Ruardean, Gloucestershire

The nick of time

Some of the greatest pleasures are the unexpected ones. I went to Ruardean in search of a Norman carving above the church doorway. But before I got near the church itself I was struck by this inscription, which is on the inside of the small lychgate that forms the entrance to the churchyard. The sun lit up the lychgate’s stone wall as I looked at it and, since the resulting photograph is very contrasty, here’s the text for the sake of clarity and ease of reading:
Redeeme thy precious Time which steals So fast away
and in gods Hous forgiveness Ask, and for Salvation Pray.
May ye 10th 1743
James Mutlow & Hendrey Heane, Churchwardens

I don’t know where these words come from, but they are similar to those of Bishop Ken’s morning hymn, which he wrote in the late-17th century but redrafted later, so that there are several different wordings, one of which includes the lines
Thy precious time misspent, redeem,
Each present day thy last esteem.

Ken’s hymn was widely circulated in A Manual of Prayers (1709) and so would no doubt have been a familiar part of the religious landscape when this variation on the theme of redeeming time was carved. The words also look as if they would do for a sundial, and I felt it was appropriate somehow for the setting evening sun to bathe them in warmth in my photograph.

The other thing that caught my eye, of course, is the style in which the letters are cut, with the plain forms now and then garnished with something capricious and different – the capital T of ‘Time’ and P of ‘Pray’. And the final s of ‘churchwardens’ looks like a determined effort not to be broken by the last straw – the word might have been made to fit if the corner had not chipped off the stone. In the nick of time, as it were, the carver decided to stick the ‘s’ on top of the ‘n’. And call it a day.

Long Compton, Warwickshire

Resting place

Many churchyards have a little entrance building called a lych gate. The word ‘lych’ means corpse, and the idea of a lych gate was that it was where the deceased and mourners stopped before going to the graveside. Traditionally what happened was that the bearers would bring the corpse, shrouded or coffined according to the custom of the time, to the gate. Here, beneath the sheltering lych gate roof, the priest would meet them and read the first part of the burial service before the body was placed on a bier and taken to the grave.

Lych gates are usually simple wooden structures, rather like a shed roof supported by a post at each corner. Sometimes, though, there’s a more substantial building at the entrance to the churchyard. In the Cotswolds there are quite a few stone ones and sometimes even when they’re made of wood lych gates can be substantial structures. But here is something completely different. This building began life as a small cottage, with stone end walls and timber-framed sides. It was originally part of a row, but the others were demolished, leaving this survivor – it was a shop for a while, apparently – eventually losing some of its lower walls to form an entranceway to the churchyard.

Round the back, on the church side of the building, the timber frame has brick infill. Just another small surprise in this little structure made of stone, brick, timber, and thatch. It’s an interesting example of the way buildings that are no longer needed for their original purpose can be adapted to play a new role. Sometimes this means making a radical change, as here, where entire lower walls were removed, opening up what was once a downstairs room. Ruthless surgery, then, saved the building, gave it a new life, and provided a welcome shelter and landmark in the centre of this attractive village.