This post is actually a retrospective one. I made a second visit to St Andrew’s, in Abbots Ripton, in February, ‘24. And that reminded me I’d been before. So I looked for it, as a previous entry, here on my blog. But it wasn’t there. Hence this post.
And that lead in turn to my realising that this had been a two church day. A good day! Here’s the other church, the rather splendid, St John The Baptist, in Wistow. The village of Wistow is also quite pretty in parts.
The porch of this church is wooden. Whilst that makes it look and feel very old, I suspect that wooden porches might need renewing. I wonder how old the current pitch actually is?
As I entered the porch I spotted a gargoyle waterspout.
The contrast of wood and stone is very pleasing to the eye and mind.
The stained glass here is glorious. It’s amazing to contemplate that in rather humdrum little villages up and down the UK there are so many buildings like this. Churches are, not always, but very often, incredible repositories of human art, architecture and endeavour.
The intensity of colour in some of these windows is, frankly, breathtaking. The richness of the reds and blues in particular, in the lights above and below? Pretty staggering.
The fact that these windows elicit an ‘OMG’ from me, a devout atheist, or – as I prefer to term it – naturalist and free-thinker, is, I think, quite remarkable. The window pictured above is pretty mindblowing.
In light (get it?) of the functions of these windows, it’s quite astonishing how powerfully effective they can be. Certainly they work a kind of magic on me. And I guess this was as intended?
And then you get the effect of repetition. The above is very similar to the one that precedes it. But it isn’t the same one. The effect of this density of imagery, and the repetition, it’s like a visual chant. Again, the word mesmerising seems apt.
I need to know more about the stained glass here, as it’s so intensely magical in its effects. Whoever did it, they were artist and magician. The alchemy of glass, lead and light, the symphony of colours? Just phenomenal.
And I leave, a sadder and wiser man! Perhaps. Or perhaps not? I do feel time spent in these ‘sacred places’ has a powerful and very positive effect. How this squares with their intended functions, and how that in turn is faring in modern times, when these buildings are no longer as central to so many lives as they once were… it’s all a bit of a mystery.
I simply had to stop and check out this church, looking so attractive in the autumnal season. And with those red poppy lines, presumably a Remembrance Day thing?
These few photos track my walk up to the church. Which, alas, was locked up, closed.
That’s as far as I got on this attempted visit. I’ll have to return at some point. See if I can find the keyholder, and have a look around inside.
Another attraction here is a cute little rest area or picnic spot, adjacent to the church. I took a couple of photographs. Thinking it’d be nice to have a picnic lunch here on a sunny spring or summers day.
