By John Macdebs
The village of Willerby is rightly proud of its medieval church. Founded in 670AD, substantially built in the 12th century and renovated many times since, it is dedicated to St Leonard and is the centre of the village’s religious life (which has been more important in some centuries than others). Some of the “renovations” have been improvements to the original structure, others … have not (notably the plastering over of the wall paintings in the reformation). One of the best pieces of work was the rebuilding of the northeast corner in the 1980s after the best part of a century of crumbling stonemasonry, leaks and weather damage. We are all delighted by the improvement but to this day there remains the question of how, in a time of tightened belts and straightened circumstances, a small village managed to get such a large piece of work done to such a high quality.
The story told in the Green Man, usually when the evening started with the strong local ale and progressed from there, is that it happened during the Miner’s Strike of 1984 after a group of dwarves turned up at the pub one night, announced that they too were socialists and were going on strike in sympathy. “One out, all out!” they are said to have chanted as they supped their ale. Apparently, they did the stonework because they had time on their hands and were showing solidarity for the miners of Willerby.
The vicar’s version of the story is equally unlikely and is focused on a beguiling phenomenon. He claims that at dawn on Good Friday the morning light streams through the stonework to illuminate the chancel floor in a glorious shade of green and to remind us of that green hill far away. From this he deduces the work of the Holy Spirit, a miracle of masonry.
The existence of the renovations means that these tales, outrageous as they are, cannot simply be dismissed and so I set out to sift the grains of truth from the chaff of nonsense. First, I set out to find the official records: before undergoing any building work, any parish church in England requires something called a faculty – essentially planning permission from the diocese – and so I found myself in the records office of Coventry Cathedral. In any well-run organisation this would be a carefully maintained database organised chronologically and cross referenced by geographical subdivisions. Of course, in the Church of England this is a cabinet filled with box-files, each unhelpfully labelled “Misc”. After a whole day of sorting through this mess (I am seriously considering setting up a GoFundMe for an archivist), I found the faculty application from St Leonard’s, Willerby. These things have a standard format (or did in the 1980s): they consist of a single sheet of paper with the application typed at the top and then either approved or a reason why not in black ink below. This is what the relevant document says:
Application for a faculty (renovation) from the Parish Church of St Leonard, Willerby.
For a retrospective faculty for work done to restore and improve the north-east corner, replacing damaged stones, removing weathered mortar, integrating with existing structure and making good.
Date: 10th March 1985
Recommendation: We would tend to reject because application made retrospectively but exceptions may be made in case of vital structural work depending on the quality – conduct survey. 24th March 1985
Survey conducted – work of highest quality and carefully integrated with existing building. Returning to original state impossible and likely to cause further damage. Vicar evasive during interview, stating that the work was done by person or persons unknown. Despite this recommend approval. 15th April 1985
Bizarre. Approved 1st May 1985
This, at least, clears up the date of the work and fits with the idea that it was done during the miner’s strike. Before I engaged further with the tale of dwarves I decided to look into the vicar’s story and to examine the stonework itself. By now, of course, the renovation is thoroughly weathered and is not immediately distinct from the rest of the building. On careful inspection, however, it’s possible to see a join on one side of which both the carving and the pointing are finer than the other. To an amateur the simple challenge of completing this without allowing the church to fall down seems insuperable, but presumably this is a common challenge for builders engaged in restoration. On closer inspection I discovered something uncommon, a strange feature of the new stones – running through each one are long rods of glass, twice as thick as my thumb, angled through the wall. It’s not possible to see through them from outside but they are easily found if you know what you’re looking for. From the inside, at a morning service, they are clearly responsible for an uplifting glow appearing to emanate from the altar, no doubt adding to the numinous nature of the holy communion.
