© Carol Moule
THE CHURCH
OF
ST. ANDREW, CHEW MAGNA
by Ian L. Durham M.B.E
(The images on these pages have been contributed by John Sewart)
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OF ST. ANDREW, CHEW MAGNA by Ian L. Durham M.B.E (The images on these pages have been contributed by John Sewart) |
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The manor of Chew was held for almost five hundred years by the Bishops of Bath and Wells, from 1062 to 1548, and for that reason the village was called Chew Episcopi or Bishop’s Chew. More recently, since about 1600, the name has been Chew Magna because this has been the most important of the several villages along the banks of the River Chew, which rises at Chewton Mendip and joins the River Avon at Keynsham. As to the name "Chew", found scarcely anywhere else, there have been several explanations, and "winding water" seems a very appropriate one. However, the latest thinking agrees with Ekwall’s interpretation that it is derived from the Welsh "cyw" meaning "the young of an animal, or chicken", so that "afon Cyw" would have been "the river of the chickens". Even today there remains in the centre of the village the group of three mediaeval buildings which in the days of the bishops were very closely related in their functions. These are Chew Court (one of the several residences or manor houses of the Bishop in Somerset), the building now known as the Old Schoolroom but originally the Church House, built about 1500 to accommodate church ales and other parish social activities, and the parish church of St. Andrew. The church would have come first and almost certainly there was a wooden structure here when the manor passed from Earl Godwin to his daughter Edith, the wife of King Edward the Confessor, and was then given in 1062 to the king’s chaplain Giso on the latter’s appointment to be Bishop of Wells. The present church contains Norman, Early English and Perpendicular styles and on this evidence was built between about 1190 and 1500. The first vicar was appointed in 1191 and a document of the next year makes reference to a church at Chew. The first stone church consisted of a chancel, nave and south aisle. What is Norman in the present building is debatable. Probably the base moulding and one course of stone, the lowest visible part of the outside wall on the south side, are of that period: possibly the two buttresses at the east end of the chancel are also. The doorway from the south porch contains Norman work, the lintel and probably the jambs, and it is thought that this entrance lost the usual rounded arch and chevron decoration when the porch was added later.
The bowl-shaped font on its short round pillar is Norman and still contains the original lining of lead, no doubt from the mines on Mendip |
