Churches

St John, Duxford

First appeared in Let's Talk! Cambridgeshire, July 2004

Duxford - the very name is instantly associated with history. The Imperial War Museum took over the wartime airbase in 1977 and began creating what is now Europe 's finest aviation museum.

Few of the museum's many thousands of visitors ever venture into the village itself. If they did, they would find evidence just as fascinating of far older history.

Remarkably, for a small village, Duxford has three medieval church buildings.

Duxford Chapel, signposted from near the air museum, is all that remains of a one-time Knights Templar hostel. In the care of English Heritage, it is scarcely more than a barn - which is exactly what it was used as after the Reformation.

The village church of St Peter, which remains in use, is of Norman origin, but like so many churches owes much of its present structure and feel to the Victorians.

The real jewel is St John's, which fell out of regular use in 1874, but has been well looked after since and is now in the good care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Ironically, one of the things that makes St John's so special is the fact that the Victorians lavished all their attention on St Peter's.

What they left was all medieval. The entrance door, inside a 15 th century porch, dates from about 1100. Set within the classic round Norman arch is something even older - an elaborately carved cross which appears to be from the seventh or eighth centuries and may mark this lovely raised site as a very old place of Christian worship indeed.

Hung up by the hair, St Agatha suffers horribly in a graphic 12th-century image: note how the painting goes behind the later wall

St Catherine disputes with the philosophers - again the painting is clearly earlier than the wall alongside

Inside, there is much of interest, from a 14th-century coffin-lid to early 19th-century boards with the words of the Creed, the Lord's Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

Best of all are the wall paintings.

'Christ of the Trades' - or a warning against working on the sabbath?

A painted collection of agricultural implements may be a depiction of "Christ of the Trades", an assertion of the essential holiness of manual labour. On the other hand, it may be a warning against working on the Sabbath.

Either way, this 15th-century image was clearly meant for the instruction of the congregation. But other paintings, centuries older yet better preserved, give the lie to the common view of wall-paintings as picturebooks for the people.

For the 12th-century scenes of saints and the life and death of Jesus are painted on the west wall of the chancel, where they would only ever have been seen by serving priests.

Here are lovely line fragments of the Crucifixion, the taking-down of Christ's body from the Cross, and His tomb, guarded by sleeping soldiers in very medieval armour.

There is a graphic and gruesome image of the martyrdom of St Agatha. Another appears to show St Catherine defending her Christian faith in argument with 50 philosophers.

Intriguingly, part of this image appears from behind the adjoining stonework in a way that shows it was already covered over, or disregarded, by the time the north chapel was added in the years just before the Black Death of 1348-9.