I am on the committee of a small architectural trust that gives out grants to local historic buildings. Mostly secular buildings, occasionally ecclesiastical ones. The grants are small and come from a bequest that set the trust up in the 1950s.
This afternoon I went to look at some work being carried out on a church.
Pouring with rain, although it was not cold, and there was a period of sustained sunshine in the early afternoon. Despite strict warnings from the doctor not to go out (because of my illness) I grew restless in the house and went out at 2pm. Drive of forty minutes across the plain.
The church of St Mary - Early English gothic, although the tower is Perpendicular and leans to one side (this has been cleverly corrected in the view from the road). The building had been restored in 1885. As I parked my car I could hear the current work going on - a constant sound of movement, banging and shouts.
No service today as the building is closed while the new lead is being put on the roof. One of the church wardens was waiting to meet me, a stout woman in her sixties. She seemed a bit disappointed when I arrived, and perhaps she had been expecting someone older and more erudite.
One enters through the south porch, which is of considerable interest being wide and square with low stone benches against either side, under arches of slender columns. This area had been developed as a sort of mini-mausoleum in the Victorian period, and on the floor were five red granite slabs ornately carved with stylised flowers. Supplementing these gravestones were, on the walls, five large brass tablets, again very elaborate. These monuments dated from the 1870s to the 1890s and related to intermarried families of local farmers, forming a little clan linked by alliances of blood and property and displaying tremendous pride in their collective lineage. Heraldry (possibly assumed), floral flourishes, meticulous references to family connections. Now the porch was used as the entrance for the workmen whose boots walked on the graves (how are the mighty fallen).
Inside the church the churchwarden showed me the restoration (the trust had only paid for a small part of the work). Scaffolding at the back restricted access to the old carvings which are folk art and record a local legend. The celebrated font was covered by thick sheets of polythene. In the vestry the churchwarden showed me the architect's drawings. Also there was a framed proclamation dated 1815 with red seals and signatures of the then churchwardens saying: Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the Glorious Victory obtained over the French of Sunday the Eighteenth Day of June. Also a painting of the Virgin Mary portrayed as a young woman standing on a cloud supported by happy fat cherubs holding Madonna lilies, the Virgin wearing clothes of delicate pastel blue with a darker blue cloak billowing out to one side and long dark hair wafted by a breeze.
When we went outside the rain had stopped. The churchyard had been laid out as an arboretum by one of the Edwardian incumbents. He planted approximately three hundred specimen trees, all of them different. A hundred years later they are now fully mature. Even in late autumn they created an exotic, delicate and feathery canopy above the graves. We walked around trying to identify some of them.
Then I drove home and began coughing.
This afternoon I went to look at some work being carried out on a church.
Pouring with rain, although it was not cold, and there was a period of sustained sunshine in the early afternoon. Despite strict warnings from the doctor not to go out (because of my illness) I grew restless in the house and went out at 2pm. Drive of forty minutes across the plain.
The church of St Mary - Early English gothic, although the tower is Perpendicular and leans to one side (this has been cleverly corrected in the view from the road). The building had been restored in 1885. As I parked my car I could hear the current work going on - a constant sound of movement, banging and shouts.
No service today as the building is closed while the new lead is being put on the roof. One of the church wardens was waiting to meet me, a stout woman in her sixties. She seemed a bit disappointed when I arrived, and perhaps she had been expecting someone older and more erudite.
One enters through the south porch, which is of considerable interest being wide and square with low stone benches against either side, under arches of slender columns. This area had been developed as a sort of mini-mausoleum in the Victorian period, and on the floor were five red granite slabs ornately carved with stylised flowers. Supplementing these gravestones were, on the walls, five large brass tablets, again very elaborate. These monuments dated from the 1870s to the 1890s and related to intermarried families of local farmers, forming a little clan linked by alliances of blood and property and displaying tremendous pride in their collective lineage. Heraldry (possibly assumed), floral flourishes, meticulous references to family connections. Now the porch was used as the entrance for the workmen whose boots walked on the graves (how are the mighty fallen).
Inside the church the churchwarden showed me the restoration (the trust had only paid for a small part of the work). Scaffolding at the back restricted access to the old carvings which are folk art and record a local legend. The celebrated font was covered by thick sheets of polythene. In the vestry the churchwarden showed me the architect's drawings. Also there was a framed proclamation dated 1815 with red seals and signatures of the then churchwardens saying: Prayer and Thanksgiving to Almighty God for the Glorious Victory obtained over the French of Sunday the Eighteenth Day of June. Also a painting of the Virgin Mary portrayed as a young woman standing on a cloud supported by happy fat cherubs holding Madonna lilies, the Virgin wearing clothes of delicate pastel blue with a darker blue cloak billowing out to one side and long dark hair wafted by a breeze.
When we went outside the rain had stopped. The churchyard had been laid out as an arboretum by one of the Edwardian incumbents. He planted approximately three hundred specimen trees, all of them different. A hundred years later they are now fully mature. Even in late autumn they created an exotic, delicate and feathery canopy above the graves. We walked around trying to identify some of them.
Then I drove home and began coughing.
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