Hidden in Plain View, The Mysteries of All Saints’ Church, Childwall

In our Postcode Histories series, guest historian bloggers will be focusing on different Liverpool postcodes to discover the history of that area.

In this second instalment, historian John Hussey focuses on the L16 postcode of Childwall.

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I have often wondered what it is an old building

can do to you when you happen to know

a little about things that went on

long ago in that building.

— Carl Sandburg —

Stepping Back in Time

Childwall Hall.

If you come away from the chaotic confusion of traffic that is Childwall Fiveways and make your way to Childwall Valley Road, you will find the roar of the traffic slowly receding as you walk down the hill and enter a tranquil world which has All Saints’ Church, at its centre. Even before you reach the church, and pass the gloomy depths of Childwall Woods, overhung by giant beech trees blocking the sun's rays from ever penetrating the leaf canopy, it becomes increasingly apparent that this place is quite ancient. And if you entered the Woods itself, you would see right away a dank, mossy roadway carved out of the solid sandstone, just wide enough for a carriage and horses; the meandering path once led visitors to Childwall Hall, which was the last in a long line of manor houses, dating back to the 1600s — sadly demolished in 1950. Returning to the road, what was once the focal point of the village, All Saints’ Church, comes into view, and across the road the castellated turrets of the 15th century Childwall Abbey compete with the church for architectural attention.

Sunday Best

While the Woods and the Abbey have their own attractions, it is the church which is the real gem — not only for its religious aspects but for the multitude of historical tales hidden in every nook and cranny. There has always been a religious presence on the site, with the present church dating from the 14th century, and All Saints’ has been a place of worship for many of Liverpool's leading citizens throughout the years — most of them purchasing family pews. It does not take a great deal of imagination to close your eyes and conjure up the shades of crinolined ladies and besuited gentlemen alighting from their carriages and walking arm in arm through the 1712 lych gate along the path which leads directly to the church entrance. Most of the congregation would have been unaware of the writing on the worn headstones, many of them laid down flat, but there is one to the immediate left as you step through the modern lych gate which tells an all-too-common story of the unbridled rate of child mortality in those far off days.

Robert and Elizabeth Brereton had the misfortune to lose no less than four of their children in infancy one after the other. The Breretons were undoubtedly proud of their eldest child who survived to become an officer in a regiment serving under General Wolfe in Canada, but it’s sad to relate that the Breretons were left completely childless when William Brereton, also lost his life, fighting the French at the siege of Quebec. 

As intriguing as this sorrowful tale is, it is just one among many of the headstones in which the writing becomes less visible with each passing year, and moss, lichen and the weather combine to make the stories undecipherable.

Mysterious Symbols

Surveyor’s Benchmark.

There's a decorative war memorial to the front of the church, commemorating the fallen of the First and Second World Wars, who briefly lived in the districts we all know so well. And a few yards further down the path, there is a holly which when pushed aside reveals a mysterious glyph carved into the sandstone. The simple lines could be interpreted in many ways to anyone whose imagination takes flight at such symbols, but the answer is more prosaic — it is in fact an engineer's benchmark. Not being an expert in these matters, simply put, a benchmark indicates where levelling rods can be placed to measure the contours of the land, so that anyone building a house does not end up with the front room 10 feet underground. Benchmark symbols are fast becoming historical items in their own right, with the last of over 500,000 of them carved 30 years ago to be replaced by lasers. There are actually aficionados of the carved symbols who travel round the country "collecting" them, in much the same way as train-spotters stand for hours waiting to write down the number of an engine.

Old picture of All Saints.

But the benchmark is not the only carving in the sandstone walls — here and there are other motifs, even more mysterious, for all the world appearing to have been copied from Sumerian cuneiform, clay tablets, they would be meat and drink to a conspiracy theorist; the answer, once again is far more literal but remains fascinating in its own right. They are in fact, masonry marks, made by the medieval stonemasons who built the church, with each mason having his own motif, denoting the work he had completed. The motifs were not simply a vanity project, but were proof of whose work it was in relation to payment. Very often, the same masonry mark will appear on buildings many miles apart — proof that the same mason worked on both buildings. There are other carvings which are rarely seen, called quarry marks — these are marks denoting where a particular stone should be placed and in which building. Most of these carvings are hidden face down but now and then there are one or two exceptions which will baffle the uninitiated.

The Curious Window

Before turning the corner into the entrance to the church, there is a window which is unusual in that it is almost at ground level. Known as a leper's window or hagioscope, in medieval times it was designed to allow worshippers infected with contagious diseases to watch the services without coming into contact with the congregation. The Crusades would proceed as much as a century after the building of All Saints’, and it was the Knights who sometimes brought leprosy back with them. 

The Empty Niche

Niche Above the porch.

Above the main entrance to the church, called the porch, is a semicircular niche which obviously once contained a religious figure, probably a statue of St. Peter; it is surmised that the figure was destroyed during the English Civil War and has never been replaced. When sections of the original sandstone 15th century framework of the niche began to crumble in the 1960s a local mason was employed in replacing them, and found beneath the ruined stone a mason's mark made over 500 years ago. Before the work was completed, the modern mason left his own mark in the fresh stonework, leaving the niche a unique homage to the stone-mason's art.

The porch, is of interest in its own right, having four carvings of the heads of the Evangelists looking down from each corner of the room. Discovered outside the church in the early years of the 1800s, the vicar gave them to the proprietor of the Abbey Inn across the road. They were returned to the church 30 years later and placed in the alcoves they now inhabit.

The Inner Sanctum

 Hatchments in All Saints’ Church — the Gascoyne family hatchment is on the left.

