Two Churches On The Steyning Road
Mar. 8th, 2016 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloCoombes is a settlement on the road that goes from Lancing to Steyning. There's a farm and a church and not much else. You have to cross farmland to reach the church. As is sometimes the case with very small, isolated churches no-one remembers which saint it was dedicated to.
This is the field I had to come through. Our car is just visible in the car park at the bottom of the hill. That's a cement works, I think, on the far side of the valley.
The church is a shoe-box with windows in it. A thousand year-old shoebox. It's glory is its wall paintings- which are12th century- and probably the work of monks from Lewes Priory. They're fragmentary but very well-preserved in patches.
This is the lion of St Mark
And this little chap is supporting the weight of the chancel arch
A little further down the same road is Botolphs- another settlement that's hardly a village- with one or two buildings and yet another Romanesque church.
It's another shoebox- and in this instance the paintings have all but disappeared. You can see traces of them over the chancel arch. I imagine the monks from Lewes working their way through the County. "Right, that's another one finished. Where to next?"
This is the field I had to come through. Our car is just visible in the car park at the bottom of the hill. That's a cement works, I think, on the far side of the valley.
The church is a shoe-box with windows in it. A thousand year-old shoebox. It's glory is its wall paintings- which are12th century- and probably the work of monks from Lewes Priory. They're fragmentary but very well-preserved in patches.
This is the lion of St Mark
And this little chap is supporting the weight of the chancel arch
A little further down the same road is Botolphs- another settlement that's hardly a village- with one or two buildings and yet another Romanesque church.
It's another shoebox- and in this instance the paintings have all but disappeared. You can see traces of them over the chancel arch. I imagine the monks from Lewes working their way through the County. "Right, that's another one finished. Where to next?"
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no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 11:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 01:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 02:29 pm (UTC)You would enjoy the Museum of Catalan Art in Barcelona...they have literally lifted the wall paintings from the many Catalan Romanesque churches in the mountains and transferred them to the museum...but in reconstructions of the partial churches themselves so it looks like you're viewing them in situ. Fantastic place!
no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 02:47 pm (UTC)There's more of this art left than you'd think- a lot of English churches have some- but most of it is faded and fragmentary.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 04:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 04:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 05:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 07:42 pm (UTC)Have you been watching Waldemar Januszczak's (sp) series about the Renaissance? He has been refreshingly scornful of art-historical orthodoxy.
no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 09:05 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-08 11:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-09 10:17 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-10 12:26 pm (UTC)I suppose the murals were painted al fresco?