The Parson’s Nose

You just never when you are going to stumble across a little piece of local history. On a recent visit to my local church of St. Mary’s in Nantwich I was fortunate enough to meet a gentleman who was the absolute font of all knowledge. The extremely kind man was able to recount and tell me some of the wonderful historical stories of Nantwich and in particular St. Mary’s church itself. It’s hard to believe that work started on the construction of the church in 1280. If you want to discover more about the history of the church, I have included a link to the St. Mary’s Church website below.

St. Mary’s Church History

So where does The Parson’s Nose come into this, I hear you all ask? The kind gentleman who was guiding us round the church directed us towards what is known as a misericord (sometimes named a mercy seat). Basically, this is a small wooden structure formed on the underside of a folding seat in a church which, when the seat is folded up, is intended to act as a shelf to support a person in a partially standing position during long periods of prayer. On the underside of each of the misericords is a carving which was carved by the craftsman at the time they were built. Each one is different and depicts a tale and tells its own story. The gentleman showing us round pointed us in the direction of two of the carvings and told us the story behind each of carved images. One carving shows the face of a priest on the rear end of a bird and it is this carving that is thought to be the origin of the expression, ‘the parson’s nose’, meaning the rump or fatty end of a cooked turkey or chicken. This is a very seasonal expression or saying and is normally heard every year around Christmas time as we prepare our Christmas Dinner. The term or expression dates back over 600 years to around 1400 AD and is thought to have originated when a local carpenter was working on providing new choir stalls for the Church. It’s thought that the Vicar at the time was either slow to pay the bill, or did not pay at all. In retaliation, on the last misericord in the stalls, the carpenter carved a bird with an image of the Vicar’s face with his nose positioned on the bird’s rump. The phrase “parson’s nose”, therefore comes from the notion that the parson may ‘have his nose in the air’, upturned like the chicken’s rear end. The carving is still clearly visible today as you can see from the photographs that I took.

We had just enough time for one more story of the stalls, before I was literally thrown out of the church, they were turning the lights off as we left.!

Can you work out the story from the carving?

The story from this carving is that the woman in the middle is seen to be beating her husband over the head with a stick or broom, admittedly the stick or broom has disappeared over the passages of time. On the left we can see a hog which the farmer’s wife left cooking over the fire while she went out to run some errands. She left STRICT instructions with the farmer to watch the Hog! Now whether he had been to the pub or not we can’t say for sure, but our unfortunate farmer fell asleep in the chair and the farmer’s dog managed to eat the Hog as he slept. You can see the dog enjoying his spoils on the right of the carving.

Another absolutely fascinating tale and I can’t wait to go back to hear more stories from the carvings on the choir stalls in the church. You just never know when local history or family history is going to find you!

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