Peculiar, pensive, pouting and penitent. Four 14th C Corbels for #Friday13th at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol.

Early Victorian font with a rather nicely designed cover, at Steeple Ashton #Wiltshire #FontsonFriday

The royal arms of Charles II, installed after the Restoration, and a particularly fine carved version at that, over the door of the 14th C south porch of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. #LesArmoiresduVendredi

A wonderful culture clash in the North Transept at St Mary Redcliffe this week.

John Aubrey is 400 today! In his Natural History he quietly suggested the earth was ancient, Noah's flood was a myth, and Genesis was not a geology textbook. Find out what else he said — and why it was suppressed for nearly two hundred years. www.louiserylandepton.co.uk/blog/john-au...

Do NOT drink this water. 1861 Water Fountain by Bedminster Bridge over the River Avon in Bristol. The water in the cast iron shell basin looks positively poisonous. #IronworkThursday

The shock of the new. A Chaotic Pendulum of 1997 installed below the 1886 Burlison & Grylls Mary Window in the North Transept at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol this week.

Entrance to the North Ambulatory at St Mary Redcliffe. The delicious iron gate opens onto the tiled walkway around the chancel, allowing a glimpse of yet another beautiful stone vault and the Handel Window at its eastern end. #IronworkThursday #AdoorableThursday

The glory of Redcliffe in Bristol, the apotheosis of gothic parish church design. Images yesterday from the main altar back to the entrance. Sublime.

An apple a day might keep the doctor away, but not the serpent in the garden of Eden. Eve in Harry Stammers’ north window of the Lady Chapel at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol yesterday. #WindowsonWednesday

Looks complicated to me! The keyboards and stops of the Harrison & Harrison Organ at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol. It has a mere 4327 organ pipes.

In ‘the fairest, goodliest and most famous parish church in England’ is this life size carved & painted figure of the woman to whom those words are attributed, Elizabeth I. She was not wrong - at St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol yesterday #Woodensday

The west window, inside and out, set in the tower at Steeple Ashton, with the glass of 1879 depicting eight female saints. #TraceryTuesday #Wiltshire

It is 400 years THIS WEEK since the birth of John Aubrey 🎂 I am celebrating by attending @chippenhammuseum.bsky.social for a book & festival (which highlights his 🤩 work)!! www.wiltshirehistory.org/news/john-au...

Cup-marked kerb stone of the north-east burial cairn at the Clava Cairns - a wonderful Bronze Age cemetery near Inverness in the Scottish Highlands. 📸 My own. #TombTuesday #ClavaCairns #Archaeology #Highlands

The Lenten Tree, bare and alone, set on the Victorian tiling in the chancel at Steeple Ashton last weekend. #TilesonTuesday #Wiltshire

Look close enough within the tracery at Steeple Ashton and the faces of kings start to appear within the fragments of medieval glass. Technology rather helps this 🙂 📷 all of the same window #TraceryTuesday #Wiltshire

One of the greatest varieties of fonts I have seen on a simple floor memorial. Don’t think they had Times New Roman back in 1835 else the Long family might have used that too. Steeple Ashton #Wiltshire

The flowing symmetry of the nave vault at Steeple Ashton, thought to be a 17th C replacement of a previous stone vault which perhaps was damaged when the church’s spire collapsed in 1670.

Weather a bit better today, well, a tad less dreich anyway, so I retook external photos of Steeple Ashton whilst driving through there. From a distance the rear turrets almost have a Bavarian castle feel, or perhaps a French chateau. What a wonderful piece of architecture.

Somehow this seems apt at the moment 🙏 #StainedGlassSunday Holy Cross, Seend #Wiltshire

… Every breath you take And every move you make Every bond you break, every step you take, I'll be watchin' you. Steeple Ashton #Wiltshire #SundayStonework

Beware the gargoyle - not a scooby doo episode, though there was one with that name, but the ever present watchfulness of creatures high up in yesterday’s gloom amongst the pinnacles and rooves of the splendid St Mary’s in Steeple Ashton #Wiltshire #SundayStonework

Am so lucky to live just over 5 minutes drive from this quintessential country village and its perpendicular masterpiece which never fails to impress on repeat visits, even in the rain. More to come soon. #Wiltshire

“When you see me sitting quietly, Like a sack left on the shelf, Don’t think I need your chattering. I’m listening to myself. Hold! Stop! Don’t pity me! Hold! Stop your sympathy!” Maya Angelou. Old faces outside the west window at St Leonard’s, Keevil #Wiltshire

For #SteepleSaturday another shot of the magnificent St Mary the Virgin at Bishops Cannings, in all its Early English glory, whose tower I climbed up this week. #Wiltshire

A King Charles III replacement for our local postbox here in #Wiltshire #PostboxSaturday

