Glittering alder trees once filled the valley of Gwernesney. Among the lime green leaves and yellow catkins, an Old Red Sandstone church has sat for 800 yrs.

Weathered heads watch with blank expressions as visitors pass under the broad chamfered arch of the south door..

#thread
Carved in the 1200s, this doorway, along with the lancet windows and the trefoil-headed lights in the east window are the oldest parts of the church. The windows at St Michael’s span seven centuries of styles creating an architectural collage - a fenestration i-Spy.

2/
Forget the pews, the monuments or the font... inside, the eye is immediately drawn to the heavily stained rood beam and screen. Spilling over the chancel arch, the 15th-century beam is carried by three stone corbels and is pierced with a delicate foliate trail.

3/
The panels at the base of the screen have a simple stencilled decoration of fleur-de-lys in golds and reds. This was added in the 19th century.

4/
From there, the eye travels up to the nave’s 15th-century wagon roof. Here, a single curving vault with moulded ribs covers the ceiling.

5/
At the west end you’ll find a baptistry. Made from recycled medieval screen, it’s roughly joined together. Time hasn't been kind to the woodwork. But there is a poignant beauty in its rusty hinges, missing tenons and wormy panels… A reminder of frailty and temporality...

6/
… And on that cheery note: GOOD MORNING! Happy St Michael’s Day from St Michael & All Angels, Gwernesney, Monmouthshire.

#michaelmas

7/

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More from @friendschurches

26 Sep
Brithdir has powers of transportation.

Behind a thicket of fleshy, fuchsia rhododendrons, a rugged granite church hides. Inside, the stippled plaster walls are daubed in burnt sienna, the ceiling soars in royal azure.

But the Mediterranean vibe doesn’t end there... #thread
St Mark’s, Brithdir was built in the 1890s. Louisa Richards commissioned Henry Wilson to design the church in memory of her husband, the Rev’d Charles Tooth, founder of St Mark’s church in Florence.

He had died within a few months of their marriage.

2/
Wilson was inspired by Tooth’s legacy in Florence, but also by “those delightfully simple churches just south of the Alps”.

3/
Read 8 tweets
25 Sep
On the Llŷn Peninsula, St Mary’s, Penllech sits in splendid isolation overlooking the Irish Sea. A church has been here for 800yrs, serving generations of farming communities.
From the 1500s, it was also used as a school, and was one of the earliest grammar schools in Wales.

1/
The church's grey interior, open benches, and box-pews jostling at the east end, is simple and special. Most of what you see today is a rebuilding in 1840 by Samuel Jones. It's hard to imagine a classroom in this this place of deep stillness.

2/4
One of the students of Penllech was Henry Rowlands, a man who went on to Oxford to gain a university education and eventually became the Bishop of Bangor.  
But Rowlands never forgot the parish of his childhood – or its people.

3/4
Read 4 tweets
19 Sep
Great art is created when the hand, the head, and the heart come together.

Llandeloy church was nothing more than a few medieval stumps by the 1840s. In the 1920s, John Coates Carter set about re-imagining the ruins to symbolise a personal journey through life...

#thread
Rebuilding the church from the fragments was meant to start in the early twentieth century. Locals donated more than £600 towards the work. But, just as they were about to begin, the Great War broke. Progress was halted for more than a decade.

2/7
In 1926, Carter returned. He designed a simple church to nestle deep into a hollow in the churchyard. An ancient holy well is hidden in the greenery to the south.

3/7
Read 8 tweets
12 Sep
In 1876, the chancel of St John the Baptist's, Allington, in Wiltshire was decorated with stencil and freehand decoration, including orange trees, curtains and rosettes, in memory of Fulwar William Fowle, rector of the parish for 60 years.
More oranges appear in a charming 'trompe l'oeil' priest's seat with an orange tree painted in the recess.
The #artsandcrafts decorations, and the east window, were designed by the prestigious firm Heaton, Butler and Bayne.
Read 4 tweets
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.
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.
Read 4 tweets
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.
Some simple moulded pews also date to the 1400s, as do the glittering fragments of stained glass.

📷@badger_beard
Read 5 tweets

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