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This wonderful Green Man, with dainty hands holding the foliage in his mouth, or perhaps helping it out of his mouth, was found in the church at Whitstable on May 7th, just before the May celebrations with the Morris dancing and Jack-in-the-Green got under way. He is placed in one panel of the choir stalls and, as all the other panels have ordinary foliage carved in them, this example of foliage with a face is very well disguised. This is approxiamtely actual size.

These leaf-masks face each other across the doors of the sixteenth century screen in the church at Herne and a copy of them was incorporated into a replacement screen on the other side of the church about 1910.

This is the clearest example I have yet found of the link between manuscripts and carved Green Men. The manuscript was made in Canterbury's scriptorium before 1100, the Green 'Man' here is the one under the canopy of the tomb of Archbishop Meopham in St Anselm's chapel, Canterbury Cathedral.

These are heads on the 19th century Tower House in the Westgate Gardens at Canterbury: a man with vibrant eyes, suggestive of Merlin or the Bath 'male medusa' and a female head-in-leaves.

These Green Men - one with mouth foliage and another with thick parasitic eye foliage are carved on pendants over the south west door of Canterbury Cathedral.

A boy's head in foliage in the stalls in the crypt at Canterbury.

Also in the stalls in the crypt is this carving of a vine which becomes a leaf-tongued monster.

Three faces inhabit the stonework in the Choir of Rochester Cathedral.

A door-knocker at Boughton near Canterbury.

The incomplete Green Man in the sundial window at Lullingstone.

An 18th century advertisement for tobacco from Sellinge.

This roof boss - painted rather in the manner of Punch and Judy figures - is in the church at Cowden. There are also Green Men on the font:

This is the logo of the new housing development at Greenhithe, NW Kent. The developer's brochure states that they hope to instil a new sense of village life and community, and a sense of peace to those who purchase a home there. The development is sited in the grounds of the former Ingress Abbey, long a ruin and repaired as part of the developer's contract, and also there is the "Seven Heads" Victorian folly, possibly the source of this very 19th century Green Man. When I visited, his image was everywhere - over the main door, on hoardings outside the area and on large flags within - a symbol of hope for the resurrection of this industrially-damaged area. The building is expected to continue for a few more years - it can be said, therefore, that the pictures on the present website show the Green Man from the 12th century to the 21st.

The woodwose is obviously a savage creature - a wild man of the woods - yet his very closeness to nature has paradoxically indicated gentility and an association with the aristocracy, often being depicted in coats of arms as part of the device or as supporters, as here.

 

The Jack-in-the-Green , which (like the woodwose) is sometimes seen as an aspect of the Green Man, is a person dressed in a cone of leaves who dances or processes with Morris Dancers. These examples are from the May Day celebrations at Whitstable (l) and Rochester (r).

Articles

Two Green Man articles follow - the first was published in Bygone Kent volume 22 number 9

The Green Man in Kent

A face made out of leaves... a face with leaves coming from the mouth... a face peering out of leaves... Any of these are the mysterious Green Man, so obviously pre-Christian in origin, yet looking down on us from the heights of a cathedral or lurking in the darkest corner of a church.

The Green Man is where the line between humanity and vegetation - one world and another - is blurred. He is a forest spirit; he represents new life and resurrection and, at the same time, death and the corruption of the body. A strangely contradictory definition. Perhaps he is a charm to attract fertility to the land, so important for our ancestors. But these are only speculations, because we know almost entirely nothing about the Green Man. We do know the meanings of many of the motifs found in church decoration - the mermaid represents vanity and lust, the dragon depicts the source of all evil, the two- and three- faced beings show deceit, the lion represents kinglyness or Christ himself. Sometimes, these meanings are indistinct - the lion can also be a devourer of men, for example. But we can find written records of them, read about them in countless legends and folktales or the medieval beastiaries. There are no ancient references to the image of the Green Man. There are thousands of  Green Men in our churches, yet they are never written of.

