Spectral Swanage: The Ghost of the Toll Gate and The Sheela Na Gig of Studland

The Ghost of the Toll Gate

A witch, who had taken the form of a black cat, was killed while sitting on the toll gate in Ulwell near Swanage. Since then, the gate is said to open for those who travel late at night...

The Sheela Na Gig of Studland

St Nicolas is the patron saint of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers, and students.

After raiding Lindisfarne Priory in Northumbria in AD793, the Vikings occupied, harassed, and sacked parts of England until the Norman Conquest. Studland's own church was destroyed in C9, and Wareham was sacked at least three times.

Studland's St Nicola church is unmistakably Norman and probably dates from the end of the 11th century. Oral tradition tells us that it was used by smugglers to store contraband between the 16th and 19th centuries. One of its most notable features is its corbels.

An ornamental bracket that juts from a wall to support a superincumbent weight is called a corbel. A corbel is an integral piece of the wall, while a console is attached to the structure. A piece of timber projecting in the same way was called a "tassel" or a "bragger" in England.

The corbels in Studland include a copulating couple, one (maybe two) shela na gigs and a couple of men who have had their knobs knocked off.

Sheela na gigs are figurative carvings of naked women displaying an exaggerated vulva. They are architectural grotesques found throughout most of Europe on cathedrals, castles, and other buildings. The greatest concentrations can be found in Ireland, Great Britain, France and Spain, sometimes together with male figures. Ireland has the greatest number of surviving sheela na gig carvings; Joanne McMahon and Jack Roberts cite 101 examples in Ireland and 45 examples in Britain

Most of all the surviving in situ sheela na gigs are found in areas of Anglo-Norman conquest (12th century). The areas that remained "native Irish" have few sheela na gigs. It is argued that their location on churches and the grotesque features of the figures, by medieval standards, suggest that they represented female lust as hideous and sinfully corrupting.

Another theory is that the carvings are remnants of a pre-Christian fertility or mother goddess religion. They note what they claim are differences of materials and styles of some sheela na gigs from their surrounding structures, and noting that some are turned on their side, to support the idea that they were incorporated from previous structures into early Christian buildings.

Jørgen Andersen writes that the name is an Irish phrase, originally "Sighle na gCíoch", meaning "the old hag of the breasts"

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