Something About the Church of the Faceless Images

Come, let us wipe its face! Father Thomas Higgins finds or receives many random clues shortly after he is transferred from his church in Duston Heights to the nearby Rocks Village Holy Angels Church in The Secret of the Underground Room (1990). The phrase "The Church of the Faceless Images" is but one of these clues.

Later in the story, on Lundy Island, Johnny Dixon and Fergie come across the remains of a ragged chapel that had protected the De Marisco Knights. Johnny realizes the ancient chapel figures in with the original clue:

Stone heads were carved on the arched doorway. They had once been meant to look like saints and kings and queens, but centuries of wind and rain had worn the carved face till they were featureless.

Several years ago, the Bellairsia staff got in touch with Bristol resident Bob Canton who provided comments and reflections (and photographs!) about Britsol and Lundy Island. While on the Island, Canton searched the cemetery but found nothing there relating to faceless images:

“However, I figured that Bellairs stayed at, or at least was in the area of, the Grand Hotel in Bristol during his stay as he features it in the story. If you exit the hotel and turn left to the top of Broad Street and then turn left again it leads you down to Castle Green where there is a roofless church and the south porch has an arched entrance with a faceless image either side in the stonework."

Canton’s pictures show the entrance and the faceless stonework. I don’t know whether this church in Bristol inspired the roofless chapel in Bellairs’s interpretation of Lundy Island but I’d wager it’s a good candidate.

And what of this Bristol church?

Stay tuned!