This is interesting and sheds some light (if you pardon the pun) on the vicar’s story. What it does not do is make it possible. Simple physics tells us that if there is a certain angle at which light can pass through these glass shafts then it will only happen when the sun is in a certain position with relation to the earth which cannot be on Good Friday because that date, like that of Easter, depends on both sun and moon. Whatever the purpose of this feature, religious, scientific or occult, it cannot possibly be that. I therefore resolved to observe for myself and, securing a key, got up early in the morning in order to be in the church at dawn every day through lent until, on the thirteenth of April, a miracle happened. As the darkness paled outside, I saw what I thought was a lightening of that wall until suddenly, over the space of a couple of minutes, it blazed with light, sunlight streaming through it as though it wasn’t there and bathing the floor of the chancel, as the vicar had described, with light of the grassiest green. Here was the grain of truth – the glass in the wall is put there to admit light, but not on Good Friday (obviously impossible), on 13th April. Why 13th April is a more difficult question – it’s not the feast day of St Leonard or, in fact, of any saint of more local significance than St Caradoc, and he’s Welsh; it’s not the date of the consecration of the church or of the renovation. Another mystery.
At this point I returned to the Green Man and a story that would be dismissed without further question in any other village. In Willerby, however, it’s not so easy – dwarves are infrequent and irregular, but undisputed visitors to the Green Man and there’s no reason to doubt their commitment to the working man’s cause. The dip in the local economy of the time could well be due to the absence of the dwarvish contribution if they downed tools and there are enough witness accounts of this particular occasion that I am convinced that a party did come to the pub one night. However, I think it was only once, and there are two reasons why it seems unlikely that they did the work on the church. The first is that Willerby is not, in fact, a mining village – nowadays it’s a very mixed economy but at its heart it’s an agricultural place, relying on farms for its wealth. Village records, in fact, show that in 1984/85 there was only one villager who worked down the pits – Bob Tumpett who had a job at Baddesley colliery. The dwarves may have gone on strike in solidarity with their human colleagues and may have come to the Green Man for a drink, but it’s a bit much to suppose that they did all that work on the church for the sake of Bob Tumpett. The other reason to doubt this story is that the dwarves themselves deny it. I’m grateful to Mauve for enabling me to get the message to them and their answer is unequivocal – the work is excellent, almost of dwarvish quality, but it wasn’t them. I think we must accept their answer.
In order to get past that dead end, I decided to speak to people who were there at the time and who might remember. Surprisingly, maybe, there are few with memories that stretch that far back so I found myself speaking to Mauve and David who had just moved into the village as newlyweds at the time of the miners’ strike. They were outsiders, not yet embedded in the Willerby ways, and Mauve’s response to my query was given with some justification.
“Oh John, it was so long ago.”
They did remember the Tumpetts – Bob, taciturn, doubtful, solid, withdrawn and his wife Millie who threw herself into everything with her heart on her sleeve. They were part of the church congregation, standing together in the third pew from the front, Millie clearly worshipping enthusiastically and Bob harder to read but reliably there at her side. Reliably there except for one week, during the miner’s strike, when they arrived at St Len’s clearly troubled. It was two days after one of the biggest clashes of the strike between police and pickets – if you were alive at the time you’ll have seen it on the news, but unless you’re local the name of the pit won’t have meant anything to you. Hundreds arrested, dozens taken to hospital and Bob Tumpett had clearly been caught up in it. He was limping, had one arm in a sling, a black eye and a face of thunder: he went no further than the back pew and stopped, clearly present only under sufferance. Millie’s eyes were red; she went all the way to the front pew, past her usual row, and only got through the first hymn before breaking down in tears. Mauve moved to sit next to her and, after the service, when Bob had stumped off home, she and David took her back to their cottage for a cup of tea.
“It’s terrible Mauve,” she said. “He won’t break strike, but he can’t be idle ‘Man’s got to work or he’s no kind of a man,’ he says, and so he goes onto the picket lines. He stays at home when I beg him to but he’s so miserable that I don’t have the heart. I’m worried that if this goes on he’ll get himself killed.”
The Mauve I know might have had more answers, but back in 1984 she could only put her arm around Millie, hug her and share her hope that Bob found something constructive to do. It being Sunday and both fresh from church they prayed for a miracle. A few weeks later they were back at the morning service. Bob’s arm was out of its sling, but his face was still showing the marks of truncheon or fist. This time they stood together in their usual pew, Bob silent but at ease, Millie pouring her heart out with thanksgiving. Mauve didn’t need to ask, the smile told her that the prayers had been answered and Bob was no longer on the picket line. I asked if she thought Bob could have done the work on the church:
“I thought nothing of it at the time – that corner was covered in a great tarpaulin so we didn’t know any work was going on until it was completed at which point most people had no idea what had happened and those who had weren’t telling. I’ve often wondered since, but it doesn’t quite add up.”
