Kilpeck

It is no surprise that we have long wanted to make a pilgrimage to Kilpeck to see the cornucopia of delights there; so as a Christmas present to ourselves, we made a small detour en route home for Christmas, to the famous village.

It was one of those bright winter days where the sun is low and the light is golden. With my finger glued to the map as we headed towards our destination, I remarked that the light would be perfect for picking out the carvings. As we were musing on this, I pointed out a sudden pocket of low-lying mist, hanging in a valley over to the left. "By the way, where is it we're going?" my sister asked. "Over there," I replied, pointing at the mist. It was too strange. And rather disappointing! We had no hope of seeing anything if the wonders of Kilpeck were shrouded in fog. As we crept forward through the blanket of white, we got to a crossroads. "Where do you think it is?" my sister asked. All of a sudden, the outline of a church tower rose out of the mist straight ahead of us. It couldn't have been more like a film. Was it the mystic creatures of Kilpeck keeping themselves hidden?

Kilpeck has so much to enjoy - and is so well preserved. The stone looks red and softer than some, but the carvings are in excellent condition, both inside and out. We went inside first - there are very unsual carvings on each side of the arch, three figures each side. The entrance into the church is amazing. A whole host of wonderfully comic beakheads, some most unusual, flanked by another arch of eyes and designs very like those in Stottesdon. The columns either side of the door are also very well preserved, all of it seems like it could have been carved last century. They are not like any I remember, but have a complicated design of interlacing foliage, figures and creatures.

The corbels are amazing. They go all around the church, not a space is left - although a couple are missing. The creatures are most amusing and full of character, who could fail to love them. The hare and hound pairing looks so modern.
 Rams, pigs, horses, people.  The back of the church looks out across the graveyard and across a field. A large tree was rising out of the mist that hung low over the fields. It all looked quite mysterious.

Others came to visit, one over-confident man striding around with his girlfriend, lecturing her in a boring manner and saying "there's nothing interesting inside". Hopefully she would make up her own mind.

The mist began to clear and the sun lit up the corbels in gold. As we got ready to leave, a few beams of golden light shone through the yews in shafts.

Romsey

When asked what I wanted to do for my birthday, the answer was simple. Yes, animals are always a good option but fonts (or rather, Romanesque carving) won. As a special treat we went that bit further to Romsey Abbey, near Southampton. And it really proved to be the sort of special treat you want for a special birthday, as mine was.

Before we even got inside, we were delighted to find wonderful Norman corbels high up around the outside walls. Most were of faces of people or animals and some distinctly different to those we have seen before; some faces had things inside their wide open mouths such as figures of people. There were also a number of pairs of heads. The garden outside was a lovely spot to stuff our faces so we admired the corbels as we ate.

Around the corner from the main entrance was a figure of Jesus, on his cross, not unlike the one at Langford. Over this one was a hand of God. The Jesus was next to a rather fine door, I'm not sure how much of it had been touched up as it seemed in remarkably good nick.  Then more corbels (it was a bit overwhelming) and then we finally made it to the front entrance.

Inside you are struck by the high walls and lofty ceilings of the building. It has many treasures and they are keen for you not to miss any of them, as a detailed map was given to us by an interested guide (although this was once we had been round the abbey already). We were both soon going from one thing to another, doing the usual thing of "look!" and then finding something even more exciting around the next corner. In terms of Norman carvings, the place is a real gem. Towards the back of the abbey, every column seems to be topped with a carved capital - and all seem different. You have the foliage design, reminiscent of Knook, and some more unusual ones of people and animals. The abbey had provided a drawing of some of the more complicated ones, suggesting what was being depicted, but cynical and questioning as we are, we did not take everything as gospel (despite being in a church). The only problem was that all the capitals were hard to see for two reasons: the main one being the height - it was impossible to crane your neck back and to see anything in detail with them being so high above your head. And secondly, each was lit with a bulb that shone down into your eyes so you could not see very well anyway. It was a real shame and we considered writing to the abbey to see if we could get a ladder or platform from which to view them all close up, under the guise of wanting to produce a book on them.

see how high they are

The back of the abbey is just one carved capital after another and then you come across the far right hand corner, where there is a Saxon rood. Thankfully you can have a proper look at this one. The figure of Jesus on the cross and the people around him stood out from a darker coloured backgro
und... which on closer inspection appeared to have been painted in bronze enamel paint, which had been applied quite carelessly. We almost began hyperventilating at this - clearly someone had done this in the recent history of this ancient carving. I just hope the offending paint can be removed without any damage.

Luckily there were plenty more carved capitals around the corner to distract us, including a rather cute one of animals biting each other. It is just a shame we could not draw anything because we could not see it in enough detail at that distance.  Unsurprisingly, many people going round were not looking up and so were walking past, in our opinions, the best bits.

So to fully appreciate the abbey we need to return with ladders and permission to shin up them, although even then I don't think I'd be able to draw at such heady heights. But even without drawing it was the perfect place for a birthday.

Who did this!?