Midsomer Norton Knight

Returning a medieval knight

to his rightful home

The Midsomer Norton Knight is a very rare 13^th or 14th century tomb effigy carving that the Society is working to have returned to its rightful home in St John the Baptist Church.

Possibly representing a member of the Gourney or Warknell family who held lands in Midsomer Norton after the conquest, the tomb on which the effigy lay was demolished when the church was remodelled in the 18^th century and the poor knight ended up in the vicarage garden. He was then used at lent to depict Judas and thereafter became labelled as the Jack o’ Lent and Nortonians threw eggs and rocks at him – resulting in his poor state of preservation today.

Then in December 1975, whilst research was being done for a local inn sign, David Fisher was shown the effigy. It was the then sexton who produced the carving out of some plastic fertiliser bags in the church tower.

The resulting publicity surrounding the knight resulted in him being taken to Bristol Museum for analysis. And there he has stayed until recently when the Museum has agreed to return him, provided we can raise the funds to buy a humidity controlled display case.

An article from the Somerset Archaeological Society (1916 vol. LXII) states:

"The effigy at Midsomer Norton is the only wooden figure we possess in this series of chain-mail knights, and it is probable that it was made in the workshops in Bristol... We can picture the medieval artist selecting a piece of oak, sound at the heart, in good condition, and sufficiently wide for him to carve the figure of a knight in armour lying on a board or bed. The portion of the board with the effigy on it, as well as the cushions on which the head rested, and the animal at the feet, were hollowed out and filled with charcoal to absorb the moisture. Having carved the figure and fastened with wooden pins such parts as lay beyond the size of the block it was ready for decoration. The effigy would then be sized and pieces of linen would be glued over the cracks and irregularities. The decorator would then give the figure a thin coat of so called gresso, with a still thicker coating for those portions he desired to be gilded or silvered. Before the gresso hardened, the decorator impressed it with various matrices or stamps of diverse patterns; some for mail of various sizes and others for decorative purposes. To give depth or richness to the gold or silver leaf, they were first treated with bole Armenian applied with white or egg, or left dead or burnished with an agate. All the painting of the effigy was done in distemper (tempera). Finally the figure was covered with a coat of tinted or oleaginous varnish, which was needful but alas! it did not prove to be a sufficient protection. The reason of the failure of the painting upon wooden effigies was the constant changes of temperature causing contraction and expansion of the wood, and the consequent fretting of the surface on which the colouring was laid. This mutilated fragment of a wooden effigy at Midsomer Norton was once a beautiful work of art, for the Bristol imagers were skilled in the work they produced, and it is probable that our English effigies in wood are some of the finest existing in Europe".

We have formed a “Midsomer Norton Knight” project team with members drawn from the church and Radstock Museum to see what can be done to bring what can only be described as the “Elgin Marbles of Midsomer Norton” home.