Landford, Hampshire

It's hopeless to be without an OS map: you can drive up and down the long road in Landford repeatedly and have no idea where you're supposed to be going. We stopped at a new-fangled pub which had a desperate atmosphere. But I needed the loo and a fizzy drink. My dear sister took the opportunity to ask about the church. She doesn't care about looking mad and religious when there's a carving at stake. The directions were curious but we figured it out in the end. Landford's church is nowhere near the obvious Landford. We should have known.

It didn't look promising as it looked rather new (well, Victorian new). But its position high up above Landford did seem promising. I've now read that the church was rebuilt in 1858. It does seem that there was a rather obsessive Thing for doing this to old churches. I'm sure a lot of it was unnecessary vandalism - it's not that they were restoring what was there, but totally trashing it a lot of the time. I raged a bit when we found the door was locked, because it stopped us seeing what we'd come all this way to see.

This was to be a stone "2ft 6in by 1ft 6in, and has sculptured upon it the figures of two priests in full canonicals, with maniples at the wrist, supporting between them a Cross.  The stone is perforated with holes, each an inch square, about 8 in number" (to quote from the link). In the old church the stone was at one time in the foundation at the SE corner of the chancel. Then it was moved above the north doorway. But when the new church was built, it was moved back inside.

You can see a big photo on the CRSBI website, but here's another version, taken by Trish Steel. I feel like we're treading in her footsteps this trip.

CC image on Geograph

The stone doesn't look riddled with eight holes any more? Maybe it got trimmed. It's evidently two people clutching a cross. It's very like the sort of cross a Lamb of God might clutch (or rather, balance delicately on its foot). But beyond that? The CRSBI site suggests one figure is Jesus 'because he has a nimbus', but I reckon both of them have got that, it's not a Jesus-exclusive. Also suggested is St Helena and Friend. She is said to have dug up the True Cross, a bit like a female Indiana Jones, and because there were two other crosses there as well she tested them out on some dead/sick people and only the True one perked them up. A bit like Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade when there were all those different grails to pick from. But I think those figures have beards perhaps. So probably not St Helena if so.

Anyway. We didn't see it. But there were a couple of pretty nice Norman capitals at the door outside. So I drew one of them.