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Carvings

The carvings throughout the church were crafted by Godfrey and his sons who served as apprentices. Further family connections can be seen on the exterior of the church where the faces carved above the windows are those of Lewis’s wider family.

The carvings on the pulpit are worth exploring too, as are those in the foyer. Themes of nature are bound drawing on scripture ideas of creation and the sanctuary as being a microcosm of the whole earth gathered to bring its praise.

You’ll see pillars in the foyer are carved to look as if they have vines running up them and leaves sprouting from the top. This good news is not merely for humanity. And in the context of the current ecological crisis, the message embedded in the stones of first church seems more pertinent than ever.

Of particular interest is the carve under the central arch at the front of the church. On the left side of the arch, a bird closes in on a moth. On the right hand side, the bird is feeding the moth to its young. The themes of life and death are appropriate in a place where the community would bring their young to be christened and their dead to be mourned and buried. However, the order of these themes is interesting. We are used to birth preceding death, but here Godfrey has carved death on the left side and new life on the right. In fact, the death on the left side is enabling the flourishing of the new life on the right.

Not just in Abel Carver, Godfrey was an astute theologian, for he seems to point to the life of faith, where a kind of death is required before we can encounter newness of life. Jesus’ death and resurrection point to this reversal of the old pattern, where death ceases to be an end and becomes instead a gateway.