The Mystery of the Wooden Mice

The first carved mouse we saw was in Knaresborough (see the picture of Thomas, on an earlier posting). But since then, we’ve encountered more of these curious creatures, carved into church lecterns, choir stalls, and kneeling benches. Our own neighbourhood church, Saint Thomas cum Maurice, had no fewer than three of them! Where did these mice come from? One of our church friends, Ken, suggested we take a look in nearby Kilburn, so we when Ulbe was visiting us last weekend, we made a trip to this part of the Yorkshire. There was considerably more snow once you were higher up in the Hambleton Hills. Kilburn is also famous for its White Horse. This is not a prehistoric creation, but was commissioned in 1857 by a local Kilburn grocer, Thomas Taylor, and executed by the diligent pupils of the local school. Being a white horse, it does not stand out in the snow very well (unlike our blue Volvo), but you can still see it in the escarpement...

In Kilburn, we discovered the origin of the mouse mystery. Since 1925, woodcarver Robert Thompson and his descendants carve this mouse in every piece of the heavy-duty hand-crafted oak furniture they make. The tradition apparently started when one of Robert Thompson’s colleagues remarked that woodcarvers were as "poor as church mice". Judging from the price tags on some of these pieces, I expect that no longer to be the case. Today, wooden mice can be found in almost every Yorkshire church (we found one in Saint Michael-le-Belfrey!) and as far away as Westminster Abbey. Regrettably, the visitors’ centre was closed, but there were still plenty of mice to discover.