Churches

Seething, a fine example of a round-towered Norfolk church

St Margaret and St Remigius, Seething

First appeared in Let's Talk! Norfolk, October 2005

Enigmatic figure - the legs and staff are those of St Christopher, but was the head originally that of the Virgin?

Fine font or fake? The figures depicting Penance suggest it's a bit of both

IN the world of medieval churches, not everything is quite what it seems. If you like a bit of mystery in your history, Seething has it in plenty.

Just for a start, there's the dedication - St Margaret and St Remigius. When and why were these oddly assorted saints put together?

Margaret, the dragon-slaying virgin martyr, was popular in the late middle ages, when many churches were dedicated to her feast day. Remigius, however, a sixth-century bishop of Rheims in France, seems an unlikely partner for her - and an equally unlikely patron in rural Norfolk .

It's just one aspect of this lovely church in which one suspects the hand of an enthusiastic Victorian vicar.

The nave and round tower of Margaret and Remigius's church are Norman , though the windows are later medieval and the top stage of the tower Victorian. The real mysteries, though, are inside.

The font is clearly one of those 15t -century Seven Sacrament fonts for which our county is famous. Or is it?

If it is an original, its carvings of the sacraments are better preserved than on any other. So is it, as some experts have suggested, a much later fake?

Or is it, as I suspect, an original that was badly damaged during the Reformation - then over-restored in the 19th century?

In the scene of Penance, or confession, for example, the small figures in the foreground, including a very feathery (and headless) angel and a squatting devil, appear to be genuinely late-medieval - but the heads of the larger figures behind seem poor later additions.

Most of the other sides, too, have heads that appear "wrong" - as does the upper half of the Baptism scene, and almost everything in the image of the Mass.

Better than the font, and certainly medieval, are the wonderful wall-paintings that have survived on both sides of the nave - but they too hold some mystery.

There, in the traditional place opposite the south door, is St Christopher carrying the infant Christ. Yet there is something about the composition, the saint's headwear, the Child's posture, that suggests a conventional image of the Madonna and Child.

Was an older painting celebrating the Virgin converted, perhaps in the late 14th century, when St Christopher was popular?

Other paintings include familiar biblical scenes such as the Resurrection and Ascension (where, intriguingly, the upturned faces of the apostles appear to have been gouged out, not merely painted over).

There is one of the finest surviving images of the Three Living and Three Dead - "As I am, so will you be" - with three finely arrayed 14th-century gents encountering a grim, though rather faded, skeleton. The other two dead have made way for a later window.

Rarest, though hardest to make out, is the Warning Against Gossip - a supposedly improving moral picture in which two devils eavesdrop menacingly on two chatting women.

There is no truth in the rumour that the devil writing down the women's words is a reporter from this magazine. At Let's Talk! we know the value of good gossip!