Welcome back to normal service. The West Country is emptying of visitors and Bookhound and I will be wandering off hither and yon after weeks of going no further than town one way (Tavistock) or town the other way (Launceston). I hope you’ve all had a restful holiday season and are ready for some good reading and commenting in the weeks and months ahead.
It’s fair to say that a book about Romanesque stone- carving in the forgotten churches of the West Country might not be top of the most exciting books I would want to read, but I can't tell you how excited I was about King of Dust by Alex Woodcock. Having read his articles in Elementum Journal I had a feeling I was going to enjoy this one and I wasn't wrong. Incidentally, edition five of Elementum, published recently, won't disappoint anyone who has come to love this journal of nature and story as much as I have.
Billed as 'a craftsman's journey through the landscapes of ancient sculpture', Alex Woodcock weaves in his own journey into stone carving, which would eventually lead to him working at Exeter Cathedral and a journey around some of the most beautiful little churches in this area.
'Now I speak ruins. I'm fluent in the language of decay. The years working at Exeter Cathedral have completely reorientated me....I was part of the cathedral's immune system, intervening when and where necessary to slow the processes that lead to damage and repair parts that had already succumbed.'
I'm an Exonian, Exeter, the city of my birth and a place very close to my heart. We visit frequently and I wander around the cathedral whenever I can. And I have learned so much from this book; new and interesting things that make wandering around a church an even greater pleasure than it already is
From Gunwalloe near Land's End to Toller Fratrum in East Dorset each church is beautifully described and all enough to make me set off on a day back in April, with sandwiches, flask and the book in my hand, a notebook and a hand-drawn map (I traced it) to guide me and off I went to find some of those churches near to us here.
With no idea about the Romanesque I was a blank canvas ready to be filled and there was much to discover about this architectural sculpture, 'bold geometric patterns, fantastical creatures and humans in states of rapture or distress' along with...
Round arches...
Solid masonry walls...
Small windows...
Bulky Columns..
My first stop, St Stephens, Launceston was only open because everyone was gathering there for a funeral, so a quick glimpse of the font and I departed. But I'd seen my first bit of Romanesque and it was a bit exciting. And suddenly I'm also a complete expert on the tympanum, usually found above doorways and rarely noticed (by me). This was my first tympanic encounter at the church of St Gregory, Treneglos not far from Launceston...
Carved in the twelfth century and located in the porch of a little out-of-the-way church, the imagery on the tympanum (in this case a Tree of Life flanked by lions) is all about finding salvation and renewal in this building and placed above the doorway to remind worshippers of this as they enter. How sad then that St Gregory's is now closed to the public for safety reasons, a building in need of its own salvation and redemption, one that is failing fast.
A single broken lattice pane allowed me to peek inside and glimpse the font and the general disarray of a disused building...
Alex Woodcock writes eloquently, quoting Rebecca Solnit as he takes in the silence that surrounds St Gregory's and ponders the 'fragments from another world' that the Romanesque has left behind,
'In medieval culture, churches were considered liminal places, thresholds between one space and another, places where the supernatural merged with the everyday...
Peering through the window and I understood that. Echoes of the past and a desperate sadness about the deteriorating condition of the church now. And how unlikely it seems that it will be fully restored.
I motored on towards Egloskerry; a thriving church it would seem in a thriving village and by now I spot the tympanum the minute I walk in.
I head for Tremaine a bit further up the road and eventually find the church, up a hill along a narrow lane and a fair old stroll from the village itself. Dedicated to St Winwaloe...Cornwall knows how to do saints, goodness me was this tiny church worth the finding...
I would never have known of it but for Alex Woodcock's book and his quote from the guru of the Romanesque, Edmund Sedding...
'To one whose mind is still full of the memories of some great English Abbey or Cathedral, this desolate little sanctuary would hardly seem worthy of notice...but to the few who love the work of the medieval craftsmen, these works they have left us are beyond price...'
And with just six people on the parish electoral roll what a miracle it is that the place is open and still used.
Now a complete expert (after a single afternoon) I spotted the font immediately..
And sat in the church and read Alex Woodcock's thoughts about it...
'Sitting on a pew for a moment...enjoying the complete absence of sound and the smell of damp plaster that permeated the nave... sculpture as a point of connection with the unseen, the doorway into another world. In the small nave of the church at Tremaine, I could understand that.'
A little meadow alongside the churchyard was awash with orchids and bluebells...
'In some parts of the South West the past hangs like a veil across the land, refusing to fully make way for the present...'
suggests Alex Woodcock...
and the unchanging view across the Cornish countryside that day seemed to confirm the idea.
All in all no more perfect and peaceful a-sitting place than this to sit and read King of Dust and knwoing I have a lot more days like this with churches to visit. If you are heading west and you enjoy a meander around forgotten churches then let this book be your guide. Failing that enjoy it from the comfort of your armchair knowing they are there; solid ancient sanctuaries clinging on to the twenty-first century for all they are worth.
Meanwhile does anyone else love a good wander around an old church...
I wonder what you look for...what interests you most...
I had always been drawn to the stained glass until now...
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