Halling Views...: To Luddesdown Church...

Monday 1 April 2019

To Luddesdown Church...

The usual route from North Halling...

The woods are just starting to green up in the warm Spring sunshine...

Mays Wood

Wingate Wood

Wood Anenomes...

The deep ploughing of the fields for the planting of vines has started. It is not pretty...

Luddesdown valley - view from Wrenches Shaw

Luddesdown Church looks rather splendid at this time of year...

Luddesdown Church...

Taken from the above web-page: "St Peter and St Paul is still a focal point of the scattered community of Luddesdown and its surroundings, little larger than it was when the Domesday surveyors of 1086 recorded 'a church here'."

"The history of Luddesdowne Church, post-Conquest, is poorly documented and has to be read against the fate of the Norman knights and their successors who acquired the manor. Following the church reforms of Henry III, many noblemen rebuilt their own small, cramped manorial churches, and this probably happened in Luddesdowne, where the earliest verifiable fabric, seen in the north and west walls, dates from the thirteenth century.

The tower and south aisle were then added in the 14th century, and so the church acquired the basic form in which it stands today. However, in 1865 the nave roof fell in requiring a major rebuilding. The reconstructed church was consecrated in 1867. Over the course of the next three decades the rector the Revd Alfred Wigan and his family furnished and decorated the church in accordance with their high church Oxford Movement tastes. Notably, they employed the firm of Heaton, Butler and Bayne to install stained glass windows and the fine set of wall and ceiling paintings which survive to this day.

Other historical features of note surviving in the church include a 14th century log ladder in the tower, three medieval bells, a 15th century brass, and a fine Caen stone reredos depicting the Last Supper installed in 1873 and designed by Ewan Christian."

I decided to walk back along Warren Road. The venerable oak on the corner of the junction with Cobhambury Road has yet to strike leaf, but is surrounded by a carpet of yellow Celandines...