The Wissington (Wiston) Dragon!
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, October 28, 2024
I was on a speaking tour in England and Wales, and my buddy Neil Seeds took me to an amazing place. We parked the car and started hiking down a trail, and after a bit, we came upon an old, secluded church—St. Mary’s Church in Wissington, Suffolk.
This little church building dates back to the 1100s as a
Norman church, but interestingly, there appear to be Roman bricks laid at the
base of a particular wall, suggesting that some history may have been lost over
time. For the past 500 years or so, the church has been in the possession of
the Crown.
Mr. Seeds informed me that there was supposed to be a dragon
depicted on a wall somewhere in the church, and we hoped to find it. This image
supposedly dates back to an event in the 1300s when a dragon was reportedly
seen and possibly killed near a nearby creek or marsh.
Parishioners had painted what this dragon looked like on a
wall in the church. A neighboring church apparently shared a similar account in
their history, likely involving the same dragon account. We were determined to
find the depiction and capture some photos.
As we walked into this ancient, quaint little building with
detailed, intricate carvings, we were stunned to find the dragon painting so
easily—it was a gigantic artwork covering a large section of wall above a
doorway. In fact, you couldn’t miss it if you tried!
In 1405, there is a record, detailed by the church, of a
dragon that could very well be referring back to this one. This account comes
from the Chronicle of Henry de Blaneford of St. Albans Abbey, which
states:
“In these days there appeared
lately an evil dragon of excessive length with a huge body, crested head,
saw-like teeth and elongated tail in land near the town of Bures near Sudbury,
which destroyed and killed a herd of sheep. The servants of Sir Richard Waldegrave
who owns the land haunted by the dragon came forth to shoot it with arrows
which sprang back from its ribs as if they were metal of hard stone and from
the spines if its back with a jangling as if they were hitting bronze plates,
and flew far away because its skin was impenetrable. Almost the whole county
was summoned to slaughter it but when it saw that it was to be shot at again,
it fled into the marsh, hid in the reeds and was seen no more.”
I get excited about dragon finds because of their connection
to dinosaurs (a subset of land dragons), which were created on Day 6 of Creation
Week. Of course, winged or sea dragons were made on Day 5. Here are some
photos we took of this amazing place. I hope you enjoy them.
