Disfigured?

A couple of centuries ago, some of the denizens of Bourton-on-the-Water may have taken against the demolition of their church's Norman nave and tower. But was it disfigured by the Georgian replacements? Pevsner thinks not, and who am I to disagree with Pevsner?

We visited the church this morning, on our way to lunch in Upper Slaughter. And on our way back, we diverted a little further South along the Fosse, so Caroline could take the opportunity to buy bacon at Castle's. We found Northleach Square taken over by a film crew: Mark Savage's wine shop had become "Mollison's", and Pulham's bus was forced to stop in the main road, holding up all the traffic. It transpires that the great Gambon is in town, playing Howard Mollison, owner of the eponymous eatery in J.K. Rowling's The Casual Vacancy, being filmed for TV.

Not disfigurement, more transformation - putting me in mind that today is the feast of the Transfiguration.

Anniversary Baroque

This was the title chosen for a delightful harpsichord and cello recital at Owlpen yesterday afternoon. In use for the first time as a Cheltenham Festival venue, the 19th Century Holy Cross church is perched above the essentially 16th Century manor house - a picturesque ensemble featured in many photographs. As Nicky Mander, our generous host pointed out, music from the Baroque period finds an echo in the terraced garden with its stone steps and yew hedging, falling away below the house. (Pevsner records that it was laid out in 1723.)

The anniversaries were those of C.P.E. Bach (300th birthday, 8th March last) and Rameau (died, 12th September 250 years ago). Besides music by each, the duo performed pieces by a contemporary Italian, Lanzetti: new to me - I liked it best of all.

An enchanting programme, with brief, but infectiously enthusiastic introductions from cellist, Jennifer Morsches: she banished nearly all my feelings of discomfort from sitting in that penitential pew.

Nonetheless the four of us in our party were content to be able to adjourn to Owlpen's Cyder Press Restaurant for tea (and excellent coffee cake); so winding up il pomeriggio culturale as our Italian friend Adriana put it. My photograph shows her in a post-concert discussion over the French harpsichord, the hand of its player, Bruno Procopio, resting upon it.

Cotswold Park

The signpost points up the disused North-West drive to a large, slate-roofed, late 18th Century house, designed for a London wine merchant, "a remote setting" (Pevsner's description).

It's one of a bunch of substantial houses dotted at wide intervals along the sides of the steep valley carrying a stream from near Elkstone down into the River Churn at Perrott's Brook, North of Cirencester: Combend, Rapsgate, Cotswold Farm, Moor Wood, Oyster Well and Bagendon House are amongst the others. No paths exist to enable the walker to get very close to most of them, but it's still possible to walk through the grounds and round the back of Cotswold Park: much construction work has being going on there over a period of 15 months or more - that being the interval between my last walk past and today's.

At 9.30, the three of us set foot Southwards in the mist from Five Mile House (newly-reopened by a couple from North Wales). It's tricky walking at first, till you hit Burcombe Lane, but peaceful once away from the A417 - a good circular walk, with two decent climbs to set the heart working: skylarks, trees in bud, a distant view of a group of five deer, some mud, but no rain.

Lucas (2)

"The solo singing was wonderful. As Jephtha, James Gilchrist offered... virtuoso bravado..." So today's paper describes (with 5 stars) Tuesday night at the Barbican . And yesterday's Cheltenham lieder recital by that same tenor might, I feel, be described in similar terms.

It could be three years since I attended a Music Society event at the Pittville Pump Room, I'm rather ashamed to say. (Their programmes deserve more loyal support.) And I wasn't really looking forward to last night's mixed bag with any great relish, having been critical of a programme Gilchrist gave at our July 2012 Festival.

As it turned out, I was taken aback not just by the beauty of his voice, but the confidence and variety of tone he brought to his performance - settings of Shakespeare, Byron and Heine by Wolf, Mendelssohn(s), Loewe, Liszt, Grieg and Schubert in part one, and a glorious Dichterliebe after the interval.

The link to my illustration? Tenuous: Gilchrist started adult life as a doctor, and the portrait is supposed to represent another such, St Luke. It's one of the images in a garish-looking East window dating from 1850 in the Norman church I visited on Wednesday, All Saints, Salperton. The glass, "possibly" - Pevsner - by David Evans, is much eclipsed by two splendid late Kempe windows in the South wall.

