Ashleworth

I had intended that we should walk in Eldersfield parish, and lunch at the Butcher's Arms there, but they can't apparently do dishes without garlic - so, no good for one of the trio of us out today. Instead, we drove to nearby Ashleworth and lunched at The Queens Arms there - excellent food and very accommodating on the allergy front.

Ashleworth feels spread out as a village: we never seemed far away from housing, but it wasn't obtrusive, and some of the architecture was interesting, a mixture of brick and stone. The tithe barn, of course, is magnificent, but the church next door was worth exploring too. Hard to get a photograph of it, though, as the graveyard is a jungle.

Inside, you can see the glorious mixture of styles so typical of our village churches. I liked particularly this fragment of mediaeval glass, representing the beloved disciple.

Both barn and church were deliciously cool on yet another Indian Summer day.