ST. JELDHELM'S HEAD. Ixxv. 



WORTH MATRAVERS CHURCH. 



Re-entering their carriages, the party drove to Afflington Barn 

 and then turned off to the old-world, out-of-the-way village of 

 Worth Matravers. At the church 



The VICAR (the Rev J. Edwardes) gave the visitors a warm 

 welcome and made a short statement about the church. 



Standing in an isolated district, it was almost unique and one of the oldest 

 churches in England, supposed to have been built late in the 7th century by St. 

 Aldhelm himself. He pointed to the door in the south wall of the nave with a 

 pointed arch of the " two flagstone " type, generally thought to be the original 

 Saxon door. (We should like to call attention to the great age of the arch. One 

 of the stones on the outside is much weathered the most weathered stone in the 

 church.) This doorway was supposed to give access to a side chapel, with which 

 a hagioscope also communicated. The chapel was pulled down in 1741. He 

 called attention to the Norman arch of the south entrance, with a tympanum, 

 the carving of which is said to have been mutilated at the time of the Civil War, 

 so that it is impossible now to make out the subject, although a figure, 

 apparently of au angel with outstretched arms, is to be discerned on either side. 

 The fine Norman arch of three orders is a notable feature of the church. The 

 chancel window is Decorated and the small lancet windows 13th century. In 

 the middle of the loth century the ancient font was sophisticated with Perpen- 

 dicular work. As for the Communion plate, there was a chalice, with a cover, 

 dated 1574. 



The ASSISTANT SECRETARY supplemented the Vicar's observa- 

 tions by observing that to his mind the great fascination of 

 Worth Church lay, not so much in the antiquity and beauty of 

 the building, great though they were, as in its association with 

 one of those venerable traditions so precious to Church people. 



William of Malmesbury recorded that when St. Aldhelm was still Abbot of 

 Malmesbury, before he had been appointed by King Ina to the see of Sherborne, 

 he came into this district with the intention of crossing over to the Continent to 

 visit the Pope and, while waiting for a favourable wind (aiiram fdicein) built a 

 church (fecit ecdcniain), in which, while his companions were occupied with the 

 necessary preparations, he might commend to God his journey and return. In 

 the historian's time, the early part of the l'2th century, that church was said to 

 be a roofless ruin, with miraculous properties, since, however wet the weather, 

 no rain ever fell within it, and the shepherds of the district there used to drive 

 and fold their sheep! Each of four sacred buildings in Purbeck had been 



