Lullington, Somerset

We've not been to Lullington for ages, but I was flicking through a book this evening and a photo I'd taken there fell out. So I thought it would be a good stress-reducing plan to draw from it. Our last trip out didn't include as much drawing as it might.

So here are three of the amazing beakheads that surround the elaborate doorway (illustrated here).

The carver must have really enjoyed making the creatures' mouths curl round the roll in front of them - they've often made much of their wrinkled upper lips!

You can't beat a good beakhead but it's the way the carvers usually surrounded an entire arch with them, making each one different, that makes them worth travelling a long way to see.

It seems that Wiltshire's not very replete with them. Only Chirton springs to mind right now. Otherwise, the ones we've seen have mostly been in Gloucestershire.

South Cerney, Gloucestershire

The Norman door at All Hallows has it all. You could draw it for weeks. Rex Harris's photo illustrates the beaky creatures, the zig zags, some neat flowers, and some amazingly intricate patterns in the innermost arch. I thought the latter even smacked of something interlacey and Anglo-Saxon... I need to draw them to explore the patterns (have to go back).

 

The door jambs have an interesting beaded motif, rather like stone hinges. They form little shelves.

I love drawing vegetationy scrolls. They're so easily overlooked. But if you draw them, you really See them. And I enjoy that, I feel like I'm properly interacting with what the carvers intended, nearly a thousand years ago.

 Images © Rhiannon 2014

Chirton, Wiltshire

 

 

 

I visited specifically to see the Beaky Creatures of the superb main doorway.

But luckily someone had come to clean the church and I was also able to see the figures carved on the font.


 Images © Rhiannon 2012

Lullington, Somerset

 Images © Rhiannon 2012