyfriars; it may not be long before this too is gone.


Sunken villages have such romantic appeal! Apparently local legend claims that at certain times and tides the church bells of Dunwich can still be heard ringing beneath the waves. A similar belief is common to myths of such places all over the world - the past echoing through the present.



Read more about 'Britain's Atlantis' here.

Time Stops: 'Meeting Point' and 'Dining-Room Tea'

I feel I've been posting a lot about the passage of time, which is something which I think about pretty much constantly (it's sort of my job). But here are two poems about time stopping, just for a moment.


Dining-Room Tea

Rupert Brooke


When you were there, and you, and you,
Happiness crowned the night; I too,
Laughing and looking, one of all,
I watched the quivering lamplight fall
On plate and flowers and pouring tea
And cup and cloth; and they and we
Flung all the dancing moments by
With jest and glitter. Lip and eye
Flashed on the glory, shone and cried,
Improvident, unmemoried;
And fitfully and like a flame
The light of laughter went and came.
Proud in their careless transience moved
The changing faces that I loved.

Till suddenly, and otherwhence,
I looked upon your innocence.
For lifted clear and still and strange
From the dark woven flow of change
Under a vast and starless sky
I saw the immortal moment lie.
One Instant I, an instant, knew
As God knows all. And it and you
I, above Time, oh, blind! could see
In witless immortality.

I saw the marble cup; the tea,
Hung on the air, an amber stream;
I saw the fire's unglittering gleam,
The painted flame, the frozen smoke.
No more the flooding lamplight broke
On flying eyes and lips and hair;
But lay, but slept unbroken there,
On stiller flesh, and body breathless,
And lips and laughter stayed and deathless,
And words on which no silence grew.
Light was more alive than you.

For suddenly, and otherwhence,
I looked on your magnificence.
I saw the stillness and the light,
And you, august, immortal, white,
Holy and strange; and every glint
Posture and jest and thought and tint
Freed from the mask of transiency,
Triumphant in eternity,
Immote, immortal.

Dazed at length
Human eyes grew, mortal strength
Wearied; and Time began to creep.
Change closed about me like a sleep.
Light glinted on the eyes I loved.
The cup was filled. The bodies moved.
The drifting petal came to ground.
The laughter chimed its perfect round.
The broken syllable was ended.
And I, so certain and so friended,
How could I cloud, or how distress,
The heaven of your unconsciousness?
Or shake at Time's sufficient spell,
Stammering of lights unutterable?
The eternal holiness of you,
The timeless end, you never knew,
The peace that lay, the light that shone.
You never knew that I had gone
A million miles away, and stayed
A million years. The laughter played
Unbroken round me; and the jest
Flashed on. And we that knew the best
Down wonderful hours grew happier yet.
I sang at heart, and talked, and eat,
And lived from laugh to laugh, I too,
When you were there, and you, and you.



and:


Meeting Point

Louis MacNeice


Time was away and somewhere else,
There were two glasses and two chairs
And two people with the one pulse
(Somebody stopped the moving stairs)
Time was away and somewhere else.

And they were neither up nor down;
The stream's music did not stop
Flowing through heather, limpid brown,
Although they sat in a coffee shop
And they were neither up nor down.

The bell was silent in the air
Holding its inverted poise -
Between the clang and clang a flower,
A brazen calyx of no noise:
The bell was silent in the air.

The camels crossed the miles of sand
That stretched around the cups and plates;
The desert was their own, they planned
To portion out the stars and dates:
The camels crossed the miles of sand.

Time was away and somewhere else.
The waiter did not come, the clock
Forgot them and the radio waltz
Came out like water from a rock:
Time was away and somewhere else.

Her fingers flicked away the ash
That bloomed again in tropic trees:
Not caring if the markets crash
When they had forests such as these,
Her fingers flicked away the ash.

God or whatever means the Good
Be praised that time can stop like this,
That what the heart has understood
Can verify in the body's peace
God or whatever means the Good.

