St Leonard's Church at Linley

Hello!  Thank you for dropping in, you are very welcome here.  Summer has gently slid into autumn since my last post, the flowers in my garden are fading and while last week I sat out in the sunshine and watched small white butterflies feeding on the last of the buddleia flowers and bees foraging in the jasmine, cosmos, hardy geraniums and ivy, this week I have donned a cardigan.  It's been raining and I almost put my boots on too, but I really can't bear to do that yet because once they're on, they stay on until the spring and I'm not quite ready for winter thoughts.  I want to savour autumn. 

Every year since 1994, September has seen Heritage Open Days in England and where possible, I have tried to use the opportunities to visit places which are not usually open to the public or to visit free of charge places which usually charge an entry fee.  I knew that it would have to be different this year because of Covid-19 and when I looked online to find out what was happening in Shropshire I found an online lecture and a few churches.  Now, you probably know that I like visiting an interesting church and as I haven't visited one since 23rd February, I got quite excited at the thought.  I read through the list and chose St Leonard's Church at Linley, a redundant church which is now in the care of The Churches Conservation Trust and is described as a "secluded medieval delight".  So, on Sunday 20th September the Best Beloved, his camera and I set off under a blue sky.  It was the perfect day to be driving through the Shropshire countryside as the sun made the hedges glow like emeralds and the trees filtered the light to dappled shadows.  We bowled along the B4373 and once we were in the vicinity I started looking out for an unmetalled track on the left - I needn't have worried, a very clear sign said, "St Leonard's Church, Linley" so we took the turning with confidence and drove along the track until it widened on both sides into an informal parking place.  I got out of the car with my trusty 1968 Shropshire guidebook and walked up the slope to the church.  I noticed that there was no graveyard and that the land in front of the church has become very overgrown, although some clearance work has been started.  I hope it gets finished, it will make a great difference to the approach to the church.  I also noticed a large yew tree which is probably hundreds of years old and I found some comfort in that:  the world may have changed a lot since February but wherever there's an old church, there's usually an old yew tree.  Plus ca change, as my mother says.

It is almost nine hundred years since this simple church was built.  The tower was added a few decades later, at the end of the twelfth century, and as I looked up, I wondered who was in the stonemason's mind as he carved those grotesques.  That made me smile.  The pyramid roof which tops the tower was added in the first half of the nineteenth century and the east wall of the church was rebuilt in the second half of that century but the rest of the stones of this building sit where they were laid in the twelfth century.  The arched doorway with its carved tympanum is typically Norman and I told the Best Beloved to mind his head as he entered the church as those typical Normans were shorter than we twenty-first century Elizabethans and that doorway is less than six feet high.

This is what we found inside. - 

As usual, there was a Victorian "restoration".  Those bloomin' Victorians!  They enlarged the windows in the nave, rebuilt the east wall (I can forgive them that) and gave it a triple window, added a piscina in the sanctuary (in a Norman style - cheeky!), took out the old pews and refashioned them into panelling for the chancel, installed new pews, fitted new iron candleholders to the walls and tiled the floor.  The stained glass in the new east windows was designed by William Warrington, who also designed windows for the cathedrals in Norwich and Ely, and the triptych behind the altar was installed in about 1870.  The pulpit was brought to the church in 1948 from another church.  This "restoration" work was begun in 1858 and I was intrigued to discover that the architect was London-based Arthur Blomfield, for whom Thomas Hardy later worked, and that Blomfield paid for the work himself.  I wonder how that came about?  I'm still working on it and I'll let you know if I find out.  I do like the fact that Blomfield tiled the sanctuary floor with encaustic tiles made a few miles away in Ironbridge Gorge by Maw & Co.  I can't help but feel that they would look even lovelier if somebody occasionally ran a mop over them!

                                                                           

However, the Victorian alterations didn't ruin the church and there is still some Norman loveliness to be found inside, including the arches which lead from the nave to the tower and the chancel and the huge font, lined with metal and big enough to dunk a baby in the water.  Its outer surface is covered in intricate carving (apparently of the Herefordshire school) and these carvings are one of the features which make this church a "destination".  The roundels on the north side apparently emerge from the mouths of demons, but I couldn't make that out.  

