The Church of St Mary at Brent Eleigh

I visited this Suffolk village church on my way home from Lavenham a couple of weeks ago.

The sign by the road made me smile.......if you've got it......flaunt it!

It stands on a slight rise and has a large porch

But just before I went inside I spotted this - must have frightened a few children over the years!

 The view down the Nave, it was a bit gloomy outside

These are the very old wall paintings that people come to see. Glimpses of colour were revealed when the East wall was repaired in 1961 and further careful cleaning revealed some of the best wall paintings in England dating from between 1270 and 1330.   Below is St John with angels offering incense.

 

This one - hard to see in the poor light - is the remains of the Harrowing of Hell which depicts the triumphant descent of Christ into Hell or Hades between the time of his crucifixion and his resurrection. It's thought to be a very rare depiction.

Under the East window is the third painting, the crucified Christ with the Virgin Mary, which I didn't take a proper picture of - for some reason.

 

 

A glorious stained glass window over the altar mirrors the painting below but when it was put there by the Victorians they didn't know about the paintings.

When I visit a church with wall paintings, which would have been quite common in the C12 and C13, I often wonder if there are others waiting to be uncovered when churches are repaired or if they were all lost during Puritan clearing or Victorian restoration.

 The other thing mentioned on the sign by the road is the box pews, with a much more recent tapestry

 

This huge memorial is for Edward Colman who died in the 1740's. His father bequeathed a collection of 1,000 books to the church but they were later dispersed.

 

Also worth noting is the Georgian communion rail which is three sided and quite unusual as there are only a few in East Anglia.

 

The C13 font is made from Purbeck marble with a Jacobean font cover.

Just as I was leaving a shaft of sunlight lit the flowers by the raised pulpit

There are many more photos, taken in better light, and information on On Simon Knott's Suffolk Churches website

Back Tomorrow

Sue

PS Thanks to everyone for comments yesterday

Can't See the Wood for the (Books About) Trees!

  The book I bought a few months ago after reading about Helen Hoover on Miki's Farms on My Bookshelf blog seems to have started a trend.

 

 Two of the books that arrived by the library van recently were these, The Long Shadowed Forest by Helen Hoover. This is her first book, written before A Place in the Woods. This book is a close look at all the flora and fauna around their home in the North Minnesota forest in the 1950's. The number of different birds that visit their cabin for the food they put out is amazing.

 

and The Wood by John Lewis Stempel  

            

For four years John Lewis-Stempel managed Cockshutt wood,three and half acres of mixed woodland in south west Herefordshire - John coppiced the trees and raised cows and pigs who roamed free there. This is the day by day diary of the last year, by which time he had come to know it well - the trees and plants and all the animals that lived there. This was a really good read.

 

Then there are the two  bought secondhand in October, which I'm so looking forward to reading.

 

 Plus  I've actually got several books about trees already sitting on my bookshelves.

 

Although I'm living in a home with fewer trees than I've had for many years, but at least it's never going to cost me hundreds of pounds to have trees cut down for safety anymore!

The sycamore in next-door neighbours garden and the cherry and willow are in the garden of the neighbour behind my garden - I can enjoy seeing them without the responsibility - and the leaves will make a mulch.

This below is a colourful part of my back garden at the moment, although I'm not 100% sure what it is. I first thought it was a Hornbeam because of the bark colour and markings but then I thought the leaves are a bit like a Beech which would be an odd sort of tree to put in a small garden and it doesn't look quite right for Beech. The two trees here which I thought were Silver Birch are probably Himalayan Birch - a more ornamental species, so it's possible that the this one below is a more ornamental and smaller species of Beech.

I might be able to tell more definitely in the spring or someone reading this will soon let me know what it is!

 

Back Tomorrow

Sue

 

 

The Weekend and Another Pear Tree

 The weather was a bit dreary on Saturday and I decided to head out early so I could visit some garden centres and nurseries for another pot grown pear tree and call in at a Christmas Bazaar too. Both the nearest places don't have fruit trees at all, another only has open ground trees and isn't lifting them yet but I got one in the end, a Doyenne De Comice  - and hopefully the   right pollinator group to go with the car-boot Conference tree.  The new tree is a couple of years older and taller so it was rather more expensive!  

(although when I got home and looked at the Ken Muir book on growing fruit they are in neighbouring groups rather than the same - but should still be OK, perhaps I need one more pear tree just to be sure 😋)
 

At home I found the new compost bin sitting outside the front door so I moved it round the back and forked everything from the old dalek-bin into the new one -it doesn't look much like "crumbly friable compost" yet!

 I started to dig a hole for planting the pear tree but just kept hitting tree roots - probably from the flowering cherry - then it started raining, so I'll have to try again in a slightly different spot during the week.

 

The Christmas Bazaar had lots of stalls but after looking around them all nothing was bought. I felt a bit guilty because there were so many crafts (jewellery, knitting, Christmas tree decorations, jams, wood turning etc etc) and people work so hard to make things but I'm just no good at buying things I don't need! 

Saturday and Sunday afternoons were all about watching Rugby on TV  and reading - all library books now finished. The mobile's round again on Thursday - eight books waiting (so far) for me to collect. I need something off my shelves to fill 3 evenings reading - although Monday is quizzy TV night and Tuesday is WI so maybe I'll just hang on until Thursday because 7 out of the 8 are crime fiction including the new books by Richard Osman and Donna Leon. Like I said on my Friday post - never short of crime to read nowadays!

There's a lovely list of things to do this week - Making pastry cases and Naan breads, writing letters for overseas Christmas cards and planting the pear tree. Also need to find out the dimensions of water butts and the stands they sit on so I can lay a slab each side of the greenhouse to collect the run-off.  I was going to see my nearest grandchildren who I've not seen since they all went to Surrey, but the whole family have been poorly with the really nasty colds that are doing the rounds. Perhaps it was a good thing I didn't feel up to the trip.

Back Tomorrow

Sue