Tweet

@knockmacool

More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

11 Jan

Until the mid-1800s, St Mary’s, Long Crichel in the Cranborne Chase chalklands was a grand medieval church. That is, until fire ripped through and destroyed its Perpendicular elegance. Just the tower survived, the rest of the church was rebuilt over twenty-five years.

#thread

Today, we start repairs at St Mary’s. The nave will be entirely re-roofed for the first time in 170 years, and the plain-glazed diamond quarry windows will be carefully restored after being vandalised.

2/

The roof is covered with hand-made clay peg tiles. Or *mostly* covered with clay tiles. The eagle-eyed might spot something curious at the eaves: the last course is actually formed of large limestone slabs. This is vernacular roofing detail specific to Dorset.

3/

Read 7 tweets

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

10 Jan

There’s about 40,300 churches in the UK. Chances are there’s one within walking distance of where you live. The doors to some might be closed, but with blocked doorways, empty niches, and fantastic beasts… sometimes the outside can be just as interesting.

#thread

Blocked up arches, doorways, windows show how the building has changed over time. Like the arches in the south wall of St Mary’s, Fordham, Norfolk which tell us this church once had an aisle. Now long lost.

2/

Grotesques, gargoyles, and carved heads peer down from windows, towers and roofs – like the giggling lions on the tower parapet at Papworth St Agnes, Cambridgeshire. Worn faces, that a sculptor crafted and put soft life into centuries ago, looking out from the past.

3/

Read 7 tweets

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

7 Jan

When a deathwatch beetle is in the mood for love, it bumps its head off the furniture. These beetles like to chomp through woodwork, and the bumping is their mating call through the tunnels in the woodwork. In the past, however, their tapping was thought to herald death.

#thread

This belief developed from sick rooms, where, in the long hours and stillness, those watching the dying heard the beetles tap out their cry for companionship from the long and lonely tunnels within the furniture.

#Folklore

2/

When death hung in the air, it’s easy to understand how the watchers associated this sound with death knocking, or time ticking down… And hence, these tiny insects, earned the name, deathwatch beetle.

📸: Gilles San Martin, CC BY-SA 3.0

3/

Read 8 tweets

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

6 Jan

The church of St Michael is about as friendless as you could imagine. Empty for over a decade, it lies low to the long valley-floor of Cwm Pennant next to a gurgling river. It’s surrounded by ruined buildings. The graveyard tells the story of a once prosperous valley.

#thread

The church is a long, simple single cell building or, as Archaeologica Cambrensis 1901 calls it “a poor church… with a clumsy transeptal chapel … scarcely any features which can be called architectural … with a roof which is rather inferior to the ordinary”.

2/

It goes on to tell us that: the altar is poor, the transept awkward, the walls low, the sacrarium common, the gallery of debased character, while the porch is without character.

(Tell us what you really think, Archaeologica Cambrensis!)

3/

Read 7 tweets

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

5 Jan

In the summer of 1985, a phenomenon struck Ireland.
Statues of saints were moving spontaneously.
In over thirty locations across the small island, holy statues swayed, prayed or wept.
Hundreds of thousands of people flocked to witness the miracle. 24hr vigils were kept.

#thread

Recently, a similar phenomenon seems to be striking our churches. Porches are getting restless, towers are getting twitchy, foundations are getting itchy feet. One way or another, our churches are on the move.

Though it’s less of a miracle and more of a nightmare…

2/

The tower at Papworth St Agnes church in Cambs has decided that it no longer wants to be attached to the nave and, in its desperate bid for independence, has started to wrench some of the nave masonry with it. It has split open the window, cracked the cill, torn the tiles…

3/

Read 8 tweets

Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

31 Dec 20

At the bottom of a dead-end, tucked down a steep slope is St Jerome’s, Llangwm Uchaf. It’s a quirky-looking church with a 15th-century octagonal turret tacked onto an off-centre, defensive-looking tower. Turning the door handle, you really wouldn’t expect to see… this

#thread

Despite dating from 1128, the chief glory of St Jerome’s is the late 15th-century screen, one of the finest in south Wales. It fills the entrance to the chancel and is “superabundantly encrusted with carved decoration”.

2/7

The screen is embellished with fleshy vines with small, tight bunches of grapes, a garden of floral bosses, and delicate architectural tracery.

3/7

Read 7 tweets

Share this page!

Friendless Churches

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches

Friendless Churches

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Like this author's thread?