Outside, we walked round to the north side of the church and found the other feature which makes this church a destination.  Here is another Norman doorway, this one blocked up centuries ago, and over it is a tympanum which is clearly carved with a rather naughty figure which I have seen described as a grotesque animal with a human face, a demon, a Green Man and a sheela-na-gig.  I shall leave it to you to decide for yourselves.  Whatever it is, it's almost nine hundred years old and very well-preserved in this sheltered spot.

I am quite fascinated by these carvings, that such intricate work could be done with tools and technology which we would consider to be "basic".  I wonder about the men who made them and how and why they designed them.  I placed my index finger onto the side of the font and traced the groove of the carving, following the track made so long ago by a mason's chisel and imagining that I could feel the vibrations of the stone just as he did.  St Leonard's is indeed a secluded medieval delight and a lovely place, perhaps because those ancient carvings have kept the nasty spirits away?

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Back to Anglesey to find a Hero

Hello, thank you for calling in.  It's lovely to see you here, especially at such a busy time of year.  I feel that we are thundering down the road towards Christmas and that I am running out of time to get everything done.  I know that I'm not, I planned well, began early and I'm on track, but I feel that I am fraying.  It's 5.30am and I have been awake for two and a half hours, my mind whirring.  This is absolutely normal for me at this time of year but it's still difficult to manage.  So, in an effort to gather myself together and find some serenity, I have been thinking about my little break in Anglesey last month when the sun shone, the sky was blue and the Best Beloved and I spent some quality time on our own together without the distractions of work or tiny people.

We have been visiting the island for more than twenty-five years and of course we have favourite places but each time we go now, I like to seek out a place we haven't been to before.   There are two bridges linking the mainland to Anglesey and this one is the Britannia Bridge, built between 1846 and 1850.   I had read about a statue which stands down here on the Menai Strait and I wanted to see it so on this beautiful November Sunday morning, after attending the Act of Remembrance at the cenotaph in Lanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch (which we call Llanfair PG) we drove to St Mary's Church, which is tucked away almost right under the bridge, and left the car in the car park.  We followed the path down through the churchyard.  Now, I have to say that if you like poking around churchyards, as I do, this one is delightful.  There are many different styles of headstone, some rather grand, and there is this monument which commemorates those people who died during the construction of the bridge - not just builders, but their family members, too.  It's an interesting story and you can read more about it here.  The most recent names were added in the early 1970s when the bridge was reconstructed after a devastating fire.
 

This was fascinating and we looked all around, reading every name, but it wasn't what we had come to find so we carried on and picked our way carefully down the path to the Strait.

I caught a glimpse of him from the path so I knew where I was heading.  The Best Beloved went ahead of me across the seaweed and the mud and through the very shallow stream to make sure that the route was safe and I followed behind.  Here is the hero. -

And just what is Horatio, Lord Nelson doing here, looking out across the Menai Strait?  An art lover and sculptor called Lord Clarence Paget, a younger son of the Marquess of Anglesey, lived beside the Strait at Plas Llanfair.  He had been experimenting with concrete to create statues in the grounds of the estate and liked it because it was cheaper than marble and more durable outdoors so he decided to create a statue of Neptune to stand down on the shore.  However, he was persuaded that the statue's subject should instead be Lord Nelson,  who regarded the Strait as "one of the most treacherous stretches of sea in the world" and said that "if you can sail the Menai Strait you can sail anywhere".  The Admiralty was surveying the Strait at the time and suggested that if Paget erected the statue in a slightly different place to the one he intended, it would serve as a navigation aid to sailors, marking the entrance to The Swellies, and by the time the statue was unveiled in 1873 it was already marked on the naval charts. 

 

We lingered here, it was so very peaceful.  Then we strolled back to the car and on the way, I stopped for a while to enjoy the trees.  I know, I'm a bit odd, but I like trees, especially in the autumn.

Back in the car, the Best Beloved was keen to drive off the island into Snowdonia because it had snowed the previous day and he wanted to see the mountains.  It was a very picturesque drive and we stopped at Llanberis to take some photographs.

On the right at the back, under a snow blanket, is Snowdon, the highest mountain in Wales.

