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Green Man β - Gedney St Mary Magdalene

by Temple Music

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Green Man β - Gedney St Mary Magdalene 44:40
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This album is part of a series of seven long pieces inspired and informed by different Green Man locations in the county of Lincolnshire, England; for this volume we travelled into the Fens, a vast area reclaimed from the sea over the years, many parts of which are below the present sea level, and, indeed, below the levels of the rivers that drain it. Near where we live is a garage still known as The Gibbet Nook; a place of execution, which, as all such, stands at a crossroads in order that the souls of the dead would not know in which direction to follow their tormentors. This is, however, a crossroads with a difference; one of the roads is (or was) called the LeaGate - the Leagate Inn still stands a little way down it. "Gate' is derived from 'gata' meaning way, street, road - this was the road to the pastures, at the far end of which began the vast, shifting, and treacherous Fens; now a place of huge skies and rolling acres of good arable land, in the heart of which are found several small villages with 'Gedney' in their names; -ey being a suffix meaning isle, or islet. This was a wild place where the local 'fen tigers' ruled and where the titular landowners travelled only with permission, and accompanied. In Phillip Pullman's 'Northern Lights' when Lyra is hidden from the authorities she is taken deep into the Fens where the only jurisdiction is that of John Faa's Gyptians; and this is the historic landscape in which the Cathedral Of The Fens, St Mary Magdalene, stands; a large scattered parish of fen and sea reclamation land with ancient dykes running through it; here and there the ancient remains of the old salt making industry - indeed, St Mary Magdalene itself is built upon a saltern.
Built of ashlar and dominating the area, St Mary's was previously a possession of Crowland Abbey, and is built in a mixture of styles from early English in the tower through to perpendicular in the clerestory and with various intricate touches and carvings throughout including a 13th century knight, a brass figure from around 1400 of a lady with a puppy (signifying fidelity) playing at her feet and a large alabaster tablet with kneeling figures facing one another, with columns and fine sprays of foliage from 1605 and dedicated to Adlard Welby and his wife Cassandra. These were the gentry; but presiding over them and the congregation from above are the lares et penates of the wild Fens; a series of carved wooden roof bosses depicting particularly fierce Green Men of the 'tree nose' type (also found at nearby Gosberton). The style could not be further away from the figures seen at ground level; a rough mastery of the wood can be seen at every stroke, and whatever the reason for them being there might be they are far removed from the courtly knights and ladies, and Adlard and Cassandra Welby as it is possible to be.
Seen today, the Fens are still strange and lonely places; although far removed from the time when Gedney was an island in an ever-changing network of reed-bound channels and stagnant pools where danced the dead men's lights, a kingdom unto itself that knew the rule of no man outside it and were secrets and customs were (and are) passed from mouth to mouth, generation to generation, blood to blood. It is this ancient landscape that we have tried to map with this, the second in the series of the Temple Music recordings in the Green Man Project series.

credits

released July 23, 2016

Harry Houlton - Treated Slide Guitar
Christopher Patinios - Gongs, Djembe, Big Blue Drum, Percussion
Stephen Robinson - Bass, Dulcimer, Autoharp, Bells, String Machine, Bowed Psaltery
Alan Trench - Low Whistle, Applewood Flageolet, Acoustic and Fx Guitars, The Insects Of Death, Bells, Bass Station

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Temple Music Lincoln, UK

Temple Music was started in 1995 as an offshoot of the English dark folk band ORCHIS and their interest in ancient Greek modal music, drone, magical trance states and krautrock. The permanent members are Alan Trench and Steve Robinson; creating shifting walls of noise; moments of arctic intensity; unsettling;demanding attention ... rhythm and chaos combined... ... more

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