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Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends
A guide to the eccentric and rare objects, tales, and legends that lie hidden behind the doors of Britain's churches.
Why does Frensham Church contain a cauldron said to have belonged to fairies? What stories lurk behind Lincoln Cathedral's imp, Westminster Abbey's macabre royal effigies, and Salisbury Cathedral's 'boy bishop' statue? Why do Britain's churches contain dragon-slaying spears, monstrous cows' ribs, pagan Roman altars, reindeer horns, and archbishops' mummified skulls? David Castleton takes you on a journey through the fascinating world of lepers' squints, sanctuary knockers, virgins' garlands, and pancake bells, forever altering your view of Britain's churches and cathedrals.
Why does Frensham Church contain a cauldron said to have belonged to fairies? What stories lurk behind Lincoln Cathedral's imp, Westminster Abbey's macabre royal effigies, and Salisbury Cathedral's 'boy bishop' statue? Why do Britain's churches contain dragon-slaying spears, monstrous cows' ribs, pagan Roman altars, reindeer horns, and archbishops' mummified skulls? David Castleton takes you on a journey through the fascinating world of lepers' squints, sanctuary knockers, virgins' garlands, and pancake bells, forever altering your view of Britain's churches and cathedrals.
96 pages, Paperback
Published May 18, 2021
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
July 14, 2021
David Castleton's "Church Curiosities" was an extremely interesting foray into British churches and churchyards and the strange things found within. From Bronze Age standing stones (which I find particularly fascinating) to Medieval mummified and saved body parts, to Early Modern funeral effigies, to dragon-slaying lances and spires and rocks that show the devil's marks, there was much information in this short, 110 page, highly readable book.
Aside from the rather abrupt ending, this was a very informative, easy to read, and obviously well researched narrative. I do wish I'd bought the paperback over the kindle edition, as the book also has pretty interesting photos which would have been better to see on a paper surface.
Highly recommend, especially if you are venturing around UK or researching the area. 5 stars.
Aside from the rather abrupt ending, this was a very informative, easy to read, and obviously well researched narrative. I do wish I'd bought the paperback over the kindle edition, as the book also has pretty interesting photos which would have been better to see on a paper surface.
Highly recommend, especially if you are venturing around UK or researching the area. 5 stars.
January 13, 2025
I got this book on my last trip to London when I was visiting Karl Marx's grave and bringing back books with history from other countries is my favorite souvenir.
Without a doubt, it is a fascinating book where you manage to connect and delve into the history of Great Britain through bizarre and strange objects. With that exquisite humor that English people have and through good investigative work, it is a book that captivates you from beginning to end, especially if you are interested in History.
Without a doubt, it is a fascinating book where you manage to connect and delve into the history of Great Britain through bizarre and strange objects. With that exquisite humor that English people have and through good investigative work, it is a book that captivates you from beginning to end, especially if you are interested in History.
October 10, 2023
This book review was written The Folklore Podcast and can be found here.
My interview with the ever insightful David Castleton can be found here.
According to the English Church Census of 2005 there are 37,501 churches scattered throughout the whole of England. It is a remarkably high number, considering how small the island is. Travel for any good amount of time and you will likely encounter a church, or a building that once was one. Many of them are ancient and mysterious buildings, rife with folkloric practices that stretch back to the Georgian, Elizabethan, or Roman times. Occasionally that past goes even deeper, into the more mythic Pagan days of the British past. It is precisely those unusually murky waters that David Castleton dives into in his slim book Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends.
Castleton challenges the reader to consider just how well they know the churches within their vicinity. That church right down the street might contain Viking Runes or ancient Ogham carvings upon its walls. Perhaps it even contains one of the enigmatic Sheela-na-gigs - effigies of a woman with her legs spread wide that may be meant to encourage fertility, frighten away demons, simply frighten later church-goers against falling to the sin of lust? There are churches with stone circles, remains of meteorites, skulls, and the graves of dead heroes that all hearken back to a time before Christinity became the predominantly practiced religion. Echoes are even to be seen in church placements - many are thought to have been erected purposefully in formerly sacred groves. And what of some of the traditions still practiced in modern times, such as the enigmatic reindeer dance wherein six men take up reindeer antlers from 1045 and perform a weaving dance with them, alongside a cross-dressing Maid Marion and an archer? Is this an echo of the worship of the horned god, or something else?
Each chapter focuses upon a different set of curiosities, ranging from “Legendary Skulls, Strange Remains, and Weird Repositories” to “Holy Wells, Sacred Eels, and Saints’ Skulls”. Littered throughout the chapters are beautiful color photographs of some of the items described within the text. The pictures alone are worth leafing through the book - high quality and detailed, you can almost smell the moss upon the damp church stones. It was a joy to look through these pictures at a time when travel is near impossible.
Castleton does not focus merely upon the popular locales, either. He has a keen eye for describing the more eccentric practices and items found in England’s rural areas. He pays close attention to accurately discussing these obscure folkloric practices and beliefs and never shies away from admitting when the origin of something is truly unknown. Nor does he shy away from admitting when the ash upon a door-frame might just be from a candle rather than the devil’s framing death, or when beloved Greyfriars Bobby might never have actually existed at all.
