Church History

Domesday Book records no church and no priests in Clawson. Granby had a church and a priest; Eastwell had two priests but no church; other nearby villages, including Melton Mowbray then smaller than Clawson, seemed as institutionally godless as Clawson. Ivo, who hailed from Ticheville in Normandy, was the tenant in chief, holding his land from Robert de Todeni of Belvoir, William the Conqueror’s standard-bearer, from whom he also held lands in Ropsley and three other Lincolnshire villages. Ivo built the first church here around 1088, probably a simple rectangular chapel with walls three feet thick, which, much altered, now forms the chancel having the thickest walls of any part of the church bar the tower. At the same time Bishop Remigius had nearly completed his 20-year project of replacing the Saxon minster at Lincoln with brand new Norman cathedral, and it seems that Ivo chose to dedicate his church to St Remigius in his honour. Ivo then gave the church and all its tithes to the Priory of Belvoir, newly founded by Robert his overlord, along with a chunk of tithes of Ropsley. Hugh his son, who was parson of Ropsley, was not happy with this arrangement, but was after a while ordered to abide by it by both King Henry I and Bishop Alexander of Lincoln, and dutifully confirmed and augmented his father’s gift, in a charter which survives at Belvoir wherein he also consigned his wife to the care of the priory. Through Ivo’s gift the priory became the permanent rector of the church, and it had men in the village to collect tithes, and a chaplain to serve the church. It was not until 1220 that Bishop Hugh Wells of Lincoln forced the priory to endow a vicarage with land and part of the tithes.

Only one recognisable detail of the period of Ivo's original church remains, and that is a small window merely 6½ inches wide, cut from a single piece of fine yellow limestone.  It is of Saxon style workmanship, maybe family work of Sven the Builder of Clawson, one of the witnesses to Hugh’s charter.  It stands where it has for centuries albeit that the wall containing it has been rebuilt, though logic suggests it was moved there when the church was enlarged.

Though parts of the north aisle wall may pre-date him, the medieval church was probably the project of Ralph Bozon. Ralph had wealth of his own but also married Lora, the great-great-granddaughter and heiress of Ivo. He started with the tower crossing, implying a date of around 1250, and planned a standard square aisled nave supported by north and south triple arcades, and in keeping with the village’s comparative prosperity, two transepts. The nave had a steep roof marked by a flashing string course in the stonework on the outside of the tower, as did the transepts, which were a foot shorter than they are now, ending flush with the aisle walls. The tower may have been topped with a low roof or steeple. 

A bell chamber was built on the tower around 1325, fifty years after Ralph died, the work possibly led by his grandson William Bozon, parson of Stubton. Its base is marked by a limestone string course. Each of the chamber’s four bell-windows consists of two main lights with tracery over of differing design. The tower roof is drained by eight gargoyles. The white limestone parapet with low battlements matches that on the north porch and may, like the latter, be an 18th century rebuild. At about the same time as the bell chamber, the Bozon chantry chapel was built onto the north side of the chancel or Ivo’s original church, on the site of the present vestry, but a foot narrower. 

Apart from the “Saxon” window, the oldest worked stone in the church is possibly the inner arch to the north aisle doorway. The angle of the springer stone on the right suggesting this arch has always been round and is not the result of the several repairs the wall has undergone, witnessed by the exterior stonework in the west angle with the porch and judging by what the writer found when replastering this interior area in 2020.  The old photo of the south side shows what could be the remains of a Norman window at the west end of the south wall of the chancel, by then Georgian-glazed and devoid of the tracery which would have divided it into two lancets. Contemporary or slightly later is the tower crossing, consisting of four identical archways, one in each wall. The half round shafts have semi-octagonal capitals which support triple chamfered arches above. It is a fine example of Early English work, and the piers remain either plumb vertical or have moved less than one degree from it. When the bells were augmented from five to eight for the millennium, vibration tests showed that the ringing chamber was the most rock-solid of any hitherto tested in the country. The arches have hood moulds on the inside which meet at common corner headstops, viz a woman, a grinning man, a cat or bat-eared face, and one too damaged to discern. The nave arch also has a hoodmould on the outside and with male and female headstops, conceivably representations of Ralph and Lora Bozon as donors. The columns have double tori (half-round rings) round the foot and rest on semi-octagonal plinths, but those on the chancel side are now buried in the floor. Ralph’s planned nave was uphill from Ivo’s chancel and the floor had to rise under the tower, the rise being reflected in the lower position of the headstops on the chancel side than the nave side. It may have all been levelled after the Reformation, but Gothic Revival sensibilities demanded that the floors should rise as the high altar was approached, so in the 1893 restoration the tower floor was raised by two steps and the sanctuary by a further two steps.

