YETMINSTER
St Andrews
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St. Andrews
presides genially over the handsome stone
houses of Yetminster, a high proportion of which
date from the seventeenth century, when the village achieved an unusual
prosperity. The church, of course, is much older: it has Saxon origins, and
retains the carved base of a preaching cross of that period. What stands,
however, belongs largely to the third quarter of the fifteenth century, except
for the low and simple chancel, of about 1300, with its characteristic trio of
lancet windows overlooking the street.
The
fifteenth century work – nave, aisles, porch and tower – has greater
pretensions, and is a good example of a uniform, aesthetically ambitious scheme
undertaken on a relatively small scale and with limited means. The exterior,
whose best face is to the south, is given grandeur by the row of large
battlements that partly conceals the roof, by the sturdy elegance of the tower,
and by the vigorous tracery patterns in the broad windows (recalling those of Sherborne
Abbey). Eleven of the twelve original consecration crosses survive. The interior
of the nave is appealingly spacious and light, thanks to its very broad plan,
which (with its aisles) is nearly square, and to the tall wide arches that flank
the main vessel. The lack of upper windows makes this, like St. John’s, Yeovil,
a ‘hall-church’, echoing the great halls of castles and the open-plan
‘preaching churches’ of the Franciscans and Dominicans. Large parts of the
original oak roofs remain (including the central one, a graceful semi-circular
‘barrel’ roof), as do some of the original benches.
From
the artistic point of view the most precious feature of the church is the amount
of original colour that survives on walls, roofs and even benches. The survival
of such a comprehensive unified scheme is rare. Though the traces of it are
often faint, much decayed, or destroyed, what is left hints at an interior once
ablaze with bright red, green, blue, white, gold and black. These colours were
gathered in vigorous chevron or spiral patterns, or employed to pick out the
foliate and heraldic decorations of the roofs, or to illuminate the sacred
monogram IHS, the first three letters in Greek of the name of Jesus. Among the
original carved capitals is one illustrating the favourite medieval joke of the
geese (the hitherto gullible people) hanging the fox (the rapacious and
mendacious friar). A more genteel but equally
entertaining detail is the little horse on a boss in the roof, the ‘rebus’,
or punning emblem, of the local magnate, Sir John Horsey
of nearby Clifton Maubank, who may well have paid
for the nave and tower.
The intervening centuries have
seen the adornment of the church with attractive funerary monuments, notably the
great early sixteenth century Horsey brass and the
pleasantly naďve Minterne wall monument of more
than a century later. Successive restorations have succeeded for the most part
in consolidating rather than replacing the medieval fabric. The most recent of
these was completed in 2000; it attended to traditional re-leading of the roofs,
modern electric wiring and lighting and necessary repairs to the external
stonework.
The
small but very beautiful organ, (Hill, 1880), was brought from Stone in
Buckinghamshire in 1987. One manual with 6 stops and one
pedal stop.
There
is a ring of 6 bells: “two new, two recast and two historic. Well matched,
steady-going and majestic”. There is also a Service bell. The oldest bell is
about 1400, the youngest 1995.
A
team of local people has beautified the church with hassocks, many of which
have been specially designed for it. More recent still – the ‘Millennium Hanging’
all twenty-six canvaswork panels that show the life
and history of the village, is now finished. These were designed to be used
at special festivals and some of them are already on permanent display in the
Trim Room, St. Andrew’s Hall.
The Dorset Historic Churches Trust wishes gratefully to record its sincere thanks to Christopher, Frances and Patrick Moule for the preparation of these notes.
