Narnia’s mythical creatures and talking beasts, which have enchanted children for 70 years, have found a new home at a 12th-century parish church in east Yorkshire.
Aslan the lion, the White Witch and Mr Tumnus the faun are among 14 handmade stone sculptures being installed on the outer walls of St Mary’s church in Beverley to replace medieval carvings that have crumbled away.
The Narnia figures were blessed this week by Alison White, the bishop of Hull.
They have been created as part of a 10-year restoration project, partly funded by the National Lottery Heritage Fund, mainly focused on more than 600 medieval wooden carvings inside the church, known as roof bosses, which include depictions of kings, saints, angels, lions, unicorns and mermaids.
But external stone carvings had also weathered away completely over time, said Roland Deller, the director of development at St Mary’s. “We didn’t have any pictorial evidence to show us what was there, so had no way of reconstructing the original carvings. And so we decided to commission something new.”
The church invited local art and design students to come up with ideas. One drew a sketch of Mr Tumnus, the umbrella-carrying half man, half goat creature who befriends Lucy, the youngest of four siblings who enter the magical land of Narnia through a wardrobe. “It got us thinking that we could commission a whole series of Narnia carvings inspired by this design,” said Deller.
The carvings were designed and handmade by specialists at the conservation and masonry company Matthias Garn. As well as Aslan, the witch and Mr Tumnus, there will also be carvings of Reepicheep the mouse, Fledge the winged horse, Glenstorm the centaur, Farsight the eagle and Jewel the unicorn.
The seven books of The Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis were published between 1950 and 1956, and have become a classic of children’s literature. The four siblings, evacuated to the countryside during the second world war, become embroiled in the struggle between good and evil in the fantasy world of Narnia.
“The story has much resonance for today,” said the Rev Becky Lumley, the vicar of St Mary’s. “Our children [have been] in a very different kind of lockdown to that of the second world war, but they too need to imagine new possibilities and hope. These books are not just for children, they contain incredible truth which helps many Christians today reflect on our own understanding of God and faith.”
Lewis, a man of deep Christian faith and a theologian, was honoured with a memorial in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey in 2013, the 50th anniversary of his death.
The author Philip Pullman has described the Narnia books as “dodgy and unpleasant”, saying they “seem to embody a world view that takes for granted things like racism, misogyny and a profound cultural conservatism that is utterly unexamined”.
St Mary’s obtained permission from Lewis’s estate to create the images, and placed an order for magnesium limestone from a quarry in Tadcaster last autumn. “We’ve been extraordinarily lucky. Most of the stone was delivered before the quarry shut down so we were able to plough on during lockdown,” said Deller.
The carvings are initially on display at ground level so they can be seen close up before being hoisted into position. Most have been completed, although a few are still in the workshop.
St Mary’s is considered one of the most beautiful medieval churches in the country. Its roof bosses are “a way of storytelling without words, created in a world which had a high level of illiteracy”, said Deller. “They show everything from Biblical characters to bawdy daily life, as well as bizarre mythical creatures like the manticore and the basilisk.”
The Narnia books have been adapted for television, and three – The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe; Prince Caspian; and The Voyage of the Dawn Treader – have become Disney movies. Netflix reportedly paid nearly $250m for the rights to all seven books in 2018.
