The glorious 16th-Century Rood Screen,
Saint Andrew’s Church, Harberton, Devon.
Text and Illustrations: DEVON CHURCH LAND
The Great East Window in the Chancel.
There is a little microcosm of history around beautifully-towered Harberton Church, with its be-lichened Grey Slate Walls and White Limestone edgings, all to do with . . .
Church Ales were quite a thing back in the day, the 15th- and 16th-Centuries to be exact, and folk built special Church Houses for them, near the Church of course. Harberton Church House still stands, and is now a Pub, reasonably enough.
Church Ales were not just Church Ales, they were festivals of food, sport, music and pageants, and they were not just that either; they raised money for the Parish and the Church (the two pretty much the same), to be spent mainly on the Poor and the Needy, as well as the the actual structure.
Stained-Glass Window of Saint Rose of Lime.
Church of Saint Andrew, Harberton, Devon.
And so to Peru, which is not a phrase normally associated with Devon Parish Churches, but here we have Saint Rose of Lima, born in 1586 as Isabel Flores d’Olivia, but taking the name “Rose” at her Confirmation.
It is a lovely depiction, especially that head-dress of Roses, and was installed soon after 1901 by Sir Robert Harvey as a memorial to his Peruvian wife, who tragically died at the age of forty-two.
But the Post-Reformation Religious dudes banned Church Ales, for various reasons, some reasonable and some just plain mean, and when Walter Wotton and Henry Somaston were having a legal barney about a right-of-way running from Harberton down to the Dart Estuary, it culminated in
Lawsuit Number Three, in 1606 . . .
In which Walter was accused of supporting
an illegal Church Ale.
So, basically, he promised to organise an illegal “rave”,
with “Cosplay” [Editor: to dress as, and pretend to be, characters from a play, etc].
We do not know the end of Wally’s and Henry’s feud, we do know that there is now a Lane from Harberton Parish to the River Dart, and we also know that Wally’s Church is a “Bonzer Beaut” [Editor: Australian slang for something rather good], with a 14th-Century Chancel, 15th-Century Nave and Aisles, and 16th-Century Tower and Porch.
And is not this Porch a lovely one ? A good Beer Stone-Carved Doorway, nice Window in the Parvise (second floor),
and those lovely Pinnacles.
The Stonework is a delight, too, for us 21st-Century heathens, Late-Mediæval folk would have looked at it in horror
and demanded to know who had stripped off
the Plaster and Lime Wash.
There was an earlier Church or Chapel here for sure;
records confirm it for the 12th-Century. How much
further back we know not.
Victorian Angels on the Rood Screen door.
Stained-Glass Window showing Christ with children.
And here, as part of the mourning for Tito, who died aged ten [Editor: Tito was the son of Sir Robert Harvey and his Peruvian wife, Isabel], is a wonderful Clayton and Bell Stained-Glass Window showing Christ welcoming the children, a radical move in Christ’s time, when children, loved as they were, were hardly seen as individuals in their own right, and, as for the 19th-Century . . .
Well, there had been a constant struggle to get children treated with love and respect during the 19th-Century; these windows placed in Churches, along with the teachings of the new breed of Priests, surely helped to see children as having rights and needs of their own.