The book does double-duty as a fascinating travel guide, thanks to the Places to Visit section in the back. The further reading, likewise, piqued my interest, as it contained books covering more rural English folklore as well as guides to understanding the symbology of church architecture itself. For anyone curious to learn more about Britain’s Churches I think this would prove to be a valuable and fascinating read. At the very least, the stories should delight and amuse, and the pictures evoke a keen nostalgia for places one might have never been.
My interview with the ever insightful David Castleton can be found here.
According to the English Church Census of 2005 there are 37,501 churches scattered throughout the whole of England. It is a remarkably high number, considering how small the island is. Travel for any good amount of time and you will likely encounter a church, or a building that once was one. Many of them are ancient and mysterious buildings, rife with folkloric practices that stretch back to the Georgian, Elizabethan, or Roman times. Occasionally that past goes even deeper, into the more mythic Pagan days of the British past. It is precisely those unusually murky waters that David Castleton dives into in his slim book Church Curiosities: Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends.
Castleton challenges the reader to consider just how well they know the churches within their vicinity. That church right down the street might contain Viking Runes or ancient Ogham carvings upon its walls. Perhaps it even contains one of the enigmatic Sheela-na-gigs - effigies of a woman with her legs spread wide that may be meant to encourage fertility, frighten away demons, simply frighten later church-goers against falling to the sin of lust? There are churches with stone circles, remains of meteorites, skulls, and the graves of dead heroes that all hearken back to a time before Christinity became the predominantly practiced religion. Echoes are even to be seen in church placements - many are thought to have been erected purposefully in formerly sacred groves. And what of some of the traditions still practiced in modern times, such as the enigmatic reindeer dance wherein six men take up reindeer antlers from 1045 and perform a weaving dance with them, alongside a cross-dressing Maid Marion and an archer? Is this an echo of the worship of the horned god, or something else?
Each chapter focuses upon a different set of curiosities, ranging from “Legendary Skulls, Strange Remains, and Weird Repositories” to “Holy Wells, Sacred Eels, and Saints’ Skulls”. Littered throughout the chapters are beautiful color photographs of some of the items described within the text. The pictures alone are worth leafing through the book - high quality and detailed, you can almost smell the moss upon the damp church stones. It was a joy to look through these pictures at a time when travel is near impossible.
Castleton does not focus merely upon the popular locales, either. He has a keen eye for describing the more eccentric practices and items found in England’s rural areas. He pays close attention to accurately discussing these obscure folkloric practices and beliefs and never shies away from admitting when the origin of something is truly unknown. Nor does he shy away from admitting when the ash upon a door-frame might just be from a candle rather than the devil’s framing death, or when beloved Greyfriars Bobby might never have actually existed at all.
The book does double-duty as a fascinating travel guide, thanks to the Places to Visit section in the back. The further reading, likewise, piqued my interest, as it contained books covering more rural English folklore as well as guides to understanding the symbology of church architecture itself. For anyone curious to learn more about Britain’s Churches I think this would prove to be a valuable and fascinating read. At the very least, the stories should delight and amuse, and the pictures evoke a keen nostalgia for places one might have never been.
May 26, 2021
Interesting tidbits of information, with a nice touch of humour in the observations around them, but the brevity of details feel like this would have been a better book if written in short "chunks" enabling a reader to open and dip.
April 4, 2021
Church
This is a wonderful book if, like me, you are a dedicated church crawler. You never know what you might find in an ancient church and if you’re intrigued by the unusual and strange objects and symbols that can be found there then this book is for you.
It’s designed as an introduction to the curiosities that have been part of churches and cathedrals since their creation and possibly even earlier than that. They are part of the history of Great Britain: its beliefs, the pagan intertwined with the Christian and the sacred iconography which we may have lost.
The churchyards are also full of fascinating tales waiting to be told again. Under the patterns of lichen lie epitaphs to people with interesting lives and deaths. For example, Hannah Twynnoy, who was the first person in England to be killed by a tiger in 1703. She teased the animal when a travelling menagerie set up in the grounds of her tavern. The tiger obviously didn’t find it so amusing and so she lies forever ‘in clay’ as the epitaph states.
I used to live near the oldest lych gate in England which appears in the book. It dates back to the 13th century and is located in a suburb of South East London.
The book has 7 chapters which feature standing stones and pagan altars, legendary skulls and strange remains, giants graves and odd epitaphs, mysterious crypts and secret tunnels, holy wells and saints skulls, odd artefacts and strange ceremonies and finally an emporium of oddities.
In the introduction, the author says that ‘as a fiction writer, and as a blogger, his work draws heavily on legends and peculiarities of the British landscape. I’ve been constantly surprised by just how weird so much of my country’s heritage is. And much of that eccentric inheritance is found within churches and churchyards.’ I would have to agree as I see these places as repositories of a community’s history with their own individual objects and mementos. He shares his passion for seeking out these bizarre and curious artefacts. After all, it’s not everyday that you find a saint’s skull being used as a drinking cup and a hidden imp in a cathedral that no -one knew was there until a drone filmed it.
