The angel roof at King's Lynn was installed around 1400.

I spent two days there, mesmerised by their magnificence, carefully studying their form with fleshy nose against wooden cheek. Walking along the scaffold platform created an inherent reverence to these angelic hosts, dipping and bowing under each figure as I moved through the building heights.

Each angel was beautifully detailed from the finely carved hair curls to the neatly clipped toes.

Ahem...I'm a lyre...

With the passage of time, what struck me most about these celestial renderings was the feeling of intimacy that emerged - a percolation of the form, detail and original intent which had the power to create a felt sense of presence; or maybe, even a glimpse of heaven on earth.

For me, heaven lies in the hands that made this, and the minds that conceived it. It is in the lives that allowed it to survive and also in the people that help it thrive. Holiness is in the the earth-song of the peeling paint and the arborescent echo from the fissured faces, and sanctity is in the rhythm of the truss, the pattern in the bracing and the un-mappable outpourings of human endeavour held within these walls.

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