The nave arcades are of octagonal columns with double chamfered arches over. There are hoodmoulds on the inside of the north arcade with headstops, being maybe Bishop Remigius and Queen Eleanor who died near Newark much mourned in 1290, but none on the south arcade. The plinths are square on the north, but octagonal on the south. The abacus (the top bit of the capital) on the eastern column of the north is round, which once led to the idea that the nave and for that matter the transepts all collapsed around 1300 giving rise to a major rebuilding, when all except one of the original capitals to the presumed-to-have-been round columns were replaced with octagonal ones. Given the remarkable integrity of the tower, an inherently much more problematic structure, this is unlikely, but the north arcade was rebuilt in 1893.  The tower crossing and both arcades share common features but the south arcade with its triple torus and cavetto moulded capitals seems to be the last built, long after the tower was started. The middle torus on one capital has been tidied away. It seems therefore that the nave was built north to south and took several decades to complete. 

Recent work in the vestry revealed the chamfer of the tower abutment against the dividing wall to the chancel, which throws some doubt on the pre-existence of the chancel. Yet the dividing wall contains what appear to be 17th century rectangular openings both to a loft doorway and to a window to the sanctuary, and the pointed arch top of the narrow doorway to the vestry itself is clearly an 1893 accommodation of the raised floor levels, thus the dividing wall could be generally a 17th century rebuild. It incorporated a flue and a square chimney above as drawn by Schnebbelie. Behind a curtain in the vestry is a plain blocked-up doorway with depressed arch into the north transept which could have been put in as late as 1550 when the chapel was handed over for parish use. It has no adornments either side. The loft doorway, served by a staircase or ladder in the chantry chapel or vestry, probably replaced a medieval doorway for the loft to the rood screen across the eastern arch of the tower. The screen was essential to mediaeval proprieties about worship; it separated the priest’s part of the church from the people’s part, but was designed to allow the people to see what was going on at the high altar, namely bringing about Christ’s real presence through the sacrifice of the Mass. It would have been constructed of painted oak with an open arcaded upper part, and solid panels to waist-height including a pair of doors. The decoration spread onto the western face of the surrounding arch, where some of it survives on the form of white quatrefoils. On each side of the same face of the arch extra chamfers have been cut. It has been suggested this was to allow maximum light to fall on the  painted panels of the screen, which would have been painted and repainted with images of saints and donors. The screen went at the Reformation, but the loft doorway was preserved for access to a new ringing chamber, which was hung below the tower arcade until 1890, to ring the four new bells cast for the church in 1608 and 1631. Around 1800, to make more space for village school, which had been ejected by Archdeacon Bickham from the chancel into the old chantry chapel, a brick external staircase was built up the end of the south aisle. By 1890 the chapel and chancel were roofed under one shallow pitched lead-covered roof. The existence of the chamfer may indicate that Ralph’s grand plan was for a free-standing tower crossing, ailsed on all sides, as planned for Melton Mowbray, but again never fully achieved.

The task facing the medieval builder was to assist the laity in their approach to God, which is a similar task to explaining churches today to folk who have not grown up habitually attending worship. The early Norman church was a simple rectangle with a doorway at the west end.  It would have had a stone altar about two thirds the way towards the east end. At worship the priest would have stood behind the altar facing the congregation standing in front of him. The medieval church, in other words the building more or less as it stands today, served as a village meeting place as well as for worship. At the very least, medieval churches had two parts, a chancel and a nave, the chancel being the domain and responsibility of the rector and priest, and the nave being the responsibility of the lord of the manor and the village. A screen, usually of wood, divided the two parts, called a rood screen because it had the rood, or crucifixion scene on top. The scene was lit by candles for various occasions hence needed a loft for access. Religion was part of everyday life however, so it is wrong to think of the nave as a secular area like a modern village hall. The nave would have been full of wall paintings: stories of saints and depictions of heaven and hell, and within the nave near the entrance from outside would stand the font, the font being the implement of baptism marking the entry of new lives into the church, and reminding the villager, each time he stepped in, that this was God’s house. Clawson’s font originally stood right up to the wall, maybe the west wall or maybe near the north doorway, which may at one time have been the only doorway into the church. The rood screen would have been painted too, typically with pictures of saints and donors on the lower panels facing the nave behind the chancel stalls. The upper part of the screen would have been simple timber arcading to allow the people to observe the priest at mass at the high altar. 

