Could a depressed arch make your day? @thehistorymouse.bsky.social Not here at Southwell Minster, because this is a segmental arch! Ancient and strong, the segmental arch has a circular arc of less than 180 degrees. This one has a continuous band of chevron around the opening & is gorgeous.

We've gone to some interesting places with the open/closed beaks, here in Southwell Minster. Could be a handy simple diagnostic for the age of the eagle @portaspeciosa.bsky.social @chartresfi.bsky.social My pics show the closed C19th beak quite clearly & there's some good podium detail here too!

Bold as brass @notpodium.bsky.social Southwell Minster had 2 lecterns, 1 a copy of the other. This was the original, made c 1510 & owned by the monks of Newstead Abbey. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries the monks wrapped up the lectern & sank it in the Abbey lake @chartresfi.bsky.social

Where there is harmony, there can also be discord! @thehistorymouse.bsky.social @chartresfi.bsky.social Despite having a crack squad of vigilant Southwell cones on duty, an ornamental urn had gone missing from a gate pier in this high status gateway! Distinctly unsettling, shocking even.

My mother has been volunteering at the Lego cathedral from the start - congratulations to her and all the other volunteers!

I've been sojourning in Southwell, and the walk to the Minster past a lively assortment of ecclesiastical dwellings was a treat. @thehistorymouse.bsky.social This is Grade II* listed Cranfield House, and I absolutely had to admire those verdant low clipped hedges 💚

In Southwell Minster, I liked this sprightly flock of sheep. I fretted about the *exploding* straw in the manager, but it can't be too combustible, as Joseph seems to have fallen asleep after the hard labour of giving birth. 💚the cheeky ox & ass, peeping in from the sides! @chartresfi.bsky.social

There was continuity between Stroud and Southwell. A pretty border by the Minster had plumped for bearded irises too, and very delicately shaded they were to boot. As always, sparkling purple alliums go with everything! @carolineirwin3.bsky.social @stroudstory.bsky.social

@horatioforever.bsky.social I've been away to Southwell Minster, but I am back, bearing a Victorian stained glass boat containing Jesus!

To Stroud's lovely Museum in the Park to hear @stroudstory.bsky.social give a thoroughly engaging lecture, and to enjoy the beautifully planted hill-side garden. This arrangement of flowers takes the prize for most flamboyantly frilly bearded irises seen so far this year! @3leggedcat.bsky.social

Handsome bridges at intervals along The Stroudwater Navigation, walking towards Stonehouse. The canal was built in the late C18th to support the thriving woollen cloth industry. With growing demand for coal to power local mills, canal transport became the ideal solution. @iangrebe.bsky.social

This year's first duckling spotted. There was a lovely mallard family, with a good number of ducklings zipping about at great speed, on Fromehall Mill Pond, between Stroud and Stonehouse. The pond was graced by a substantial contingent of gorgeous boy Mandarin Ducks (Aix galericulata).

For all fellow #Heroneers this park near the centre of Edinburgh has become a favourite haunt: just a few of the birds I saw this morning!

The Lady of Shalott @3leggedcat.bsky.social Right, my David Austin rose of that name, now coming into bloom. Left, a depiction of the chaos which ensues after the Lady of Shalott has looked directly at Sir Launcelot! Her weaving is disintegrating, entangling the weaver. By William Holman Hunt.

Pie-crust lead detailing makes this robust Norman tub-font even more appealing. St Leonard's, Bledington.

Mention polychrome brickwork to me in passing, and I am round to Keble College, Oxford, in a flash! The Warden's Lodgings, built 1876-7, fizzed & popped in the Spring sunshine yesterday, with their vibrant patterns. High Victorian Middle Pointed Gothic, says Pevsner. @thehistorymouse.bsky.social

Well ordered Greylag goslings, maintaining their neat line up, on the Thames between Wallingford and Benson.

Delicate stained glass roundel with star design, by @fabledstainedglass.bsky.social This artwork enchanted with its diminutive beauty. Suspended on my desk between postcards of vintage Oxfordshire glass from Yarnton (little bird) & Shiplake churches (the portrait of St John the Baptist). 🌟

It was time to set this hare running free, leaping about the ceiling in the cosy room where I organise all my church crawls. S/he seemed perfect for Spring; a kind present from @digupyourancestors.bsky.social who unravelled the stories of generations of my ancestors for me. digupyourancestors.com

#EveryHeron There was little peace for this fish, where the heron was feeding at the LWC! Pics from left: fish wrangling 1 & 2 Pic 3: down the hatch!

Adorable ducks at the London Wetland Centre. "I go and lie down where the wood drake rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds. I come into the peace of wild things who do not tax their lives with forethought of grief." [Extract from Wendell Berry's "The Peace of Wild Things"]

Details of Florence Camm's window, St Mary the Virgin's church, Shipley, Sussex #FlorenceCamm #StainedGlass #Sussex

A visitor to the Bodleian Library "Pets and their People" exhibition? Or an exhibit him/herself? It was impossible to tell with kitty, left! Thoroughly recommended. Free at the Weston Library, Oxford. @bodleian.ox.ac.uk

The Langton Chapel, in St Mary's, Barnes. The oldest surviving part of the original church, once the Lady Chapel. #SundayStonework Architect's Edward Cullinan's 1984 post-fire roof works handsomely here. @iangrebe.bsky.social @churchartnature.bsky.social

The beautiful interior of St Mary's, Barnes. #SundayStonework Core of c1100-1150, extended c 1200, with later tower, Victorian restoration & a superb rebuild completed 1984, by Edward Cullinan, following a fire. Window splay for @thehistorymouse.bsky.social

#BovineBeauties Old English Longhorn cattle in Christ Church Meadow, Oxford, yesterday afternoon. The longhorns spend the winter on a farm, and return to the Meadow in early spring. They look in fine fettle. Lovely mottled markings on the mums, while the calves are chocolate woolly darlings!

