Cottam Church and the farm adjoining it are all that
now exists of what must once have been an extensive village. In the
church is a Norman font of cylindrical form, covered with the
wonderfully crude carvings of that period. There are six subjects, the
most remarkable being the huge dragon with a long curly tail in the act
of swallowing St. Margaret, whose skirts and feet are shown inside the
capacious jaws, while the head is beginning to appear somewhere behind
the dragon's neck. To the right is shown a gruesome representation of
the martyrdom of St. Lawrence, and then follow Adam and Eve by the Tree
of Life (a twisted piece of foliage), the martyrdom of St. Andrew, and
what seems to be another dragon.
On each side of the bridle-road by the church you can trace without the
least difficulty the ground-plan of many houses under the short turf.
The early writers do not mention Cottam, and so far I have come upon no
explanation for the wiping out of this village. Possibly its extinction
was due to the Black Death in 1349.
It is about four miles by road to Cowlam, although the two churches are
only about a mile and a half apart; and when Cowlam is reached there is
not much more in the way of a village than at Cottam.
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