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Friendless Churches

7 Oct, 9 tweets, 5 min read

This image of the Llananno screen has always spoken to us. We love that you can see the human hands that carved it over 500 yrs ago in the way the timber thins and thickens, the shapes squeeze and spread..

The design is restless, alive.

And it inspired our new logo.

#thread

The eagle-eyed among you might have noticed that we've updated our profile photo. The egg-yolk yellow logo was inspired by the perfectly imperfect quatrefoils in the majestic medieval roodscreen of St Anno's, Llananno, Powys.

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This screen has borne the whips and scorns of time.

Candle wax streaks, beetles gnawed the oak, hands gripped the frame, bats roosted in the loft, the roof leaked, worshippers left - and came back.

This screen - chipped, cracked, crumbled, surviving - has seen it all.

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To us, these tiny toppling quatrefoils captured so much of what we love about places of worship, and they seemed to be the perfect symbol to have as our logo.

We started out with some monochrome shapes…

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Then added some colour…

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From here, we stripped back to bright yellow, a sort of teal-blue and a Brithdir terracotta (TM) …

And it comes stacked and as a line… to suit every scenario.

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But the logo isn't all that's new.

We're excited to tell you that we have re-launched our website. You'll find that as well as a new look, we've designed the site to make it easier to find information on our churches, and to support our work.

friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk

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Do take a look and tell us what you think: friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk

We've still got *a lot* more to do, but we hope you like what you see so far…

And in the meantime…

8/

@fotofacade

1. Thank you to the Newton School of Carvers in Montgomeryshire, Wales for their carving of 1500 and the inspiration it continues to give.

2. Thank you to @fotofacade for taking these photos that captured our imagination.

3. Thank you to *you* for your continued support!

9/

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.
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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.

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19 Sep

Great art is created when the hand, the head, and the heart come together.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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