A Thousand Years Of Cool

In which we step out of the warm sunshine and into the cool space of Barnack Church. 

It's true: parts of this building have been here for a thousand years. Much of this long history is best viewed from outside, but on this warm day we were craving the coolness of the interior where there are many cool things to be seen too.

You enter through the south porch which, like the rest of the church, is built of the local Barnack Rag and roofed with stone from nearby Collyweston.

It's immediately obvious that you're in a very fine church indeed, and the longer you stay, and the more you look, the more wonderful things there are to see. I'll include some of the most appealing, though I'm well aware that there are more things than I noticed, photographed or have room to show you here.

There's this fabulously ornate and gilded carving on the rood screen.

And there's a large and highly detailed east window which needs closer inspection. But also look at the reredos directly beneath the window. I would assume that this is all nineteenth century work. Don't strain your eyes; we can see some of the detail close up...

Here's the Nativity depicted in stained glass.

It's these mosaic angels that really steal the show though.

I would love to know exactly what instrument is being played above. Some sort of zither perhaps.

Stone sculptures, from the very ancient and crude to more recent work can be seen all over the walls. L to R: St Peter with his keys, Madonna and Child, St George. Just look at the tiny raised hand of Jesus - isn't that perfect?

There's some nifty carving in even some of the most inaccessible places, like around the tops of the pillars in the nave. But there's one particular piece of stone that is justly famous....

In the 1930s, when some restoration work was being done, this carved representation of Christ in Majesty was literally un-earthed from beneath the church floor. No one knows how or when it got there and no one is quite sure exactly how old it is. Stylistically it's said to be Saxon, but guesses at its precise date range from 900 AD to 1300AD. Dating it is difficult as there's so little work from this period surviving. It must have once been painted as traces of colour can be seen on the left shin and the torso. 

I've played with the above picture on the computer to make its detail a bit clearer. It's a monument to a husband and wife, who are shown at their prayer desks with their family ranged behind them. The man's hands are enormous, which is supposed to represent his piety.

I'm not sure why, but I don't photograph many pulpits. I liked the way this one fits in with the steps and the items arranged around it.

The font is older than I thought it was - thirteenth century according to the British Listed Buildings website. If you type in the name of a village or town in the UK into Google (or whatever) and add "listed buildings" it will give you a handy map of where the historic buildings are concentrated. Click on any one and you'll get a detailed, though very dry and academic, description of that building. Very useful.

Painted organ pipes, a crudely carved grotesque and a pretty bench end, complete my photos of the interior of the church. Lets go back out into the sunshine.

The bottom two sections of the tower are thought to be the oldest part of the church, dating from around 1000 AD. The upper section and the spire were added about 200 years later. Even so that must make it one of the oldest spires still in existence on a British church.

There's some original Saxon carving both above and below the church clock. It looks like some kind of bird carved just below the clock. Notice also the stones placed vertically on either side, that seems to be a feature of such old buildings.

In fact the more I look at the way Saxons handled building in stone the more I feel that someone had seen it done properly elsewhere and had tried to copy it when they got home. They were of course much more familiar with building in wood and may have used techniques they'd learned there and transferred those skills to building in stone. Even so their methods clearly worked - what's more the tower is also supporting the weight of the stone spire, as well as a peal of bells, neither of which were foreseen when the tower was constructed.

Anyway, this is the door in the tower, still standing straight and square after a thousand years. Which is pretty cool in itself, I think.

We made our way out through the churchyard, which has some elaborately decorated gravestones. Part of the churchyard is being managed for nature, incidentally, but I somehow didn't get any photos of that.

And we'll end with a look back at the church from the village street.

Take care.

Set In Stone

Today we're setting our course for the village of Barnack in that curious geographical anomaly known as the Soke of Peterborough. This small area was once part of Northamptonshire, but in many ways independent. Then in 1888 it became a separate county. Later it was amalgamated with Huntingdonshire till that county, and the Soke, became part of Cambridgeshire. No wonder Bing Maps is confused enough to think that Barnack's in Lincolnshire!

Barnack and its neighbouring villages certainly don't look like part of Cambridgeshire. Lets have a leisurely wander around on this unusually warm day. 

Most of the buildings here are constructed of honey-coloured stone. This remote corner of Cambridgeshire is one of the very few places in the county that has any good building-stone and it's been used (and re-used) over the centuries so that many houses display a complicated history to the inquisitive passer-by. The house above dates back, in part, to the 13th or 14th centuries. It was altered in the 16th century. It's roof by the way, like many around here, is made of Collyweston Stone, quarried just a few miles away. It readily splits into thin sheets, a bit like slate.

Many farm buildings use the same materials, like this handsome dovecote that stands in a field grazed by horses.

Well, a horse and a pony anyway, both desperately seeking out a bit of shade from the sun.

There are even stone walls around some fields and farms, something you won't find anywhere else in Cambridgeshire. A little tuft of Stonecrop has made a home for itself in one of the cracks.

