St George in Colchester

Yesterday (23rd April) was St George’s Day. St George is the patron saint of England, and the St George cross represents England in the British flag, the Union Jack. St George was born in Turkey, became a Roman soldier, defied the emperor Diocletian’s edict to persecute Christians and was himself executed in AD 303, having freed his slaves and given his possessions to the poor and refused to renouce his Christian faith. St George is a popular Christian saint all over the world and, in Christian iconography, he slays a dragon and thus saves a maiden. He is often represented riding a white horse and in the act of slaying the dragon. St George was a martyr who was transformed into a conquering hero, and the dragon he slays actually represents the devil or evil. In England, in 1348, King Edward III established the Knights of the Garter, the first order of chivalry in Europe. The Order of the Garter is dedicated to the Virgin Mary, Edward the Confessor and St George. All saints’ banners but St George’s were banned in England in 1552, during the Reformation. We had Roman soldiers in Colchester, of course, and the Christian image of St George is very similar to the image used in the funerary monument of the Roman cavalry soldier Longinus from Colchester, in which he is shown riding his horse victoriously over a human figure which may represent death.

Colchester has many saints – St Botolph’s priory, St Helen’s Chapel, St James the Great Church, St Peter’s Church, etc – but no church of St George. The nearest St George’s Church is at Great Bromley. However, there are a few elusive references to or representations of St George in Colchester. There are two different St George’s schools! – the Infant School and Nursery in Barrington Road and the New Town Junior School in Canterbury Road. The sadly unused public hall behind 156 High Street in Colchester was once called St George’s Hall: built in 1851, it is Grade II listed and adjoins St Peter’s Church yard. It has had some great functions during its existence, for example, as a club for soldiers during WW1, as a young men’s club and then as a centre for the unemployed. Most significantly, Colchester’s great war memorial includes a figure of St George in armour, holding a sword and shield, with his head bowed. The war memorial was erected in 1923 to commemorate the dead of WW1 (1914-1918), so he is standing on the slain dragon, the defeated foe. St George faces east, while a parallel female figure of Peace faces west; perhaps she is the maiden that St George has saved. The winged figure of Victory stands above them.

St George is honoured in pub. names as well as by church dedications, and there is a George and the Dragon pub. at Kelvedon. There are several stories about the worm or dragon remembered in the name of the village of Wormingford. One is that the village is where St George slayed the dragon, and a farmer has recently created the image of a dragon in the landscape at Bures, near Wormingford, in honour of the story.

Read the story of St George at www.royalsocietyofstgeorge.com/history_of_st_george.htm .

The images show St George on the war memorial, the monument to Longinus, and the Bures dragon. [Image to follow.]

.