Kent has many Green Men. The central legend of Kent itself, the Invicta story, features men dressed in leaves. The two cathedrals, at Canterbury and Rochester, have approximately 80 and 40 respectively and I have found more than 30 parish churches in Kent which have at least one Green Man; there are probably many more - churches are so often locked! There are also many examples of Green Men which have escaped the church and can be found on secular buildings, especially on Victorian banks. There is also the Green Man who appears on public house signs but who may be a different thing altogether... In this article I hope to introduce the reader to several of Kent's Green Men and, at the same time, investigate his many meanings.

The Three Main Forms of Green Man

Beginning with one each of the basic forms of Green Men, the best example in Kent is the one in the Black Prince's Chapel of the Crypt at Canterbury Cathedral. This is reasonably well known and is even on Cathedral merchandise such as t-shirts and cufflinks, though the Chapel is rarely open to the public. The Green Man here takes the first form mentioned, a face made out of leaves, where the leaves radiate like sunbeams from the centre. I have heard it said that he represents the oak forests loved by the Black Prince himself, however the foliage here is probably acanthus which is a classical form of foliage, not intended to be 'lifelike' but indicating an 'idea of foliage'. There is a wise and beneficent feeling about this Green Man's face so perhaps he represents the force of creation, the spark which God has set in motion. At the nave-crossing of Rochester Cathedral, looking down on the altar, are several very large Green Men. Their countenance is rather that of the so-called Wild Man, or Wodwose. They are fierce human heads and the recognizable oak foliage (and acorns) here is issuing from their mouths. A lovely example of the third form of Green Man can be found in the parish church at Lenham. Here, a wise and compassionate face is surrounded by, or perhaps peers out of, a wreath of leaves. The difference in interpretation is that one may be that he is being somehow lauded with the foliage and the other may be that he is, like the Man in the Oak mentioned by Reynold Scot, the face which sometimes can be glimpsed staring at us from the leaves of a forest, perhaps a tree-spirit or perhaps a highwayman. The Lenham Green Man is more like the first of these, of course.

Green Cats and Human Sacrifice

These, then, are the three primary styles of Green Man which can be found in Kent. Various subdivisions and combinations exist. For example, the face made out of leaves may also have vines and foliage issuing from his mouth - the charming Green Man at Whitstable is such as this. A further category of Green Man is where the 'Man' is actually half man, half cat. This strange hybrid occurs quite frequently and there is one on a bench end at Charing and provides what is, perhaps, a key to certain darker aspects of the Green Man.

 The Charing Green Man has vines issuing from his mouth, an obvious symbol of fertility. His hair resembles a field of corn, the tuft in the middle is like a sheaf. His ears are like the embryonic shapes in the paisley pattern, which are the ears of corn. Moreover, the Charing Green man is half cat. The importance to fertility rites of the cat can be found in Frazer's Golden Bough, that encyclopedia of ancient religious practices. The cat was taken to be the Corn Spirit. Why is not quite clear and other animals are sometimes taken as such, but perhaps because every farmyard has a cat to defend the grain from vermin and the cat is always associated with magic. Frazer describes how, at harvest, a cat is decorated with leaves and ribbons and let loose into the field. However, he also describes how sometimes the cat is sacrificed - in order to insure a future good harvest, blood must be spilt on the land. Such primitive behaviour was quite common and the sacrifice was not always animal. Human sacrifice is known to have occurred and there are legends, even in the British Isles, which allude to this. The half man, half cat fertility figure is perhaps some echo of this. It might be a strange coincidence, but there is a legend that Charing church contains the stone upon which John-the-Baptist was beheaded.

 The Celts are supposed to have decorated the heads of their victims with leaves and it might be noted that many Green Men show the signs of beheading or garroting - an agonised grimace, the tongue protruding, the eyes bulging - several heads like these, reminding us of Tollund man, can be found in the Cloister at Canterbury. This does bring us to question why, if this is their origin, are they found in Christian buildings. One can only speculate - perhaps the memory of their exact origin was lost and their Celtic intention - of scaring away evil spirits - was kept. Possibly they show the terrible consequences of returning to the Old Religion - human sacrifice was done away with by the ultimate sacrifice of Jesus on the Cross. It has also been suggested that the green leaf, in early Christianity, was an emblem of the sins of the flesh and that the Green Man represents the human soul in torment, taken over by his sins.

