A Fairy Tale .... or is it?

Once upon a time, when the years passed so slowly that they were hard to count, a young dragon lived in a pool just outside the little village of Lyminster in West Sussex. The pool was blue and bottomless, and always so cold that only a dragon could live in it. It was called Nucker Hole. (or Knucker Hole in some tellings of this tale)

The dragon didn’t mean to, but in his foraging for food he did much damage in the surrounding countryside. The villagers were fed up, but no one had the courage to tackle the dragon.

At last, a farmer’s boy called Jim Pulk became brave enough to kill the dragon. He took a piece of poisoned cake and fed it to the dragon. The dragon was slain. The lad went off to the local Inn, The Six Bells, to celebrate with a beer . Unfortunately, he wiped the beer froth from his lips with the hand which still had on it poison from the cake. He was buried in a prime spot in the churchyard just outside the entrance to St Mary Magdalene’s Church.

This screen, in the same church, depicts this story in the centre panel. There is Jim in the third panel, holding out the poisoned cake. The dragon is in panel two with 6 bells in the background, showing the inn where Jim met his death. Panel one has an Angel holding the Sun, with rays shining through her wings, depicting Day. Panel four has an Angel holding the Moon, with stars falling on her wings, depicting Night. Together the panels make up the story of the legend, and symbolise the triumph of good over evil.

So you may think this is a strange subject for a screen in a church, and that you don’t believe in dragons anyway, or think this a fairy story, or at best a fanciful legend from a time when people believed in much more than we do today. But I offer you a curiosity. The old Anglo-Saxon word for dragon is Nicor, from which Nucker (Hole) is derived. The good people of Lyminster have always called it by this name, and even though they didn’t know the true meaning, they always knew there was a dragon linked with the pool.

You can see more detail in Large.

The screen was designed and made by Caroline Benyon and the wrought iron work by Christian Meheux. The heraldry at the bottom contains the coats of arms of the Wyatt and Liardets families. Both families were connected to this Church, and lived in Lyminster. The screen was dedicated in 1998.