February 2014 – Edition 107

Another visit to the homeland with Ray as our tour guide. Enjoy.

This is the story of a fascinating church which has a “Jerrems” connection. Regardless of whether you are a church enthusiast I think you should find it interesting.

St Botolph’s Church is in Boston, 35 miles/57 km to the south east of Lincoln, near the east coast of England.

It has a significant connection with the Gainsborough branch of the Jerrems family because:

(a) My great great great great grandfather George Jepson was the minister at the Church in the early 1800s, and
(b) Big Bill’s daughter Elizabeth married William Small (who had been baptised in the Church and grew up in Boston) there in 1833 and their three children were also baptised there.

Boston, which dates back to Roman times, is in the County of Lincolnshire and is located near the mouth of the River Witham on the east coast of England. The river runs into The Wash, a huge deep bay.

The surrounding land was formerly a mosaic of marshes, swamps and lakes (known as fenland) until they were finally drained or filled during the 18th and 19th centuries.

The Wash forms an integral part of the story of Boston and the Church. When I saw the The Wash on a map it rang a bell, then I remembered that it was where King John lost his Crown jewels in the 1200s.

As a young schoolboy I thought that the jewels had fallen out of the king’s pocket into the washing tub (my mother used to refer to putting dirty clothes in “the wash”). However the more likely (and accepted) version is that his luggage cart was caught by the fast incoming tide when it was crossing a causeway bordering “The Wash”.

The bay is very shallow in places with marshlands and mudflats, and is now protected as a bird sanctuary. (see photo.)

My further research revealed that the word “Wash” is probably an anglicised Flemish word and has nothing to do with a laundry.

A peculiarity of The wash is that it produces a high range of tidal influence. The tides can reach a height of 13 feet (four metres) by the time they cross The Wash in a westerly direction and reach the mouth of the River Witham. This is due to the funnelling effect of The Wash.

The result for Boston is that when the tide reaches the mouth of the river it rushes up the river in what is known as a “bore”. The high tidal difference can be seen in the photo below. Before the river was deepened and canalised centuries later only shallow draft boats could reach Boston, and they could only do this after the tide had come through. When the water level dropped they were stranded until the next tide arrived.

At last, now I can tell you about the Church itself.It was named after Botolph, Botulph or Botulf (d. c. 680), an English abbott and saint. He is the patron saint of travellers and the various aspects of farming.

It is a large Church. The church is one of the largest parish churches in England. In fact it is claimed that until the 1700s it had the highest roof of any building in the world.

The church tower, irreverently known as “The Boston Stump” is 272 feet high (almost as high as the Statue of Liberty) and is the highest “non cathedral” church tower in the world.

Replacing an earlier Norman church, construction of the present building commenced in 1309 at the east end and was completed by 1390 apart from the tower. Tower construction was started between 1425 and 1430 but was not completed until between 1510 and 1520.

When work began on the church in 1309, the southern Lincolnshire port town was among the busiest and wealthiest commercial towns in England. Every year, the finest wool in Europe from the backs of 3 million sheep passed through the port to the Continent. The town’s burghers and guilds were determined to design a church fitting their provincial importance.

By the time the church was completed in 1390, however, Boston’s fortunes had changed. The evolution of larger ships requiring deeper water and larger ports. in addition to a shallow silting river were unhappily rendering the proud town a backwater. No doubt the expected growth in the town’s population had not eventuated. Nonetheless, Boston would have its statement to the world. In 1425 work began on the church tower that would take another 90 years to complete.

Although Boston was the major town in the area, its population was only 5,926 in 1801, making it likely that its population was less than this in the 1300s and 1400s.

The church had an amazingly sophisticated design for a church commenced in the early 1300s, compared with the usual box shaped construction for churches. This raises the probability that it was designed by a person familiar with the designing of cathedrals.

The complexity of the design is illustrated by the many dimensions of the church that correspond with dates in the calendar. The roof is supported by 12 pillars (months), the church is illuminated by 52 windows (weeks), 7 doors (days of the week) and there is a total of 365 steps to the top of the tower (days of the year). There are also further statistical links with 24 steps to the library (hours in the day) and 60 steps to the roof (minutes and seconds).

All of this sounds like a numerologist’s dream.

The Church tower

The tower has an octagonal lantern on top which it has been assumed was a guide to mariners, an interesting combination of Church and lighthouse.

It features a walkway roughly at two thirds of the height of the tower that encircles the edges giving great views to  the Wash in the east and towards Lincoln in the west. Reached by 209 steps, this also provides access to the upper tower level and an array of bells. (see photo)

Why was the tower so high?

There must have been a strong reason for the tower to be constructed to such a height, and for the lantern to be placed on top. A steeple would have been far cheaper and simpler to build, and equally as close to God (often given as the explanation for putting steeples on churches).

It has been assumed that the tower was designed to be a lighthouse. This is supported by my research on lighthouses, but you will have to wait for a later Journal to hear about this.

The tower is very unusual from the aspect that it is more than 3 times higher than the church itself. It is prominent against the surrounding plains,

As I observed in an earlier Journal, the tower was used by Allied airmen returning from sorties over Europe as a navigational feature during the Second World War (on the downside, the Luftwaffe also found it useful for navigation.

Meanwhile I will leave you to wonder whether the church itself, which could seat at least one eighth of the town’s population in one sitting, had become somewhat of a white elephant.