Resurrection and the True Vine

There are many legends which tell of a seed being planted in the mouth of a holy man or saint upon his burial and which then grows into a tree, often one with healing virtues. The feeling that all flesh is grass - and vice versa - is an ancient one and while it can be seen as rather depressing to imagine that, after our death we may be literally pushing up daisies with our fertilizing properties, there is a logic in this: for all growth there must be death. This may be why the Green Man appears on tombs and memorials. The very ancient tomb of Bishop Hamo in Rochester Cathedral has several excellent examples of Green Men; an 18th century memorial wall tablet in Upper Hardres church also features a Green Man, though it is more common to find Green Men placed on tombs in counties other than Kent. The springing up of new life in the form of vegetation is a concept which is closely associated with Jesus, the True Vine, and with the Tree of Jesse.

Hidden Green Men

There is a little 'game' played by those who carved the Green Men - a sort of hunt-the-thimble. Not only are Green Men located high up in the roofs of churches out of sight, they can be hidden right under our noses. For example, the stalls in Whitstable's church are carved throughout with foliage and flowers. Arches, eight in all, resembling church windows are carved along the front and there are pairs of spandrels, carved with foliage, each side of every arch. However, if you look closely, you will see that one of the spandrels contains a leafy face whose tiny hands are pulling leaves from his mouth. The best place to hide a tree is in a forest and such tricks as this make these Green Men a delight to find. This also occurs on terraces of Victorian houses, where there are leafy designs beside every doorway but one of them, just one, will have a face. There are very tiny Green Men in one of the stained glass windows at Patrixbourne and, in Canterbury Cathedral, the tomb of Archbishop Stratford has a canopy complete with two small 'roof boss' Green Men. A Celtic word for the Green Man - Cylenchar - actually means 'the hidden one'. It is quite possible to find a Green Man which has probably not been noticed by anyone else since the day it was created!

Green Women

Are there any Green Women? This is often asked and the answer is 'not many'. The Green Man is very much the male energy of creation, while the female principle is depicted in other ways such as the very rare sheela-na-gig but, especially, in the image of the Virgin Mary which is frequently derived from pre-Christian images of the goddess Isis. There is a lovely stained glass window at Stowting depicting Mary in a green gown. In places other than Kent, the Green Man can be found accompanying images of Mary. Isis in Egyptian mythology was the consort of Osiris and he was depicted with the colour green; the Green Man is quite often found in association with a (non-leafy) female head, such as on the misericords at Wingham or in the Black Prince's Chapel, so I think there is a balance here and that the Green Man was simply never considered as female. Having said that, in the quire at Canterbury there are depictions of a Green King and his Queen entwined with leaves, there are female heads surrounded by foliage in the church at Shepherdswell and at St. Nicholas-at-Wade there are two 18th century corbels which seem to show female heads wearing bonnets and with leaves and berries coming from their mouths.

Green Animals

Other than cats, which as we have seen are a special case, several other animals can be found depicted with leaves. The Canterbury Black Prince's Chapel Green Man has two Green Lions as companions. Lions account for many of the Green 'Men' in Canterbury Cathedral. At Wye there is a Green Man and a Green Pig or Boar. There is a Green Lion and a Green Bull on the nave crossing in Rochester Cathedral, as well as some unidentifiable species of Green Beast. Dragons are often shown disgorging foliage instead of fire, at Stone Nr Dartford a Green Dragon swallows its leafy tail. Wingham has a set of fine misericords, two of these depict a horse and an ass, both with leaves poking from their mouths (of course, they might be eating the foliage). This might also be the place to mention the a depiction of a Wild Man or Wodwose - he is on a misericord in Faversham church, holding his traditional bough.

