I love being out and about in the countryside. It’s refreshing and exhilarating in a way that being stuck indoors simply can’t compete with.
On this day, I encountered several interesting buildings, inc several churches. First up was St Mary’s at Reed, a rather small and homely slightly out of the way little church. I love the quiet peaceful location.
Inside the church, folk were busy working. I wonder, do the chalked letters on the door mean it’s being restored? Are they carpenter’s marks? Note the damage to panel B+.
I should’ve taken more pics, I guess. But the presence of the guys working kind of put me off. They appear to be working on the organ. The organ is the other end of the church (behind me, in the above pic). They’re working the other end cause there’s more room to manoeuvre there.
It was a bit too busy and messy to get good pics inside, with all that was going on. So this was a very brief stop. Plus, in all honesty, there was t a huge amount of interest. I’d like to visit again. When the church is otherwise empty. See if that impression is correct or erroneous.
The fabric of St Mary’s is, like many churches, a right ol’ patchwork. Most notably there the dark patch atop the tower.
In the course of my travels I’ve taken to stopping and investigating churches. And the more I do it. The more I love these old buildings.
As a non-believer, in either religion more generally or Christianity in particular, there’s a strange tension in there somewhere. Or perhaps I just say that?
Truth be told, when I visit churches there’s no tension whatsoever. Usually instead a sense of exaltation. Which, I suppose, is something they were, at least in part, intended to evoke?
All Saints in Polebrook has some very nice stained glass. And I’m always drawn to ‘the lights’, as they’re sometimes referred to.
And it’s not just the light through the stained glass, but the light in churches generally. Mind you, that has been materially affected by historical changes: if stained glass was torn out, during the Reformation or at some other time (possibly in more Puritan times (ECW or shortly after?), and replaced with plain glass, it changes the quality of illumination inside, naturally.
This glass is dated 1928. I wonder, is all the glass in here of that vintage? Or is it a more mixed bag? This one, below, for example, looks very different… not of a piece, so to speak.
Well, a closer look answers that question, the above is dedicated in 1981. Very recently indeed!
And, as ever, the windows draw attention to the thickness of the walls. What amazing buildings churches are.
Two extraordinary lights, dedicated to Tev. Richard Hinds and Susannah Hatfield.
I’ve always found it odd how a religion that, in its secondary phase – i.e. New Testicle – professes for the most part to be a more pacifist ‘turn the other cheek’ type affair (never mind old Testicle exhortations, such as Thou shalt not kill), cosies up to the State and Power, and I’m particularly vexed by this in relation to war.
And Polebrook, abd one assumes the church, as part of that, has very strong very recent martial connections, with the WWII creation of RAF Polebrook, and the presence of the (?) Bomber Group. As it happens, I’m adding this blog entry retrospectively, whilst watching Masters of The Air on Apple TV, making this a very resonant theme for me, right now.
On leaving the church, and getting out into the countryside, it was a crisp and beautiful winter day, with partly clear and partly clouded – and rather dramatically so – skies.
I love the above pano’. And yet, as is so often the case, the rather puny camera on my iPhone fails to capture the awesome if rather empty grandeur of such simple yet sublime moments.