The stone, Barnack Rag, takes its name from the village and, although it is used locally for all kinds of mundane structures, it is one of the most prestigious building materials this country has. It was used in building both Peterborough and Ely Cathedrals, as well as the many great abbeys of the Fens - Ely, Thorney, Ramsey, Crowland. When the life of the abbeys was brought to an abrupt end by Henry VIII, much of the fabric of those great buildings was re-purposed for the construction of the Cambridge colleges.

You could easily study the geology of the British Isles by just looking at the building materials used in old cottages and farm buildings. Although good stone was moved long distances to make churches, mansions and large public buildings, the common people always used whatever was at hand locally.

Thatch is used here and there. This cottage was home for many years to the artist Wilfrid Wood, famous for his intricate townscapes and a series of posters for the London Underground.

And here's the Wesleyan Chapel dating from 1898. It looks to me as though this is now a private house.

But how do you account for this? It appears to be some sort of old church window which has found its way to being part of a barn or stable. It says much about the historical richness of the village that neither this, nor the chapel above merit any mention in the records of listed buildings.

This house is included, of course. It was once a (very grand) vicarage, but is now known as Kingsley House. Charles Kingsley, author of The Water Babies, spent his childhood within these imposing walls.

I find myself more captivated by the more modest dwellings which, far from making a bold statement, whisper secrets and conundrums into the ear of those willing to linger in their presence. When did they swap to using pantiles on the roofs? Presumably when the quarries at Collyweston ceased operating. And why is this little house built at such an odd angle to the road? I really have no idea!

The garden flowers are set off beautifully by the colour of the stone walls and also make me loiter along my way.

Here someone has had built, relatively recently I think, their dream of what an English country cottage should look like. Not all that close to the real thing, but with a certain Wow-factor nevertheless. And you should see what they've done with their front hedge....

I love it, though I wouldn't want the job of keeping it trimmed. But we'll end our perambulation of the village with another of those idiosyncratic old houses that seems to have grown out of the very ground on which it stands - which in a way it has, being constructed of such local stone.....

The observant and insightful reader will have noticed the very top of a church spire appearing above the trees and will have guessed where I might be heading next.

Take care.

Flowers - Wild And Tame

Just a brief post to show you a few of the wildflowers - and the tameflowers - that have detained me in my recent travels. First of all, that field of peonies is coming into bloom once again.....

A few more turns of the bicycle pedals brings me to an area where the wild ox-eye daisies flourish...

That's all for now.

Take care.

Lets Look For Orchids

Most people don't even know that we have orchids growing wild in this country. OK, they're not the spectacular blooms you see in the garden centres, but once you know they're there it can be every bit as addictive to seek them out. 

I'm a bit late to see the earliest ones, but there's bound to be some infiltrating the buttercup meadows of Fulbourn Fen.

Firstly we must walk along this laneway through the trees, most of which are now in full leaf. There's plenty of birdsong, though finding them is another matter.

Then we'll cross a meadow where White Campion blooms brightly. It's a bit too dry for the orchids I think. Then we need to cross the old moat....

Actually there is a shorter route, but I like this path and I thought you might like to see all that remains of the moat which once surrounded an old manor house.

Then it's orchids, orchids, orchids.....

Most of these are, I think, Southern Marsh Orchids, though there might be a Common Spotted Orchid or two among them. And that's a Twayblade, second from the right and not looking particularly impressive. Twayblade is an orchid too.

There didn't seem to be quite as many blooms as there were last year at this time. Still an impressive show though.

There's something about this crazily leaning tree, the narrow boardwalk and the Yellow Flags or Wild Iris that always demands that I stop to take some photos.

We're out of the nature reserve now and heading towards Fleam Dyke, which is only a short walk away.

That's the end of the Dyke, but this mighty earthwork runs for at least 3 miles (5km) across the Cambridgeshire countryside. The digging of the ditch and piling up of the bank took place between 330 and 610 AD, with several phases of construction.

It's just one of a series of defensive ditches that stretched across the open chalk lands, from the dense woods in the south, to the swampy Fens in the north. The exact history remains a mystery - it may have been to defend a territory from attack, or else to control the trade routes across the country. 

There's a path that traverses the full length of the bank and lets you see down into the deep dyke alongside - or at least it would if it were not full of trees and bushes!

In my memory the bank was also more open some years ago with more space for wild flowers, though I did find a few common blooms like the Goat's Beard above. It's the British equivalent of the Mediterranean Salsify that I showed you a few weeks ago.

The top of the rampart does however give good views across the agricultural land to the west. And there's some of that pinkish hawthorn blossom once again. After a while we decided to turn back towards Fulbourn Fen once more.

Couldn't resist a few more flower pics.

One of those spectacular Flags growing down by the boardwalk.

Then it was time to leave the best of the orchid meadows and go across the cattle pastures, past the lovely old oak trees, through the wood (now full of ferocious wild animals and blood-thirsty pirates - or possibly just some imaginative 10-year-olds) and back to where we'd parked the car.

Take care.