Andy Marshall's Genius Loci Digest: 13 Oct 2023
"I find it hard to think how anything like this can survive the perils of our times."
Treasured places, layered in history
"I find it hard to think how anything like this can survive the perils of our times."
A nod to Banister Fletcher: Church Towers
This is one of those iconic churches that never disappoints. St. Mary is lodged within a bucolic landscape neighboured by the Star Inn pub.
I stand and watch the Kentish rag rise up from the dull nights refrain and prick out lines and glyphs that are older than the church itself.
What I've discovered about this building is that it keeps on telling. It speaks of an architect who was inspired by his own town and community to create a building in harmony with the spaces around it.
It feels like there is a kind of aesthetic gravity at play - that I am being drawn into a celestial whirlpool of beautiful things, flying through the cosmic dust of our historic environment only to be sucked into the divine detritus that adorns our churches.
I’m fascinated by the stuff. Etched within and without the officious walls of our churches are the whispers of ordinary people that found a way of making their mark without others seeing.
Instantly the animal is alive - its head is a blintering mass of moving light which spills out onto the column behind, begetting the head with a sparkling, animated body.
The fabric is mainly C12th and C15th but the paint scheme is of the 1870's from the hand of the incumbent at the time.