Buckminster

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	Dedication: St John the Baptist Simon Jenkins: Excluded Principal Features: Sculpture by the Mooning Men Group of Masons

Buckminster sports what must be one of the most outsize broach spires in the Midlands - and it’s a pretty crowded field! It is oddly situated too: bang in the middle of the south side. It dates from before 1300. In fact, most of the church is of around this time.

The church, however, is of interest to me for its association with the Mooning Men Group of masons (MMG). It is the northernmost of the churches with a mooning man. It also has a flea carving. I am afraid that if you have arrived at this page without reading any of the “Demon Carvers and Mooning Men” narrative a lot of this is going to go over your head.

The work of the MMG is focused on the south side. The porch was added at that time and appears to have been the main focus. For some reason the south aisle seems to have been remodelled at the same time. As a consequence of all this we have a porch with a highly decorated facade and a west end of the south aisle - that is, to the left of that mega-tower - with a sub-parapet cornice frieze. The porch and the south aisle are also battlemented. There is a clerestory and that too has a sub-parapet cornice frieze very much of the same pattern as the south aisle. It suggests that the program of work here comprised only the construction of the porch and clerestory and alteration to the south aisle roofline.

The rest of the church - apart from the tower - is adorned with plain, unbattlemented parapets.

I have at the time of writing been unable to gain access to the interior of the church. Although I like to analyse or speculate on the program of work that the masons were undertaking when the sculptural decoration was added this has proved impracticable here so I am going to confine myself to observations on that alone.

There are two discrete pieces of decoration here: on the south porch and clerestory and on the south aisle west of the tower. The sub-parapet cornice frieze of the aisle is very clearly by the same mason or masons who carved similar friezes at Cottesmore and Hungarton and probably on the tower frieze at Harlaxton. It is a primitive style typical of the man I named “Simon Cottesmore” .His presence is demonstrated by, amongst other things, the “bat winged lion”, identical to those at Hungarton and Cottesmore. Th presence of a flea carving denotes the presence of John Oakham. A mooning man announces that the work was under the auspices of the Mooning Men Group of contracting masons.

The porch carvings, however are in distinctly different in style. The inset almond shaped eyes of the aisle and clerestory are replaced by drilled eyes and an altogether fiercer set of grotesques. As with Cottesmore and Hungarton,I suspect that John Oakham contributed to friezes largely by Simon Cottesmore. I think, though, that the porch here was possibly by John alone.

Three Trademark Carvings at Buckminster. Left: A damaged mooning man on the south west aisle. Trademark of the MMG. Centre: Flea carving also on the south west aisle. Trademark of John Oakham. Right: Batwinged lion on the south west corner of the clerestory. Trademark of Simon Cottesmore. Note his characteristic way of carving eyes..


	Images of the Buckminster aisle and clerestory. Both the green man (above left) and the second version of a corner lion (above right) have more or less identical versions at Cottesmore.




		The south porch. There is no doubt that it is contemporary with whatever the MMG were doing to the clerestory and south aisle. The difference in style is obvious and one can only assume that the decoration was the work of John Oakham.



			Another little oddity is a single gargoyle - the only one on the church on the south clerestory, Quite why this was the only one we can only guess at. What is interesting is that this odd imagery of a monster apparently pulling apart the jaws and teeth of his own stomach is also seen at MMG churches, Wymondham, Knossington and Tilton-on-the-Hill. These are parts of groups of gargoyles carved by “The Gargoyle Master” discussed elsewhere in the Demon Carver narrative. This example at Buckminster does not quite look the same. Was it by the GM? Who knows!