Shrewton, Wiltshire

We wandered around a bit in Shrewton. That's because Maddington St Mary's is in the middle of Shrewton. And Shrewton St Mary's seems to be in Maddington. I can't begin to explain this. Perhaps I'm wrong. Today was quite a strange day. It might have been the weather (oppressive), my mood (peculiar) or the incessant guns going off on Salisbury Plain (like being in a war zone).

Shrewton looked old from the outside. But inside we couldn't really be sure that anything we were looking at was genuinely old. The chancel arch capitals were the most convincing. But they looked too recent to be Norman.  The chunkiness of the nave columns looked okish - at least the green and white stripey one that you can see in Neil MacDougall's photo here, at the back of the church. (More greenstone, you'll notice, like in other relatively nearby churches we've been to recently). But the carving on them was so neat and had an unconvincing texture, so we didn't find any of the trumpetiness credible.

The font was definitely neo-Norman but really rather good. Mr P says it's by TH Wyatt, who's responsible for much of the rest of the church. But he did well there I think. It's got a liveliness about it and it's pretty chunky. Far too symmetrical for the connoisseur of the originals! but lively nonetheless.