Our Church inside – Notes for guided tours

Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the famous architectural historian, described the church as “A perfect piece of Perpendicular architecture, perfect because it was built, not only lavishly but also quickly and entirely to one plan”.

Original plan

St. Augustine’s was built between 1401 and 1404 as a Chantry Chapel – not as a parish church. A Chantry Chapel was a place where priests were paid to chant the Masses for someone’s soul – in this case, Walter’s soul. Because of that, there was no need to have a separate place for ordinary people – that’s why the building is open, ‘box’ shape, different from more usual churches. The porch and tower were added later.

Walter died on 24th March 1406 and it remained a Chantry Chapel for about 50 years until it became a church for the village which saved people walking 3 miles to Swine Church as they had been doing.

Chantry

At that time, purgatory was part of the Catholic beliefs. Purgatory was no man’s land between death and heaven and the belief at that time was that if people prayed for you it would hurry your passing through purgatory. He also had a Chantry Chapel built inside Durham Cathedral for the same reason.

When the church was built as a Chantry Chapel, there’d be no pews so the priests would have stood to chant Mass for Walter. Later, when it became a Parish church most of the congregation would have stood throughout the service in the Nave (where the pews are now) and the wealthy brought their own chairs. The Victorians put the pews in so the congregation could sit.

The Chancel is the area where the Choir stalls are now, and the part at the very East end, separated by the altar rail is the Sanctuary – where the altar is – the holiest place in the church.

Ashlar

The stonework (or fabric) of the church was very expensive magnesium limestone ashlar, as are both Beverley and York Minsters. The stone came from quarries near Tadcaster and was transported by river on flat bottomed barges, down the River Wharf into the River Ouse and then into the Humber and up the River Hull to as near as possible – possibly near to Wawne. It would then be unloaded and transported by land on sleds with wooden runners pulled by oxen which were common beasts of burden in Medieval times.

To build the church they would first have to cut down trees to make a space and they’d use the trunk and branches for scaffolding and planks which would have been lashed together by ropes.

You can tell by looking at it that it’s a high quality build. It’s built with very large pieces of stone and the gaps between the stones are small and are filled with lime cement.

In some places they did a bit of cost cutting – there are some ‘dog legs’ because they were confident it wasn’t going to be seen because it would have been plastered over! The little square pieces of stone are where there was a ‘leg hole’ where the wooden scaffolding went.

Internal finish

They often built the building around the scaffolding and when they finished they’d pull the beam out or cut it off and put facing – lime horse hair plaster- on top of it. The interior walls would have been plastered but before they plastered it, they ‘keyed’ the stone (roughened it up) so the plaster stuck to it. Point out the ‘keying’ marks.

The plaster was then painted over and you can see faint traces of the various schemes which have survived. The original scheme for Walter’s chantry chapel used black and red and included stylised flowers, probably in a scheme that used red lines on white plaster to create a brick like effect – see above the limed oak cupboard in the SW corner of the nave and above the south door.

It seems odd to us to cover up the beautiful stonework, but that was the fashion, and the plaster help protect the stone.

Later wallpainting & graffiti

There may have been some later images of saints painted when it became a church for the village but these have been lost. But in places are the bits of post – Reformation texts which replaced imagery in churches – in those days it was all about The Word, so bible passages, creeds, prayers were painted in black text on white plaster. These probably lasted until the Victorian restoration which stripped the interior walls of all their plaster.
As we go round the church you’ll see some 17th Century graffiti- We think of modern graffiti as vandalism but in the past, people went to great lengths to make their mark. We have some interesting examples from the 1600s, perhaps related to the Civil War which raged in this area of East Yorks.

Mason’s Marks Some of the ‘graffiti’ you may see are actually mason’s marks. These were made by builders of the church in the 1400s and were an accounting system – they got paid by how much work they had done, so marked their blocks to ‘claim’ them. We don’t know the names of these workmen but several of the marks are the same as those found in York Minster and Beverley Minster, suggesting the same high-quality craftsmen worked on Walter’s Chapel. Good places to look for both masons marks and graffiti are window reveals and round the doors. Can you see any?

