[This is the sixth of a series of articles giving a brief
description of each of the 26 ancient Anglican cathedrals coupled with a sketch
of a person, activity or institution connected to the area]
Southwell Minster
(pronounced Súth’ull) is one of England’s
smallest Cathedrals. It lies in the modest town of Southwell
(population 6,800), near Newark, Notts, about 14
miles from the City of Nottingham.
It is famed for its Norman nave and for the glorious naturalistic stone carving
in the Chapter House – The Leaves of Southwell.
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| Southwell Minster |
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| The Norman Nave |
The Minster we currently see was built from 1108 with a
Norman nave and west front “pepper pot” towers, an Early English choir and central
tower; its Decorated Gothic Chapter House was erected in 1286. The elaborately
carved choir screen was completed in 1350. An extensive but sympathetic
renovation was carried out by Ewan Christian over 37 years from 1851 to 1888.
Southwell was connected to the nearby (now ruined) Palace of
the Archbishop of York
and run by prebendaries (canons). It was never a monastery but a collegiate
church and was not much affected by the Dissolution, although it was used as a
stable by Cromwell’s and Scottish troops in the Civil War. The prebends were
phased out in the 19th century and the Minster became a cathedral in
1884.
If that were all, Southwell would rank as a reasonably
interesting, if second line English cathedral. What makes Southwell remarkable
is the stone carving on the capitals in the Chapter House. These are simply
stunning in their skill and vitality; they are unrivalled in England and
Pevsner paid them high Ruskinesque tribute:
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| The Leaves of Southwell |
Could these Leaves of
the English countryside, with all their freshness, move us so deeply if they
were not carved in that spirit which filled the saints and poets and thinkers
of the thirteenth century, the spirit of religious respect for the loveliness
of created nature? …..Seen in this light, the Leaves of Southwell assume a
significance as one of the purest symbols surviving in Britain of Western
thought, our thought, in its loftiest mood. Nikolaus Pevsner – The Leaves
of Southwell (1945)
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Southwell is not far from Sherwood Forest and 14 miles from Nottingham. Naturally, with this proximity we make the
connection to that great hero of English folklore, the outlaw Robin Hood.
There is a weight of research about the origins,
authenticity, geography and meaning of the legends; suffice it to say that
Robin Hood appears first in 14th century ballads as a yeoman archer
and swordsman who had turned to banditry. There were subsequently many
accretions – his Merry Men, Maid Marian, enmity with the sheriff of Nottingham,
aristocratic birth at Loxley (actually in Yorkshire),
loyalty to King Richard the Lionheart and so on. He appears in Scott’s Ivanhoe and later in countless books,
movies and TV series.
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| Errol Flynn as Robin |
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| Olivia de Havilland as Marian |
In my view by far the best telling of the Robin Hood story is in the 1938 Hollywood movie The Adventures of Robin Hood directed by Michael Curtiz. It has Errol Flynn in top form as swashbuckling Robin, Olivia de Havilland as a lovely Maid Marian and memorable performances by Claude Rains (Prince John), Basil Rathbone (Sir Guy of Gisborne), Alan Hale (Little John) and Eugene Palette (Friar Tuck). Everywhere there is action, colour and spectacle and our enjoyment is much enhanced by the splendid musical score by
Erich Korngold.
Later efforts with Sean Connery, Kevin Kostner and Russell
Crowe have their moments but are not a touch on Errol Flynn’s classic. I first
saw the film when on holiday in Bournemouth in about 1948, aged 6 and have been
enchanted ever since.
One of the accretions to the Robin Hood story was that he
“robbed the rich, to give to the poor”, an early description of envious Marxist
economics and a justification since of often unfair redistributive taxation the
world over.
The latest manifestation of this notion is the so-called Robin Hood Tax, a proposed financial
transaction tax aimed among others at the currently demonised banks and the
world of money. The proponents of this policy, who are the usual suspects -
NGOs, actors and the tender-hearted in general - want the many millions raised
to go towards helping the needy, bolstering the regimes of the Third World and
(yes, you guessed) preparing for climate change. Britain prefers to raise money from
banks by imposing bank levies and reckons the Robin Hood Tax is doomed unless
it is introduced globally. The idiotic European Commission proposes to
introduce it unilaterally in its area, a certain trigger for capital flight and
boost for offshore entities outside its jurisdiction. Its championing by Angela
Merkel and Francois Hollande is another good reason why Britain should
add distance to its ties with the EU.
So Robin Hood in his Lincoln green is in some ways a
subversive figure, just as among the Leaves of Southwell there are puzzlingly
several Green Men, those medieval pagan fertility symbols hiding in the foliage.
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| A Green Man at Southwell Minster |
SMD
26.10.12
Text Copyright © Sidney Donald
2012
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