Tower and Town, March 2022

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The Church of St John the Baptist, Minal

Minal Church is the oldest in the Anglican Team. Glastonbury Abbey acquired land at Mildenhalle in 804 but they were not a proselytising order and may have farmed the land and built a mill in support of their great Abbey and its works of mercy. The first stone building surviving is an Anglo-Saxon tower dated to the mid-11th Century. Domesday Book records William of Salisbury holding Mildenhalle with the Abbey as 'tenant-in-chief'. The Normans built a stone church - its pillars and arches still stand. A new chancel and larger tower arch were intruded in the 1220s. The upper stage of the tower was built in Henry VIII's reign.

The first recorded rector is John de Novell fined in 1301 and 1319 for being absent from the parish - he doubtless held several others. The first lay patrons - who presented the rector to the parish - were John and Mary Meriot in 1297. Richard, Duke of Gloucester presented in 1461 which might account for the large white rose in one of the chancel windows.

On the tower arch jamb are the words Domine and Marie, reminders of the Latin liturgy used until 1549. The remains of other medieval wall-paintings, dated from the 1200s to the late 1400s, still survive. In the North aisle is a large portrait of Robert Morley who held Minal rectory as a sinecure, being resident in Christ Church, Oxford. A Royalist, he was ejected from the College at the beginning of the Civil Wars in 1641, went into exile with Charles II and when the King returned was rewarded with the bishopric of Worcester, then of Winchester. Puritan Thomas Bayley who succeeded him in Minal was in turn ejected in 1660 when King Charles returned.

Patrons were responsible for the upkeep of the chancel and the Pocock family who provide three rectors lined the walls with 18th Cent. 'Strawberry Hill Gothic' panelling. In 1816 Rector Charles Francis installed the finely carved box pews, pulpits and gallery in the nave. The church and its curtilage are rated Grade One.

David Sherratt