Misericord carving

The quire stalls have a hinged seat arrangement known as a 'misericord'. The name is derived from the latin word for pity, 'misericordia, the word being first applied to the relaxation of a rule and then to the seat which gave support to the back during long services.

Hidden on the underside of thee seats are carvings of mediaeval tales and legends.

The misericords are thought to be some of the finest in Europe. Many of them depict a moral, in one of them a woman is scolding a man for breaking a cooking pot, a warning to careless husbands perhaps? In another, men are playing back-gammon, no doubt the carvers had heard the mediaeval priests denouncing the game as the devil’s own device for hindering church attendance.