Time was away and she was here
And life no longer what it was,
The bell was silent in the air
And all the room one glow because
Time was away and she was here.


Here's 'Meeting Point' as read by MacNeice (ignore the video). One of the things I like about both these poems is that while they are about freezing a single moment of time, they also encapsulate, perfectly though inadvertently, their own time-periods: an Edwardian tea-party of 1911, all china cups and flowers and firelight, and the glamorous 1930s, escalators and a radio waltz and cigarette-smoke. And markets crashing, of course. That verse, which I think is my favourite, always reminds me of this Gershwin song:

Fordwich: "I feel I've only to turn my head to see them on the road behind me"

A while ago I posted some extracts from a rather eccentric Victorian history of Fordwich in Kent, A History of the Town and Port of Fordwich, written in 1895 by a clergyman named C. Eveleigh Woodruff. Fordwich is a tiny village now but it's actually a town, the smallest place in England to have a town council, because in the Middle Ages it was the chief port for Canterbury. Well, I should let Mr Woodruff tell it:

The little village of Fordwich is situated on the right bank of the river Stour, about two-and-a-half miles below Canterbury. The excursionist from the Isle of Thanet to the Cathedral city may notice, as he descends the hill from Westbere, a cluster of red-tiled houses, and the neat, broach spire of a church half-a-mile away to the left, but there is nothing to tempt him to inspect more closely what appears to be a commmonplace and not very healthily-situated village; nor would his curiosity meet with much reward should he be induced to linger. Not many of the houses are externally interesting, and the church, though bearing traces of great antiquity, would by the casual observer probably be pronounced rather below than above the standard generally attained in the neighbourhood. The visitor may have been told that the place was once a corporate town and a member of the Cinque Ports’ confederacy; but, without further assistance, he is scarcely likely to identify the humble building of timber and plaster, opposite to the ‘Fordwich Arms’, as the ancient Court Hall, or to suspect that it contains the records of a municipal life extending over more than six hundred years. Nevertheless such is the case; and the town, in spite of its complete insignificance in the present day, possesses a history of exceptional interest.

It really does; and this book is that delightfully Victorian thing, a mixture of sound scholarship and quirky, irrelevant facts. The author consulted the archives of Fordwich, which provide a fascinating picture of a medieval town's self-regulation; but he also feels able to note at one point, describing an ancient house in the village, that "in summer time this garden is well worth a visit, for it contains a very choice collection of old-fashioned flowers". Now that's useful scholarship.

I posted some of Woodruff's extracts from the archives about trouble between vicar and parishioners, and here are a few more passages which amused me - with pictures of said 'commonplace and not very healthily-situated village' and its church.

This is the tiny Town Hall, built in 1544. It's said to be the oldest and the smallest still in use. Like Chilham and Wickhambreaux, Fordwich was used as a location in the 1944 Powell and Pressburger film A Canterbury Tale, going to make up the fictional village of Chillingbourne, one train-stop west of Canterbury (the site of Chilham; Fordwich is the same distance away, but to the east). A Canterbury Tale is the oddest but loveliest of films, a wartime love-letter to 'deep England' - to history and the English land, and all its odd quirks and all the odd, ordinary, but glorious people who have made its story. It's an eccentric but deeply heartfelt response to Chaucer's poem, opening with the jolly pilgrims of his Canterbury pilgrimage, but turning with a jolt to modern warplanes in the skies above Kent, tanks lumbering through rural lanes. The pilgrims in this film are from the twentieth century, brought to Canterbury because of a world torn apart by war: a land-girl mourning the loss of her fiance, a British soldier about to be sent overseas, and a homesick American GI. They're brave, clever, confident young people, but at heart they are all, even if they don't know it, pilgrims in search of blessings, and they have an urgent, painful need Chaucer's pilgrims never manifest - aching grief, longing for a distant home, lost idealism and hope. This film is actually more interested in and engaged with the idea of pilgrimage than The Canterbury Tales is, and with the image of Canterbury (which Chaucer's pilgrims never reach) as England's holy city, the place where all roads lead. The plot really makes no sense at all, but the feeling in this film is utterly heartbreaking.

