Avebury and Winterbourne Monkton

With the pressures of modern life keeping our brains in a whirr (I have been forgetting to do the meditation you can tell), admittedly not the pressures of being down a mine a hundred years ago, but relief is still found in the soothing pleasures of a trip out fonting.  As it had been some time, (although a whole trip to Bristol needs updating on here), it was nice to get out, sit down and take up a pen. (My new pens. More on them later).

We travelled a by now familiar route out towards Devizes, through the weird hills and villages of Wiltshire.  Then further on to Avebury, home of the Stones.  It always strikes me as strange how many other people wake up and have exactly the same thought as we did, to go and visit them on that very day. (Although they had not had the same thought about visiting the font). However it wasn't heaving, and there were large enough spaces between other visitors not to feel like we were at Stonehenge or something.  As I had forgotten the tea flask we used it as an excuse to have a cream tea at the cafe, which was very nice.  Then we had a wander around the Stones, which are remarkably large, solid and smooth in places, and you have to wonder what it was all about. Even though we were walking round them in a circle, I got a bit disorientated but I enjoyed the calm feeling and seeing the sheep grazing in the middle.


Our main objective was of course to see the font in the local church, which has a fair few more visitors than your average village church. Most people just glanced at the font, if they noticed it at all, even though we were both sitting attempting to draw the detailed and swirling design on it, that is worn with time. The main features are two dragony/wyverny creatures with what I think were unusual amounts of detail, in the patterning down their sides. Very pleasing. I was drawing one with a particularly delightfully curving tail.  There was also a human figure, face bizarrely obliterated by a metallic thing, perhaps part of an old lock.  Above the figures were swirls reminiscent of several places, I shall have to look up - and below, an interlinking archways/pillars design very reminiscent of Durnford font.  I am sure with our extensive knowledge now, we should write a book making observations, as we have been able to see many links and similar designs throughout our travels that other people (the handful who also have this obsession) may not have seen.

We decided to squeeze in another font, just up the road in the next village, Winterbourne Monkton. My sister has visited both before as I remember seeing her previous drawings, but it is always nice to re-visit. And for me they were both new. We really were out in the middle of nowhere, or so it felt, and there were butterflies joining us as we had our picnic lunch.  This font was another elaborately carved and very striking design, which carried traces of paint from years ago, including blue and red. Then it seemed only too fitting that I used my new colour pens in their fancy case, which are fine-tipped. I am quite pleased with my drawing as I depicted different areas of the design in different colours. The bold zig-zag band that forms the main part had traces of blue on it. There is a human-oid figure with splayed out legs and arms, possibly other bits, or is this part of the whirly flower design that fits neatly above and below the zigzags. I think it was put there because if you imagine it removed, the zigzag design would not meet up neatly - you can imagine, can't you, the carver getting round to the end of the pattern and realising it was not really going to work out. A bit like the strikingly free-hand looping patterns at Hinton Parva.  I was not good at depicting the deep cut trumpet design below the zigzags, something my sister did with much more 3D success.

Moreton Valance and Leonard Stanley, Glos

Moreton Valance church was fairly sweet with what the OS map clarified as an old moat behind it - we

decided perhaps the original entrance had been on the moat side, as we found the sculpture we had come to see over the door on the back wall to the church. It was a Norman tympanum of St Michael spearing the dragon - or was it in fact another wyvern which I have now learned is the creature on some of our earlier discoveries. Wyverns have two legs whereas dragons have four. I think four legs are visible on this creature so it is a dragon. St Michael is quite pleasingly depicted with lovely folds of material in his dress and some fine looking wings. We both remarked that he had a nicely carved foot, slender and shapely. The overall composition of the picture is a bit confusing, as it was not that easy to make out what was at both sides of the picture: on one side there were some swirly patterns that could simply have been just that; and on the other a plant-like shape that we both swore looked like a potted plant. The centre is also a tad confusing, but as we have discovered, observing these carvings in an attempt to draw them invariably means working out just what is going on. Between the two figures are St Michael's shield and the pennant on the end of his spear.  In many texts which my sister has unearthed, people have often made incorrect statements about what is depicted in tympanums or fonts, and it surprises us that they have not looked closer for the purposes of description. In some cases it has only taken us a matter of minutes to figure out what is happening: sometimes you wonder if these people have just glanced at the carving for five seconds, or if they have seen the original at all.

But I digress; also at Moreton Valance were some very appealing figureheads on the side of the church - I should learn the proper words for all these items but I can't seem to get them to stick in my head despite hearing how my sister and Pevsner describe them. There were a couple of what looked like bear heads, holding both paws up to their mouths in a kind of surprised or giggling way. Okay now it sounds as if I have not looked at them long enough to work out what they are. But in the case of animals, it is not always easy to know what they are supposed to be. (Another such case to follow, at Sutton Benger). Whatever they were, they were cute and amusing, which all good animal carvings tend to be.

Talking of which, Leonard Stanley church held a lovely surprise in the form of two dragons' heads at the main door - they have to be by the same carver who did those we loved at Elkstone. The design, size and shape of the heads is all similar and I am not surprised that other people liked them too, enough to commission one for their own church (or however these things worked). That is a thought actually - how did people decide what to do in those days? The carver could not have shown them a portfolio of photos of his work as he would now. "Here's one I did at Elkstone. If you like I could do something similar here." ... They are fast becoming a favourite of mine.

Inside the church there was a wealth of carving to look at: however, a lot of it was too high up on the walls to see, photograph or draw. There was something weird with two figures and an apple - possibly not Adam and Eve, even though this had been suggested, plus something with Jesus high up and right next to the wall (also very weird). Outside, the well decorated and large tub font was being used as a plant pot and suffering as a result. We were not very impressed with this at all as we felt it would be damaged by the weight of earth.