English Buildings

Perennial There are some buildings I never tire of looking at, and some of these I have blogged about more than once. One of my favourites i...

Devoted to baser things Dedicated as they were to higher things – prayer, the celebration of the Office at the canonical hours, the copying ...

Abbey fragments My awareness of what’s left of Evesham’s once-great abbey was limited in the past to a few fragments. First, the impressive ...

Well floored Buildwas Abbey, where the Resident Wise Woman and I were pleased to find ourselves on our own in an atmosphere of almost monast...

  Pershore beasts, Pershore plums I’ve noticed the former church of St Andrew near the abbey in Pershore several times, and my photograph of...

Well connected  Hailes is a tiny, remote place I’ve featured here several times before. It gets my attention often because it’s close to whe...

Secluded Back in November 2019, the Resident Wise Woman and I made a trip to Suffolk to visit the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival, look at some ...

Ruined choirs The ruins of Hailes Abbey are just across the lane from the small church in my previous post. The abbey was founded in 12...

At the abbey gate A few hundred yards from the station in my previous post is the little church of Hailes. It’s one of those Cotswold c...

Halting for a moment One of the consequences of the coronavirus pandemic for our household has been a change in the way we buy our food...

Ancient peace Modern life, even here in the country, involves a lot of noise. Traffic, tractors, chainsaws, guns, the sounds of restorati...

Clifton-Taylor’s English towns: Down by the riverside Next in my short series of posts on Alec Clifton-Taylor’s 1970s television programm...

Now and then The entrance to Malmesbury Abbey contains some of the most celebrated Romanesque sculpture in England but, in this blog’s s...

What we think about when we think about ruins The other week I found myself not far from the ruins of White Ladies Priory, a medieval h...

House with a history A few hundred yards form the Fish House described in the previous post is this house. It is set back from the road ...

Phone for the fish knives, Dunstan At Meare, a few miles from Glastonbury, this plain but striking medieval building stands in the middle...

We want a rockery In the Abbey Gardens by the river in Shrewsbury is an interesting rockery, made up largely of tantalizing fragments of ...

Space invaders After the church, the chapter house was often the most impressive part of a medieval monastery – especially if that monastery...

The daily round Many people know about the abbey at Shrewsbury because it features in the Cadfael novels of Ellis Peters, and is the home...

A world of wet Although in my mind July 2007 stands out as the month I began this blog, here in Gloucestershire that month has other, mor...