Southrop, Gloucestershire

The main attraction at Southrop surely has to be its amazing Norman carved font, with its symbolic human figures, lettering, buildings and detailed patterns. Perhaps I was overwhelmed by it, but I gave it a go. You'll notice that for once I was sensible and focused in on the detail. Even so, it didn't take long to find out the detail was pretty detailed. It's got that characteristic that we both like to seek out... that is, patterns that are repetitive, but slightly dissimilar in each repetition. Even in the tiny extract above you can see differences on the right and left (it's not just my careless drawing).

But I wasn't a huge fan of the carvings of figures. Maybe I'm just not used to them, as they're unusual and B and I both like the Romanesque classic flora and fauna and geometric forms. But the thing I didn't really appreciate was the violence. The carvings are supposed to be the Virtues overcoming the Vices. But I'm not sure it's very virtuous to go stabbing or thrashing or trampling people. And I always say everyone needs a vice, I'm not against vices per se. So I found the carvings a bit unpleasant and so didn't feel that inspired to draw them.

So there I am in a church with one of the fanciest Romanesque fonts in the area, and I don't really like it. In fact I'm more drawn to the capitals in the porch. Of which this is one. And it's got zigzags, swirls (volutes), round bits going into square bits, and those boudoir trifle biscuits at the bottom. That's more like it.

There was a nice bit of beading on the chancel pillars as well, with saltire crosses and a wheaty band - really rather simple and kind of Anglo-Saxonesque.

The font at Southrop is quite uncharacteristic of the sculpture we've seen before. Maybe Norman times were indeed full of knights slashing at each other but that's not the image one gets from toothy dragons and swirling foliage. I wonder whether the creator of the Southrop font was working to a brief or whether it was a topic they felt strongly about and got Really Into. Nearby Stanton Fitzwarren (scene of a visit last year foiled by a locked door) has a very similar font, doubtless by the same hand.

I think B may have taken photos of each 'window' of the font. I feel as though I should go through each one and try to analyse what they show. But it seems a little too unpleasant for now.

We'd had an excellent bright autumnal day in the Cotswolds in the Van, and it seemed a fitting final odyssey for the year.

Coulston, Wiltshire

We couldn't get into the church at Coulston, which was a shame, and there was no information about where to get a key. But perhaps it didn't matter because most of Mr P's promised interestingness was outside.

In the south side of the building is a Norman doorway with a lovely golden round arch. On each side is a capital with little volutes (a bit eroded). But curiously, although there are these capitals, there aren't any columns underneath them. And it doesn't even look as though there were any - that is, there's no mark on the stone to suggest they've been whipped away. But I suppose there must have been once.

The poor arch looks rather neglected since someone's seen fit to pile up a load of plastic chairs underneath it. It looked strangely surreal, so I didn't feel as outraged as I might. But to most people it would surely look a bit rubbish. I don't really understand, because I don't find anything very interesting about all these brash Victorian rebuildings of churches. And so if you've got something left of the interesting past, of the beginnings of your church, why wouldn't you look after it? Maybe the congregation would say that there's more to their church than the building, in fact that the building's probably the least important bit. I dunno. It was a bit disappointing to see, anyway.

But another truly interesting thing outside was the spring coming out of the hillside facing the archway. As we stepped gingerly across the marshy ground towards it, we were watched closely by many eyes. The spring is inside a deer park and a couple of stags and many female deer lined up on the ridge above us. We seemed very interesting to them for some reason.

The water runs into a pool where there was a lot of watercress. Then we could hear it heading under the path past the church. The area had a special and rather strange air. It was hard not to think of elfish pagan things and whether or not the site for the church had been chosen in relation to this water.

(An interesting though morbid little snippet, is that the murdered child in the Victorian 'Rode House' case (recently retold in 'The Suspicions of Mr Whicher'), is buried in this churchyard. The family previously lived at Baynton House nearby, and the father's first wife is also buried here).

Images copyright Rhiannon 2014.

Codford St Mary, Wiltshire

I thought these volutes had a sort of animal-eye type effect. Or is that just my overactive imagination. Next stop The Owl Service.

 Images © Rhiannon 2014