“What do you mean, doesn’t add up?”
“Oh, John, use your eyes and your common sense for once. Go back and look at the church will you?”
So I went back to the church and looked and she’s right – it doesn’t add up: there’s far too much work there for one man. An interesting story, the beginnings of an explanation but essentially another dead end and I was running out of threads to tug at so I went to the local library and went through the back copies of the Coventry Echo to see what I could find.
I was not disappointed – in August 1985 there is a front-page article with a picture of St Leonard’s and a headline “Hand of God or Axe of the Dwarves?” reporting on the consecration of the renovated building. The journalistic style oscillates widely between sober, not to say dull, local reporting (all fourteen non-Willerby families, couples and individuals who attended are named, possibly in the hope of increasing the circulation by that number) and wild sensationalism. The mystery was, of course, how the work got done in the depressed economy of Thatcher’s midlands and the Vicar’s answer was that it was a miracle, God’s providence. The locals all laughed at this suggestion but when pressed passed the credit onto the dwarves (which the Echo thought an even less likely story than that of the vicar). An entertaining mystery, good copy and, of course, the chance of selling those extra fourteen copies. If Mauve is right (she usually is), this is surely the beginning of the Green Man tale – the handful of people who knew the truth covering it up with a story that was believable enough to Willerby folk and immediately dismissed by the city journalist.
I wondered, though, about those fourteen families – fourteen strangers who came to celebrate some stonework in a little village they had no connection to. Summer boredom and the possibility of a beer afterwards could explain some of it, but I wondered and since the names were conveniently printed, I followed them up. I couldn’t track them all down, but each of those I did had one thing in common – one of the men of the family had worked at Baddesley colliery and so a picture formed in my mind of solid Bob Tumpett, keen to avoid Millie’s tears and a group of mates who couldn’t be idle but wouldn’t betray the strikers, coming together to work on a project. More than one family might have been saved by that opportunity. Bob Tumpett, shy, agnostic at best, presumably pushed for the secrecy, desperately keen to avoid any attention.
Man’s got to work or he’s no kind of a man.
Epilogue
The strike lasted through the winter of ‘84/85 and ended with the exhaustion and misery of the mineworkers, first in Nottingham and then throughout the country. Baddesley stayed open for a few more years but shed jobs and Bob was made redundant, spending his small severance package on starting a masonry business in a yard just outside Willerby. Tumpett’s Stone was a success – you can still see examples of his work around the area if you know where to look – but years below ground had taken their toll on Bob’s lungs and he grew too sick to work and had to sell the business. Millie took care of him until he died and was buried (fittingly, I suggest) in St Leonard’s churchyard. The stone reads simply “Bob Tumpett – b1938 d1996 – Miner”. Millie stayed in the village for a little while, generous with her time, money and belongings. When not doing the flowers in the church or visiting the sick she would stand at her garden gate and reward children who came to visit with a gift: a piece of fruit, a flower cut from her garden, a garment for their dressing-up box or a book to read. It was as though she didn’t want to be encumbered when she left and one day she just did, slipped away in the morning to be with her people in the West Country. The last that anyone in Willerby saw of her was when she left a final gift: a small statue of St Leonard carved in soapstone, placed carefully on Mauve and David’s doorstep early in the morning. The noise was enough to wake Mauve and she caught a glimpse through the window of Millie’ back as she hurried away.
Fortunately for the historian, Millicent Tumpett is an unusual name and I was able to find a death certificate and then a journey to Devon took me to the village of Kennford where I found her gravestone. It told me little I didn’t already know but by now I had suspicions that needed confirmation, so I repaired once more to the newspaper section of the library, this time to read through the obituary pages of past editions of the Bovey Tracey Chronicle. This is the relevant article:
“Millie Tumpett. Born Millicent Green in Bristol on 13th April 1939, Millie Tumpett died at home in Kennford on 25th October 2020 after a short illness. Goodbye Millie: you were much loved.”
I’m now sure that Bob did the stonework for Millie – such a quiet devotion that it’s possible nobody else recognised quite what he’d done (which I suggest is how the habitually taciturn Bob would have wanted it).
And that’s all, except to say that if you want to know who taught Bob Tumpett stonework, my best guess is that it was of one of the dwarves “almost of dwarvish quality” indeed.