Victorian Green Men

Most of the Green Men already mentioned date from before 1600. After the 17th century the Green Man more or less disappeared from the repertoire of decorative images. However, with the resurgence of the 'Gothic' pioneered by Pugin and others the Green Man returned, mostly to secular buildings. There is a smiling Green Man at the church of St Augustine in Ramsgate, actually by Pugin, but most are to be found on banks - Rochester, Faversham and Blackheath having excellent examples. The Post Office at Canterbury, dated 1907, has several very clear Green Men. It seems that here, with the flourishing economy of the British Empire, the Green Man became a symbol of wealth and increase.

Continuing the Search

There are inevitably more Green Men in the county than I or others have yet found and I hope this article has inspired the reader to search for them. I would be pleased to hear from anyone with new 'discoveries' and I can be contacted via the web site www.canterburygreenman.fsnet.co.uk where there will also be found many colour photographs of the Green Man, including those mentioned herein.

©2001 Nigel Rushbrook

Below is a list of places with known Green Men, mostly in the respective parish church:

Barfreston, Biddenden, Bishopsbourne, Blackheath, Bromley, Broomfield, Canterbury, Charing, Cliffe-at-Hoo, Cobham, Cowden, Cranbrook, Dover, Faversham, Fordwich, Headcorn, Herne, Higham, Ightham Mote, Lenham, Lullingstone, Lydd, Mereworth Castle, Minster-in-Thanet, Old Romney, Patrixbourne, Penshurst, Ramsgate, Rochester, Sandwich, Shepherdswell, Shorne, St. Margarets-at-Cliffe, St. Nicholas-at-Wade, Tonbridge, Upper Hardres, Whitstable, Wingham, Wye.

The following is the text of a lecture handout

from a talk given to students from the University of South West Texas at Kent University.

(The pictures used are from the pages of this web site)

The Green Man

The Green Man is generally taken to indicate a human head carved in varied association with leaves. It is frequently found in church architecture but also in municipal buildings. The term itself dates only from articles written in the 1930's - we have no idea what, if any, name it was originally given

Why Have We Identified the Green Man?

1) The image itself can be visually very striking, the expression in the faces is frequently strongly observed and the association with leaves is quite haunting.

2) There is almost complete mystery about its meaning.

3) Its possible origins in paganism link it to the modern search for alternative religions and to the environmental movement.

Green Men - three different kinds.

1 The head disgorges leaves or vines

2 The head is formed by leaves - a leaf mask

3 The head is surrounded by (or peers from) leaves

Combinations of these three main types often occur: The disgorged leaves may rise up to surround the head. The leaf-mask may be disgorging foliage from the mouth. Quite often the disgorging head will be feline or a feline/human hybrid and sometimes the leaf-mask will be a lion.

What Might the Green Man Represent?

Resurrection - It has been argued that the Green Man's appearance on tombs and in churches generally represents the Christian hope of new life, green leaves sprouting from a sometimes obviously dead head.

Creation - The head may seem to be uttering leaves into being - depicting how God speaks His Creation into life. Let there be leaves.

Wood Spirits - Some Green Men, especially the leaf masks, seem to show a beneficent face peering from the heart of the wood, shining with the leafy energy of Nature.

Protection - If the Green Man is derived from Celtic iconography, its frequent use beside or above doorways might derive from the desire to protect the building beyond from evil spirits or from bad luck.

Fertility - Some Green Men, especially the cat-like ones, seem to be associated with harvest. The cat was regarded as a corn spirit. The depiction of a man/cat hybrid is too frequent to be regarded only as confused draughtsmanship.

Portraiture - Sometimes, a Green Man has such character it appears it can only be taken from life. Are these portraits of clerics, sponsors, masons etc. involved with the building work and depicted in a traditional manner?

Decoration - By the Renaissance, the foliate head had become merely a formal decoration. It is found everywhere from furniture and ceramics, through wall panels to stained glass.