Closest I can get to a signpost this week, a bees warning sign in the churchyard of St Leonard’s at Keevil #Wiltshire As far as i could see, the bees had got the message and kept away 🐝🐝🐝 #FingerpostFriday

1715, the year of Catholic Jacobite rebellion in Scotland & the north. The white horse of Hanover has been slapped in the middle of the previous Queen Anne shield. A powerful image of the new German Protestant King George I. St Leonard’s, Keevil #Wiltshire #LesArmoiresduVendredi

“Oh the bells, bells, bells. What a tale their terror tells Of despair! How they clang, and clash, and roar!” Edgar Allan Poe. Eight of these bells to be precise and all are massive, set just under the spire within the tower at Bishops Cannings this week. #IronworkThursday

Narrow turret doorway on the roof of the tower at St Mary the Virgin, Bishops Cannings in the heart of Wiltshire this week. It was tight squeeze getting up the winding stairs and out onto the walkway. Medieval folk were much shorter and smaller than today! #AdoorableThursday

A millenium window of local work over the years: industry, agriculture and wool, with a canal boat thrown in too. Holy Cross Church, Seend #Wiltshire #WindowsOnWednesday

Bright enough to wake the dead. Lacock Abbey this week. #WindowsOnWednesday

Ahh, Early English Architecture. Slender pointed arch, delicately decorated quadripartite ribbed vaulting, narrow flowing chancel, all leading to the elegant simplicity of the lancet windows. Sublime. Bishops Cannings #Wiltshire #WindowsonWednesday

A hand of meditation in a unique pew, perhaps for penitence. Most is 18th C but hand panel prob 15th C. “What thou oughtest to think upon” “Thou shalt not be a happy man if abundance of wealth flows to thee” Church of St Mary the Virgin, Bishops Cannings #Wiltshire #Woodensday

Back to Bishops Cannings today to climb up the tower & appear outside on top of the world. Looking down from the heights of this outstanding Early English building gives a completely different perspective on the church’s design and its place in the local community. #TowerTuesday

Now crossing the Forth on my way to Dunfermline. In the past I've always done this crossing later in the day, and to see the Forth with the sun shining in from the sea transfigures it into something unfamiliar.

If you’re seeking sanctuary from the madness of this world, is there anywhere better than a place like this? I feel that I could stare at this image for hours. Simple yet sublime. Lacock Abbey yesterday, warmed by the afternoon sun.

Cloistered around the courtyard, the transcendent tracery of Lacock Abbey yesterday. #TraceryTuesday

Lovely examples of original medieval floor tiles on show at Lacock Abbey #Wiltshire #TilesonTuesday

Couldn’t resist popping in to have another look at the ‘Harry Potter’ medieval cauldron in Lacock Abbey today. Part of Professor Quirrell’s Defence Against the Dark Arts classroom in the first film, it sits under a beautiful vaulted ceiling off the cloisters - also in the films.

A sphinx? In the sunshine? In March? In #Wiltshire? But yes. Mid 18th C folly of a female sphinx on two columns which were once supposedly Tudor chimney stacks. In the grounds of Lacock Abbey. #MonumentMonday

The sundial has come out of retirement and is bracing itself for the busiest week in a long time, at Lacock Abbey this afternoon. #Wiltshire

Mosaic maketh the man! Beautifully crafted images of St Leonard with the chains he released others from, and St Adhelm with his harp, both part of a lovely 1908 Powell & Sons mosaic backdrop to the altar in Keevil #Wiltshire #MosaicMonday

A simple brass memorial from another age. Father & son, both John Haskens. A reminder literally & figuratively of remembering death: “Memento 💀 Mori”, of how s was written as f, & that early March 1724 was 1723/4 in a world of two calendars. #MementoMoriMonday Keevil #Wiltshire

Happy birthday Augustus Pugin. Lived in Salisbury 1835-37. During that time he designed & built his first house, converted to Catholicism, published his controversial book Contrasts, did the plans for the Palace of Westminster, then 10 years later designed St Osmund’s Church.

Changing #stainedglass depictions of women at Holy Cross in Seend - a 1908 still rather Pre Raphaelite Mary Magdalene by Powell & Sons, a sombre mid war 1916 St Helena by Percy Bacon, and a more modern 1937 Lydia by Joseph Bell. #Wiltshire #StainedGlassSunday

The light, the colour, the beauty. Two Powell & Sons windows from 1900 & 1881, in St Leonard’s, Keevil #Wiltshire yesterday with the sun shining through the first window in the south transept. #StainedGlassSunday

there’s an eagle font cover at Penmorfa (Gwynedd) can’t remember ever seeing anything else quite like it

Survived Gallipoli as a soldier in the Wiltshire Regiment & awarded a Military Cross, then 2 years later joined the Royal Flying Corps, shot down 6 enemy planes till he became the first victim of the German flying ace Hans von Häbler. Memorialised in Holy Cross Church, Seend #Wiltshire #LestWeForget