Middleham Parish »
The Treasure in the Hay-Loft
On March 4th Lucy and Luke, a remarkably well-behaved double act, were baptised in Middleham Church. A happy service, like all baptisms. I looked up at the beautiful 15th Century font cover and imagined all the hundreds of babies and the assembled parents and god-parents, all in their best gowns and doublets, that it had seen. Perhaps it originally came from Jervaulx Abbey or was a gift from Warwick the Kingmaker or Richard of Gloucester. But for 150 years the canopy was lost.
It had been taken out of the church, along with the stalls, the rood screen and other medieval woodwork, on the orders of Dean Cotes, who installed plain oak pews as more in keeping with the fashions of his day. This vandalism was very unpopular and the Dean had to foot the bill himself. He died in 1741, not greatly lamented by his flock. If the Dean was the villain of this piece, the unknown hero was some resourceful person who rescued the canopy and hid it in one of the Rectory outbuildings.
There it remained until the Summer of 1895, when 20 or 30 pieces of medieval carving were found in the Rector's hayloft. It was estimated that the cost of restoration would be about £30 and that it would make an appropriate memorial of Queen Victoria's coming Diamond Jubilee - the fragments pre-reconstruction and restoration are pictured on the right. In the Summer of 1898, Mr. Kerr-Smith appealed in the Parish Magazine for funds. “If everyone who had been baptized in the font would give one shilling only, we should have more than enough." A further search of the loft revealed more fragments.
The work was entrusted to Mr. W.S. Hicks, a well-known architect of Newcastle who had recently overseen the restoration of Grinton Church. The final cost was about £60 and the results (a then contemporary picture is on the left) are superb, especially as most of the fragments were from the middle section and very little remained of the pinnacle and the lower portion.
On November 11th 1898 the Archdeacon of Richmond came to preach, a good congregation attended despite bad weather, there was a "merry peal" from the bells and the canopy was back where it belonged. Now it is once more a treasure to be prized and adds greatly to the beauty of Middleham Church. We all owe a debt of gratitude to Mr Hicks. Not all restorers in that enthusiastic age were as sensitive. We also owe an equal debt to some unknown parishioner, perhaps a churchwarden, who saved the canopy for us, so long ago.
Nigelle Munro