Churches

St Mary, Over

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

ANYONE who has ever driven through Over, 11 miles north-west of Cambridge, will have been impressed - if only for a moment or two - by the handsome tower of the village church.

It makes a fine profile at a turn in the High Street, as it has for almost 700 years.

It looks very English and solid, not to say stolid. Stop for a closer look, and you will find much more in the detail.

For one thing, the church is full of faces: large ones in the gorgeous gargoyles round the south porch; dozens of small ones peering from the pillar-tops inside.

The carving over the west door has been incorrectly identified in some guidebooks as representing Christ in Majesty. In fact, it is something even more exciting to a historian - an image of the Assumption of the Virgin Mary.

Before the Reformation, the church's dedication was undoubtedly to the Assumption, which in Catholic countries is still enthusiastically celebrated on August 15. To the Protestant reformers, this was the height of idolatry, to be scrubbed from the calendar, its imagery eradicated.

Somehow, it survived here - perhaps simply overlooked, as that door was no longer the main entrance. Some 500 years of weather have done it more damage than any reformer, but it remains to bear witness to the changing times.

Of the many carvings inside the church, the most intriguing probably did not originate here at all.

A range of 15th-century choirstalls in the chancel may have been removed from nearby Ramsey Abbey when it was dissolved by Henry VIII in 1539. They have nice misericord carvings on their tip-up undersides. More fascinating are the figures on the armrests.

One shows what appears to be the Roman god Bacchus, or one of his pagan worshippers, riding a pig while pouring wine from a jug. Another is of a kneeling man with an extraordinary oversized head-dress. If one is a warning against drunken debauchery, the other may satirise over-fine dressing, and both might have been used to illustrate sermons.

And then there is this fine dragon savagely devouring a man - and providing a modern visitor with a conundrum. If every picture tells a story, what story is this one telling?

Could it be a rare image of the mythical Bigorne? In French folklore, the Bigorne was a monster that grew fat devouring henpecked husbands. Its mate, Chichevache, fed on obedient wives and always went hungry.

Sexist it may be, and a long way from anything in the Bible, but the story was well enough known to be referred to by Chaucer and may also have figured in sermons.

Or is this the female dragon Tarasque, which terrorized a French town until subdued by St Martha, using only holy water and faith? Images of her are common in Provence , and may not be so rare in East Anglia as you might suppose. After hundreds of years, and the loss of England 's Catholic tradition, it is hard to be sure.

	Gargoyles of a very human nature