Ecclesiastical Highlights and Delights

 Rather than three Gloucestershire church blog posts I'm cheating like mad and offering a much reduced singleton and restricting myself to just a handful of highlights....don't want to bore everyone to death!

1. St Andrew's, Chedworth. An old piece of graffiti of a shoe [a common theme, but my first find] with a fish overlaid and a medieval man-in-the-moon glass fragment in amongst lots of other smashed pieces of window.

2. All Saints, North Cerney. The church was locked which was a bit of shame, but not the end of the world as what I wanted to see is on the outside. The gorgeous Romanesque porch has two of the tiniest faces carved into it. I missed them completely until I went in for a closer look. It's known for these two big manticores carved into the church walls. They're very naive in style. Manticores emanated from Persia originally, but began to appear in European medieval drawings symbolising the devil. They have the head of a man [often depicted with horns], the body of a lion and the tail of a dragon or scorpion.

3 St John Baptist, Cirencester.

"I expect you've come to see the Ann Boleyn cup like everyone else" said one of the lovely volunteers. Actually I hadn't [I did go back and take a photo], but we were just taking a look round. I much preferred these.....one 15th century wine-glass pulpit, the  medieval "Tom and Jerry" carving in the Lady Chapel and this stunning coffer. The date on it is 1532 and it was donated by Richard Master who was the physician to Elizabeth I.

4. Whoops....snuck another Fairford in again...this modern one just made me laugh!

Arilx