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Jan 28, 2022 7 tweets 3 min read Read on X
The church at Castlemartin is a riddle of arches.

From yawning arcades and stone arcs floating in a limewashed wall to sloping skew-passages and pointed scars of lost roofs, these shapes chart the 900-year architectural history of the church.

#thread
Cut into a steep sandstone bank just a couple of miles from the Pembrokeshire coast, the earliest parts are the south and western walls (and font) which date from the late 1100s. This includes, we believe, the four-bay arcade.

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The chancel was rebuilt and extended in the 1200s. At the same time the north aisle was reconstructed and the tower erected over the south transept. A north transept was also added at this time.

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The 13th century saw a considerable enlargement of the church, more or less doubling it in size. Such enlargements were often a response to the ritual and ceremonial requirements of the Sarum Use for the Mass and other liturgical rites.

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In the 14th-century, the two storey porch was tacked on to the south.
The Reformation era of the 16th century, coupled with the introduction after 1549 of a less elaborate and more static liturgy, probably precipitated the reduction in size to the proportions we see today.

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The north and south chancel aisles were demolished, along with the north transept. The only evidence of their existence is the arches over the windows.
The north chancel aisle, where it abutted on the north nave aisle, was replaced by an angled passageway leading to the chancel.
Except for the provision of a vestry on part of the site of the north chancel aisle, which was constructed in 1856 over a boiler-house and cellar, no additions were subsequently made to the church.

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Oct 24, 2023
Red and yellow and pink and green ... most children can tell you that rainbows contain seven colours, and many of us use 'ROYGBIV' to remember them. But people haven't always seen rainbows this way. Photograph of St Mary's, Tal-y-Llyn, Anglesey by Wynne Jones, with a rainbow in a grey stormy sky. The simple church is lit up with yellow light.
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The church at Skeffling was built from glacial clutter and recycled masonry in the 1400s. It sits in Holderness. A landscape of mudflats and salt-marshes washed into existence by the North Sea.

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Jun 18, 2023
The next time you're lying in bed counting sheep, you might like to try out the counting system that was used by shepherds In medieval Lincolnshire.

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... Yan-a-dik, Tan-a-dik, Tethera-dik, Pethera-dik, Bumfit, Yan-a-bumfit, Tan-a-bumfit, Tethera-bumfit, Pethera-bumfit, Figgit.
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(info from 'Alex's Adventures in Numberland' by Alex Bellos)
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Mar 19, 2023
In about 1300, five massive oak legs were pushed into the soil at Boveney to raise a belltower out of the clay tile roof of the 12th-century church. Inside, in the 1800s fielded panelling was installed, hiding those hardworking legs.

#thread
Perfect as that panelling looked, it obscured the most important timbers. Noticing that the bellcote was somewhat slumped, our architect removed some panels, and we found the legs were rotten. Boveney church was *almost* without a leg to stand on.

2/
Many things contributed to the decay-the high water-table of the river-bank church, deathwatch beetle, fruiting bodies… The panelling concealed this until it was almost too late. The words, ‘catastrophic collapse’, were used. Panic set in. The £60,000 repair bill quadrupled.

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St Patrick was ripped from his home as a teenager. After six years as a slave in the west of Ireland, he trekked the breadth of the island to get home to Britain. He would become the patron saint of Ireland, yet at the end of his life, he felt he had failed.

#thread Image
Patrick lived in the 5th century. Upon leaving Ireland in his early 20s, he devoted his life to Christ. He returned to Ireland after hearing Vox Hiberionacum – the voice of the Irish – in a dream.

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He became the patron saint of Ireland in the 7th century when the embellishment of St Patrick’s story began. Some of the biographers got quite creative, attributing all manner of miracles to the man – from snakes to sprouting staffs.

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Read 8 tweets

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