Chapel of St Catherine, Abbotsbury

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The chapel of St Catherine of Alexandria, Abbotsbury, Dorset was built around the year 1400 on a small hill outide the village. It looks over the Dorset coast and more particularly, the 18 mile long shingle bank of Chesil Beach and, beyond, the distant Isle of Portland. It was probably an adjunct of Abbotsbury Priory and may have been used as a place of private prayer. It was always a visible beacon or sea mark that ships used for navigation, and there is a suggestion that in later times a navigation light was kept burning at the top of its stair turret.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

The Old Nunnery, Dunster

This building is a terrace of three dwellings. The ground floor walls are made of stone and the two floors above are timber-framed. The roof is slate covered and the first and second floor walls are finished with slate hanging - an uncommon feature in the UK. The name fixed to the ground floor wall calls it "The Old Nunnery" though there is no evidence of it having such a purpose. However, in 1346 the site was granted to the Abbot and Convent of Cleeve by Hugh Pero of Oaktrow, and there is speculation that the building was an almonry or guest house attached to the priory. Dendrochronology shows the of roof timbers were felled between 1453 and 1489.

 photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Medieval tiles, Cleeve Abbey

It isn't unusual to come across medieval tiles in cathedrals and monastic buildings, and it's very common to find Victorian tiles influenced by their designs. However, the number of such tiles is often quite low, which isn't the case at Cleeve Abbey in Somerset. Here there are thousands with a variety of heraldic designs all dating from the 1200s. They show similarities to tiles in Salisbury Cathedral Chapter House and Clarendon Palace. Cleeve's tiles are well-protected and displayed by English Heritage.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon Z 5

Peter de Grandison revisited

About five years ago I took a photograph of the tomb of Peter de Grandison (d.1358) in Hereford Cathedral. It is a typical of its date having a sculpture of the deceased on a raised, panelled tomb chest with rib vaulting and canopies above. The smaller figure carvings depict the Coronation of the Virgin and four saints (Cantilupe, Ethelbert, John the Baptist and Thomas Beckett). My focus this time was the depiction of Peter de Grandison and his armoured upper body. This probably received repairs after damage by iconoclasts. However, it outshines many tombs of its date due to the fine detail that was recoloured in a restoration of the 1940s. Incidentally, the surname can be spelled with a single or double s.

photos © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

A font from afar

The church of St John Baptist, Lea, Herefordshire has a remarkable font. It is an Italian stoup bought from an antiques dealer in London in 1909 as a memorial. The shallow bowl has fine decorative carving and stands on a slender column that has a capital made of interlocking rams' heads and a single knot half way down. This column stands on the back of a small elephant. It is thought to date from the late C11 and to be influenced by work in Canossa and Bari. I know of no other font in Britain that is remotely like this example in the small medieval parish church at Lea.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: iPhone

Restoring medieval churches

We often come upon workmen who are busy restoring or repairing medieval churches. It's not surprising really - how many buildings can survive for several hundred years without regular maintenance? Recently we called in at the church of St Andrew at Allensmore in Herefordshire and found workmen busy restoring the timber frame of the south porch. This structure last had major work done in 1857 when it was completely rebuilt. The two workmen in the photograph had stripped off the roof tiles and were replacing some of the timbers that gave structure and strength to the porch. Work of this kind can't be done by just anyone, and the van of the workmen showed them to be accredited for work on ancient buildings.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Vicars' Close, Wells

The vicars of Wells were minor officials of the cathedral. The street shown in the photograph housed them and was built as early as 1348. It is 456 feet long and most of the twenty seven residences (originally 44) are identical. The front gardens are an addition of c.1410-20. Improvements and modernisations have been applied to the buildings of the Close during every century between their initial construction and today. Despite this, it is considered to be the oldest purely residential street in Europe.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Abbot's kitchen, Glastonbury Abbey

Not many medieval kitchens have survived the years since their construction. One of the best preserved in Europe is the Abbot's Kitchen that still stands in the ruins of the Benedictine abbey at Glastonbury, Somerset. It dates from the second half of the fourteenth century and is, externally, square in plan. However, in each corner is a fireplace and this makes interior space octagonal, a shape that is carried through in the truncated pyramidal roof. The latter is surmounted by a tall lantern which itself has a tiny lantern on top.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Abbey Cottages, Tewkesbury

This continuous, curved row of twenty three timber-framed cottages has been called "one of the earliest surviving English examples of uniform medieval town development". It is on Church Street in Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire, near the Abbey, which can be seen on the left of the photograph. The row is not perfect; a couple of inserted facades and buildings do mar it, but what remains gives us a good idea of the kind of street frontage that must have featured in many medieval towns. Today it is called Abbey Cottages and that may have been its original name since it was built in the early 1500s as a speculative venture by the abbey's monks. See a further image of the end of the row here.

photos © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Salisbury Cathedral

Cathedrals are big. Moreover, the space around them is often limited. Consequently fitting the building into the viewfinder can frequently be a challenge. If you haven't got a very wide lens then you either have to accept massively converging verticals or you have to move back as far as you can. On the evening of our visit to Salisbury Cathedral in Wiltshire, a building with a much larger "close" than is usual, this was the position where I could just about get the verticals to be vertical, with the trees making a dark, detailed "frame". This building was erected relatively quickly compared with many cathedrals. The main body of the church was built between 1220 and 1258. The chapter house was added around 1263 and the tower and spire were completed by 1320. Incidentally, it's the height of that spire, Britain's tallest at 404 feet (123m) that accentuates the photographer's problem described above.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Last Judgement, St Mary, Fairford

