Well folks, my sweetie is here. Steph arrived at the manor on Monday after having flown into Heathrow late Sunday night. Today we went into Grantham to see the sights and for her to visit Living Health, a spa which in addition to the normal services associated with that word, also specializes in chiropractic and sports injury treatment. It is located in the birthplace of Grantham's second most famous native son--or in this case daughter--Margaret Thatcher. Her father had a shop there. Someone had gotten Steph a little gift package to celebrate her arrival.
So, while she was enjoying that, I wandered over to St. Wulfram's for a closer look. You may recall from an earlier post that we went by the church but not into it during our Historical Grantham tour with Malcolm (see Sept. 9 post). The spire is in need of 600,000 pounds of repair, but the interior is holding up just fine. Here is a pic of the floor plan.
The church sits on the site of a Saxon church which predated the Conquest. The Normans built a larger structure in the 12th century, but the building depicted in this drawing was completed in the mid-14th century with several minor additions since then--well, come on, it has been 700 years. Think you will have done any remodeling of your place in the next 700 years or so?
The church is named for St. Wulfram from France who never visited England, let alone Grantham, so it is a bit of a mystery why they dedicated their church to him. There is only one other in all England. Here is a pic of the choir.
As usual, one of the most moving aspects of any church in England is the Honor Roll of the fallen from the First World War. In addition to the roll of all those men from Grantham who were killed, and it is depressing to see three and four listed all with the same surname, there is a memorial to the Machine Gun Regiment which suffered more than 60,000 casualties during the war out of a total complement of 160,000.
However, the most interesting display of the day was a number of "chained books" from the Trigge Library in the church, set up by Francis Trigge in 1598. Trigge was born in Lincolnshire, exactly where is not known, and served his entire career at the nearby parish of St. Chad's in Welbourn. In addition to the library, he left a substantial sum for the assistance of the poor in the borough upon his death.
"Chained books" are just what they sound like, books chained to the carrel. In medieval times, books were so valuable and so rare, they were literally chained to the stand in a library so that no one could steal them. You read them standing up. More than 80 of the 350 plus titles in the Trigge still have their original chains, made by a local black smith, attached. The texts are all printed, but a large number of them are incunabula, i.e. printed before 1500, in the first 50 or so years of movable type, thus making them quite rare.
In addition to the religious titles you might expect, including a Polyglot Bible from Antwerp, a disputation by Cardinal Robetr Bellarmine who tried to talk some sense into Galileo about this sun-centered nonsense in 1616, Duns Scotus musings on the limitation of reason in matter of theology from the 14th century, and a collection of 15th century sermons that tend to run about 3 1/2 hours apiece, there are also titles on cosmology, natural history (including one of the first texts of zoology ever published and which has a number of woodcuts by Albrecht Durer), Tudor legal writs, and a medical text which includes some pretty whacked out remedies for problems, such as dried magpie brain in white wine to cure the inability to urinate and "gelding" for manic behavior which cured that but led to intense melancholia, d'uh
After that, a wander around the town and then back to the Living Health to pick up Steph for lunch at the Cafe Leo and home.
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