It was a beautiful and memorable day.  The following day, the sky was grey and overcast but we were not deterred - we are British and we dress for the weather!  So, we wrapped up well and went to Porth Trecastell, Cable Bay, so-called because the first telegraph cable from Anglesey to Ireland was laid from here.  This is one of my favourite places and we walked along the beach recalling the many happy days we have spent here - our children paddling in the shallow sea and poking about in the rockpools when they were small, the time we found a line of stranded jellyfish all along the shoreline, our twenty-ninth wedding anniversary when the sun beat down and I danced in the sea in my party dress, the time Storm Bryan washed up a dead leatherback turtle onto the beach, and watching wild waves and brave surfers.  This was not a day for taking photographs but we recalled many of the snapshots we hold in our heads.  Here is a photograph I took there in July 2017.

 

Then we moved on to another place we have visited before, St Cwyfan's, the Church in the Sea.  Of course, the church was not built in the sea, it was built on the land in the twelfth century but the sea has eroded the land around it and would have taken the land beneath it too had a protective wall not been built in 1893 after some of the graves fell away.  I think the church looks as if it is perched on top of a hatbox and when the tide comes in, it is completely cut off.  I have walked along the causeway at low tide and climbed the steps up to the church, but this was not the day for that.  The wind had become bitter and our visit was brief but rather wonderful.

 

Here's what it looked like when we were last here on Valentine's Day in 2012. 

 

 

It's a special place.  Occasional services are still held there, including weddings.

 

 

Thank you for bearing with me.  I feel much calmer now, more ordered.  It's 7.45am and time for my day to begin.  I plan to be back here again before Christmas, hopefully at a more civilised time of day.  I hope things are going well for you.

 

See you soon. 

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x



St James' Church, Stirchley

Hello, thank you for popping in to my Shropshire patch.  We are definitely heading towards autumn here, as we turned into our street yesterday I noticed that the leaves on the trees are changing colour.  However, it is still summer until next Saturday, the weather has been sunny and unseasonably warm for the last few days and on Friday I saw four small tortoiseshell butterflies and a comma on the small buddleia in the garden.  I was pleased to see so many small tortoiseshells as their numbers declined by 75% between 1976 and 2018. 

Telford is an interesting place - or group of places.  Created as a New Town in 1968, it appears that the planners actually took a group of much older communities, plonked a large shopping centre in the middle, made a good road network to join it all up and built lots of housing estates in the gaps.  Parts of it are very old, some places being recorded in the Domesday Book, and parts of it are very beautiful, although nobody seems to talk about those places.

 

Stirchley is one of the old places, originally a farming community whose church dates from the twelfth century.  It is a church I had wanted to visit for many years and last September, I finally made it. 

 



 

We parked outside the churchyard and entered through the wrought iron gate.  This is the view which confronted us: a lot of brickwork.  However, as we walked all around the building, this is what we saw. -

 

 

 

Intriguing, isn't it?  The chancel, at the east end of the church, shows the original Norman stonework.  In about 1740 the nave and the tower were remodelled: the windows were enlarged, the whole thing was encased in bricks, the roof was replaced and an extra storey was built onto the tower.  Why they didn't also encase the chancel in bricks I don't know because it all looks quite odd.  Moving forward it time to 1838, a family of wealthy local employers, the Botfield brothers, paid for a brick extension to be added to the north side of the church, which is the block with large windows which you can see in the photo above.  This extension added seating for an additional 120 people, including a gallery for the brothers' employees.

 

Inside, the church is typical eighteenth century with high-sided box pews, pulpit and reading desk which probably date from that 1740 remodelling.  I do love box pews, that whole thing about closing the door and being in your own little space is very cosy.  However, I have to report that the seats inside these particular little spaces are very narrow and quite high; I couldn't put my feet flat on the floor, which was tricky as my well-padded bottom was sliding off the perch!  I really found them very uncomfortable.

 

 

I sat there for quite a while because this church has a lovely, serene feel, perhaps because of the plain white walls which are free of memorials and other "clutter".  Looking from the chancel towards the west end of the nave, there is a rather lovely clock.