The bible talks of the Holy of Holies, the place within the priests’ area of the tabernacle or temple, into which only the high priest was allowed. The medieval church sought to replicate that idea, so the altar was moved back to the east wall, and the area around it was raised or fenced off as the sanctuary, holier that the rest of the chancel. As the church grew more powerful the clergy attempted to regulate access to God, emphasising their role of intercessor, praying eastwards across the altar to a distant deity, on behalf of the living and the dead. Equally, the higher laity exerted their own influence, demanding pews in the chancel to be closer to the divine mysteries. Parallel with this grew up the idea of the intercession of the saints, so additional altars dedicated to various saints were installed and sometimes screened off to make little chapels, of which Clawson retains one, the lady chapel to Mary the Virgin, making use of the south transept.  Richer patrons would aggrandise their pews into family chapels, with their own altar.

The dead were believed to go to purgatory where they could yet be reformed to take their place in heaven, so there grew up a class of clergy called chantry priests whose sole job was to pray for the dead by repeated celebration of communion or mass, funded by those who could afford it. Some wealthy families extended the parish church to make a family chapel, or even constructed detached chapels in the churchyard, with an altar solely to pray for their dead. These when duly licensed by the bishop were called chantry chapels. The Bozon family had their chapel on the site of the vestry. In 1508 one John Penny is mentioned as chaplain at Clawson in 1508. He may have been the vicar, or the Bozons’ chaplain or the same John Penny who was simultaneously Abbot of Leicester, Prior of Bradley and Bishop of Bangor, or even a by-blow of the same. Either this chapel or another one in the north transept may have been dedicated to St Catherine.

Clergy, as the only ones who could read or write also had a secular role, which the church needed to accommodate. Most churches did not gain porches until the 15th century, and the porches were built not just to shelter the entrance doors, but to provide a place to conduct parish business. Some had the priest’s office above. The benches in the porch were in many cases the only seating provided for the laity, though larger churches had them round the edge of the nave too. Porch seating can be seen as a precursor to waiting rooms everywhere.

At the Reformation the emphasis in worship switched away from repeated masses or communion services. Stone altars were replaced by communion tables which were manhandled into the body of the church for the four times a year that communion was then celebrated. All the medieval paintings were whitewashed over. Weekly worship was psalm-singing and long-winded sermons. Seating, which had become more widespread in the 15th century, now became a necessity, and in due course box pews, such as those visible in the old inside photograph above, became the norm. The preaching desk or triple decker pulpit dominated the church at the tower crossing; the lowest deck for the parish clerk leading the psalm singing for the illiterate congregation line by line, the middle deck for the parson conducting the prayers, and the top deck for his sermon. At the west end was a gallery for further seating and to accommodate the village band accompanying the psalm-singing. The chancel sank in status; Clawson’s being given over to schooling children until rescued by a zealous archdeacon, concerned that a tiny altar commemorating Revd Wm Turvil was being used as a schoolboy’s desk, for which it was and is entirely appropriate by length, width, and height. In contrast, the sermon preached at the funeral of Mr Turvil’s wife in 1737 was 46 printed pages long; rapturously high in flowery exhortation, deep in biblical exposition and, when at last it got round to speaking of her, broad in abstract praise of her character.

As the years passed, medieval buildings sank more and more into decay. Then in the late 19th century the Oxford Movement rediscovered good things about pre-Reformation worship, and industrial wealth allowed churches to be restored or rebuilt, and the altar brought back into focus. Clawson’s restoration gave it the standard pattern of rising floor levels to the “holier” east end, but did not give it colour, nor entirely reduce the dominance of the pulpit, which was demoted again to its present position some fifty years ago. The restoration also saw the introduction of the pipe organ and a gowned choir to replace the village band, and the Mothers Union and Sunday School, each with its banner. The churchwardens gained staffs of office, and processional crosses were acquired to add to the dignity of worship.

