Saints, Bones and Body Parts

This image does not come from Cumbria, it comes from Norfolk and is in the grounds of Gressenhall Workhouse, not too far from the location of the paupers’ unmarked graves in the apple orchard there.

The Resting Place of the Disappeared

 

I have been studying the lives of the saints this week whilst at the mill in Cumbria  and in particular have learned much from a thesis I found when searching for one of the Lady Trinity I wrote about last time.

The final resting place counts towards the location of a saint.  Their body parts (relics) could travel widely causing multiple claims upon holy sites stretching country wide.   For scholars concerned with mapping the story sources of obscure saints there is every reason to look at the detail and be extremely pernickity.  The inclusion or exclusion of material could affect the claim and ultimately the celebrant/celebrity status.

Notes and subsequent thoughts disgorging from a thesis called  Lichfield and the Lands of St Chad by Andrew William Steward Sargent. (Keele University)

I was so happy to find this really interesting thesis related to my search for St Osyth, named in the Thexton memorial window in the North West aisle of St Michael and All Saints, Beetham.  St Osyth forms part of  The Lady Trinity I have thus named for the purposes and the imaginative life of my evolving project at Heron Corn Mill

The thesis begins with a hole – a hole in history – ie an absence of information, recognition, inclusion: a region seemingly ignored.  One purpose of the study is to fill the Mercian Hole which may have application beyond “the confines of the (Mercian) region, certainly of pertinence to my consideration of the small part of Cumbria that I am looking at situated in former Westmorland and at the time of Osyth part of the kingdom of Northumbria.

My project begins with Dog Hole in Haverbrack, quite near to where I stay when I am up here in Cumbria.   Dog Hole,  an archaeological site presenting numerous finds was first excavated in 1914, abandoned and then further investigated by Boy Scouts from Milnethorpe in 1956.  More of this later for it concerns boundaries and forbidden places requiring a separate post.

The Sargent thesis also considers, amongst many other things, Resting Place Lists – so important to the location and naming of sacred places and their saint associations.

It considers multiple tellings/texts versions of LIVES of saints with a complex consideration of who told which story first.  It plays in a delightful way with contradiction and counter claims.

My project has multiple stories crossing centuries and the task for me is to find the simple common ground between them all.

The thesis considers river saint legends,  floodings and the naming of these places.

The thesis goes into some detail about the river legend of St Modwenna of Ireland and her connection to St Eadgyth and thence to Osyth/Osgyth and of course the confusion of location: Ireland, Mercia, Essex, Wessex ……..and for me the question is:

How come she ends up in a church window in Beetham?

The window dedicated to Rev John Thexton (father to one of the Beetham women I am researching) was installed in or around/after 1849 and designed by Shrigley and Hunt of Lancaster

One answer will concern the river saint legend motif – miracles taking place in rivers – resurrection stories, drowning stories.

Beetham is on the River Bela.

Around the time of the glass window they were redirecting the course of the river and making it split.  It splits just after the bridge on the A6 -insignificant and unnoticeable unless you walk down Mill Lane towards Heron Corn Mill.  You might not even notice the bridge unless you really look.

I have to search the archives of Shrigley and Hunt to ascertain where the content for the window came from but this is my hunch – it was something to do with the river splitting and the river miracle legends associated with both Lioba and Osgyth – Osgyth more directly in her Essex/Chich(ester) home though by linking her to.  Sargent’s thesis locates her in Mercia (Polesworth/Burton) – on the river Trent/Anker. It’s complicated but it’s fascinating to me.

To get out of my head I have been walking along the A6 to Milnthorpe quite a lot since the footpath to Dallam is so muddy from rain and sheep feeding in the gateway that it has become a “no go” area at present.  So whilst walking up and down the A6 I  got thinking about the body parts of trees.  I have watched what seems to me in my imagination (whilst being immersed in thoughts of saints,  body parts and relicss) a dismemberment and dispatch of an oak tree laid to rest in the River Bela by the recent storms and flooding.  Its resting place did not last for so long.

Her “priests” were not content to leave her there so throughout these past two weeks she has been dispersed to other parishes and places of resting in the form of table tops, ornamental mushrooms, window boxes, firewood and all manner of other reincarnations still to be witnessed.  To me she has become sacred…to me she is St Osgyth defiantly carrying her head inspite of the Viking raiders.

But rather than talk about it I am making a short film that explores this female river saint.  How do I know she is female – I have seen the male further down the river with his head rammed through the wall.