"A three-year Odyssey"

This is how sculptor, Rory Young described his journey leading from the important commission for statues of seven martyrs for the niches on the nave altar screen at St Albans. Rory was talking to supporters of the Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust this evening - a crammed Chedworth Village Hall. He called his lecture, "Mediaeval form and colour inspiring new work at St Albans Cathedral".

Goodness knows how many images we were treated to! Some slides incorporated two or more, so it must have been in the hundreds. They illustrated a voyage round mainland Europe (Amiens, Verona, Padua, Rome), but particularly England: other cathedrals of course (Westminster, Durham, Exeter, Coventry, York, Wells...); abbeys such as Westminster, Tewkesbury and Downside; great parish churches (St John the Baptist, Cirencester, St Mary, Warwick, Holy Trinity, Coventry), and lesser ones (South Newington, Notgrove, Leigh Delamere). Then there were the trips to the V&A and the Mercers' Hall. All served to illustrate a quest for hints of original colour, and the best sculptural representation of flowing garments and off-guard expression.

Perhaps Helen Whitbread over-egged it when she paid tribute to "a present Michelangelo in our midst," but we were certainly wowed.

Alas, we couldn't stay for supper in the pub, as bidden: it was 19-year-old Misa Yamahoi's last evening with us. One of a group of students from Japan, she arrived to stay with us on the 10th, the day before the Pope resigned. It seems strange that all the hoo-hah surrounding this event in our media should so completely pass by someone in our midst but from quite another world.

Toddington

I called at Toddington this morning for a couple of reasons, one of which was to photograph the church as part of my Gloucestershire Churches project. Not for many years had I turned off the B4077 down the lane leading to St Andrew's - which I don't ever recall going inside before. We went past once, many moons ago, to look at the adjacent Manor from the outside: then, it was in a relatively early state of neglect - very soon, matters became a lot worse, until Damien Hurst bought the estate a year or two back. The whole of the Manor is now swathed in scaffolding, awaiting a new incarnation as an art gallery - assuming Hurst doesn't go the same way as Timon of Athens.

Like the Manor, Toddington church is vast and rather forbidding. But the oak hammerbeam roof looks magnificent on a bright morning such as today's: there's not much stained glass to darken the interior, and what's there stimulated little excitement in me. A large chapel to the North contains white marble effigies of the ancestors of our former guide - the 1st Lord Sudeley and his Tracy missus, dating from the late 19th Century, yet in the style of the 14th. So, one can't help wondering what if any impact Hurst might have upon "his" church in due course.

Coming away, I spotted this relic of the past. There are not many fingerposts left in Gloucestershire - I tried to capture some of the plainer variety by photographing them a couple of decades ago, before they were replaced.

Gloucestershire churches

At the Gloucestershire Historic Churches lunch we attended in the Summer, Caroline's cousin (the current chairman) told me he would like some photographs of the county's churches. I haven't heard any more from him about this, but have gradually begun compiling an archive. With the two I photographed today after visiting Charlotte - this is St John the Baptist, Chaceley - there are now 64 on my website. Plenty more to go though.

Hill

Another first today, visiting the hamlet of Hill, right down by the River Severn beyond Berkeley. We were supporting the Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust and in the process enjoying a jolly lunch in a left-over marquee pitched upon a sodden lawn. Never can loitering within tent have been such a prevalent activity in any recent Summer.

St Michael's church is no contender for any revised edition of Jenkins, but it has a certain atmosphere, thanks to the generosity of various Fusts. One of them married a Jenner - not the famous doctor's family - and Jenner-Fusts still live at Hill Court. (Indeed they are cousins both of Caroline and of Nicky Talbot Rice, GHCT's enthusiastic and welcoming Chairman.)

Had a bomb dropped upon that lunchtime tent, much of the fun would have been taken away from Gloucestershire's social life. Not that I would have survived to bemoan it of course.

"May they all be one..."

Saturday was the day for the annual Sponsored Ride (or walk) in aid of Gloucestershire Historic Churches Trust, and a beautiful day it was too! After all the rain we have had, many prayers were no doubt offered - and they were answered.

At about 12.30, Fr. Tom Smith and I set off from home (Tom on Caroline's bike), and by the time we returned at 4, we had notched up 21 local church buildings on our list. (I have made a photographic record for my sponsors - see here). There are of course many more than that in Cheltenham, altogether. Ten of those we visited were locked, and there was a wedding at Christ Church, but we were able to see inside the other ten.

Very interesting it was. A huge amount of love is lavished on our churches - not to mention money; but to what end? Today, society in general is Godless. Children are not taught to pray. The Ten Commandments? How many can name them all, or even a few?

"See how these Christians love one another," pagans would say in the early days; but how can we love one another if we don't so much as acknowledge that we are part of the same faith-based community? Are we not spending too much time conserving our historic church properties, at the expense of the Christian mission, "Go and teach all nations"?

I echo the words written following a visit to Rome more than fifty years ago by the then Archbishop of Canterbury, Geoffrey Fisher, in a letter to the subsequent pope, Paul VI, "I am sure that such personal contacts as we enjoyed during this visit are the best way of creating that spirit of love and understanding between members of different theological traditions which is a prerequisite for closer unity in the future."