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Sometimes we need reminding that the world still holds moments of wonder. At Ripon Cathedral, a little incense, sunlight and a 30-second exposure revealed something extraordinary.
This digest is continued from last week:
Andy Marshall
Stay then, village, for round you spins
On slow axis a world as vast
And meaningful as any poised
By great Plato’s solitary mind.
R S Thomas, The Village
Whilst walking along the canal from Huddlesford, instead of heading back to my bed in Woody, if I had dared to take my weary feet a little further and flag down a passing, neon pleasure boat, I might have accepted the Whisky Sour on offer, travelled north to Fradley Junction, and, with sweet goodbyes, stepped ashore at the bucolic turn onto the Trent and Mersey Canal, before finding myself wandering past timbered homes with private jetties, through a village with a strange name called Alrewas.
Loosened, I might sit beside the canal, collar turned up, and watch the lights glint in the water until daybreak.
Then I might stalk the church tower at All Saints in a roundabout way, walking through the silent lanes, up and over the hump-backed bridge, casting my eye upon its layers of history, until I finally plucked up the courage to walk into the churchyard and face the tower full on.
Here, after steadying myself against the boundary wall, my eyes might wander from the crenellations and pinnacles down to the angled buttresses that hold it together, before settling upon a peculiarity - a pair of ancient oak doors, held within a stone surround that predates the tower by more than a century.
Anybody walking up through the lychgate or driving past the festive tree might have noticed my silhouette standing in front of the tower.
Perhaps someone walking their dog would pass within a few metres, tip their hat and offer a brisk ‘Good morning!’ before continuing on their way.
I doubt they would think me strange, but rather absorbed - having, on occasion, been similarly absorbed themselves by the very thing that had caught my attention.
There are no calories in looking, I would think, and take it all in. And there the spell would begin.
Silvered hues and fissured surfaces, with old oak worn into deep furrows and ridges, like the contours of an ancient landscape. Here and there, the remnants of paint clinging to the grain, while rusty nailheads, hammered into the timber centuries ago, stand proud of the weathered surface. Great wrought-iron hinges spread across the doors with curling tendrils.
I might move a little closer, drawn towards the smallest detail. The grain twisting around hoary knots and rising into little ridges of softened timber. An iron ring hanging from a flower-shaped plate, while an old keyhole sits within a square of pitted metal. Every surface in that moment might seem to be alive, with its own history, its own distinctive layer of time: a universe in the particular.
This door has taken seven centuries of rain and wind, of frost and sunshine, of hands reaching for the ironwork, of generations passing through. And there, towards the top, amongst the weathered grain, another peculiarity might reveal itself - a series of lozenges, with letters and numbers carved into the oak. And there, a date more than three hundred years old, marking an occasion when these doors were tended to.
I couldn't say whether the man standing before those ancient doors might still be feeling the slightest influence of the Whisky Sour, the bonhomie aboard the boat, or the long hours spent looking at the lapping water. After all, he wasn't really there…
But there was something real in it all. Something about this glorious coming together of dream and time and place, of weathered oak and wrought iron, of the hands that made and mended, of those who passed through and those who lingered to look.
And perhaps the final spell would be cast by something altogether simpler. The man, still standing before the door, might find himself repeating the strange name of the village.
Alrewas.
Again.
Alrewas.
The old vowels rolling around his mouth, sounds handed down through generations, carrying echoes of the Mercian in them. His breath giving life to syllables that had travelled through centuries, just as the wood before him had been worked, weathered and tended by countless hands.
And there, in the speaking of a name before an ancient threshold, something extraordinary might happen. The man, the door, the village, the hands of the past, the water that had brought him here - no longer quite separate, but part of something greater than himself.
And for a fleeting moment, he might feel that he belonged to it all, that he was really there, in a glorious entanglement of time and place.
The centuries no longer behind him, but all around him.
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I found out the names behind the initials on the door and then went inside the church and was mesmerised by the welcome there..
Continued next week.
Four Watering Cans Hanging Against An Ancient Wall
"I thought of gravity, of quantum entanglement, of the mysterious relationships between things." 👇
Andy Marshall
Join Me Next Week
A diagonal journey from Pembrokeshire to Norfolk.
Four rescued churches, eight counties, campervan stopovers, welcoming cafes and pubs - and remarkable buildings and landscapes along the way. Join me from the comfort of your armchair.
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Andy Marshall
I'll also be re-visiting Gumfreston which is being photographed for Member Powered Photography.
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Photographs and words by Andy Marshall (unless otherwise stated). Most photographs are taken with iPhone 17 Pro and DJI Mini 5 Pro.
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