A short diversion
I have posted about this church before, but wanted to show you another photograph of it because as I drove past the end of the no-through-road where it’s sited today, I noticed that the blossom was already out. A short diversion brought me back to the lane and the churchyard, to see that there are not only trees with blossom but also daffodils in bloom up the grass path to the church.
No through road, lane, grass path – it all makes the tiny church at Little Washbourne sound remote. However, it’s only a couple of hundred yards from the road between Tewkesbury and Stow-on-the-Wold – hardly a trunk road, but not remote either. Yet when you turn off, this spectacle of quiet greenery and blossom awaits you. Part of the joy of English buildings is their settings, whether smack in the middle of a town, like the factory in my previous post, or up a country lane and a grass path.
There’s no grand architecture here – just a medieval parish church modified by the Georgians and left much as it was since then. But where it is, the flowers on the approach to it, the clouds of white blossom to its left, and the still whiter clouds in the sky, all make it worth stopping and looking. And when the main road is quiet, the noisiest thing here is the buzzing of bees for the nearby hives.
1 comment:
You were helped considerably by an unseasonable splash of good weather! I was excited at first because the church roof appeared to be of thatch - as certain churches in East Anglia - but closer inspection of your photo revealed tile: also very decorous.King's England Gloucestershire 1938 reckons it is Norman, with Norman-period wall painting of roses, etc.in the splays of one of the chancel windows. That, and the grass-grown approach path, suggest that good old benign neglect has done its delightful work here too.
Post a Comment