Chesterblade, Somerset

Chesterblade is very little and the roads are narrow. But as I tried to abandon the car in an inappropriate spot, a very nice woman offered me the use of her driveway. This was very kind. I might have given her a funny impression with my pleading 'oh I just want to see the church'. But it was the truth, albeit not inspired by religious sentiment.

Here's the font. It was plain but pleasing, like a giant beaker, or a clay pot that had been made on a wheel. And of course, slightly wonky. It was sitting skewhiff on its unevenly shaped base. And it had a nice simple cover, none of that fancy tasteless business.

I read the blurb in the church leaflet about it and it was very strange. The back cover featured an alleged drawing of the font, and it had a band of twisted rope design around it about two-thirds of the way down. The leaflet explained how an Artist in the 1840s had drawn it so, but later the design had been removed. Youwhat? There was not a trace on the font to suggest any such vandalism had taken place, it was smooth and lovely. It seemed to make no sense at all. That someone would go to such trouble to remove a totally inoffensive design, and then go to extreme lengths to make it look perfectly smooth - yet (and here's my clincher) - do a completely botched job on the place where the lock used to be at the top. Not to mention to then sit it wonkily on a funny shaped base? So. Frankly, I don't believe a word of it. It certainly gives the impression of being in its original form.

It's true to say that B and I not infrequently get confused about names and what was where and when. We try to label our drawings as soon as we've done them, whilst still in the church. Even then, we're sometimes asking ourselves 'hang on, where are we again?'. And that's with maps and Pevsner and the internet and everything. It doesn't seem unbelievable to me that the 1840s artist had a big sheaf of drawings and got confused about which came from where, and mislabelled one of them.

That's my opinion anyway.

Outside in the porch were two super capitals, the chubby face above (with ears and beaded eyebrows) and the lovely to draw twiddly design below.

There were also two creatures at the headstops of the arch. But I thought they were very cramped as they were very small, unusually small in our experience of such things. You can see pictures on the CRSBI website. I wasn't taken with them. They don't look Romanesque to me, but I shouldn't argue with the CRSBI should I.

Also on that page you can see photos of some carvings we totally missed. We're usually quite thorough and have a stroll round the outside of the buildings. But we must be getting slack to miss not one but two carvings with faces and animals. B will be saddened to hear that one of them was a Lamb of God (you can tell by the characteristically bent front leg, which usually supports a cross). They haven't quite got that bold touch that I like. But I'd still like to have noticed them! Maybe another time (pending parking opportunities). There's a photo of the other carved stone here.