Syde walk

On a dullish morning, we walked again, this time with friends. From Syde church, we set off Northwards before dipping into the hidden valley which stretches down through Eddington Wood from Brimpsfield. It's less than a mile from the busy dual carriageway, but you wouldn't know it. How grateful we can be that this ancient pocket was spared the scars that a modern PPG7 mansion would have inflicted on it! "Proposals for Syde Park, near Caudle Green, included a six-bedroom house with conservatory and orangery, two large cottages and a water cascade on landscaped terraces."

Listeners to The Archers (I don't count myself as one these days) will know all about it.

We arrived early for our rendezvous, so I popped into the jewel-like church of St Mary to see, I'd hoped, the "roundel of St James of Compostela in the nave SE window" - Pevsner. But no roundel was there to be seen! What might have become of it?