The tower

The tower was a later addition – added after Walter’s death. Probably built in the later C15th when the function of the chapel had changed. You can see inside it is built of rubble stone not the fine blocks of the ashlar which built the main church. This wouldn’t have mattered as the outside was ‘stone clad’ with limestone to look like the rest of the building, although not such good quality, whilst the inside would have been plastered and limewashed so the rough stonework would have been hidden.

Bells

We have two bells which were installed in 1678.
They were installed by Andrew Gurney of Hull. They are 75% copper and 25% tin and the clapper is wrought iron. A new bell frame was installed in 1975. The two bell ropes are in the kitchen and the bells are rung every week.

Organ

The organ was built and installed in 1902 by Forster and Andrews, Hull organ builders and is a small romantic organ with tracker action. In the early days it was hand pumped but later became electrically operated. The pedalboard was renewed in 1998 and the organ is serviced regularly.

James Forster and Joseph Andrews, served their apprenticeships with an organ builder in London and set up their own business in Hull in 1843 cleaning and repairing organs. A year later they started building their first organ. Shortly afterwards they were commission to build a new organ for Holy Trinity (now Hull Minster) and in 1847 they did alterations on Beverley Minster organ and were working on the Great Organ at York Minster. They exhibited at the Great Exhibition in 1851 and by this time they were employing nearly 30 people and by the early 1870s they were building over 30 organs a year and exporting to Africa, Central America and Australia. They installed the organ in Hull City Hall. Sadly, however, after the WW1 the demand for new organs fell, the business began to decline and finally closed down.

At the West end in the C17th or C18th there was a West gallery added on which had Gallery Minstrels playing and singing metrical Psalms to simple tunes. The staircase to it was through a door on the South side. (The door is on the left through the kitchen door – staircase since filled in.)

The door on the opposite side in the kitchen is the door to the tower – a spiral staircase.

West window

The West window is decorated perpendicular. Before the tower was added on, the west window would have been where the limed oak screen is now which separates the kitchen from the church. In the heyday of Walter’s career, it was probably more decorative. It would almost certainly have had a picture of Walter somewhere in it. The clear windows were the fashion of the time to let in the light and Walter’s Coat of Arms (his ‘trade-mark’) was on most of the windows.

Font

The hexagonal stone font was moved from under the tower to its present position in 1987. Nowadays it is usually near the entrance to the church to signify that baptism is the entry to Christian life – the first step on the journey. A later addition was a locked cover to protect what’s inside – to stop thieves stealing and selling the holy water.

Coat of Arms

The royal coat of arms is that of George IV. It reminded the people who was the head of the Church of England. A new coat of arms was brought in after the death of a Monarch – hence the black frame. After the Reformation, in 1534 the Anglican Church was established and King Henry VIII appointed himself as head of a new church, the Church of England and it then it became custom to display the Royal Arms inside parish churches up and down England. It was a very visual way for the sovereign to put themselves in front of their subjects week in week out and to remind them who now had authority over the church.
It was also a reminder to any papists in the congregation that the Pope was no longer the head of the church but the British sovereign was.

South door

The south door – the main door is made of oak and is the original door – over 600yrs old. It was recently repaired as it was cracking.

Catlin window

The stained glass window over the North Door is in a very different style from the other windows – a very typical Victorian window which was installed in 1890 in memory of Mary Catlin the well loved Matron of the Victorian workhouse which was built in 1838/39.
In 1916 the workhouse was used as a Military Hospital. Latterly was used by ER County Council as offices, now standing empty.

