High in the roof of Highley Church is a wooden carving of a face of a bearded man, his mouth open. He is the nearest we have in any of our local churches to a representation of the “Green Man”, a symbol that was very popular in Medieval times and who has recently undergone something of a revival. In classic carvings, the individual has leafy stems growing out of his mouth, leading to the idea that he was a representation of the spirit of the forest or, more generally, of nature itself. Today the Green Man has been adopted by many as a symbol of the “Green movement”. Some have seen him as a survivor of pre-Christian religion, venerated by country people when the local priest or Bishop was not watching. This idea has particular appeal to modern pagans. There are some problems with this version of events. The surviving carvings are largely in churches; not only is it necessary to assume the local priest did not see them, but neither did the higher clergy who regularly inspected all churches to ensure that they were in order. As far as I know, there is not a single case in a church court about a Green Man. I suspect the carvings were regarded simply as the medieval equivalent of wall-paper, decoration with no pagan associations. And finally, the penny seems to be dropping amongst the modern equivalent of the medieval church courts. The Chancellor (the chief judge) of the Diocese of Gloucester has accepted that the Green Man is not a pagan symbol and can be used on memorials in his diocese. Perhaps it is time to knock the cobwebs of our local Green Man.
Rev David Poyner