in Domesday,[1] is built on an artificial mound on the top of a hill, a little way out of the village, so that it might serve as a landmark in the Forest.[2] The church has been sadly mutilated. A wretched brick tower has been patched on at the west end; and on the north side a new staring red brick aisle, which surpasses even the usual standard of ugliness of a dissenting chapel. On the south side stands the Norman doorway, with plain escalloped capitals, and an outside arch ornamented with the indented and chevron mouldings. The chancel is Early-English, whilst the plain chancel arch which springs without even an impost from the wall, is very early Norman. Under one of the chancel windows rises the arch of an Easter sepulchre, whilst a square Norman font, of black Purbeck marble, stands at the south-west end of the nave.
If the church, however, has been disfigured, the approach to it fortunately remains in all its beauty. For a piece of quiet English scenery nothing can exceed this, A deep lane, its banks a garden of ferns, its hedge matted with honeysuckle, and woven together with bryony, runs, winding along a side space of green, to the latch-gate, guarded by an enormous oak, its limbs now fast decaying, its rough bark grey with the perpetual snow of lichens, and here and there burnished with soft streaks of russet-coloured moss; whilst behind it, in the churchyard,
- ↑ In that portion of it which comes under the title of "In Foresta et circa eam." See chap. iii. p. 31.
- ↑ All over England did the church towers serve as landmarks, alike in the fen and forest districts. Lincolnshire and Yorkshire can show plenty of such steeples. At St. Michael's at York, to this hour, I believe, at six every morning, is rung the bell whose sound used to guide the traveller through the great forest of Galtres; whilst at All Saints, in the Pavement, in the same city, is shown the lantern, which every night used to serve as a beacon.