Anyway, you can see a loving recreation of the town hall's upper chamber in the film, from about 13.00 onwards (not the real thing - I should think the real town hall was too small to film in!). The lower floor is occupied by a tiny jail cell, of which Woodruff observes:

During the present century, this place of detention has been very sparingly used. At the time of the inquiry held by the Commissioners, in 1835, so seldom had his services been required, that the old gaoler was not aware that he had been removed from office and another person appointed in his stead.

Some local laws could be eccentric. This was their way of settling disputes about property boundaries:

The claimant or defendant as they shall agree, shall place his right foot so that his great toe shall extend to the extremity of the land which he claims, and he shall put his foot to the wall if he claim the wall, and shall say: "Hear this ye good men and show J or W my opponent that all the land which I measure with my foot is mine, so help me all Holy Saints," and this custom is called Feche and Have.

You see how sleepy and full of weeds the River Stour is now, as it is in Canterbury too - a dreamy quiet river. But all the stone to build Canterbury Cathedral was landed here when it was brought across the Channel from Normandy. It had other practical uses too:

If a stranger appear as a prosecutor accusing a man of [the town] of felony whether committed within or without the [jurisdiction of the town] the prosecutor shall come to the boundary fully equipped as is fit for a prosecutor to be. Then when he comes to the town he shall be led to a certain running water called ‘Stour’, and in that water he shall stand up to his navel with all his equipment prepared to prove his appeal. Then the accused shall come in a boat with three poles to oppose the prosecutor clothed in a garment called ‘a storrie’ with an instrument called ‘an ore’ three yards long and the boat shall be made fast to the quay by a cord and he shall fight with the said prosecutor until the duel between them is decided.

That conjures up some amusing images...

When it comes to the church, Woodruff is of the opinion that "the present east window is a wretched modern contrivance". The parish appears to have agreed with him, because it was replaced by this beautiful east window which bears the date 1931:


The Norman church has some interesting features, especially this stone:


It's a block of limestone which legend says was the resting-place of the relics of St Augustine of Canterbury. The carving has been dated to the twelfth century and the whole thing is not unlike the kind of monument used to mark the place of a high-status burial; so perhaps it really was associated with St Augustine (the site of whose tomb is visible among the ruins of St Augustine's abbey in Canterbury) or with another of the Canterbury saints whose relics were lost at the Reformation. A similar claim to be St Augustine's resting-place is made of an (empty) tomb now in Chilham church - they can't both be right, but I suppose we might easily imagine such things being moved from Canterbury to local churches for safe-keeping, their original significance being forgotten. Fordwich belonged to St Augustine's abbey in the medieval period, and it's not difficult to see how a 'saint's tomb from St Augustine's' might become 'St Augustine's tomb' in local legend.



There's some gorgeous medieval glass in the church too:

This seems to be the remains of an Annunciation scene (note the lily). And this is the Coronation of the Virgin, in two facing lights:

And a pair of evangelists in blue and white:

And a fierce little lion:

Thinking of Mr Colpeper, I was pleased to see memorials to local magistrates in the church, especially this one to Friend Tomlin, who died in 1819 - 'senior jurat of this town' and father of its then mayor.

I wonder what he would have said to a GI, an organist and a land-girl if they came in search of blessings.

Psalms and Psalters

This is how I've just spent a happy afternoon, and I recommend it as a strategy for cheerfulness: pick a psalm, and then go to the British Library website and look at the illustration of it in the Harley Psalter. This manuscript, produced at Canterbury at the beginning of the eleventh century, has lots and lots of superb line-drawings which illustrate scenes from the psalms, and they're just delightful. The pictures are full of detail and so at first glance look disorganised, but once you have the text of the psalm to compare them to, they make perfect sense.

So for instance: spot the 'pelican in the wilderness' and the 'sparrow on the housetop' in this illustration of Psalm 102, and the angels building up Jerusalem (they look very serious about it).

