As we drove back to Wotton from Fairford in the car I tried to explain it to the kids as follows: "In the 15th. century," (I actually said "in the olden days") "people didn't have Tom and Jerry cartoons, they didn't have cinemas or television, they didn't have comic books or radios or compact discs or any of that stuff."
"It must have been really borin'" piped up Douglas.
"Well, they sang songs, and told stories, and had lots of holy days and fairs and plays... "
"That's where the word holi-day comes from," Jan added.
"... and most of them didn't even have books" I added, "so if you wanted to look at pictures, you went to the church to see the stained glass".
This did not impress the kids one little bit. A 30 foot-high depiction of the Last Judgement showing Christ raising the quick and the dead and the Devil claiming his own is small change compared with Tom and Jerry. There is the point however that pre-Reformation stained glass (and much of the fancy work on early churches) was not primarily decorative. This is what surprised me most about Fairford - I was accustomed to decorative stained glass and I'd gone expecting decoration and found something with the colour, narrative and vividness of a Superman comic, justifying the title "the poor man's Bible".
The church of St. Mary's in Fairford is unique in the British Isles in possessing an almost-complete set of 15th. century stained-glass windows. Most parish churches have none, some have small scraps. The reason for this is that England went through two phases of window-smashing. The first was the Reformation, when King Henry VIII lost his temper with the Pope and in a fit of pique closed down all the Abbeys, instructing his commissioners to treat the abbey buildings as vertical quarries of ready-cut stone. The second period of iconoclasm was the Commonwealth, when folks dressed in black, wore white shirts with floppy collars, pricked suspect witches with long needles, called their daughters Faith, Hope, and Charity (not to mention Chastity, Prudence, Piety and sweet Simplicity), and stabled horses in heathen and idolatrous churches.
The stained glass windows of St. Mary's, the only example in the British Isles, survived - clearly not a town of Puritans (who knows what the daughters of Fairford were called - Jezebel, Lucretia and Scarlett perhaps). These windows are not amateur daubings either - they are believed to be the work of Barnard Flower, Master Glazier to King Henry VI and constructed c. 1500, a decade after Christopher Columbus set sail for the West Indies. There are 28 windows and they provide a pictorial and often narrative summary of the history and beliefs of the Church.
The church of St. Mary's is a classic Cotswold 'wool church', built sometime around 1497 by the Tames, a family of wool merchants. It is similar in many respects to other outstanding examples of the 'Perpendicular' style in Chipping Campden and Northleach. Fairford town centre itself is built around a large market square and is entirely unspoiled. It is quiet and uncommercial (at least, it is when the nearby international air show isn't happening ...).
One of the most attractive single views in the whole of the Cotswolds has to be the mill pond at Fairford. It is easily missed, located on the River Coln to the north-east of the town. The pond has a bizarre eco-system of ducks and monster trout ... there is a moment of cognitive dissonance when, leaning over the railings of the bridge over the Coln, one realises that the traditional English millpond is populated like a tributary of the Amazon. The trout are escapees from the trout farm in nearby Bibury, and they are so large as to make one wonder how any duckling could reach maturity. The large pond is fed from several sources and is set against a backdrop of specimen trees in Fairford Park, and an excellent view of St. Mary's.
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A fine terrace of rubblestone and timber-frame houses close to the market
square, Fairford.
The church of St. Mary's, Fairford.
The tower of St. Mary's. As in most English churches, statues of saints
once filled the niches, but they were destroyed during anti-idolatrous purges (typically
during the Reformation of Henry VIII or the Commonwealth of Oliver Cromwell). It is odd
that the statuary has gone but the glass remains.
The millpond to the north-west of Fairford on the River Coln. Even in the
fading sunlight of an early spring day it is a beautiful scene.
St. Mary's seen from the bridge over the Coln at the millpond.
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The yearly Fairford International Air Show draws large numbers of visitors, and if aeroplanes are not your thing, you would be well to check on the dates as accommodation in the area becomes an issue at this time.
Fairford is about four miles from the Cotswold tourist magnet of Bibury You should also check out nearby Quenington and Coln St. Aldwyns.
Fairford is about seven miles from Cirencester and similarly from Burford.
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East End House is a luxury family run bed-and-breakfast, an elegant 17th Century self-catering cottage, and a business meeting location in Fairford.
Return to the Cotswold HyperGuide Town Index
Copyright Digital Brilliance 1995