St Peter and St Paul, Preston, Rutland
Another bike ride in England's smallest county yesterday. Sixteen churches altogether, which sounds a lot, but churches in Rutland are refreshingly close together, and generally open, although I did find two yesterday that said they were open and weren't, and one that said it wasn't, but was.
Part three.
From Edith Weston I headed west again along the northern perimeter of RAF North Luffenham, and within a mile or two I was at Lyndon, a lost little village below the road with old stone cottages, some of them thatched. Out by Lyndon Hall was the rugged little church, set back among trees behind a wide grass verge and an ancient sign telling me that I was welcome to picnic here if I wished, as long as I was careful of the wild flowers. A track led up to a small church, yet to scale with aisles and clerestories. Architecturally, this church is all of a piece, inside and out, of the late 13th/early 14th Century, and remarkably unaltered since. Pevsner though the outside was 'not of much interest', presumably because there isn't much of a puzzle to work out. You step in to a restrained and rural 19th Century interior, with a couple of points of interest. The designs on the reredos of the 1850s are made in what Pevsner calls 'sgraffito', creating a monochrome effect with a modernist feel. The west window is not great, and not in great condition, but it is an early work by Henry Holiday.
Back up to the top road now, but further west, and the lovely village of Manton. Manton was once an important railway junction, but the village sits on the top of the hill, and the railway (still the line between Leicester and St Pancras) travels beneath it in a tunnel. The ironstone village sleeps undisturbed above, and this was the first of a series of hilltop villages. The little church is set among rows of stone cottages with roses set beside the path. There is no tower. The exterior is largely 13th Century, but you step inside to discover that this shell was built on late Norman bones. Late Norman arcades and a fine Norman tub font give the place its character, but then you turn east to the delightful surprise of a late 18th Century chancel as at Shotley in Suffolk. The 18th Century also brought a row of delightfully rustic memorials in the south aisle to the Smith family, who were 'Lords of this Mannour'. Above the chancel arch is a painted 18th Century royal arms which has been restored vividly. All in all an idiosyncratic space quite unlike any other. Pevsner liked this church ('a low, homely, loveable church'), and I did too, though it didn't quite pip Edith Weston for my church of the day so far.
My plan was to head south here. There were two roads I could take, one which wound and meandered as if taking its time to decide where to go next, and the A600 Oakham to Uppingham road which darted south in a straight line. The trouble was, between the ridge I'd cycled westwards on and the ridge I wanted to cycle on next there was a deep valley, the contour lines on the map clustering like wires in the back of an old-fashioned radio. Thinking it might be best to deal with it quickly, I headed out on to the A600, only to see the road ahead of me falling away sharply to the foot of what looked like a vertical wall a mile beyond. Changing my mind very quickly, I hauled my bike onto the verge and pushed it back to the Manton road, before getting on and heading south on the old road, which turned out to be charming and delightful, weaving between woods and meadows before climbing in merciful zig-zags onto the Wing road, where I turned west again and climbed the last slope up into Preston, another hilltop village.
This was the prettiest village of the day. I had reached the ironstone belt, and this was a lovely gingerbread village of narrow streets, dominated by its old manor house. Thatched stone cottages flanked the main street of the village which was only spoiled by the noise of the traffic on the adjacent A600. Set back among fields down a lane to the west of the village was the long church, presenting its east end to the lane, and beside it a meadow was separated from the graveyard by a dropgate. As I approached the church, a group of sheep ambled over to the dropgate. Perhaps the person who usually lets them into the churchyard to graze also arrives by bicycle, I don't know. I didn't ask them, and I obviously didn't let them into the churchyard either.
The gingerbread church is tall, narrow and spired, a grand sight. Inside, as you might expect, the bones of a Norman church, and the piers which support both the chancel arch and the most easterly arches of the arcades are massive - was this once a cruciform church? Whatever, the chancel was rebuilt in the 13th Century, and is gorgeous. I'm not one to get excited about sedilia as a rule, but you can't help noticing how glorious this one is. The south side of the chancel has a window by that great East Anglian 20th Century artist, Rosemary Rutherford, depicting the adoration of the shepherds, while the smaller windows beside it are filled with abstract glass in reds and pinks to the design of John Hayward. The commission required that they 'fit in' with Rosemary Rutherford's window, which is probably a mistake as more might have been made of it, especially with such an important artist as John Hayward. The only other glass is the four evangelists in the west window, the 1860s work of Ward and Hughes.
I joined the A600 now, thankfully downhill for most of the way, in the direction of Uppingham.
To be continued.