Kniveton – The little church that smiled

Posted on May 26, 2018 by Sue Vincent

On my last trip north, I took a different route, and that is always an adventure. With never enough time to take side-trips and explore, I can never resist when something just drops in my path, so when, after three hours driving, a village that announced itself as a Saxon settlement offered me a church and a parking spot, the inevitable happened. I pulled over and grabbed the camera.

Even from the road it is an interesting little church. You can see its architectural evolution in the different styles and the shapes and colours of the stonework. It stands in the shadow of a thousand year old yew, it is built on a small mound in the centre of the village and a newborn stream runs around its base…a perfect situation for an ancient place of worship that may even pre-date this church and the present building already goes back nine hundred years.

The human story of the village goes back much further. The surrounding hills are dotted with archaeological sites and, in the nineteenth century, antiquarian Thomas Bateman excavated one of the Stand Low round barrows here, bringing to light a bronze dagger, a stone axe, a pottery urn and an amber ring.

The name of the village is said, by those who should know, to be derived from the Old English for a farm belonging to a woman named Cengifu. I am not always convinced by these attributions as personal names and wonder if linguists do not decide upon them simply because they don’t want to admit they don’t really know the meaning.

The village was already well established and its name had evolved at the time of the Norman Conquest, and when the Domesday Book was compiled in 1086, it was listed as Cheniveton. The manor belonged to the Kniveton family until Sir Andrew Kniveton, a staunch Royalist during the Civil War, was obliged to sell the land in the middle of the seventeenth century to pay the heavy fines imposed by Cromwell’s victorious Roundheads. The Kniveton arms can still be seen within the church as a panel of fifteenth century stained glass, along with an even older fragment from the fourteenth century.

The old door of the church is set beneath a plain Norman arch, with a human head as its keystone that is sometimes described as a bear. The supporting corbels are also carved… one is now too worn to identify, but the other is a ‘beaked head’ which looks rather draconine.

It is always exciting to turn the handle on these old doors, wondering whether or not they will open and, if they do, what you might find within. This time, the door swung inwards and I stepped into the happiest church I have ever felt. And that is strange, for churches  may be lovely, welcoming or forbidding, serene and peaceful or even cold and stark… but I have never found one that simply felt happy. I wondered why…

My first impressions revealed nothing to explain it. St Michael and All Angels is a simple, single-cell building with a later gallery and thirteenth century tower, contemporary with the font which, though it carries a seventeenth century date, is Early English in style and also dates to the thirteenth century. The carved date commemorates a renovation of the church which had been built originally, some nine hundred years ago, as a chapelry for the Church of St Oswald in nearby Ashbourne. At that time it was dedicated to St John the Baptist and I wondered if it was his head that was carved into the arch of the doorway… and, if so, why it would be mistaken for a bear.

Behind the font a narrow staircase winds up to the gallery, passing the temptation of the bell ropes that have been calling worshippers to prayer for the last four hundred years. From the gallery you can see the whole body of the church and I could pinpoint nothing to explain why the place felt so cheerful.

There is some really beautiful Victorian and Edwardian stained glass, though, with jewel colours glowing in the low sun.

They are mostly commemorative pieces, as are so many stained glass windows, in memory of parishioners and clergy alike, including the east window, a tribute to a mother from her children, which shows Jesus between the Virgin Mary and Joseph carrying a cage of doves.

My favourite was the one that shows Faith, Hope and Charity. A little different in style and rather more simple, it dates from 1908 and is a tribute to a former vicar and his wife.

There was evidence of much love in the windows, but I still couldn’t see any reason why the place should feel so happy. There were embroideries and hanging made by the local children, so it was evidently a church still very much at the heart of its community.

There were flowers everywhere, and that always helps. There were fresh bouquets behind the altar, ancient floral geometries carved as ceiling bosses, and painted, arts and crafts style, on the pulpit.  There were also flowers carved into the bench-ends of the ‘new’ pews, installed in 1842.

And not just flowers…

Half the bench-ends were carved with foliate men.Green Men, nature spirits, or in Christian iconography, symbols of resurrection and rebirth. And all of them were smiling… and they were not on their own. I couldn’t help smiling back.

There was another smile too. When the new pews were being installed, a carved stone was found. No record exists of where in the church it was originally placed, and there is no mention of its age. They set the roundel into the south wall of the nave for safekeeping where it could easily be overlooked, and that would be a shame. It is old, seems, at first glance to be crudely carved and ‘primitive’ in style. It is possibly as old as the church itself… and it is possibly the most beautiful crucifix I have seen.

