Holcombe Old Church, Somerset

Holcombe Old Church is in the sort of place we like, i.e. it's at the end of a long and winding narrow lane following a sudden handbrake turn off the main road. It's signposted too, making a useful and pleasant change.

Mr P. mentions the Norman carvings of the doorway, but I'd also read of the church in Rosemary Cramp's book on Anglo Saxon carving in South West England ( you can read the relevant section here at the moment). That's because a part of the stone that makes up the right hand capital (which you see below) is inscribed with letters. You can be pretty sure it's reused rather than contemporary with the capital, because the writing is upside down for one thing.

The lettering has a definite Style to it. Cramp says "The letters are boldly but unevenly incised, and some letters are finished with serifs or the expansion and deepening of terminals." By which you may infer that it shows an individual's hand, but they've gone to a bit of trouble to make it look fancy.

I was going to draw it but I was getting tired and the light wasn't very good for picking out the details. I took a crayon rubbing of a bit instead. Yes yes I thought about the frowns I might get for this (you'd certainly get frowns if it were prehistoric rock art). But I've done it now and here is the little bit I did:

There's much conjecture about what the whole thing says (or said) - it's probably in Latin but a lot of letters are missing. And it's suggested 'PROT' could be at the beginning of the inscription because it's apparently preceded by a little cross. Or at least, it's the first line that survived (now the lowest since it's upside down). Cramp has the lettering transcribed as follows:

[+P]ROT[R] ---
--- AT [...]
EIE [L.]A[V]--
C:PET[R]A[.]--

It's sad that I'm not organised enough to be able to vouch for any more than the PROT. But I'd like to defend myself by saying that I like the element of surprise and also that I don't want my mind to be influenced by prior knowledge. With lettering, you might decipher it in a certain way because you are expecting it to say something particular. And with carvings more generally, you might be inclined to See what you're told to see, and even miss things that you haven't been told about.

More concise information can also be found Lapidge's 'Anglo Saxon England v21'.

But lettering is never really as exciting to draw as a lovely spiral column with fancy Romanesque capital. And those spirals are a treat in their unevenness. I like the way the blocks aren't evenly sized and the stripes don't match up properly, and they even change direction. Is that because someone moved them and put them back together weirdly? Wouldn't that have been somewhat lazy? I like to think they how they were intended. But who knows.

Another strange thing to note about the columns is the curious beaky toe on each one. I think we've seen similar things before (maybe Marden?) - but maybe not just single ones like that.