Why thank you, Ron! Another very fine Dough composition which captures the mood of this glowering building beautifully. The best by far of the pictures of St Machar available on the web.

And just to add my thanks also to Antheil for the tour of Welsh churches. Lovely things. How on earth does that plucky little Cwmyoy church remain standing? It's not going to give in, is it?

George, the Church started to twist about 500 years ago and is obviously being monitored.  They have had to stop ringing the bells in the tower now because of the vibrations.  It's difficult to get a picture which clearly shows the angle of the tower but it leans more than the Tower of Pisa. (If you put Simon Jenkins and Cwmyoy into google you will get a very interesting article he wrote about Cwmyoy in the Guardian a couple of years ago)

Further along there is St. Mary the Virgin, the smallest Church in Wales at 4m x 8m, built in 1762 and described by Francis Kilvert as "the old chapel, short, stout and boxy, with its little bell turret, squatting like a stout grey owl among its seven great yews"

Nearby, in 1880, a Vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary appeared several times to the monks of the nearby Monastry and then to some choir boys and farmers.  This is a statue of her where it happened and there is a Pilgrimage each year on the anniversary of the Vision - the Welsh Lourdes in the the Black Mountains!

 

Yes Don B, the Monastry of Llanthony Tertia.  Father Ignatius certainly seemed pretty flakey.  The daily ritual of the monastery at Capel-y-Ffin was evidently bizarre and harsh in the extreme. The monks had to take it in turns to be led into the cloister with a halter, to be spat on and walked over by the rest of the community and to beg their bread for the day.  When Francis Kilvert visited the monastery in the spring of 1870 he described two of the monks digging in the garden,

"dressed in long black habits girt round the waist with scourge cords knotted at the ends ... The black hoods or cowls were drawn over their heads leaving their faces bare, and their naked feet were thrust into sandals with which they went slip slop along as with slippers down at heel.......

...... One could not help thinking how much more sensible and really religious was the dress and occupation of the masons and of the hearty healthy girl washing at the Chapel House, living naturally in the world and taking their share of its work, cares and pleasures, than the morbid unnatural life of these monks going back into the errors of the dark ages and shutting themselves up from the world to pray for the world"

However the Vision was evidently seen by a scholar from Oxford as well ....

The Monastry didn't survive very long, about 35 years, and after Fr. Ignatius' death the monks dispersed.  The Church is in ruins (they built it themselves) and the house was once lived in by Eric Gill (almost as disreputable in his own way as Fr. Ignatius perhaps?)

I like Llanthony Abbey very much.  Have you been to Tintern Abbey?  They have installed a new statue of Our Lady there.

I've never been to Penrhys, but from googling it says the original statue was removed in the 1500s and thrown from the West window of St. Pauls by Bishop Latimer.  I must admit that present day Ferndale seems such an unlikely spot for Pilgrimages.

I admit I don't know Shobdon at all Don B., except as an airfield.  Upon looking I find the Church a complete surprise inside!!



Kilpeck, being in Herefordshire, I know very well for its carvings



This is the newly installed statue of Our Lady at Tintern Abbey to replace the 13th century one  which is damaged beyond repair (Tintern was Cistercian btw)



As Wordsworth wrote about Tintern:

      These beauteous forms,
      Through a long absence, have not been to me
      As is a landscape to a blind man's eye:
      But oft, in lonely rooms, and 'mid the din
      Of towns and cities, I have owed to them
      In hours of weariness, sensations sweet,
      Felt in the blood, and felt along the heart;
      And passing even into my purer mind,
      With tranquil restoration.

Did I say I liked it Don B?

Do you know the Knights Templar at Garway, or Llangarewi, Archenfield?

Now I see, you just said you were suprised.

I think Shobdon is scrummy.  Not numinous, mind you, but fun.

I knew about the Templars in London, Temple church and all that, but I didn't know about their Welsh bases.  Any round churches among them?

(I'll be away from a computer for a few days now.)

In the absence of Don Basilio I fear I may be talking to myself (but then these old Churches are a passion of mine and I claim the old Garway Rite of Sanctuary!!)

Back to the Templars (possibly). Near to me is a tiny, isolated church in the middle of nowhere in the middle of a field with a couple of farms nearby.  It's right on the present  borders of Herefordshire and Wales but used to be in Wales of course and is not terribly far from Garway.  Legend tells that it was founded by the Celtic saint, Ridol (hence Llanrothal).   In the Norman period the church was rededicated to St John the Baptist. Much of what we can see today is 12th century work, with a window of that date in the north wall, and 14th century windows elsewhere.

The church has a porch leading straight into the chancel. At the west end of the nave is a very simple bowl shaped font upon a narrow pedestal. From the style, it would be a fair guess that the font dates to the early Norman period.

The intriguing thing about the font is not the date, it is the presence of a small, raised 'cross pattee' at the centre of the bowl. The cross patte is associated with the Knights Templar - was this font brought here from one of the dismantled Templars sites?