The Lives of Somerset churches – St Catherine’s, Swell

There is something symbolic about arriving at Swell. I turn off the main A372 that follows a ridge running east to west. A wooden sign points off the road labelled “Ancient Church” in Old English font. Once off the road a lane dips down into the valley between tall hedges which gives the impression it’s disappearing into the land. Laid out before me, the rolling hills of Somerset are a rich green. Ahead is the perfectly rounded hill of Burrow Hill with its solitary sycamore tree and to the right the Blackdown Hills stretching west towards Devon.

This landscape is ancient. There is something mythical or mystical about it, especially on a spring morning when the valley is veiled in mist and church towers and trees and hills seem to float in the valley like islands on a lake. As the lane drops and the way behind me is swallowed by the hedges it feels as if I’m travelling back in time. After Swell the lane leads down to the Levels, the flat lands of south Somerset that from time immemorial have flooded, leaving villages as isolated places in this temporary sea. The names of the villages a few miles down this lane attest to this: Isle Abbotts and Isle Brewers often get cut off by flooding, the church of Isle Abbotts often surrounded by water when seen from the main road. A mile from the main road another wooden sign points off the lane to Swell Court, a large manor house with its own farm and amongst various barns hidden away between the court and the farm is the tiny church of St Catherine’s.

Swell Court and St Catherine’s Church

St Catherine’s has no tower and sits in its own small graveyard with only a few graves and a magnificent cherry tree that blossoms every March and April creating a bright canopy of white flowers over the path that leads to the front door. The church dates from around 1450 and was most likely built on the site of an earlier Norman church. St Catherine’s was closed in 1910 and then reopened for worship in 1925. It was also closed in 1957 for a year for restoration work. Swell, which is said to take its name from being built on a swell in the land has 16 houses.

Swell Church is a place that has always exerted a strange power on my imagination. It keeps on pulling me back. And other people I speak to seem to agree. My neighbour, Jo, in the nearby village of Curry Rivel, isn’t a worshipper but certainly a “church-crawler” (to use John Betjeman’s term about himself exploring churches). She writes her own Facebook blog about visiting local sites called The Wessex Wanderer. When I told her I’d just paid another visit to St Catherine’s she said: “There’s just something about it isn’t there?”

Sometimes it’s difficult to put into words what that “something” is. Some people might call it spiritual, or special, or say it has an aura. Whenever I visit I look in the St Catherine’s visitors’ book to read other people’s reactions:

Examples are, “So restful, so needed in the chaotic world we live in today”, “So peaceful, almost a monastic quality”, “Beautiful, prayerful simplicity”.

If that book went back hundreds of years I expect there would be many more similar comments.

Next to the visitors book is a copy of Simon Jenkins’ England’s Thousand Best Churches permanently open on the page for Swell. Jenkins’ description concludes: “This is not a great Somerset church, more a place for quiet contemplation.”

A copy of England’s Thousand Best Churches and The Swell Visitors book

I arrive under the cherry tree’s canopy and through the 12th century doorway which has a lattice-style Arabesque carved decoration over the arch. The nave has flagstone floors and four worn pews each side of the aisle in front of the door and 3 sets each side behind the door. There are a few extra chairs should they be needed.There are several gas heaters placed at random. In the middle is the locally made Hamstone font also from the 12th century. A couple of Tannoy speakers and a reading lamp are the only other modern accessories. There are two big iron candelabras with 12 candles hanging from the ceiling. 

The vestry is just a curtained off corner of the south west corner. Inside are a few fold up chairs, a coat hanger for robes and a mirror. There are also some prayer books and a spare gas canister.

In the chancel is one pew facing south towards a small box organ. The altar, like everything else, is simple and undecorated. There is very little stained glass in the east window apart from an angel holding the coat of arms of Beauchamp of Hatch – a local baronry that can be traced back to the Norman Conquest – and two fantastical beasts looking out with their mouths open. The other windows are also frugal in their decoration with the odd pane coloured but otherwise clear.

There is no electricity here although a cable can be attached to power in a nearby barn if needed. It seldom is. Winter evensong and the annual carol service are conducted by candlelight. With the wind scything across the levels on a winter’s evening and buffeting the cherry tree outside and the monastic glow of candles inside it is difficult not to feel a sense of being connected to the past.

This place has always drawn me as a sanctuary. I have come here to remember my father, to shelter from the weather when walking or just to feel a sense of calm. Although raised in the Church of England I lapsed in my twenties but still find myself coming back again and again to certain religious places, perhaps looking for that special something.

I am here to meet some of the people who are devoted to St Catherine’s and without whom the church simply wouldn’t continue as a working place of worship. The door is open and while we talk the sound of birdsong and wind in the trees floats in and mingles with our voices. Anna Rees is among the regular churchgoers and also volunteers who help with the upkeep of the church. Anna is the church warden. “People love it here. It’s so special. There aren’t many churches quite so simple – it has its own spirituality”, adding “It’s never locked.”

The nave at St Catherine’s

As we are talking, a man walks in. Derek Bryant is 90 and lives locally. He has come to tidy his wife’s and sister-in-law’s graves. He doesn’t want to join us but before he goes he says “Although I’m not a churchgoer there’s something special here. I don’t know if you sense it but when I come here and sit out at the front there’s a tranquility and peacefulness. I like to think that it’s centuries of use of this lovely little church by the local population. It has an effect on me.”

I ask him to explain what that effect is.

“Our lives are built on the lives of countless others before – what they’ve left, what we’ve learned from them and we’re in the same process of handing that on.” Derek talks about the “symbolism” of the church as being a link to the past and adds “It’s part of our history and part of our future. If we hand nothing else on to our children it should be that sense of continuity.”

And with that he was gone to tend his wife’s grave.

With Derek’s words somehow still held in the coolness of the air and surrounded by the old walls I wonder about the future of St Catherine’s.

Anna says there is still room for places like St Catherine’s because “spirituality, the unknown, dreams are in us all”.

In Peter Ross’s excellent book about churches Steeple Chasing – Around Britain by Church, Ross quotes John Betjeman in his 1970s documentary A Passion for Churches as describing churches as a “place to think of when the world seems mad with too much speed and noise”. I can think of no better place to embody that idea than Swell. It is a place that on arriving engenders a sense of peace and seems to ask us to forget about our usual frantic lives. Its position down in the valley surrounded by fields and farm buildings seem to encourage this. It is itself hidden away and asks us to do the same, to escape, even just for a moment. I wonder at the worshippers and visitors who must have felt that same sense of peace and place going back almost a thousand years and wonder if it will continue to be, in Derek’s words, part of our future.

The churchyard of st Catherine’s