The roads were, as usual on a Sunday afternoon, deserted. Past little rows of houses sheltering under the high river banks (which date from Anglo-Saxon times when the marshes were first drained). A little watery sunshine which made the isolated red brick houses and barns look mellow and warm.
Arriving at the hamlet, I was immediately conscious of an element of timelessness. The small church (no tower, only a little bellcote) had been built in 1850 of rough-hewn stones, to a design by Butterfield. Inside it was very intimate, with at the west end little stalls selling home-made produce, plants and vegetables. A local artist offering very good local landscapes in watercolour for £5 each (to go to church funds). Like most rural communities it is very conservative and resistant to change - people can still recall church feasts with decorated farm waggons pulled by beribboned horses.
A restrained white and grey marble tablet to an eleven year old girl who died in 1857: She was a most heavenly-minded tender-hearted child, ever dutiful to her parents, loving and beloved, the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.
Then the sad little verse:
Ere grief could blight thy op'ning bloom,
Or Sin thy charms destroy,
Thy Saviour called an Angel home,
To realms of peace and joy.
There was a large memorial on the back wall and I had to read it several times to get the sense of it. First inscription referred to a magistrate who died in 1868 and his three wives. Second inscription described his eldest son who practised at Chancery Bar and died in 1898. His five wives (!) were listed. The family coat of arms, three gold arrows on a blue background, were displayed on various hatchments impaled with the coats of arms of the women they had married. Anthony Trollope satirised greedy lawyers who married heiresses, but even he would have been shocked by such a blatant example.
Talking to the lady pouring the teas, there is supposedly an inland sea in the area - one of the great lakes that appear and disappear in this magical timeless landscape depending on the caprice of the local climate. The event is looked for with great anticipation by the local population who regard it as a happy and auspicious phenomenon. She could remember as a child in the 1940s being taken to a picnic on the beach of this secretive expanse of water one splendid summer when the lake had lasted the year round.
Arriving at the hamlet, I was immediately conscious of an element of timelessness. The small church (no tower, only a little bellcote) had been built in 1850 of rough-hewn stones, to a design by Butterfield. Inside it was very intimate, with at the west end little stalls selling home-made produce, plants and vegetables. A local artist offering very good local landscapes in watercolour for £5 each (to go to church funds). Like most rural communities it is very conservative and resistant to change - people can still recall church feasts with decorated farm waggons pulled by beribboned horses.
A restrained white and grey marble tablet to an eleven year old girl who died in 1857: She was a most heavenly-minded tender-hearted child, ever dutiful to her parents, loving and beloved, the Lord gave and the Lord hath taken away, blessed be the Name of the Lord.
Then the sad little verse:
Ere grief could blight thy op'ning bloom,
Or Sin thy charms destroy,
Thy Saviour called an Angel home,
To realms of peace and joy.
There was a large memorial on the back wall and I had to read it several times to get the sense of it. First inscription referred to a magistrate who died in 1868 and his three wives. Second inscription described his eldest son who practised at Chancery Bar and died in 1898. His five wives (!) were listed. The family coat of arms, three gold arrows on a blue background, were displayed on various hatchments impaled with the coats of arms of the women they had married. Anthony Trollope satirised greedy lawyers who married heiresses, but even he would have been shocked by such a blatant example.
Talking to the lady pouring the teas, there is supposedly an inland sea in the area - one of the great lakes that appear and disappear in this magical timeless landscape depending on the caprice of the local climate. The event is looked for with great anticipation by the local population who regard it as a happy and auspicious phenomenon. She could remember as a child in the 1940s being taken to a picnic on the beach of this secretive expanse of water one splendid summer when the lake had lasted the year round.
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