These were some I particularly enjoyed:

'The high hills are a refuge for the wild goats, and so are the stony rocks for the conies' (Psalm 104). Who knew Anglo-Saxons were so good at drawing goats and lions?

Standard-bearing angels in a dramatic illustration of Psalm 103

In this illustration of Psalm 105, spot Joseph with his feet in the stocks, looking just as if the iron entered into his soul!

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills...

People sowing in tears and reaping in joy

A dynamic battle scene

Gorgeous angel-wings

And so on, and so on. Have fun!

A Self-Indulgent Post

This is an exciting day for me, because about midday today I reached 20,000 page views on this blog. As I like to remind myself sometimes, this is approximately 19,990 more 'people' than will ever read the thesis I've spent the past three years on! Never mind; I'm almost as proud of one as of the other. I've also only now realised that the 22nd February just gone was this blog's fourth birthday. 20,000 views in four years isn't that many, but when you consider how obscure most of my subject-matter is, I choose to find it heartening that so many people are interested in it! It's been a very beneficial experience for me; I've learned a lot. I'm thoroughly committed to the idea that academics should make their work as available and accessible to a wide audience as possible, and the appreciative and intelligent responses of my readers here have convinced me that there is an audience for this kind of thing. Heaven only knows if I'll ever get a job in anything related to my field of study, but if I don't, at least I won't feel like the time's been entirely wasted while I've shared some of my work with you.

To celebrate, I went back and looked at some of my previous posts. There's a list of the most popular posts there on the sidebar, but that doesn't really reflect the best of this blog, in my ever-so-humble opinion (well, except for the post on the stained glass of Canterbury, which I do like); so here to add to it are links to some of my own favourite posts, one from each year. You may have noticed I like linking to my own posts (it's not my fault! I have a limited range of topics, and they're all related!), but these are the ones I don't think I've ever found an excuse to link to:

2008: that would have to be my first post, almost the only time I've written about the real, Chaucerian Clerk of Oxford. Oops.

2009: Slants of Light, on medieval romance and 'sun shining through glass'.

2010: a little language rant. I don't often write film reviews, but when I do, they include the word 'monomachy'. (An honourable mention to this post on Lammas)

2011: A Month since Michaelmas (but also Wilton, the New Narnia, and the New Jerusalem)


Thank you for reading; I'm grateful for all my readers - and still mostly just pleasantly surprised that anyone cares about the stuff I care about!

St Chad of Mercia

Brasenose chapel; St Chad is on the left

Seventh-century Mercian bishops are not my speciality, but since St Chad, who died on 2 March 672, is one of the patrons of my college chapel, I can never ignore his feast-day.  The wikipedia article about him is surprisingly good, detailed and enlightening on Chad's role in contemporary politics. It also points out the interesting fact that the (Pugin-designed) cathedral of St Chad in Birmingham is in possession of some probably authentic relics of the saint; this makes St Chad one of the few Anglo-Saxon saints whose bones survived the double trial of the Norman Conquest and the Reformation.*

Here's Bede's account of Chad's death (from here):

He had his episcopal see in the place called Lichfield, in which he also died, and was buried, and where the see of the succeeding bishops of that province still continues. He had built himself a habitation not far from the church, wherein he was wont to pray and read with seven or eight of the brethren, as often as he had any spare time from the labour and ministry of the word.

When he had most gloriously governed the church in that province two years and a half, the Divine Providence so ordaining, there came round a season like that of which Ecclesiastes says, "That there is a time to cast stones, and a time to gather them; " for there happened a mortality [i.e. a plague] sent from heaven, which, by means of the death of the flesh, translated the stones of the church from their earthly places to the heavenly building. And when, after many of the church of that most reverend prelate had been taken out of the flesh, his hour also drew near wherein he was to pass out of this world to our Lord, it happened one day that he was in the aforesaid dwelling, with only one brother, called Owin[e]..