He also discusses the pagan survivals in churches such as standings stones incorporated into churchyard walls and churchyards as at Rudston, churches built inside henges and Roman altars turned into fonts. There’s also men buried inside pyramids and holy wells amongst many others. There’s a well in Oxfordshire at St Margaret’s, Binsey which may have been the inspiration for the Treacle well in Alice’s Adventures Underground.
This is a book that will make you want to get out and explore churches as soon as we are able to and see these treasures in person. After all, who knows what’s behind a church door?
It’s written in a knowledgeable and accessible by someone who knows his subject well. At the end of the book there is a useful section on future reading and places to visit.
This is a wonderful book if, like me, you are a dedicated church crawler. You never know what you might find in an ancient church and if you’re intrigued by the unusual and strange objects and symbols that can be found there then this book is for you.
It’s designed as an introduction to the curiosities that have been part of churches and cathedrals since their creation and possibly even earlier than that. They are part of the history of Great Britain: its beliefs, the pagan intertwined with the Christian and the sacred iconography which we may have lost.
The churchyards are also full of fascinating tales waiting to be told again. Under the patterns of lichen lie epitaphs to people with interesting lives and deaths. For example, Hannah Twynnoy, who was the first person in England to be killed by a tiger in 1703. She teased the animal when a travelling menagerie set up in the grounds of her tavern. The tiger obviously didn’t find it so amusing and so she lies forever ‘in clay’ as the epitaph states.
I used to live near the oldest lych gate in England which appears in the book. It dates back to the 13th century and is located in a suburb of South East London.
The book has 7 chapters which feature standing stones and pagan altars, legendary skulls and strange remains, giants graves and odd epitaphs, mysterious crypts and secret tunnels, holy wells and saints skulls, odd artefacts and strange ceremonies and finally an emporium of oddities.
In the introduction, the author says that ‘as a fiction writer, and as a blogger, his work draws heavily on legends and peculiarities of the British landscape. I’ve been constantly surprised by just how weird so much of my country’s heritage is. And much of that eccentric inheritance is found within churches and churchyards.’ I would have to agree as I see these places as repositories of a community’s history with their own individual objects and mementos. He shares his passion for seeking out these bizarre and curious artefacts. After all, it’s not everyday that you find a saint’s skull being used as a drinking cup and a hidden imp in a cathedral that no -one knew was there until a drone filmed it.
He also discusses the pagan survivals in churches such as standings stones incorporated into churchyard walls and churchyards as at Rudston, churches built inside henges and Roman altars turned into fonts. There’s also men buried inside pyramids and holy wells amongst many others. There’s a well in Oxfordshire at St Margaret’s, Binsey which may have been the inspiration for the Treacle well in Alice’s Adventures Underground.
This is a book that will make you want to get out and explore churches as soon as we are able to and see these treasures in person. After all, who knows what’s behind a church door?
It’s written in a knowledgeable and accessible by someone who knows his subject well. At the end of the book there is a useful section on future reading and places to visit.
May 14, 2022
A slim volume with lots of interesting highlights and tidbits of folklore, ancient people, architecture, and human oddity. Nothing too detailed but plenty of crumbs to follow if one were inclined to delve deeper.
January 2, 2023
“Here are some facts.” A souvenir-shop coffee table book in miniature — reads like a 90-page-long Wikipedia article (in fact it did send me to WP multiple times to read further about this or that). Pleasantly interesting but certainly no deeper meaning to be searched out or found.
August 18, 2023
I love churches and church grounds, despite not being a Christian. This book gives some fascinating insights into many of the strange and curious tales, folklore and objects. Good pictures to accompany the writing- I would have liked more and some more details for some of the aspects described.
May 29, 2025
Thoroughly enjoyable. Castleton mixes a variety of topics from pagan artifacts to folklore in a way that gives the reader a look into the quirky, fun side of Christianity in the UK. It was worth reading to learn about the existence of sheela na gigs alone.
December 13, 2022
Interesting book about churches in the UK. Some are very old and some things had pagan roots. So many curiosities described here.
May 14, 2023
Really interesting and chock a block full of information.
And it talks about the church cats.
And it talks about the church cats.
February 16, 2024
3.75 stars. Could have used more photographic examples.
June 28, 2025
Fun book I picked up at Winchester Cathedral earlier this month. Lots of weird and interesting facts about churches and their stuff.
May 18, 2021
There are some interesting aspects I find useful from Church curiosities-Strange Objects and Bizarre Legends, such as the pagan rituals still followed at certain times of the year in some parts of England such as the Horn Dance celebrated in Staffordshire in September, or the ritual involving the reading of a rhyme takes places at Easter in Lincolnshire. I also find fascinating the Vampire graves and legends of objects related to fairies and witches. For those who like me like investigating for educational purposes or for their own writings, this book is a great starting point. This is the kind of book I would also use in my English as a Second Language lessons.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews