A few years ago All Saints Church in Hereford got funding for the erection of a cafe on a new mezzanine level. A new seating gallery had excellent lighting, all the better to illuminate detail of the magnificent intricate carvings cloaked in shadow since the 14th century! …Ah.
The man in the carving has appropriately been nicknamed Seamus O’Toole, and it is thought that his spirited salutation was created by a disgruntled medieval artisan.
Stone gargoyles and decorative misericords have all sorts of symbolic meanings but there is some anecdotal evidence that the more ribald version was a final flourish of carpenters and masons scammed of their pay.
Elsewhere one tale tells of church authorities who thought they were being clever by ‘running out of cash’ only at the very end of construction, when all that was left to do was to affix the cherubs to the rafters.
Cue over 100 cherubs with massive phalluses and an aggrieved church having to hire scaffolding to hack each offending protuberance off by hand.
A reminder, for your long weekend, that a system of divine rule may not always have the best interests of the people in mind, and that small acts of dissent are the lifeblood of revolution.
#folkhorror #folkhorrormagpie #medieval #phallus #cherub #allsaintshereford #sheelanagig #seamusotoole #grotesque #gargoyle #jubilee #plattyjoobs #platinumjubilee #revolution #hangthemfromthechandeliers
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