Today’s worship is leaner than a hundred years ago. The banners hang unused like laid-up flags of old military campaigns, and the choir robes come out but twice a year. But the colours improve, with more to see, more space to wander in, and more for the visitor to reflect upon.            

Sir Ralph Bozon’s effigy currently lies on the step from the north aisle into the transept. Late last century it rested on common brick piers over the heating pipe against the north wall, until they burst. The Bozon family arms were three bird-bolts and were noted by William Burton, an early 17th century traveller, to have adorned the  now lost shield on the knight’s effigy then lying in the chancel. Apparently, the bird-bolts looked more like winged dung-forks. Ralph died around 1275, and the style of the effigy is contemporary, suggesting it is his. It would once have been the top to a chest tomb in the family chapel on the site of the present vestry. When that became a school, the effigy got very worn and was turned out into the churchyard in the 18th century, though was back in the vestry by 1890. Mr. Peck a local antiquary found in 1729, a small figure of St. Catherine in a north window, with a wheel in her right and a sword in her left hand, which could suggest the chapel was dedicated to St Catherine. Mr Burton also noted, in one of the north windows, stained glass depicting a kneeling knight on whose surcoat were the three red bird bolts, labelled Dominus Willielmus Bozon, a clergyman who was Ralph’s grandson, and became erroneously identified with both the effigy and the bells. Neither piece of stained glass survived by 1790.

The present seventh bell was cast by Johannes of York late in the 14th century, probably at Leicester, in all probability at the expense of one of the Sirs John Bozon, William’s nephew and great nephew.  Whilst there is a tale that Bozon’s bells were carted back as booty from the wars with France, it seems more likely that he gave, or left in his will, money to cast four bells, and that one of these remains, probably the second lightest of the four. Church bells have always had two functions: one being religious, to signify when the service is taking place and what is going on in it, and the other secular, to mark the hours of the day, and to call the villagers to meet, or to mark the curfew. At the Reformation it was decreed in 1552 that only one bell was needed, to announce the sermon and to toll for a funeral.  Extra bells were to be disposed of, but the ordinance was soon postponed and abandoned, as they were still needed for secular purposes.  Queen Elizabeth had a particular liking for bells, and the less they were used for religious purposes the more they were used for secular purposes or mere fun.  Gentlemen began taking up the hobby of bellringing. Medieval bells were long and heavy, however, and difficult to ring. Louth had a fine set of six, but it took a team of 22 to ring them. The gentlemen ringers wanted more and lighter bells, better hung and better tuned. In 1608, maybe at the expense of the Hastings family with their new, now Old Manor House over the road, Clawson had two new bells cast by Henry Oldfield II of Nottingham.  One is the present sixth bell and the other was the present tenor bell, which had to be recast again in 1782. Both were probably re-castings of two of Bozon’s bells. In 1631 the men of Grantham asked to acquire Clawson’s great bell, a monster bigger than the present tenor bell, as theirs of the same size had cracked. They offered their old bell plus £20, which would have been seen as a good deal by the wardens of Clawson, who had the metal recast as two lighter bells, by Hugh Watts II of Leicester, thus increasing the peal from four to five. One of these survives as the fifth bell, and the other was the fourth bell, again recast in 1782.  The bell that went to Grantham did not survive long. Another smaller bell was added in 1662. It may have been ended up being used to summon children to lessons in Bozon’s old chapel, which had become the schoolroom. When the new school was built in 1849, and the children departed, the bell seems to have gone with them and got lost.

