Lud’s Church could be Coleridge’s deep romantic chasm. There’s the scale of a large chapel of the perpendicular style, moss-riddled and dropped with greenery. It could be the shock of stumbling into it from the woods after quite a clamber up from the river. In my imagination it was low in the valley whereas it is in fact a niche cut in the gritstone of the roof of the valley. Isolated, not just tricky to find but easy to miss, there’s no difficulty in understanding why such myths are evoked. The forest is twisted and dotted with outcrops, it could be trying to trick you, get you lost, physically, possibly spiritually.
In contrast the church soars, or it could be the soul soars within the church. The scale and proportions seem to stretch the spirit slightly, the grey-green stone and plants soothing, the quick drop in temperature to something like a cave, and a sense of sanctuary. Beyond the woods is a bleak moorland encrusted with dark outcrops of rock, it feels exposed and volatile. In the seclusion of the Church there’s protection and security.
Lud could be the same Lud that founded London. It fits with my conception of England as interconnected at some mythic level. There is no reference to this outwith my imagination.
According to a nineteenth century guide, an old man resided in the Church and when discovered by a traveller, Sir William de Lacy, told of the Lollards trying to avoid persecution in the Church, and the arrest of their leader Walter de Lud-Auk. There’s a scuffle and the beautiful daughter, Alice de Lud-Auk is mortally wounded. The meeting is broken up, but the plight of Alice touches the soldiers and becomes a founding reformist myth. This sounds too prosaic to be true, and there was no old man in residence on my last visit.
The tangle of legends around the grail inevitably thread through the Church. If the grail actually spent time here, it would have just been passing thorough on its way to Hawkstone. Sir Gawain found his way here on his quest. When the Green Knight turns up and challenges the knights of the round table to strike a blow, that they will receive the same in return a year and a day hence, it is Gawain who rises to the challenge and decapitates the Green Knight. He picks up his head and heads off with a reminder. Not to give away the plot, this is where Gawain confronts the Green Knight and a seminal English tale reaches its culmination. A place of chivalry, the code challenged, by circumstances and human frailty, and a layer of meaning laid down deep in this deep gorge deep in the Staffordshire countryside.
The England Project 