 

 

However, the real jewel of this church is the twelfth century carving which decorates the arch between the chancel and the nave and which looks so crisp and fresh that it's hard to believe that it's nine hundred years old.  I sat and looked at it for a long time.

 





 

In the picture above you can clearly see that the chancel arch was once very much bigger.  This was revealed when the plaster was removed from this wall in 1979.

 

The stained glass windows date from the nineteenth century and were bought from another church in the 1970s and installed here.  On the day we visited they were simply and sweetly decorated ready for Harvest Festival.

 

 

The church was declared redundant in 1975 and later sold to Telford Development Corporation who restored it for use as a museum.  It now belongs to The Churches Conservation Trust and is kept locked but you can borrow the key from the people who live in The Old Rectory next door, which is now a guest house.  However, if you visit next weekend, 21st and 22nd September, the church will be open between midday and 4pm and friendly volunteers from a local historical society will be there.  You could even stay for the Harvest Festival at 4pm on Sunday.

 

 

 

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x

Penmon Priory

Hello, thank you for calling in and thank you for your comments on my last post.  I am very happy indeed to have discovered that some of you are ABBA fans too, especially with Eurovision on the horizon (I am already planning my menu).

After Easter, the Best Beloved and I went off to Anglesey for a little glamping break.  The last three months have been a bit of a struggle for me so this was supposed to be a restorative treat and I am happy to say that it was exactly that.  We arrived on Tuesday in 24 degree heat and sat on the little terrace outside our camping pod drinking chilled wine and eating bread, smoked salmon and little salady bits and pieces as the sun set over the field; then we lit a fire and stayed outside until the cockchafer beetles began their invasion attempt.  Have you ever had a close encounter with a cockchafer beetle?  You might know them as May bugs and that is the point - they are supposed to emerge in May, not on 23rd April!  They are huuuuuuuge, well, about 5cm long, and you know they are near because they buzz very loudly.  They fly towards the light but they are a bit clumsy and when one landed on me I yelped and demanded that the Best Beloved remove it, which he did, to the other side of the field.  Then a second one appeared inside the pod and had to be kindly but firmly evicted with the aid of a glass and a postcard before I locked the door very firmly, closed the curtains and turned on the fairy lights.  This was my second cockchafer encounter in the last seventeen years and I still haven't really recovered from the first so I don't wish to have any more, thank you very much!

The following morning the weather was still warm enough for us to sit outside on the terrace as we drank tea, ate croissants and planned the day.  I was keen to visit Penmon Priory, a place we hadn't visited before, so off we went.  I had done my research and knew that there were a ruined priory, a medieval fishpond, a dovecote and a holy well to be found there and if you've been reading here for a while, you'll know that that's just my kind of outing.

St Seiriol (St Cyril in English) is said to have come to Penmon in the sixth century and, finding a spring of clear water pouring out of the cliff, settled there as a hermit.  However, his brothers, who were both Welsh kings, didn't think that a little hermitage was good enough for such a high-born man and so they came and had built for him a wooden church and a monastery was established there.  The spring water became known for its healing powers and a well was built around it.  Four hundred years later, the Vikings attacked Anglesey and in 971 AD the church was looted and burnt down (pillage and plunder!). 

In the twelfth century a new church was erected a short distance away from the well, this time built of stone.  This church was a "clas", run by an autonomous religious community, and in about 1220 AD this clas was reorganised as an Augustinian order of canons, which meant that new buildings were added to the site: a refectory and dormitory, a place for the canons to eat and sleep.  This large block was built opposite the church, the space inbetween becoming the canons' cloister, and another building, the Prior's House, was probably built to link them, forming the third side of the rectangle.  (There is a more modern Prior's House there now which is not open to the public.)  Can you picture this?  This photo might help, taken from the fourth side of the cloister where there are now about twenty steps to take you up to visit the church - there would have been a range of buildings here too, but that's long gone.  It's quite a small complex and, I think, really quite charming.

The Priory did not survive the Dissolution of the Monasteries and was abandoned in about 1537.  Eventually, the land and buildings passed into the possession of a leading local family, the Bulkeleys of Beaumaris, who enclosed the land as a deer park and allowed the church to fall into ruin.  They also built a magnificent dovecote which enabled them to breed pigeons for food.  In the 1850s the church was repaired and the chancel rebuilt as it became the parish church.