In 1893, as part of the church’s major restoration, the five remaining bells were rehung at a cost of £200 by Taylors of Loughborough, who between 1995 and 1997 cast three new bells to augment the peal to eight, as part of the “Ringing in the Millennium” project, a nationwide £3M lottery grant co-ordinated by Lin Forbes of Clawson, who was awarded an honorary MBE for her efforts. These are the details:

Treble, John Taylor 1997
MAGISTER CAMPANORUM JOHN ADCOCK
5cwt 2qr 2lb
2nd, John Taylor 1997
IN MEMORIAM VITAE FRED ADCOCK – FLORENCE ADCOCK DEO GRATIAS
6cwt 0qr 10lb
3rd, John Taylor 1995
MEMORIAM VITAE ROSEMARY COX DEO GRATIAS
7cwt 1qr 16lb
4th, Let everything that hath breath praise the Lord. EDd. WRIGHT CHURCHWARDEN T.HEDDERLEY of NOTTINGHAM FECIT 1782
8cwt 0qr 11lb
previously Hugh Watts II CUM FONO FI NON VIS VENIRE NUMQUAM AD PECES CUPIES IRE: 1631
5th, Hugh Watts II
IH’S:NAZARENUS REX:IUDEORUM FILI:DEI  MISERERE:MEI 1631
9cwt 0qr 4lb
6th, Henry Oldfield II
All.men.that.heare.my.mournful.sound.repent.before.you.lie.in.ground.1608
9cwt 2qr 0lb
7th' Johannes de York c.1380 +ISTA|CAMPANA|FACTA|EST|IN|HONOR|SANCTA|TRINITATIS
14cwt 0qr 3lb
Tenor, I to the Church the living call and to the grave do summon all EDd. WRIGHT CHURCHWARDEN T.HEDDERLEY of NOTTINGHAM FECIT 1782
17cwt 1qr 12lb
previously Henry Oldfield II my.roaring.sound.doth.notice.give.that.men.cannot.heare.always.liveI.sweetly.tolling.men.do.call.to.taste.on.meat.that.feeds.the.soul.1608.

is by two-manual and pedal tracker action instrument by Alex Young and Sons of Manchester, in pitch pine with matching the pews but with figured panels. Youngs built many organs for chapels and churches across the country between 1880 and 1920. It is a good instrument of the right size for the church. The piano is a Broadwood rosewood-cased grand from c.1880, rescued from a roofless house and restored for the church around 2000. The pews, pulpit and choir stalls are all part of Dr Swain’s rebuilding, but the pews were oversupplied. The pulpit blocked the view of the sanctuary from many of the northern pews, and as matins-led preaching services declined in favour of the parish communion movement in the mid twentieth century, it was moved to one side and the front line of pews removed. The work done reflects the loss of skilled craftmanship at the time.  The pews at the back of the church were removed around 2005, returning that space to the openness of the medieval era, although the clutter of an active church inevitably accumulates. The chaplain designed the two mobile corner screens which hide the stacks of Howe 4-40 chairs purchased from an insolvent restaurant at £10 each instead of £200 each new. The stalls in the chancel are good examples of artisan country oakwork from the end of the Arts & Crafts period, given in 1932 in memory of J C Wilford who had been tenant and latterly owner of Old Manor Farm including the land for the Sandpit Lane cemetery, and churchwarden. The brass eagle lectern is by Hardmans of Birmingham, and a fine example but tedious to clean.

An octagonal font of early perpendicular style dating maybe from c.1330. It has alternating blind tracery to the stem and blank shields in quatrefoil to the sides of the bowl. It is nearly identical to one in Ropsley church east of Grantham; the manors of Clawson and Ropsley were held in common up to around that time. Both fonts have one blank side indicating that they on stood against the wall. The Ropsley example has a moulded top rail which also runs to only seven sides.

A plain pine table, but underneath is a small, neglected stone altar inscribed “DEO TRIUNE, OPTIMO MAXIMO, ALTARE HOC P ANNO MDCCXXXVII GULIELMUS TURVILE M A HUJUSQUE AEDIS VICARIUS IDEMQUE E PATRONIS”, in other words it was given by William Turvile in 1737 when he was both vicar and patron. He thus owned both the lay rector’s house, Old Manor House, which he repaired, and the vicarage which he substantially rebuilt.  Archdeacon Bickham found in the 1770s the stone altar being used as a school-desk and ordered that it should never again suffer such indignity and should forthwith be cleaned of ink-stains.

on the lectern, pulpit and altar are mainly mid-20th century work from Van Heims, but the fumed oak candlesticks with matching cross and the green altar frontal (used for about half the year) were made by the renowned Warham Guild (1912 to 1969), though the fringing and super frontal (top bit) have been recycled from elsewhere. The guild favoured whitewashed church interiors lifted by splendid vestments and hangings.