A handsome horse indeed! St George's steed steals the show in this light of Joseph Nuttgens' 1992 window in Holy Trinity, Bledlow. One of the most beautiful horses that I have seen in a church. Created in memory of Major Rupert Chitty Brookshaw. @stroudstory.bsky.social @iangrebe.bsky.social

I was thrilled to meet this wonderfully rich textural dragon in Holy Trinity, Bledlow. This 1992 Joseph Nuttgens' window shows St George & a defiant dragon, in memory of a gentleman with a most memorable name: Maj Rupert Chitty Brookshaw. @portaspeciosa.bsky.social @chartresfi.bsky.social

This is my cross manuscript face, left, & right, this is my arms akimbo remonstrating stern face, in Haddenham. All I need to do now is find some reprehensible church crawlers, who need a good ticking off...my big ears will surely help me to locate them.

Dragon or Wyvern, these manuscript worms are full of cheek! Impudent pair. @chartresfi.bsky.social

Here be dragons! A self-chomping spotty serpent on the west door at St Michael and All Angels, Bishop's Cleeve. #SundayStonework

My journey home was a colourful one. I succumbed to this gorgeous Gerbera plant (right) then encountered a splendid pair of Mandarin Ducks by Cookham Bridge [Aix galericulata]. Though the boy duck shows off his tangerine plumage brilliantly, I think girl Mandarins are also very pretty.

Sometimes, throwing caution to the winds, and abandoning notions of restraint and good taste, is just the ticket!

The first rose of summer, left, a slightly crumpled David Austin rose - and the first fizzing pink fireworks of Ragged Robin. This plant has had lots of babies, all of which are now planted out - I wonder if they will all be the same colour. @carolineirwin3.bsky.social @3leggedcat.bsky.social

#Caturday What has changed over the centuries & what has fundamentally stayed the same? Cats then & cats now can't resist a trailing piece of wool...here wound on a tempting spindle. Wren Digital Library, Trinity College, Cambridge, Book of Hours, B.11.22. @stroudstory.bsky.social

I couldn't help but warm to the early C19th Toll House adjacent to Cookham Bridge, alongside the bridge, which I notice Stanley Spencer has captured in his painting! @stroudstory.bsky.social

Rambling in Spring-time Cookham, so dear to Stanley Spencer, was a form of heaven! Left, the cast-iron bridge over the Thames, by PEASE HUTCHINSON AND CO; 1867, DARLINGTON. The quatrefoil parapet is very distinctive. Right, Spencer's painting, showing the bridge; Turk's Boatyard Cookham, c 1931.

In Stanley Spencer's imaginative paintings, the village of Cookham became 'a village in heaven', in which the spiritual world lies lightly veiled beneath scenes of everyday life. For me recently, it's been heaven through nature, listening to & watching birds in an idyllic Thames-side landscape.💚

It would of course have been unthinkable to walk the canal path without a decorative heron. Summertown to Port Meadow in Oxford. @everyheron.bsky.social

Walking from Summertown to Port Meadow in Oxford, and beyond to the railway station, was a wonderful experience: I felt as happy as the horses munching on their fresh Spring grass! There was canal bridge art by the path to bring the experience to life for birders! @everyheron.bsky.social

Holy Trinity, Bledlow, in the Chiltern Hills. My first successful visit to see the interior of this picturesquely situated flint-built church, mostly C13th. The South porch is early C14th & has a large stoop. The turf to the churchyard is strewn with flowers. @thehistorymouse.bsky.social

A bold visual statement in the churchyard of St Michael and All Angels, Sunninghill. Listed by Historic England who state: Early to mid C19th, in Egyptian style. Monument to the Hon Richard Fitzpatrick. Square stone base with round column; surmounted by capstone with elaborate anthemion finial.

More glittering bosses were available inside the cathedral (left) as was Skidmore's heavenly screen. It is a marvellous piece of work. Francis Alfred Skidmore was born in Birmingham in 1817, the son of a jeweller. Skidmore worked with Scott on the Lichfield, Hereford & Salisbury cathedral screens.

#SundayStonework The foliate bosses of Worcester Cathedral Cloister really caught my eye, carved from a range of sandstones; I liked the rhubarb-coloured stone. Leafy decoration has a powerful presence here as is so often the case in sacred buildings of this date. @churchartnature.bsky.social

From the Hyde Park account on Facebook - a well-placed heron makes your day! @everyheron.bsky.social

#ScreenSaturday in Worcester cathedral's Chapel of St John. The woodwork is Victorian I strongly suspect, but the Purbeck marble in the piers beyond, and the vigorous stiff leaf capitals, are of a finer vintage!

Fuzzy moorhen chicks with HUGE feet pootle around Windsor Great Park, yesterday. @iangrebe.bsky.social

Glitzy heron bids visitors to Windsor Great Park, welcome. @everyheron.bsky.social

This lectern knows how to sort the wheat from the chaff. More #GiantCandles and #TinyLions were to be found close by, in the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge. I like the way that they are looking back over their shoulders to admire the candle! I expect they have quite bad neck ache by now. 🧡