St Nicholas church is the Parish church .

 

 

  Service details are held on the Savernake team web site, published in the Community news and posted on Notice Boards.

 

 

 

 

 We always seem to have a good year for flowers in the church

 

 

Saint Nicholas
Bishop of Myra, c.326

Nicholas was a fourth century bishop of Myra in Asia Minor (southern Turkey). His reputation as a worker of wonders was enhanced by a ninth century author of his hagiography and he is now best known through these stories. Many of them concern his love and care for children, how he fed the hungry, healed the sick and cared for the oppressed. He saved three girls from a life of prostitution by providing them with dowries and so developed the tradition of bearing gifts to children on his feast day, a practice appropriated by the Christmas celebrations. Nicholas is also one of the patron saints of Russia.

                

Religious History
During the 1200's when gargoyles first appeared (and at many other times), the Roman Catholic Church was actively involved in converting people of other faiths to the Catholic, faith often very keenly indeed (as the Christian but non-Catholic Cathars could testify). The argument for decorated gargoyles runs as follows. Since literacy was generally not an option for most people, images were very important. Since the religious images (if any) that non-Christians were accustomed to were of animals or mixtures of animals and humans (e.g. the horned god, the Green Man), then putting similar images on churches and cathedrals would encourage non-Catholics to join the religion and go to church, or at least make them feel more comfortable about it, or at least ease the transition.

 

           

"Gargoyles (in the strict sense) are carvings on the outside of buildings designed to direct water from the roof away from the base of the walls... ...Some gargoyles are undecorated but many are zoomorphic or anthropomorphic - often very imaginative and/or grotesque. This has led to the term 'gargoyle' being applied more widely to any grotesque carving in medieval buildings." (from Bob Trubshaw, posting in BritArch archives, 23Feb1999)

 

In architecture, gargoyles (from the French gargouille, originally the throat or gullet, cf. Latin gurgulio, gula, and similar words derived from root gar, to swallow, the word representing the gurgling sound of water; Ital. doccione; Ger. Ausguss, Wasserspeier) are the carved terminations to spouts which convey water away from the sides of buildings.

 

Russell Sturgis, writing in Sturgis' Illustrated Dictionary of Architecture and Building, defines a gargoyle as a: A water spout, ... projecting from a gutter and intended to throw the water away from the walls and foundations. In medieval architecture, the gargoyles, which had to be very numerous because of the many gutters which were carried on the tops of flying buttresses, and higher and lower walls, were often very decorative, consisting, as they did, of stone images of grotesque animals, and the like, or, in smaller buildings of iron or lead. Many cultures throughout history have created sculptures of fantastic creatures. These figures stir our imaginations, as they stirred the imaginations of the carvers who lovingly created them. We struggle to understand and explain them, delving deep into the realms of psychology, culture, symbols, history and religion. One of the more common belief is that gargoyles served as protectors, keeping evil away from the buildings and their occupants. However, there seems to be much at work here and we can suspect that their reason to be, operates on a multitude of levels.