Priest's door

I have a fascination with church doors -  and this priest's door at Little Bytham church seems to be a particularly interesting example. The church is dedicated to Saint Medar and St Gildar, who were French, lived in the late 5th and early 6th centuries and may have been twins. It's the only British church to be dedicated to them and it's not clear why there should have been this link between France and a quiet Lincolnshire village.

The church is of very great age and incontrovertible evidence of Anglo-Saxon origins can be found in the long and short work on the south east angle of the nave. This is adjacent to the gem of this church: the priest's door on the south side of the chancel which is quite extraordinary and perhaps one of the most ornate priest’s doors in England.  Most authorities declare it to be Norman. 


It has a tympanum in dark stone with birds on either side enclosed within roundels. These are eagles from the legend of St Medard. What is between them is unique: a round and empty niche within which some believe a relic was once held. Could this be the key to the unusual dedication? Was there a relic of the saint here in Lincolnshire? More prosaically the niche may have been created to hold a light of some sort.  Beneath the space is a small sculpture of a horse with a man astride.


As usual, I visited while recording the plants of the parish. The grassland of the churchyard was nearly as interesting as the door, with swathes of lady's bedstraw, autumn hawkbit, germander speedwell and mouse-ear hawkweed -all neatly mown at this time of year.