On a hot day in July 2022, I pulled into a car park at Godshill on the Isle of Wight. If you’re not familiar with this place, it’s a large island off the south coast of England - see my Maps page and look at the coast south of Winchester. The Island is a tourist destination for the south coast, and also visited by lots of foreign tourists; on my ferry there was a German family and what sounded like a Dutch family, both with camper vans.
Godshill is a touristy destination and the huge car park decanted hundreds of people into the restaurants, wine and chocolate shops in the village. I confess to having bought some mead at the wine shop on my way back. Buying chocolate in heat didn’t appeal.
The church is, as the name of the place suggests, at the top of a hill - Gods Hill - and that in itself indicates it is ancient. It’s believed this is the fourth church on the site and given its prominent position on a hill, it seems likely this site was first used for a church back in the 8th century or thereabouts. It’s pretty much an infallible rule that a church is very ancient if:
It’s in the middle of a field, or
It’s not by a main road, or
The road to it is in fact a lane which peters out into a track with a couple of houses either side before you get to the church, or
There is only a footpath to the church and no road at all.
In this case it was a number 4 - a long, winding path up to the church, well above the village. Here is what you see when you emerge near the top of the hill.
If you’re wondering what happened to England’s green and pleasant land here, we were in the middle of a long heatwave, which persisted longer in southern England than it did in the north. The greeness had turned to brown. When I left home the day before, the temperature was a very comfortable 16 degC, but by the end of the day, on the Isle of Wight, it was 26 degC. I was overdressed, I discovered.
So, back to Godshill and the first thing I see is a standard Perpendicular 15th century church. The entrance is on the south and there is the usual cross base by that door.
Late medieval crosses always have steps, for people to kneel and pray. The cross is long gone and replaced by a modern equivalent, rather uninspiring. The sundial on the right is more interesting and may be made out of old cross remnants; many sundials in churchyards were reworked medieval crosses.
So, inside and this church is somewhat unusual, having a double nave. We’ll come back to that. This is the view from just inside the door:
This church is Anglican but staunchly anglo-catholic, hence the statue of Mary and the rood across the nave, which is a 20th century recreation. What we are interested in here is behind the locked iron gates on the right - the chapel containing the Lily Crucifix.
Why a lily? It seems to relate to the tradition that the Annunciation and Christ’s death on the cross occurred on the same day, March 25th. The lily represents purity and Mary in particular, so the conjunction of the two resulted in lilies emerging from crosses or the entire cross being made of a lily. It’s mostly an English thing, and was relatively common in art before the Reformation - this article on the subject is interesting. This is the only painting of the lily crucifix that survives in England and was discovered under several layers of whitewash.
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