The bishop was alone reading or praying in the oratory of that place, when on a sudden, as [Owine] afterwards said, he heard the voice of persons singing most sweetly and rejoicing, and appearing to descend from heaven. Which voice he said he first heard coming from the south­east, and that afterwards it drew near him, till it came to the roof of the oratory where the bishop was, and entering therein, filled the same and all about it. He listened attentively to what he heard, and after about half an hour, perceived the same song of joy to ascend from the roof of the said oratory, and to return to heaven the same way it came, with inexpressible sweetness.

When he had stood some time astonished, and seriously revolving in his mind what it might be, the bishop opened the window of the oratory, and making a noise with his hand, as he was often wont to do, ordered him to come in to him. He accordingly went hastily in, and the bishop said to him, "Make haste to the church, and cause the seven brothers to come hither, and do you come with them." When they were come, he first admonished them to preserve the virtue of peace among themselves, and towards all others; and indefatigably to practise the rules of regular discipline, which they had either been taught by him, or seen him observe or had noticed in the words or actions of the former fathers. Then he added, that the day of his death was at hand; for, said he, "that amiable guest, who was wont to visit our brethren, has vouchsafed also to come to me this day, and to call me out of this world. Return, therefore, to the church, and speak to the brethren, that they in their prayers recommend my passage to our Lord, and that they be careful to provide for their own, the hour whereof is uncertain, by watching, prayer, and good works."

When he had spoken thus much and more, and they, having received his blessing, had gone away in sorrow, he who had heard the heavenly song returned alone, and prostrating himself on the ground, said, "I beseech you, father, may I be permitted to ask a question?" "Ask what you will," answered the bishop. Then he added, "I entreat you to tell me what song of joy was that which I heard coming upon this oratory, and after some time returning to heaven?" The bishop answered, "If you heard the singing, and know of the coming of the heavenly company, I command you, in the name of our Lord, that you do not tell the same to any before my death. They were angelic spirits, who came to call me to my heavenly reward, which I have always longed after, and they promised they would return seven days hence, and take me away with them." Which was accordingly fulfilled, as had been said to him; for being presently seized with a languishing distemper, and the same daily increasing, on the seventh day, as had been promised to him, when he had prepared for death by receiving the body and blood of our Lord, his soul being delivered from the prison of the body, the angels, as may justly be believed, attending him, he departed to the joys of heaven.

* The story of how his bones were rediscovered is wonderful:

At the dissolution of the Shrine on the instructions of King Henry VIII in about 1538, Prebendary Arthur Dudley of Lichfield Cathedral removed and retained some relics, probably a travelling set. These were eventually passed to his nieces, Bridget and Katherine Dudley, of Russells Hall. In 1651, they reappeared when a farmer, Henry Hodgetts of Sedgley, was on his death-bed and kept praying to St Chad. When the priest hearing his last confession, Fr Peter Turner SJ, asked him why he called upon Chad, Henry replied, "because his bones are in the head of my bed". He instructed his wife to give the relics to the priest, whence they found their way to the Seminary at St Omer, in France.

After the conclusion of penal times, in the early 19th century, they found their way into the hands of Sir Thomas Fitzherbert-Brockholes of Aston Hall, near Stone, Staffordshire. When his chapel was cleared after his death, his chaplain, Fr Benjamin Hulme, discovered the box containg the relics, which were examined and presented to Bishop Thomas Walsh, (RC) Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District in 1837 and were enshrined in the new St. Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham, opened in 1841, in a new ark designed by Augustus Pugin.