Wealth - By the 19th Century, the Green Man had become a frequent decoration on banks. Not only is such carving the preserve of the wealthy, but the lush foliage issuing from a face symbolises the generation of wealth at that time.

The Mystery

We can identify and decode most of the images found in churches - e.g. the mermaid, dragon, lion, simple portraits etc. One example, the mouth-pulling 'toothache' figure provides an interesting comparison: Medieval man suffered greatly from toothache, the illustration of a man with toothache must have been immediately obvious to people at the time. Therefore, does the Green Man also have an obvious, but to us now lost, meaning?

Celtic Origins?

The Celts are supposed to have held in veneration the human head as the seat of the soul. The heads of ancestors and those slain in battle were decorated with foliage. The Celtic use of swirling ribbons also makes a connection with the Green Man, both directly and through illuminated manuscripts.

Manuscript Origins?

There are clear parallels between manuscripts from the medieval scriptoria and the carvings of Green Men.

Are there Green Women?

There are very few female leaf-disgorging heads. Even modern women artists seem to concentrate on the Green Man. Occasional examples do occur, with the female head surrounded by leaves occurring slightly more frequently. If we accept that the Green Man might represent a medieval personification of the male principle, we might argue that the complementary female principle is represented by images of Mary, which are often shown in association with Green Men.

Hidden Green Men.

Despite the fact that so many Green Men are placed in completely obvious locations, even above the altar in some cases, there seems to have been some effort expended in hiding Green Men - either by making them very small, placing them in inaccessible locations or disguising them beside carvings of ordinary foliage. In a row of Victorian houses, for example, where there are many keystone or capitals carved with foliage it can often be found that one of these - and just the one - is a green man. It is a great pleasure to find a Green Man that has been so 'tucked away'.

The Cult of Death.

Green Men sometimes seem to show death by hanging, garrotting or beheading. The eyes and tongue protrude, the face is in agony. One is reminded of known sacrificial victims such as Tollund Man. Are these depictions intended to warn people against straying from the religion which offers a once and for all sacrifice in Jesus on the Cross?

Leaves as Sin.

It has been suggested that, for the early Christian Church, lush green foliage symbolised the sins of the flesh, the lustfulness of Nature. It is possible that, as the Church authorities obviously sanctioned the Green Man, that they are intended to show souls in torment, surrounded and penetrated by their sin, swallowing their sin unrepentantly.

The author acknowledges the degree of (he hopes informed) speculation in this leaflet - the subject of the Green Man is like a jigsaw puzzle with only 5% of the pieces. It will also be noticed that the author has deliberately picked illustrations that most obviously represent each individual paragraph - an indication of how greatly varied an image the Green Man is - that one face made of leaves can be a tortured soul, another shows the hope of resurrection and yet another Green Man is a patriarchal Robin Hood peering at us from the Greenwood.

©2001 Nigel Rushbrook 

Ancient graffiti abounds in Canterbury Cathedral. One strange feature of this is that it seems to give 'permission' for modern graffiti.

The first piece of graffiti represents a geometric pattern very similar to that used in the construction of the 12th century "rose" window and also the geometrical pavement (Opus Alexandrinum) in the sanctuary and I wonder if the stone was originally used as a kind of 'sketchbook' before its incorporation into the column here.The pattern has an ancient beauty and its incision into the stone contrasts clearly with the scrawling from 1977. There is very little modern graffiti on the columns here, except where this ancient example is carved.

This marks the position of Archbishop Lanfranc's interment. It is unclear to me why there are pentagrams. Such devices as these occur at Lincoln, where they are marks made to indicate work completed by certain stonemasons; usually, though, they are out of sight. It is as if this stone marking Lanfranc's interment was intended to be replaced with something finer.

Normally hidden behind a notice, these horseshoe shapes remind me of the ancient maze pattern. Just visible here is a 'church' shape dated 1663 and also, as with the 'window pattern', some modern additions.