St. Michael's Church

St. Michael's Church

For Christine's History 135 class we went to St. Michael's Church in Alnwick.  St. Michael's is rather small, but is rich in its history.  With origin in Saxon times, the church was later rebuilt in the 14-15th centuries in a medieval style.  The story of this small church spans the history of Alnwick and the Dukes of Northumberland.

Walking through a rather small doorway, we made our way to the west end of the church where the original baptism chapel would have been.  Here the walls were adorned with several grave covers which were found outside and brought it.  They majority of these covers contained keys and things, which Christine told us described something about the person in which the grave stone was for.  On the wall next to this one was a statue which was of Henry VI and St. Sebastian.  This statue had to be put back together due to the dissolution of the monastries and removal of religious themed artworks. 

As we made our way through the rest of the church I noticed a very small beautiful stained glass window.  This imagery in the window was rather small and hard to make out but Christine was sure to inform us of what it was.  Here in the window IHS is shown, which is a Christogram for the first three letters of Jesus in Greek.  There is also a lionshead, and a twisted rope with a pelican in the center.  This is signifcant because the pelican plucked its own breast and blood to feed its young, much like what Christ did for his disciples at the Last Supper.

After Christine pointed out the rest of the medieval elements we were to look for for our class, we had some free time to explore and look around the rest of the church.  I have so say, although this church was small, it had a lot of interesting things to look at.  So much detail was placed into the pillars and sculptures inside of it. 



The only medieval pillar left in the church.
The rest have all been repaired and remodeled.

The floor of the church were actually
comprised of tomb covers. And yes, people
are actually buried underneath them.  Kind of creepy....

We then moved outside of the church where Christine pointed out the masonry marks on the bricks.  These marks were done by the person who constructed the brick, as a way to know who did what on the building.

 

Although I am not really a big fan of churches and am not overly religious, I have to admit that churches provide us with so much history.  I am continuously amazed by the amount of art, history, and architecture they contain.  I am always taken aback by the beautiful aura they posess, and have a feeling that I will be traveling to more and more churches now just to experience their magnificence.