In the west window of the church of St Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire (see previous post), the stained glass depicts The Last Judgement. In the bottom right is a portrayal of Hell and its denizens. Here the glazier seems to have indulged his imagination and as well as showing the usual horned creatures with pitchforks there is a fearsome two-headed Devil (?) swallowing the condemned souls. Against the dark red background of the glowing fires of hell it makes for an unforgettable image.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Crucifixion, St Mary, Fairford

The stained glass windows in the church of St Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire, are unique. They fill all the windows of the building in a planned sequence of religious subjects, were made around the same date (c.1500-1505), and were probably designed and made by the same glazier - Barnard Flower, the King's Glazier. The people of the town managed to protect them from the puritanical iconoclasts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and so we are able to appreciate them today. The crucifixion scene above (often called The Passion) is in the top of the east window above the altar.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

St Mary, Fairford, Gloucestershire

The church of St Mary in Fairford, Gloucestershire, can be dated by documentary evidence to a rebuilding of c.1490. Its style is what architectural historians would describe as Late Perpendicular. Noteworthy are the distinctive and very individual sculptures of the exterior, and, on the morning I took my photograph, the warm, creamy Cotswold stone. However, what informed visitors usually come to see at this church is the most complete sequence of stained glass windows of its date in England (see next post).

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300

Hartpury tithe barn

The original purpose of the tithe barn was to hold the produce paid by farmers to the local church. One tenth of a farm's production was paid to the priest and went towards his and the wider church's upkeep. A number of tithe barns still remain in Britain, and many more are remembered in street names. The fourteenth century tithe barn, built by the Abbey of Gloucester at Hartpury, is one of the largest in the country, measuring 161 feet by 36 feet. It is made of stone and may have originally had a thatched roof. The present roof is tiled. In the eighteenth the large main door was supplemented by five smaller doors. Further adaptations - inside dividing walls and adjoining walled yards to manage cattle - were added in the nineteenth century. Interestingly, on one end of the roof is a Welsh dragon finial (facing towards England) and on the other is an English lion (facing towards Wales).

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Monnow Bridge gatehouse, Monmouth

Over the years I've taken several photographs of the Monnow bridge gatehouse in Monmouth. It is one of ony two remaining medieval fortified bridges in Britain and has been the subject of artists down the centuries. On a recent visit, as we passed over the bridge, I took this quick snap, prompted by the cloud of feral pigeons swirling around the roof of the gatehouse. There are usually pigeons to be seen on the building and I'm sure many use it as a nest site. They contributed something vital and transient to this view of the bridge and prompted me to ignore the view I usually choose (see here and here).

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Olympus OMD E-M10

Restored timber-framing

The former Master's House in Ledbury was the residence of the person in charge of the adjacent St Katharine's Hospital (founded 1231). The present building mainly dates from c.1488 and the eighteenth century. Today, following a major restoration, it serves as the town's library. At the back of the building some timber-framing from the fifteenth century can be seen. It is unusual in that the infill is pillowed and stands proud of the woodwork. The colour of the framing and infill is the same: something that was more commonly seen in the past than today, though current examples are not difficult to find. On the day I took this photograph I was drawn to the raking light accentuating the details of the construction.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Medieval stained glass, Tewkesbury Abbey

The medieval stained glass above can be seen in Tewkesbury Abbey, Gloucestershire, and is believed to date from 1340-4. It was sensitively restored by Kempe & Co in 1923-4. The full length figures depict: in the centre Christ displaying the stigmata, to his left Mary, to the right, St Michael, and in the left and right outer panels, the Apostles. At the bottom right corner of the photograph is the kneeling, naked, monochrome, figure of the donor of the window, Lady Eleanor de Clare, who died in 1337.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

St Mary, Ripple, Worcestershire

Last year we visited the very charmingly named Worcestershire village of Ripple and tried to gain access to the church. It was locked. However, the exterior seemed to promise much and we determined then to try again, which we did in December when it happened to be open (see a following post). As far as the exterior goes the unbuttressed tower and some narrow, rounded arch windows tell of Norman beginnings, the tower top balustrade are clearly Georgian, and some columns and traceried windows speak of early and later Gothic work. For such a small village it is a large and imposing church. This can be attributed to the fact that it was a possession of Worcester Cathedral Priory and may well be on the site of a former Saxon minster.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

The Cathedral of the Forest

The village church of All Saints at Newland, Gloucestershire, is known as "The Cathedral of the Forest." It was given this name due to it being one of the biggest and most ornate churches to be found in the Forest of Dean. Construction began just before 1216. Much of the main structure dates from the C13 and C14.

The most notable work of the C15 is the pierced tower parapet and the ornate pinnacles. The photographs also show a preaching cross. Its base of five steps was rebuilt in 1864. It was presumably at this time that the column and cross were added. The sun dial on the exterior was donated by villagers to mark the millennium.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Lumix FZ1000 2

Church at Welsh Newton, Herefordshire

When we visited the church of St Mary the Virgin, at Welsh Newton in Herefordshire, I was immediately struck by two things. Firstly, the amount of lichen that covered the church, the gravestones and all the other stone surfaces in the vicinity was prodigious. Secondly, the tower and spire, apparently thirteenth century, are the smallest that I've seen from that period.

 A third memorable feature became visible when we went inside - a stone rood screen of c.1330 - examples made of stone in parish churches are rare. Its existence also explained the fourteenth century dormer window designed to illuminate the rood (cross). One other notable feature is to be found in the graveyard: it is the tomb slab of St John Kemble who was executed in 1679.

photo © T. Boughen     Camera: Nikon D5300