St Botolph's Church, Botolphs

Cultural refreshment on the Old Way pilgrimage route to Canterbury

Highlights

• Fragment of Botolph’s portrait
• Saxon wall paintings

The merest glimpse of St Botolph, England’s most elusive missionary, is reason enough to visit this picturesque Saxon church. A fragment of a wall painting showing the outline of a churchman with his staff is as close as we can get to visualising the enigmatic 7th-century abbot. The wall paintings are among England’s oldest surviving images, probably dating from Saxon times. They are on the chancel arch – part of the original church structure that dates from around 950. All that survives of St Botolph’s portrait is a silhouette against a red background. He is wearing some sort of cloak or vestment, faint traces of colour delineating the fabric.

The church guide says this and the other paintings are too fragmentary to be worth restoring. It is hard to disagree, although there is plaster obscuring some other sections of the original wall surface. One day someone might persevere here, not least because so few examples of Saxon wall painting survive in England.

It is thought that the church was originally dedicated to St Botolph when it was built in 950. After the Norman Conquest, the church was rededicated to St Peter, presumably because the Normans thought St Botolph obscure or irrelevant. But his memory lingered, and over time the church reverted to its original patron. The village’s identity merged with its church and adopted his name too. The community now celebrates St Botolph on the Sunday nearest to 17 June, his saint’s day. The church itself is now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Norman's disdain for this Saxon saint can only partly explain why there are so few surviving records about his life. He was certainly an important figure in his time: around 70 churches have been dedicated to him but his near contemporary Bede also omitted him from his writings. We do know that St Botolph was an abbot who died around 680 and probably lived at Iken in Suffolk.

Directions

St Botolph’s Church, Annington Road, Botolphs BN44 3WS

W3W: nuns.stables.hurtles

GPS: 50.8704N 0:3051W

The church is on the east side of Annington Road, which runs through the tiny hamlet of Botolphs. It is open 10 am–4 pm.