poliphilo: (bah)
poliphilo ([personal profile] poliphilo) wrote2015-10-20 09:57 am
  • Add Memory
  • Share This Entry

St Mary, Higham

St Mary's, Higham was Dickens's parish church. One of his daughters was married there. It sits at the end of a road that peters out into the North Kent marshes-  so isolated that the villagers built a second church in the 1860s, about a mile away on higher ground. It is now redundant and in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

This is the landscape of Great Expectations. One can imagine Magwitch shivering among the graves.

The south door dates from c.1400 and is studded with quaint little carved faces.





Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 11:28 am (UTC)(link)
Although 'Pip's parents' are buried in Cooling churchyard as you probably know.

Love those door details, but you know I would! :o)

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 12:20 pm (UTC)(link)
Yes, we've been to Cooling.

I love the marshes. Can't think why, but I do...

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 12:30 pm (UTC)(link)
Oh so do I!

I suppose I was brought up with them and Dickens's descriptions of them as th' meshes.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 01:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I grew up in Croydon, so I had no contact with the marshes until adulthood.

I love Romney Marsh too.

Marshes are liminal.

[identity profile] cmcmck.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 02:19 pm (UTC)(link)
Romney Marsh is a magical and infinitely strange place.
Edited 2015-10-20 15:15 (UTC)

[identity profile] puddleshark.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 03:09 pm (UTC)(link)
I love that door. How amazing to have little medieval faces peering at you!

[identity profile] pondhopper.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 03:18 pm (UTC)(link)
Is there any interpretation of the little faces or are they merely ornamental whimsy? That is a wonderful door!

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 03:26 pm (UTC)(link)
It's a wonderful door. I'm thinking it must originally have been painted- that way the faces would have stood out more.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 03:43 pm (UTC)(link)
I think the top face in the middle picture is a nun. It would make sense as the church once had a convent attached. On the other hand it could be someone in a shroud.

The other two are green men

[identity profile] moodywho.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 04:43 pm (UTC)(link)
How wonderful!
sovay: (PJ Harvey: crow)

[personal profile] sovay 2015-10-20 06:46 pm (UTC)(link)
This is the landscape of Great Expectations. One can imagine Magwitch shivering among the graves.

With the faces on the door looking at him.

[identity profile] poliphilo.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 07:12 pm (UTC)(link)
I wonder what he'd have thought of them.

I think they're friendly little faces- but maybe they'd have worn a different aspect to a man on the run.

[identity profile] pondhopper.livejournal.com 2015-10-20 08:20 pm (UTC)(link)
I realized they were probably Green Men after I commented but the nun is interesting.
Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only