Ashwell (Rutland) 

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Historical notes about the Parish of Ashwell (Rutland)

It abounds in natural charm and has a fine old church, with a pyramid cap peeping out of the trees as we come from Oakham. Green hedges and ivied stone walls line the roads. Opposite the church is the Old Hall made partly new, set off by smooth lawns.

Looking its best outside, the church is chiefly 14^th century, with earlier work in the arcades, which continue into the chancel and open to chapels. One of the arches is Norman, and nail-headed ornament enriches the capitals.

The windows are a charming feature, some of them adorned with frames of ballflowers, and most of them having delightful little faces on their hoods. Dainty indeed is the hood of ballflowers over the charming east window, spoiled only by the stone panels filling the base. One each side wall of the chancel is a corbel table of ballflowers alternating with little faces of animals and men.

There is a double piscina in the chancel, and a fine piscina niche in the south aisle. A flower-shaped drain is in a windowsill of one chapel, and in the other a bracket piscina, a niche, and a carved bracket.

The very fine wooden figure of a 14^th century knight, thought to be Sir Thomas Touchet, lies in the south chapel. His head rests on cushions, his hands are at prayer, his legs are crossed, and his features are worn, but every detail of his costume is clear - his chain mail, his tunic, the sword with a broken handle, the girdle, and his spurs.

On the top stone of a 15^th century tomb near the wooden knight are engraved the life size figures of John and Rose Vernam, their hands in prayer. John wears the everyday garb of a medieval citizen, with a tasselled purse, and his dagger at his side; she has a flowing headdress. One dog is curled up at her feet, and another, alert, is at John's feet. The great stone is covered every inch with the initials of louts, some cut three centuries ago.

The stately alabaster figure in the other chapel is supposed to be their son John, rector here. He lies in his finely draped robes, his feet and hands broken. His guardian angels are battered, and the lion at his feet has lost its head.

Here, far from war's alarms, sleeps a very gallant figure, Parson Adams, who came as rector and was the first clergyman to receive the Victoria Cross. An Irishman of Herculean strength, he was said to be the strongest man in Ireland in his youth. He consecrated his physical prowess with all the energy of his heart and mind to the service and salvation of his fellows. Going out to India in 1866 when still on the right side of thirty, he became a model padre, toiling unremittingly for the troops and carrying his message far into the jungle, where his strength enabled him to reduce forest trees to logs and raise logs to temples.

As war blazed up, Adams was called to serve with a field force under Lord Roberts, and his courage and devotion made him an almost legendary figure. The great testing time came at Villa Kazi when Adams was forty.A number of the 9^th Lancers were trapped in a muddy watercourse and in danger of either drowning or of death from the spears of Afghans. Under heavy fire the padre dashed single-handed to the scene of danger and rescued the men. It chanced that Lord Roberts himself was a spectator of the incident, and in his dispatches home he begged that Adams might receive the Victoria Cross.

He had many years of military experience in the East, and again and again was under heavy fire.Nothing daunted his spirit, nothing dimmed the sunshine of his nature.Her left India as the idol of the Army and was for several years a rector in Norfolk, and a royal chaplain before he came here as a man of 62, with the hope of years of service before him. But his constitution had been undermined, and he died little more than a year after reaching Ashwell.

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