Mary and her husband Robert, who was the Master, are buried in the Churchyard. (Their headstones, which stands in the meadow area with its back to the hedge, can be seen to the left of the public footpath going towards the main road.) The workhouse inmates were the responsibility of the Parish and in a sense being in the workhouse was social security for them – they were fed and had somewhere to sleep and there were children in, as young as seven years old.

In the centre of the window is Christ, ‘the Lamb of God’ – ‘the good shepherd’. To the right is St. Paul and on the left is St Peter.

St Paul is carrying a sword because he was executed by a sword because he had the legal right to be killed by a sword. He has a red halo because he was a martyr. St Peter was also a martyr. He is holding two keys – one silver one – to the gates of hell – to release penitent sinners from Hell. And one gold one – to the gates of Heaven. Both St. Paul and St.Peter are holding books because they both wrote many of the books in the bible – in the New Testament – many being letters to several churches in Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome and St Peter wrote letters to five Roman provinces of Asia Minor.

The rest of the windows

By 1656 all the original glass was gone (we don’t know why) and we don’t know exactly what the original windows looked like in Walter’s chapel but it is thought that those on the S & W sides included repeated images of Walter’s coat of arms set into plain glass so the priests had good light to see their books, with perhaps a more elaborate window in the East end, possibly with a picture of Walter himself – like the one in York Minster’s great east window.

In 1967 the church was closed because it was unsafe and a new roof had to be installed. George Pace – a well-known Church Architect had the clear windows put in in 1967 with the medieval & modern fragments of glass in ‘ribbons’. The ceiling, also by George Pace, was done about the same time and the limed oak light fittings installed.

Rood Screen

When it became a church for the village in about 1450 it had a medieval ‘rood screen’ a large wooden screen to divide the priest’s part of the church (the Chancel) from the people’s part (the Nave). ‘Rood’ is an Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘cross’. It would have had a huge crucifix in the centre. Some rood screens had a narrow staircase and the Priest climbed up it to the top of the screen to read the gospel in Latin. He was accompanied by two acolytes – two young boys who carried candles. The rood screen was taken down at the reformation (probably about 1550).

There are still ‘scars’ on the walls where the rood screen was. See if you can spot the scar ‘repairs’ where they plugged the hole, what does this tell us about how big and tall the screen was?

The four wooden carved apostles on the N & S walls may have been part of the rood screen or the reredos – a decorated screen that at one time stood against the east wall, behind the Altar.

The Pulpit

Pulpits or preaching boxes, were introduced after the Reformation when we had a Protestant style of worship which was all about the Word – teaching and preaching. There was for some time a triple decker pulpit – can you see the scars on the North wall where it was?

The top level of the pulpit was for preaching. There, the Vicar would stand as he preached from his text. The sermons could be up to two hours long. The second level, was for reading the lessons from the bible, and the third, lowest level was reserved for the parish clerk or warden who would have led the congregation in its responses to the Vicar’s prayers.
Some time after 1600 Box pews were installed and each family paid to have their own pew, each having a small entry door.

In 1879 there was a comprehensive programme of restoration and modernisation. The box pews, triple decker pulpit and gallery were taken out and the present pews were installed, fixed on raised wooden platforms with dado panelling. Large bore central heating pipes surrounded the platforms. Also the church was reglazed, and the present choirstalls, pulpit and lectern provided.

East window

In our East window there are some fragments of the original stained glass in the centre panel – the letters WS (Walter Skirlaw), a chalice and an angel. During the recent extensive repair work in early 2023 these three pieces were cleaned and environmentally double glazed to protect them.

Piscina

On the South wall of the Sanctuary there is a piscina – a relic of the medieval church – medieval washing up bowl! – where, after Mass, the priest used to wash the chalice of any remaining wine and the patten (plate) of any remaining crumbs and it went through a lead pipe directly into the earth – treated just like a body, ‘earth to earth’. The Catholics believed that the consecrated bread and wine actually became Christ’s body and blood. Now most people believe it represents Christ’s body and blood.