Saturday, May 26, 2012

St Wistan's, Wistow


Two years ago I was at Wistanstow in Shropshire, one of the candidate sites for the martyrdom of St Wystan and the subsequent miraculous growth of golden hair from his first resting place (his remains were later taken to Repton in Derbyshire).

But Wistow in Leicestershire has the strongest claim to be the site - when the Church appointed a commission to investigate the claimed miracle, its members all came from the East Midlands - and that is where I was today.

St Wistan's, Wistow, has Norman fabric but a pleasing Georgian interior, complete with box pews and plain glass. No burials have taken place in the churchyard since 1873 because of the risk of flooding from the neighbouring River Sence. And the grass had just been mown, so the lad would have got a short back and sides if he had tried any recent miracles.

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