How it started … how it’s going …

Saltfleetby church was built on a Lincolnshire salt marsh. The landscape is melancholic. Long straight roads, drainage ditches, desultory farmsteads, big medieval churches. Flat lands with empty horizons.

#thread
Church-moving is rare... But that is exactly what happened at Old St Peter's. The west tower is all that remains of the medieval church when the rest of the building was moved in 1877.

2/
It was moved partly because it was felt to be in the wrong position, but also because it had started to move (the tower is still on a definite lean). The architect, James Fowler re-sited the body of the medieval church from its original position in Charlesgate Rd to North End Ln.
We took the church into our care in 1976, with the help of a local farmer, Mark Stubbs, who was desperate to see it saved as a monument. 

4/
However, in 1956, twenty years before we came on the scene, the medieval bell was removed from the tower. A local lady has an album of photos of the day the bell came down, and kindly shared the pictures with us.

5/
It’s a snapshot of sunny day, a group of people saving an ancient, inscribed bell, lowering its immense weight to the ground and loading to the back of tractor. The bell was eventually brought to St Nicholas’s church, Newport in Lincoln.

6/
St Nicholas’s dates from 1839 and is believed to be the first church by Sir GG Scott and WB Moffatt. 

7/
The inscription on the bell read: Pura Pudica Pia Misere Maria, which I believe translates to something along the lines of: Mary pure, modest, reverent, in sympathy with the sorrowing. 

Read more about Old St Peter’s, Saltfleetby, Lincolnshire: friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/church/old-st-…

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More from @friendschurches

Feb 22
The earliest English & Welsh burial records go back to 1538, when Henry VIII made it law that parishes keep registers of baptisms, marriages and burials.
But a few records and medieval memorials survive to give us clues about people who were laid to rest in earlier times.
#thread
The earliest record of a burial at St Beuno's, Penmorfa, is found in The History of the Gwydir Family, written by Sir John Wynn of Gwydir Castle in Caernarvonshire (1553-1626). The book, which was a big hit in 17thC North Wales, aimed to show that Sir John had royal ancestry.

2/
Sir John wrote that in abt 1450, Ivan Ap Meredith Ap Howell (constable of Criccieth) had joint command of Caernarfon but "dying at Caernarvon, his body was brought by sea (for the passages by land were shut by Owen Glyndwr's forces), to Penmorva, his parish church, to be buried."
Read 7 tweets
Feb 20
What does a Catholic chapel in the Cotswolds have in common with an Anglican church in the mountains of Cyprus?

Come with us on a journey from Brownshill to Troodos to find out … ImageImage
In the late 1920s, Bertha Kessler and Katherine Hudson founded a Catholic retreat at Brownshill, in the Cotswolds, for people suffering from mental illness. They were inspired to build a chapel there, overlooking the Golden Valley. Image
They took their modest budget to W.D. Caröe, architect to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners. At 73, he had already designed 30 Anglican and non-conformist churches. The distinctive church he created at Brownshill — along with its furnishings — was eclectic, yet unpretentious ...
Read 14 tweets
Feb 19
There are remains of roodscreens in ~300 churches in Wales. They were constructed in a short period: two generations either side of 1500, and take three forms: veranda, coved and vaulted.

This survival at Llanelieu is the most complete example of a veranda loft in Wales.
#thread
Towards the of last year the @RCAHMWales published, Painted Temples: Wallpaintings and Rood-screens in Welsh Churches, 1200–1800 by Richard Suggett. For information and images, this book is a treasure trove.  

Order it here: bit.ly/3BwgxmE

2/
One chapter deals exclusively with rood screen, which in Wales are distinctive not only for their “lavish enrichment, fluent decoration and curious carvings”, but also for the literary dimension – as several screens had poems written about them.

3/
Read 8 tweets
Feb 13
In the Vale of Aylesbury, there are low-lying limestone hills surrounded by clays and sands. There, at Waddesdon Hill in 1792, ragged limestone was used to build the Strict & Particular chapel. And under the pebble-dash render, we found an ammonite as big as your head!

#thread
The chapel had a thick layer of lumpy cement render on three sides, the last side had a light slurry of lime mortar. The render was causing problems of damp and decay, so we removed it to replace with a more permeable lime layer.

2/6
During the removal, we’ve been fascinated by all the fossils – some small, some enormous – that we’ve uncovered. The gigantic ammonite spiral is a real thrill, but there are several brachiopods (clam-shell shape) and chunky crinoid stems too.

3/6
Read 6 tweets
Feb 12
Off a layby on the A483, you'll find a sunken churchyard. Walk down the avenue of sentinel yews and you'll discover the little church of St Anno.

From the outside, it’s not much to look at. But inside is one of the greatest glories of Welsh craftsmanship...

#thread
The majestic 15th-century roodscreen fills the interior. It bursts with life: the bressumer trails with vines, pomegranates and water-plant issuing from the mouth of a wyvern. The vines symbolise Christ. The pomegranate represents eternal life.

2/7
The thirty-four coving panels are decorated with seventeen different designs, creating a restlessness. The tracery heads hang like lace. The loft carries a line of twenty-five canopied niches. The carving is the work of the Newtown School of Carvers, Montgomeryshire.

3/7
Read 7 tweets
Feb 11
In churches, hard surfaces and sharp angles of stone, brick, glass and wood are softened by the delicate draping of intricately woven and embroidered altar-cloths, comfortable cushioning of communion kneelers & pleasing curves of plump hassocks, stitched with great care. 🪡

1/5
Today we’re celebrating our churches’ softer side …

1. Altar cloth, St Mary's, Long Crichel, Dorset ⬆️

2. Altar frontal, St Philip's, Caerdeon, Gwynedd ⬇️

2/5
3. Hassocks, St Andrew's, Woodwalton, Cambridgeshire

📷 @badger_beard

3/5
Read 5 tweets

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