So that's the history of this special place.  The Best Beloved and I set off along the lanes and soon arrived at the car park where we happily paid the £3 fee as the site itself is free to visit.  The sun was shining and the temperature was a pleasant 19 degrees.  First we looked inside the ruined refectory, which would have had three storeys: cellars, a dining room above and a dormitory on the top floor.  The monks used to eat in silence while one of them read aloud from a window seat.  "Go on then, read to me," the Best Beloved said.  "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God," I said and he laughed.  Standing in front of the wall is a 12th century gravestone, as tall as I am, which had been used as a lintel over the doorway.  I placed my hand flat upon it for a few moments to imagine the echoes from centuries past. 

Then we climbed the stairs to the old cloister and sat on a bench, looking at the view.  It was a very pleasant spot.  (That large domed structure is the roof of the dovecote.)

Then we went inside the church and found ourselves in the chancel, which looked quite ordinary.  I wasn't sure what all the fuss was about. 

Then the Best Beloved, who had wandered off with his camera, called me.  He had gone through the door and was standing at the entrance to the south transept, clicking away.  The sight just about took my breath away, it was so beautiful.

The rebuilding of the church has incorporated the arcading, which dates from 1170.  There is a stained glass window, made in the 19th century but including fragments of glass from the 15th, which depicts St Christopher, the Christ Child and St Seiriol himself.  It is the only image I found of St Seiriol in the church.  Standing in the transept is a large stone cross which dates from the 10th century, one of two which probably stood at the entrance to the old monastery which was destroyed by the Vikings.  This cross is missing one of its arms as it was removed to be used as a lintel for one of the windows in the refectory!

Leaving the south transept, we entered the nave of the old church, where stands the other 10th century stone cross, which stood in the deer park until 1977, and a font which may well be the base of a third cross of a similar age.  There is also a very small font dating from 1150 which was used until the big one was installed.  I really don't know how you could dunk a baby in it!  (I did wonder if it were a piscina rather than a font but then I remembered that I saw a very similar font in a Norman church last year.)  I sat there by myself for a while, it was so very quiet and peaceful. 

When we left the church we decided to head down to the beach and look at the well on our way back - the Best Beloved was very keen to have an ice cream and after all, we were on holiday, and the holiday rule is that you have an ice cream every day!  There is a £3 toll to drive down the road to Penmon Point but if you have paid to use the car park, you don't have to pay again.  We went to the beach and ate our ice cream in the car because the temperature had dropped to 11 degrees!  We did get out and have a little wander, which I'll show you next time, but soon it started to rain.  We got back in the car, drove back to the Priory and parked up, by which time it was raining consistently, but we are a bit daft when we are on holiday and a pilgrim like me is not to be deterred from finding a holy well by a bit of rain!  First we ran inside the dovecote - WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

"It's like something out of Game of Thrones!" said the Best Beloved.  The pillar in the middle was a ladder which enable the pigeon keeper to climb up to the birds.  There are spaces here for 930 pairs of pigeons and the squabs would be killed at four weeks old, so plenty of meat for the Bulkeleys.

I'm sorry, it was really difficult to photograph but I wanted to give you a sense of its scale.

Then we found the footpath leading to the well, which took us around the fish pond which had been built for the monks.  Fortunately, some overhanging trees provided a bit of shelter from the rain, which was becoming heavier.  Apparently, lots of people miss out this bit of the site but really, it's worth the few minutes' walk, even in the rain!  The water in the well is still crystal clear.  The little brick "house" built over it dates from 1710 but the rest of the stonework is much, much older.  The Best Beloved must love me because he stood in the rain to take these photos and he really isn't very bothered about holy wells at all.

We strode back to the car as quickly as we could and fell into it.  I was soaking wet but happy because Penmon Priory is a very lovely place to visit, even in the rain.  Of course, we could have avoided getting wet by visiting the dovecote and the well before going to the beach, and that would have been very sensible, but then we wouldn't have walked on the beach, and I can't ever regret a walk on the beach, especially when there is a delicious ice cream and a lighthouse.

See you soon.

Love, Mrs Tiggywinkle x