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@friendschurches

11 Sep

Old St Peter’s, Wickham Bishops was established to serve the Bishop of London in the 12thC. Since the 90s it has been home to Ben Finn's stained glass studio. Tomorrow there's a rare opportunity to look inside ... and see four beautiful new windows created and installed by Ben.

This ancient building continually serves up surprises from its past. Several wall paintings have revealed themselves from within layers of plaster, as well as the scratched names and initials of hundreds of people — left as permanent (though fragile) traces of impermanent lives.

@badger_beard

In 2013, Ben Finn created a new east window depicting Jacob's ladder, and this summer, he completed four more windows representing St Helena, St Cedd, St Peter and St Mary. Here’s Ben working at the finishing stages, and the dazzling results —photographed by @badger_beard.

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Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

10 Sep

At the end of July, just days after completing a £150k re-roofing project, St Mary Magdalene’s church in Caldecote was vandalised. We’re thrilled to announce that the church will be open this Sunday and the next as part of #HeritageOpenDays 2021.

Come and talk to a local volunteer about this fascinating church in the site of a lost medieval village. Treasures awaiting you include an extraordinary, floor-to- (almost) ceiling stoup and an octagonal font encrusted with cusped panels, heraldry and foliage. Both 15th century.

@badger_beard

Some simple moulded pews also date to the 1400s, as do the glittering fragments of stained glass.

📷@badger_beard

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Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

9 Sep

The Gloucester Candlestick is an extraordinary survival. Dating from 1104-13, it’s a masterpiece of English metalwork, a gilt tangle of beasts clambering, clawing through fleshy foliage, struggling “to reach the light or sink into the darkness below”...

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Incredibly, an inscription on the stem of candlestick clearly indicates its provenance: ‘The devotion of Abbot Peter and his gentle flock gave me to the Church of St Peter of Gloucester’. Peter was the abbot of the Benedictine Abbey in Gloucester in the early 12th century.

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However, somehow, Abbot Peter’s candlestick ended up in the treasury of Le Mans Cathedral, France. There are several points when it could’ve made its journey: the Abbey was destroyed by fire in 1122, was the candlestick stolen?

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Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

8 Sep

@CPRE

Just over a hundred years ago, Louisa Harris commissioned Sir Guy Dawber (a founder of @CPRE & a President of @RIBA) to design a remarkable Arts & Crafts style private chapel.
St John the Baptist, Matlock Bath, was built into a cliff face overlooking the Derwent Valley.

Louisa Harris assembled a glittering array of artists to realise her dream, including Louis Davis, "the last of the Pre-Raphaelites", who designed the water-themed stained glass in the east window ...

- and George Bankart, an architect who specialised in ornamental plasterwork, and who created the barrel-vaulted plaster ceiling (including tiny birds flying across the plaster!).

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Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

6 Sep

@cadwwales

This month, more than 150 historic sites in Wales are offering free entry, special events or tours, as part of #OpenDoors, funded and organised by @cadwwales.

Participating monuments include Laugharne Castle, just a mile from St Oudoceus's church in Llandawke, Carmarthenshire.

This medieval castle, built in the 13th century for the de Brian family, was turned into a magnificent mansion in the Tudor period by Sir John Perrot. Unfortunately, Perrot was sentenced to execution by Elizabeth I, and he died in the Tower of London, while awaiting his fate.

Today, two imposing medieval towers stand watch over the remains of the mansion, surrounded by ornamental gardens. Its breathtaking position overlooking the Taf estuary inspired Laugharne's most famous resident — the writer Dylan Thomas — who called the castle 'brown as owls'.

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Friendless Churches

@friendschurches

4 Sep

Duncan Berry from Berry Stonework was demonstrating flint knapping. It’s an incredible skill. The material offers no guide, no grain. It’s a capricious stone. Here’s Duncan squaring off a piece.

And here’s a galleted panel he made. The gallets are shards of flint, which he presses into the mortar. It’s decorative, but also provides some structural reinforcement.

Here’s a flint nugget that sort of looks like a thigh ball joint.

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