This started me thinking about the current whereabouts of other Anglo-Saxon saints. While St Chad's is apparently "the only cathedral in England that has the relics of its patron saint enshrined upon its high altar", there are a few other saints whose whereabouts are known: St Cuthbert, after his Viking-impelled wanderings, is at Durham, and Bede and St Oswald (probably) with him (and the Gospel book with which Cuthbert was buried is in the British Library). John of Beverley is still at Beverley; the relics of poor Edward the Martyr are in an Orthodox church in Woking, after a ridiculous yet sad spell in a bank vault.  I think that's it, though (unless anyone knows better?).  As far as I can tell, all the many pre-Conquest saints buried at Canterbury (both at Christ Church and St Augustine's) disappeared at the Reformation, as did the relics of, among others, Edmund of East Anglia at Bury St Edmunds, Æthelthryth at Ely, Margaret of Scotland at Dunfermline, and Edward the Confessor at Westminster. St Dunstan's relics were still at Canterbury in 1508, when his tomb was opened and inspected, but less than a century later they were lost forever. Oswald and Wulfstan are buried somewhere in Worcester Cathedral, but the precise location is unknown. I've written about the particularly unlucky fate of those buried at Winchester before, but St Swithun is not even among the jumble of bones in the mortuary chests; his shrine is empty:



The inscription says 'Whatever partakes of God is safe in God. All that could perish of Saint Swithun, being enshrined within this place and throughout many ages hallowed by the veneration and honoured by the gifts of faithful pilgrims from many lands, was by a later age destroyed. None could destroy his glory.'

Like many people interested in medieval religion, I spend a lot of time tracing the physical location of the relics of saints, as they are moved, stolen, studied, fought over, prayed over, and piously sought.  The importance of saints' relics is, to some people, one of the most alienating differences between the medieval world and our own (although that's a complete illusion, if you ask me). Relics brought tangible benefits for the communities which owned them, and some of the stereotyped ideas about the silliness of late-medieval relic-hunting are of course based on fact; but what comes across far more strongly is the simple human love which relics could inspire. It is impossible to overestimate the deep personal relationship which a medieval religious community could have with its patron saint; they felt for these tombs what people feel for a beloved parent's grave. The combination between that love, and the strong sense of community identity which was bound up with the ownership of relics, and the belief that the saint was still watching over them and protecting them, was incredibly powerful. What would they have thought if they had known that the physical remains in which they invested so much of their love would one day be simply scattered to the winds? They knew, and I know, that we are dust, and to dust we shall return; 'earth goes upon earth as mold upon mold'.  But to think that the relics of St Dunstan, over which Eadmer and the Christ Church monks prayed in the ruins of their burned cathedral in the winter of 1067, are 'loam to stop a beer-barrel' - it's a sobering thought.  At least Chad was luckier.

More from Pugin's Ramsgate

Today is the 200th anniversary of the birth of A. W. N. Pugin. Considering that the medieval and Victorian periods are my twin loves, the Gothic Revival is very close to my heart; but I'm especially fond of Pugin for being one of the few people to see beauty in, and bring beauty to, my underappreciated corner of Kent. Last year I posted lots of pictures of the wonderful stained glass of the abbey church of St Augustine's, Ramsgate, and here are some more photos which didn't fit into that mammoth post.


The stained glass is from the north cloister; as I understand it, this part of the church wasn't the work of Pugin himself, but some of these windows were based on his designs (according to this useful page, which has many more and better photos than mine).






These details are from the Digby chantry chapel, designed for Kenelm Digby:


The chantry chapel also features a window depicting St Kenelm (as you might expect!) but I sadly didn't get a chance to photograph it. I took a picture of this instead, because it's awesome:

The north cloister has a Flemish set of stations of the cross, running the length of the wall:


And this is from Pugin's chantry chapel, in fact from his own tomb, which stands beneath the wonderful Augustine window I wrote about in my previous post:

This was designed by Pugin's son Edward and depicts members of Pugin's family mourning for him. And here's that splendid window again, just because I like it so much:


Happy birthday, Pugin; between you and Charles Dickens, Thanet has been well-served for bicentennials this year!



ETA: link to this article from the BBC. It's heartening to see a positive article on such a subject, but seriously, the standards of proofreading at the BBC are atrocious; the punctuation in that piece is all over the place.

ETA 2: this excellent sermon from the bicentenary Mass held yesterday at Ramsgate. I wish I could have been there.