Our series of intermittent articles on Peakland churches is now almost complete. Sadly, since we began some years ago, many churches now have to be kept locked but on a recent weekend I was fortunate in finding Ilam Church open to visitors.

Saxon, Norman, Early English and Decorated styles are evident here, with the hefty stone font a wonderful example of Saxon workmanship. The Lamb of God and several human figures are carved around its sides, one pair with linked hands, while mythical beasts with talons and long necks are in the act of devouring human heads. Shafts of 10th-century crosses stand in the churchyard.

The church underwent restoration in 1618 and again in 1854, some 30 years after the addition of an octagonal mausoleum on the north side. The mausoleum with its marble floor is a chantry chapel containing a life-sized statuary group by Sir Francis Chantry (Peak Advertiser 14 February 1994). Carved from pure white marble, the figures depict David Pike Watts on his death-bed, bidding a last farewell to his grieving daughter and her three children. The Watts Russell family lived at Ilam Hall and their family arms are carved into the vaulted ceiling of the chapel. Stone angels look down on Chantry's masterpiece, which is illuminated by natural daylight streaming through ‘bubble’ panes of clear glass windows.

South of the chancel is the Chapel of St Bertram, whose tomb it contains. Bertram is reputed to have been the son of an 8th-century Mercian king. As a young man he travelled to Ireland, where he eloped with and married a beautiful princess, returning with her to Mercia. Towards the end of their journey the couple had to take shelter in a forest, where a child was born to them. Bertram set off to seek help but while he was gone his wife and baby were attacked and killed by wolves. So great was his grief that Bertram renounced his royal heritage, spending the rest of his life in prayer and meditation in these wild surroundings. Many people were converted to Christianity by the example of his holy life and goodness. After his death his tomb became a place of pilgrimage, with claims of many miraculous cures.

Carved over the external doorway of St Bertram's Chapel, above a pair of weathered stone heads, are three sets of initials: RM, RP and NH. They represent Richard Meverell, Robert Port and Nicholas Hurt, respectively squires of Throwley, Ilam and Castern and jointly responsible for rebuilding St Bertram's Chapel in 1618. Two imposing Meverell tombs can be seen inside the chapel; one a chest tomb bearing the effigies of Robert Meverill and his wife in early 17th-century dress, the other a wall monument showing their daughter kneeling in prayer, her four children lined up behind her.

Here too are many monuments to the Port family, including the burial slabs of a little boy who died in 1801 and another naming the Revd Bernard Port, a former vicar who died in 1854.

St Bertram's Shrine The reason for the existence of St Bertram's Chapel is the ancient stone tomb of this little-known saint, still visited as a shrine. The flat top of the tomb is spread with hand-written prayers on cards provided for the purpose. Some give thanks, most ask for help. A Royal Engineer remembers mates lost in the Falklands while giving thanks that he ‘came through it’. Prayers of other visitors turn to a twin sister, a newly bereaved widower, ‘all the children in the world’, and a plea to be blessed with the gift of a baby. Children's handwriting is seen in prayers for a missing daddy, a cat recovering from an operation and a message to a grandad from ‘his Princess’.

Hanging above the entrance to the chapel are two Maiden's Garlands or Virgin Crants. There is no inscription to tell their age, nor the names of those they commemorate, but such decorative paper wreaths were made by friends and family of a deceased, unmarried and often young woman. The garland would have been carried at her funeral and afterwards hung above her pew. This custom largely died out about 200 years ago.

A number of unusual wall monuments in the church take the form of Victorian encaustic tiles, commemorating, for example, the wife of a former vicar and a young man who belonged to the church choir. The reredos too is tiled, and stained glass windows add their rich hues to a general colour scheme of deep reds, greens and gold. The beautiful east window shows some of the Stations of the Cross. Brightly polished brass decorates a lovingly maintained wrought iron chancel screen, topped with a pretty row of painted poppies, fat berries and heads of corn.

Amongst the Port family monuments in the chancel is that of Robert Port, referred to earlier, who died in 1649. His memorial inscription was composed by Charles Cotton of Beresford Hall, poet and devoted fishing companion to Izaak Walton. A mid-19th-century double monument to John and Bernard Port contains slender pillars of polished, heavily fossilised limestone, closely resembling similar pillars in the marble pulpit and all presumably of local origin and workmanship.

Time seems to have moved slowly in this lovely country church. Whilst a presumed Saxon south doorway has been blocked in, the north door - rather unusually in the Peak - has not, and although electric lighting was installed half a century ago, the old candle scones are still in place. Nevertheless, the peal of five bells, after almost 30 years' silence, was restored in time to take the Church of the Holy Cross into a new millennium for the second time in its long history.

© Julie Bunting
From "The Peak Advertiser", 3rd November 2003.