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Coming next week: All Saints’ Hough- on-the-Hill - more of that remarkable Saxon tower, the church interior, and a remarkable stop over at Greetham.
“The church preserves significant late Saxon work in its tower.”
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📷 Taken with the tilt shift lens: The magnificent Romanesque nave at Norwich Cathedral is crowned with a later vaulted ceiling that has one of the most remarkable series of bosses depicting scenes from creation to the last judgement.
“The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.”
— W.B. Yeats
Oculus
Whilst watching a nature programme on TV recently, there was a moment where the TV crew were following a whale and its offspring and, after a long chase through the corrugated waves, suddenly the mother breached the water and gifted the crew a glimpse of her fluted, lenticular mass - but the most enigmatic moment was when her eye met ours through the camera. There was a knowing that reached deep into the self - almost an acknowledgement that we are kin, made from the same stuff. It was a feeling that lay beyond the realms of description.
More recently, whilst skirting the choppy highways of the Lincolnshire countryside - much like the TV crew had bobbed through the brine - I came across another ancient wonder, gargantuan in terms of age.
I moored the van in the haven of a truncated lane - one that seemed to have a weight about it - perhaps a former hollow way. Leaving the van, I eddied through the shallow waters of a daff-flecked churchyard and then skiffed through the swaying understory of a massing of redwood until I was jolted to the spot by a sight that offered up the same correspondence as that with the whale.
Again there came an unfurling and opening up that comes with looking into another creature’s eye - but this time it was with a building.
The church was All Saints’ at Hough-on-the-Hill - part Saxon, the circular staircase tower rumoured to be part of that precious Saxon turriform, where the whole barnacled form gathers upward into a single ancient vertical presence breaching the motte and bailey that is called Castle Hill.
Before long, amidst the jolting and creaking of the Wellingtonia, I was caught by a window set deep within the stone. It was as though the building had offered up its eye.
This window felt like one of those rare thresholds where absence and presence meet. It felt, too, like a deep well of knowing - of wisdom - both touch-paper and embodiment of the lives of the past.
At Hough-on-the-Hill there is a sense of the spirit of humanity held behind that window - of people who have paused, breathless on the steps - taken a chance glimpse through the oculus and spotted a hare, or perhaps a kindred spirit in the fields beyond.
In this way, on this early spring day, the building felt spirited and alive.
What is rarely acknowledged in history books, appraisals or assessments is this deeper register of encounter - because our empirical habits tend to reduce things to function: a whale becomes a mammal, a church a place of worship. They both exceed their description. They carry presences, associations and inward correspondences that lie beyond classification - things felt before they are named.
Words aren’t the only coinage in our lives.
I’m reminded of a moment in C. S. Lewis’s The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, when Eustace says, “In our world, a star is a huge ball of flaming gas,” and the reply comes: “Even in your world, my son, that is not what a star is, but only what it is made of.”
If something can’t be measured, it doesn’t mean that it isn’t there. Wrapped up in the whale’s eye, and again in this little window - the space that relies upon nothing, the void between lid and lintel - is something that captures not only the depth of human presence, but also our enduring capacity to pause, to dream, and to engage with things beyond our ken.
Member Powered Photography
Two Member Powered Photo Shoots are about to begin shortly. Members will be able to follow the back story as I photograph some remarkable buildings in Derbyshire and the Cotswolds.
Seven more members would not only release the next free MPP photo shoot, but also help reach the significant milestone of having 200 members. This will help release further Digest focused journeys such as 'In Pursuit of Spring.'
Membership really does help - thank you.
The Saxon Tower Windows of All Saints' Hough-on-the-Hill
Andy Marshall
University of York
More Saxon Circular Staircases:
Brixworth
Uplifted by my interaction with the church wall, I choose to look for clues as to the building's past in the material. I choose to ignore the fact that the majority of this building is perhaps one of the last surviving C7th buildings in the country.
Andy Marshall
Brigstock
It was perhaps the most delicious sausage roll I've tasted - especially next to an Anglo-Saxon icon.
Andy Marshall
For Members - The Tarbat Discovery Centre, Portmahomack
A fuller guide with more photography of the repurposed medieval church of St Colman’s.
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Andy Marshall
For Members - The Tarbat Discovery Centre Crypt in Virtual Reality
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Andy Marshall
Kind words from a subscriber:
Andy your work is becoming wonderful, remarkable. A so-called breakdown has been milled into its constituent parts, becoming profound construction: through perception, architecture, the lens and the pen. In your Repton crypt essay a deep description of our social anxiety - and our reason to be....
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Andy Marshall
One of the most delightful depictions of a whale that I've come across:
I’m mesmerised by it. The carving is a breathtakingly beautiful, organic embodiment of a whale.
Read on:
Andy Marshall
Thank You!
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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