A fanfare in Sherborne, Dorset

By Elyn Aviva

Our friend Kate Gannon offered to show us some unusual sites in southern England (see the previous post), and she suggested we spend a day or two in Sherborne, Dorset (there is another Sherborne somewhere else). She said there was an interesting abbey, begun around 1180. We said, “Why not!” and booked a hotel.

We thought Sherborne Abbey would be in poor repair, perhaps a ruined shell, but then we learned it was still in use as an Anglican parish church. As we walked toward it from our hotel, we saw its golden spires and square tower rising above the Elizabethan houses that line the street. When we were about a block from the abbey, Gary and I began to feel slightly “spacey” and disoriented as the energy of the place became palpable. Apparently, when Kate said the abbey was “interesting,” she was engaging in calculated understatement. Water-pipe-spouting grotesque gargoyles snarled at us from the roofline, and jagged zig-zag stonework edged its way around the Norman (12th century) entrance.

We pushed through the temporary plywood doors and gasped. Exquisite fan vaulting created a delicate stone forest of soaring columns and interlaced arches that covered the distant ceiling, the intersections marked with sculptures of knot work, fantastic animals, grotesque faces, and geometrical designs. The abbey staff provided a large flat mirror on a trolley to make it easier to see the carved bosses suspended high above. Rolling it down the aisle, we spotted St Michael dressed in a feathered “onesy” tromping on a playful dragon; a mermaid with a comb and mirror, symbolizing vanity; a “Jack of the green” Greenman with leafy tendrils issuing from his mouth–to name a few. Many of the bosses had been gilded and repainted in garish colors during the extensive 19th-century Victorian renovation (and reinvention) of the abbey.

We quickly became visually overwhelmed by the fanning vault work and multi-colored designs painted on the abbey’s walls and ceilings. Staring in the mirror at the criss-crossing stone arches was mesmerizing, like looking at a kaleidoscope momentary petrified in time. We realized that the geometry of the abbey, including the complex fan vaulting, and the earth energies below the abbey interacted to intensify the buzzy energy we felt.

Seeking shelter from too much intensity, we made our way to the Lady Chapel at the northeastern end of the abbey. Here we found unexpected beauty of a quieter kind: a three-part glass reredo engraved by Laurence Whistler in 1960. In the center is an etched heart with delicate, thread-like veins; angelic wings mirror its shape on either side. Beneath the heart and wings is a crescent moon, pierced through by the pure transparent winged heart of the Virgin Mary. Two slim lines expand on either side and turn into cornucopias overflowing with grain and grapes. Above the heart is a delicate crown adorned with a looping string of pearls and, above that, the five-petaled roses and lilies that are symbols of the Virgin.

Scattered stars sparkle in the glass, and tongues of flame circle the frame, recalling the sun-rays of fire and the stars seen in images of Our Lady of Guadalupe–who perches delicately on a crescent moon. Unlike the exuberant colors and carvings in the rest of the abbey, which clamored for our outward attention, the simplicity of this etched glass drew us inwards into contemplation.

The abbey holds more, much more. To mention a few: medieval misericords (wooden seats that supported the monks who had to stand in the quire [choir] for lengthy services); regimental banners; a reconstructed timber roof; medieval stained glass; the stunning Great West Window installed in 1997, with references to Hale-Bopp comet and with the central image of the Virgin Mary and child sitting among tree branches that rise up and expand into an exuberant canopy of leaves.

We had expected to find a modest church but found instead a visual concert of painted walls and fan-vaulted ceilings, a “fanfare” of almost overwhelming intensity. But we also found stillness in the midst of it, the silence that is always present between sounds and images if you take time enough to notice.

A fanfare in Sherborne, Dorset