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"This our life, exempt from public haunt, finds tongues in trees, books in the running brooks, sermons in stones, and good in everything."
– Shakespeare, As You Like It.
Holy Air, Encased In Stone
I have my parking anxiety again. I’m headed to a church I’ve long intended to visit. It’s in a tight spot on a bend where the road converges with a confluence of schoolchildren streaming towards their lessons. Somehow, I manage to shoehorn the van into the last parking space in front of the church and then negotiate my way through the babbling tide of pupils. Their youthful energy is infectious – it lifts me as I walk towards the lychgate.
It’s perfect timing, for the verger is opening up the church, and I’m the first inside. The church I’m visiting today is St Wystan’s in Repton, Derbyshire. Repton was a principal religious centre for Anglo-Saxon Mercian royalty, and some of that significance lies beneath the church in one of the most complete Anglo-Saxon spaces I’ve seen.
Mercia was one of the most powerful Anglo-Saxon kingdoms, occupying much of what is now central England. It was largely defined by its borders - its very name, from Old English Mierce, means "border people" or "borderland." The River Mersey marked Mercia’s northern boundary, its name reflecting its role as a frontier.
It is widely believed that the crypt was originally built as a baptistery in the first half of the 8th century, during the reign of King Æthelbald of Mercia (716–757). Sunk 1.2 metres into the ground over a natural spring, it was designed with a deep, stone-built drainage channel running eastward.
Later, the crypt was repurposed as a mausoleum, possibly to receive King Æthelbald himself, and went on to serve as the final resting place for Mercian royalty. King Wiglaf (d. 840) was laid to rest here, along with Wiglaf’s grandson, Saint Wystan, who was murdered in 849.
"Have you come to see the crypt?" says the verger, as she flicks the lights on in the nave.
"Yes, if possible," I reply, my heart racing with anticipation.
"It’s over there," she says, nodding towards a doorway. "Just flip the light switch on your way in, and be careful on the stairs!"
I can’t believe that I’ve been given full agency over the crypt – the first to enter (out of how many over the millennia?) on this new day. I carefully negotiate the steps, noting the spectral Saxon column beside the stairway, and then stop at the door.
I’m moving into the shadows, so I reach for the switch, but pause before I switch it on. I decide to leave it off.
Instead, I prolong my gratification by slowly opening the door revealing the space in its natural light. A corridor of heavy-hewn, monolithic masonry stretches before me, accompanied by a faint hint of petrichor. The passage leads to a twist of vaulted columns, largely silhouetted but also touched by a buff, filtered light. The columns themselves are remarkable – spiralled, as if frozen mid-turn, glowing faintly in the half-light. Their forms pulse with energy, like the schoolchildren skipping past the church just moments ago.
How do you leave the life force of your generation behind in built form? Perhaps you reject convention – where others build in wattle and daub, you build in stone. And if stone alone is not enough, you carve it, twist it, shape it into something that is alive. You make columns that rise and turn in opposition to one another, a helix of movement held forever still.
The weight of history here is a press. I am so taken in by what I see that I sit down on the cold slab to absorb it. This is a place that has held fast in the eddying tides and swells of chaotic times. The arcade sprouts from the 8th century, above a sacred spring, hammered into deep time by a simple vault.
I am caught up in the dance of light along the vaulting. The corridor walls seem to sparkle in patches, snagging on imperfections, whilst in front of me, dust motes move in murmuration. There is a delightful combination of stone, slab and plaster that augments the space – exactly as John Betjeman described it: ‘Holy air, encased in stone.’
I pull out my sketchbook – I have to be quick – I’ve been invited to morning communion. I capture the essence of its form, perhaps for a larger painting.
As I sketch in the lines, an idea comes to me, drifting across the dust motes – whoever built this might have been to Rome or wandered through the detritus of a broken Roman Britain. For what stands before me feels like an echo of Bernini's canopy at St Peter’s shrine, its spiralling columns in adversum completed much later than here - but perhaps there was something similar there before? Or could they have come across Solomonic columns left behind by what they surmised as giants from the past?
I don’t know – the idea is born from a fleeting feeling. A felt sense.
Some places are more than the sum of their parts. This space at Repton is a deliciously concocted brew of the tangible and intangible – a place that allows the emotions to bubble up unexpectedly, a place that allows the mind to think.
And so I do. I think.
I finish my sketch and sit longer than I should, reaching down into my thoughts, into the void I have been carrying. What is it? What has been gnawing at you these past few weeks? I pause, recess, think, retreat – until the feeling rises up - incomprehensibly. After a few moments more, I'm able to frame the emotion with words.
I’m frightened.
I am frightened for the world and where it is going, for my family and my friends, for the small, good things that feel ever more fragile.
It's a feeling I hadn’t recognised until now - something that has been building slowly, like silt in a riverbed, settling over time. I don’t cry, but something deep and instinctive rises within me, breaking free in a single, involuntary sob.
And then – the moment fractures. I hear footsteps above. Holy Communion awaits. I worry whether an old agnostic will be made welcome. Will I remember the postulations and the creed?
Before I go, I think of my own creed.
I believe in myth and romance. I believe in poetry and prose, in the wonder of places that speak without words. I believe in the sanctity of nature. I crave the companionship of others, I enjoy the company of strangers, like and unlike me. I seek out the warmth of human nature and believe in the very best that it can offer. I believe in cradling those that need cradling. I believe in the legacy of our lost ones, in their echoes carried forward in our hands and hearts. I believe in the joy of our children, and in the future I would like to shape around them.
I walk back up the steps and take one last look, then shut the door behind me.
Upstairs, a small congregation has gathered – a handful of people preparing for morning communion. The kind lady from earlier smiles at me. There is no expectation here, no obligation – only welcome.
I hesitate, then move towards them.
I sit at the back with my communion booklet, leafing through the pages, trying to find the right place in the text – and then my mind drifts back to the space below and the void inside, until I hear the vicar say:
"Most of you will remember this story I told of my youth, apart from Andy here…"
My thoughts are cut short at the mention of my name, and whilst the vicar continues with his story, I’m rifling through the ways in which he might know me. I’m touched by the mention – by the warm intent.
The warmth in the room is not just from the people, nor from the heart of the old stone. It is something deeper – a kind of permission, an unspoken understanding that one does not need faith in the divine to find solace in human kindness.
And suddenly, there is a release from the nagging fear inside.
Not a resolution, not an answer – but a shift. I feel as though I'm back in the world, with agency again.
It no longer feels like a weight. It does not burden; it spurs. The realisation of it does not close me down, but opens me up. And kindled with the quiet presence of these people – people who do not know me, yet still offer a place beside them – I feel something unexpected.
Hope.
Perhaps, even in times of fear, there will be places like this. People like this.
And perhaps that is enough.
To be continued...
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with Iphone 14 Pro and DJI Mini 3 Pro.
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