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Friendless Churches Profile picture
@friendschurches
Feb 5, 2022 • 7 tweets • 3 min read • Read on X
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While we don’t mean keep visitors away from Llancillo church, getting there is a bit of battle, involving sharp turns, potholes, rattling cattle grids, boorish cattle, watchful sheep and a busy train-track. But this area is no stranger to battles...

#thread
It’s here, along the spellbinding Welsh Marches, that you’ll find the densest concentration of motte-and-bailey castles in England and Wales. These castles were the result of William the Conqueror’s plan to subdue the Welsh by installing Marcher Lords along the border.

2/7
But defence wasn’t new to the Marches: along their length, the Romans built forts to defend themselves from the Welsh. The Anglo-Saxons dug an 80-mile ditch. So, it's no wonder really that our little church at Llancillo is in the shadow of an ancient castle.

3/7
The castle at Llancillo was built in the 1090s by Richard Esketot, a tenant of the formidable de Lacys. The church itself dates to a similar time, with remodelling in the 14th, 17th and 19th centuries. Of particular interest here is the woodwork – much of it recycled:

4/7
...the carved wall-plates in the porch are believed to be from an old roodscreen; the choir stalls incorporate 17th and 18th-century panelling; one pulpit is richly carved and dated 1632; another is inscribed ‘I.G.1745’ and seems to have been made from pieces of box-pews.

5/7
Inside and out, there are monuments to the Scudamore family… The same Scudamores that bought Dore Abbey in the Dissolution of the 1530s and sold off the masonry… and then, in the 1630s had a pang of guilt and restored the building as parish church.

6/7
It’s worth a visit to Llancillo… if you’re brave enough...

Read more:
friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/church/st-pete…

 7/7

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More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches Profile picture
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.
Rubens' 'The Rainbow Landscape' of 1636 was painted just three decades before major new scientific theories about colour and light emerged. The rainbow lights up surrounding clouds with highlights of lemony yellow and blue.

© The Wallace Collection Painting by Rubens: The Rainbow Landscape. A rainbow forms an arc across most of this landscape painting. Below it is a idealised rural harvest scene, with agricultural workers (men and women), cows, and carts with horses at the edge of a stream. From the Wallace Collection (licensed under Creative Commons).
In 1664, Robert Boyle conducted experiments with prisms, and in the 'artificial rain-bow' he produced, he observed five colours: Red, Yellow, Green, Blew and Purple. ... The frontispiece of Boyle's book, 'Experiments and Considerations Touching Colours'
Read 9 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Sep 23, 2023
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.

Here ‘leaves unnoticed thicken, hidden weeds flower, neglected waters quicken’. An aerial view of Skeffling, with the church tower peeking out above the trees, surrounded by flat marshes and fields
Those are the words of poet, Philip Larkin. Larkin explored this area after he moved to Hull in 1955 to take up the position of librarian at the Brynmor Jones Library at the University of Hull. He lived there and held that job for thirty years, until his death in 1985.
Of Hull, he wrote "I never thought about Hull until I was here. Having got here, it suits me in many ways. It is a little on the edge of things, I think even its natives would say that. I rather like being on the edge of things.” A view of the salt marshes at Skeffling, with a brooding dark blue sky lit by the sunrise, and a man-made glow on the horizon
Read 5 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
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.

From 1-20, the numbering sequence ran as follows: Yan, Tan, Tethora, Pethera, Pimp, Sethera, Lethera, Hovera, Covera, Dik ... Aerial view of St John the ...
... Yan-a-dik, Tan-a-dik, Tethera-dik, Pethera-dik, Bumfit, Yan-a-bumfit, Tan-a-bumfit, Tethera-bumfit, Pethera-bumfit, Figgit.
If there were more than 20 sheep in the flock, he could note the first 20 when he reached Figgit by putting a pebble in his pocket, and then starting the sequence from Yan again.

(info from 'Alex's Adventures in Numberland' by Alex Bellos)
Read 4 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
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.

3/
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Mar 18, 2023
Between 1666 and 1680, the English parliament sought to protect the wool trade, by requiring the dead to be buried in nothing but a shroud of English sheep's wool. Plague victims and the destitute were the only exceptions. A section of a 17th century affidavit shows a wood-cut print
The 'Burying in Woollen Acts' required an Affidavit within 8 days of burial, proving before a JP that the law had been complied with. Those who didn't comply were fined £5, half of which went to the poor. This blog has some terrific examples of affidavits:buff.ly/3YkB33B This signed affidavit from Worcestershire for Burying in Woo
Many wealthy families preferred to simply pay the fine and bury their loved ones in clothing or shrouds of finer materials, such as linen.
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
Mar 17, 2023
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.

2/ Image
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.

3/ Image
Read 8 tweets

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