Although depicted on the Cross, He smiles. His arms are outstretched as if to embrace the world in simple joy and acceptance, with neither judgement nor discrimination. It is as if, in this one simple carving, the artist has transcended the dogma and politics of ‘churchianity’ and cut straight to the heart of the message of Love. I find I cannot argue with that.

About Sue Vincent

Sue Vincent was a Yorkshire born writer, esoteric teacher and a Director of The Silent Eye. She was immersed in the Mysteries all her life. Sue maintained a popular blog and is co-author of The Mystical Hexagram with Dr G.M.Vasey. Sue lived in Buckinghamshire, having been stranded there due to an accident with a blindfold, a pin and a map. She had a lasting love-affair with the landscape of Albion, the hidden country of the heart. Sue  passed into spirit at the end of March 2021.
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56 Responses to Kniveton – The little church that smiled

  1. blosslyn says:
    May 26, 2018 at 07:59

    Well it made me smile, just from your photos, a lovely church and that crucifix is amazing. I think you are right about it being as old as the church, there are smilier crosses in Scotland that are 10th century…..a really treasure. Glad you stopped for a look 🙂

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  2. Darlene says:
    May 26, 2018 at 08:06

    I love this little church. The smiles, the flowers, the signs of children, the brightness, all make this a happy place. Not the gloomy atmosphere of many churches. What a great find. I´m sure you are pleased that you stopped.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  3. barbtaub says:
    May 26, 2018 at 08:44

    I can’t tell you how much I enjoyed this post. Thank you for sharing your smiling church!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  4. stevetanham says:
    May 26, 2018 at 09:17

    Reblogged this on Sun in Gemini and commented:
    From Sue, with ‘love’…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  5. tidalscribe says:
    May 26, 2018 at 10:29

    I think you have already answered the question; the church is happy because it is still loved and a living church. Perhaps the parisheners have always been a happy lot, from the stone ‘happy crucifix’, the green men on the pews to the children’s wall hangings. Also the church looks bright with its white walls.

    Liked by 2 people

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  6. Mary Smith says:
    May 26, 2018 at 10:55

    A lovely, happy little church – thanks for sharing your visit to it. I like the smiling Green Men – sometimes they can be forbidding and unsettling. These ones are lovely.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  8. ksbeth says:
    May 26, 2018 at 12:11

    how charming – no wonder it is happy –

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  9. kph52013 says:
    May 26, 2018 at 12:53

    Lovely, Sue!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  10. myforever77 says:
    May 26, 2018 at 13:39

    Thank you for the tour with beautiful images.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  12. Pingback: Kniveton – The little church that smiled – The Militant Negro™

  13. Dale says:
    May 26, 2018 at 16:05

    What a beautiful little church, Sue. Thanks for sharing it with it. It is a happy one, isn’t it? What a lovely find for the road…

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  14. Anne Copeland says:
    May 26, 2018 at 20:04

    A church only gives the feeling that is apparent in these photos if the people in charge of it are also loving and caring, and dedicated to keeping it alive. The fact that the little artworks of children are given a prominent place for display is evidence that the person or persons who were responsible for caring for the church and its community were truly loving and open spiritually to different forms of demonstrating one’s image of what faith means or meant, and also it shows a tremendous respect and love for its community, something that is somewhat absent in many of the churches today. It truly provided a spiritual home for the old and young alike. Would that love were the center of all churches today.

    Liked by 1 person

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  16. Eliza Waters says:
    May 27, 2018 at 02:39

    I love that you sensed the ‘happy’ right away and found the reason eventually. A neat little church!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  17. Marilyn Armstrong says:
    May 27, 2018 at 03:57

    What a wonderful place. And you are right. Something interesting to shoot and a safe place to park … who could resist? The church seems to be in amazingly good shape. Just absolutely lover and the smiling Christ is truly transcendent.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  19. Jennie says:
    May 28, 2018 at 13:59

    Wonderful. Just wonderful!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply
  20. June Lomas says:
    July 31, 2018 at 21:45

    Thank you for visiting and liking our church: we are very proud of it. Come back in November to see our Angel Festival!

    Like

    Reply

  21. Pingback: A Thousand Miles of History: Under one roof… – France & Vincent

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