The interior of All Saints’ Church is stunningly beautiful and filled with memorials to the great and the good of congregations past. The tops of the walls are filled with diamond-shaped, wooden boards called hatchments. Bearing the coat of arms of the family, a hatchment was carried along at the head of a funeral procession. As in the case of so many artefacts in the church the hatchments have meanings immediately apparent to a medieval onlooker which modern observers would never know; for instance, the colouring of parts of the hatchment denote whether it was the husband or wife who survived, while a skull at the base would denote that he or she was the last of their line. Many of the hatchments contain the mottos of their owners, so that Joseph Need Walker of Calderstones reads Resurgam which means "I shall rise again", the influential Ashton family of Woolton have the motto "So teach us to number our days that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom", while the Gascoyne family motto reads "Raison Pour Guide".  There is one hatchment bearing the arms of King Charles II dated 1664, it was placed in situ to commemorate a visit to the area by the King who stayed at Speke Hall.

The Legend of the Eagle and Child

Eagle and Child sculpture, Knowsley Hall.

In a recess within the chapel, there is a sculpture of an eagle and child carved in wood, which was damaged during the Civil War. The motif became a part of the Lathom coat of arms following two legends which have persisted since the 1300s, both centred around the inability of Sir Thomas Lathom's wife to produce a male heir. The first legend says that Sir Thomas was walking in the grounds of his estate, Lathom House, when he heard a baby crying, and on investigation he found a young male child lying in an eagle's nest. Taking the baby home, he told his wife it was a gift from heaven and the baby was welcomed into the family with open arms, growing up to inherit the lands and titles.

A more likely version of the legend is that Sir Thomas had a clandestine affair with a "gentle-woman of his acquaintance", resulting in the birth of a son. Sir Thomas finally had his male heir, leaving him with the problem of how to introduce the child into the family without incurring scandal or humiliating his wife. The plot that he engineered was quite preposterous, involving a trusted servant placing the child in a remote part of the estate beneath a tree and standing guard over it until Sir Thomas, who this time was accompanied by his wife, "stumbled" across the baby while out walking. They both accepted the child as a gift from heaven and it was duly accepted into the family. A contemporary poem relates the lady's acceptance of the baby.  

"That their content was such to see the hap,
The ancient lady hugs it in her lap;
Smothers it in kisses, bathes it in her tears,
And unto Lathom House the babe she bears."

At this distance in time it is difficult to believe Sir Thomas' wife could have been so gullible, but it was an age of superstition and ignorance and implicit belief in miracles, and what may seem unbelievable in our cynical world was quite normal in theirs. Nevertheless, some would say that Sir Thomas was pushing his luck when the baby was given the unusual name of Oskatel, which happened to be the surname of his mistress.

For reasons known only to himself it was the Eagle and Child motif that Sir Thomas chose to add to the Lathom crest, hence the persistence of the least likely legend.

However, on his deathbed Sir Thomas confessed to his infidelity, and although Oskatel was granted the manors of Urmston and Islem near Manchester, he never inherited the Lathom estate which went to Sir Thomas' only daughter.

The Eagle and Child motif has been adopted by many public houses, and used as a decoration for clocks and other items but the most impressive memorial to the legend is the Portland stone carving above Knowsley Hall.  But perhaps the most astonishing thing about this legend is that it has persisted for an astonishing 700 years.

Les Misérables

Fantine, Walker Art Gallery.

The church is full of old and new tablets from the First and Second World Wars, and the Crimean War, with many personal plaques recalling well-known names around the area. There is a polished brass plaque fixed to a column which looks as if it was placed there yesterday — it was in fact commissioned in 1911 by Louise Greenfield to her great friend, the artist Margaret Bernadine Hall (1863 - 1910).  In the same year that the plaque was fixed in place, Margaret's finest painting was hung in The Walker Art Gallery and has been there ever since. In recent years the painting has attracted more interest than ever due to the influence of the musical Les Misérables, as it depicts a demented Fantine with her baby, Cosette — names which theatre and cinemagoers will know well.

The stained-glass windows in the church have been commissioned by relatives of the great and the good of the parish, but things are never as they seem in All Saints’, and on close inspection there are tiny comic additions, such as a group of mournful pigs and a pride of grinning lions.

Among the stained-glass windows there is one dedicated to Margaret, the work of the renowned Mary Lowndes, who was also well known within the Suffragette Movement. 

Margaret Bernadine Hall was born in a house opposite Calderstones Park, and at the tender age of 19 she travelled to Paris and enrolled in a respected art academy in Batignolles, later exhibiting her paintings in various European cities. Among her paintings, Fantine, always attracted the most attention.

When Margaret's younger sister, Florence, followed her to Paris, the future was full of promise for both girls as artists in the city which nurtured Toulouse-Lautrec, Pisarro, David, Corot, Manet, Monet, Renoir, and so many others. Although Paris was at that time the centre of the art world, it was also one of the unhealthiest cities in Europe, and Margaret must have been shocked to the core when Florence suddenly succumbed to cholera and passed away aged just 22. She is buried alongside Margaret in All Saints’ churchyard.

Two years after the death of Florence, in 1889, her father, Bernard Hall commissioned the magnificent building which now stands on Mill Street, as a boy's youth club — he named it the Florence Institute, and he placed inside it a bas-relief of Florence which can be seen today.

There are many more tales of All Saints’ Church — too many to recount in this small article, and in common with many of the above stories they are also — Hidden in Plain Sight!

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With thanks to John Hussey for his contribution to the series.

You can find more interesting historical facts by John in Liverpool Forgotten Landscapes, Forgotten Lives.