Up the Coln Valley

We drove through the mist to Arlington for the start of this morning's walk. A late start became later as the three of us - well, me actually (as I had the map) - couldn't find the way out of the village: the bonus was a glimpse of the tucked-away Baptist Chapel - 1833, "with windows with odd straight-sided Y-tracery" (Pevsner). Why so much non-conformism in the Cotswolds?

The sun struggled through as we passed amongst the horsiculture and many million-pound mansions in Ablington, Winson etc. (This view was taken looking back between those two villages.) Entering Coln St Dennis, we passed a weather vane featuring a gaff-rigged yacht - a long way from the sea. St James' was where Caroline and I were married 38 years ago, a June day rather warmer than today. I could not be sure I'd been inside the church since. Candles were carefully placed upon every surface: when lit they would make the Norman nave a pretty place indeed. Cutting across the Fosseway, we walked up through Chedworth, which must be one of the longest villages in Gloucestershire. At least, it felt like it: I was exhausted.

Hard walking

The no 51 bus along the valley road to Cirencester dropped me at the Rendcomb turnoff. From there I crossed the road and made for Woodmancote, taking this photograph as I slithered my way up the icy road. A car that came later failed to make it.

At the top of the hill, I passed what must be one of the smallest "churches" in Gloucestershire: the tin hut that houses the Woodmancote Christian Fellowship - considered beneath the notice of Pevsner. From there I followed the track leading eventually past the late 18th Century Cotswold Park and onto the narrow road up to the A417 below Beech Pike. My destination was The Five Mile House, now open again for lunches (save on Monday and Tuesday).

The three or so miles I covered was enough (being horribly unfit) - on the whole, an easier walk than had it been muddy, but what a pity the sun didn't shine as yesterday!

Just like the old days

Richard Cohen and Shelagh Hancox were chatting in Montpellier Gardens as I walked by this lunchtime. It was good to catch up with Richard again. In the years when he directed our Festival of Literature, it was indisputedly true to its name: Joseph Heller, Kurt Vonnegut, E.L. Doctorow, Allen Ginsberg - they all featured in Cheltenham one glorious year under his aegis. And Shelagh's husband Alan Hancox (a seminal former Director) would then still hold court in his book-lined Prom basement treasure trove, and at home in Gratton Road till a late hour.

There are a few worthwhile events even in this year's juggernaut bookfest: I had just been to an interesting talk by Susie Harries on Nicklaus Pevsner, "Englishness, of course". How on earth did he manage to produce his 46-volume Buildings of England series, on top of teaching at Cambridge and Birkbeck? One of the answers was by not stopping for lunch: we learnt that he would set off early on a Monday morning from London with a week's worth of sandwiches.

Pevsner was fond of those familiar words of Whitman: "Do I contradict myself? Very well then, I contradict myself. I am large, I contain multitudes.” And Susie Harries' lecture made you understand why.

Green memories

We had long planned to be in Cornwall this weekend in order to visit Jeremy and Odile Faull, close friends of all our family over many years. Instead, the journey on Friday was for Jeremy’s funeral. More than 300 friends and wellwishers packed into St Breock’s Church for the service: Jeremy’s parish church, St Clement’s, Withiel (“Quite a large church,” according to Pevsner) wouldn’t have been big enough. It was a wonderful thanksgiving for the richest of lives. Local farmers and dignitaries rubbed shoulders with Parisian businessmen and all manner of Greens, golfing partners, artists, craftsmen, writers and bibliophiles.

This evening, we walked with Odile from her house in the valley up through the fields to the graveyard on the hillside. There, in the corner nearest home, Jeremy’s grave lies covered with flowers, with bean sticks on the village allotments as a backdrop. He will be smiling!

The Gloucestershire Way

Yesterday, I set out to fulfil a New Year's Resolution: to walk the Gloucestershire Way. I shall leave the more remote bits till later in the year. It was easiest to start near home, from Crickley Hill.

The photograph was taken looking back North-Westwards at the Hill, across the A417. It must be the most hazardous crossing on all the 100-mile route: three lanes of traffic without any central reservation. But walk for five minutes up and away from the road and - noise apart - you are in the most glorious landscape: on a day like yesterday especially.

You couldn't find a better example of Cotswold walling than here at Coberley, supporting the garden of the former Rectory, a couple of miles down the Gloucestershire Way from Crickley Hill.

The church is certainly in need of a signpost: you can't see it at all from the village road. You approach it through a gate in a house wall, leading to a garden path. It's what Pevsner calls "the shadow of an outer courtyard of Coberley Court (demolished 1790)." The church contains some handsome 14th Century memorials, but was more or less entirely rebuilt 500 years later. Apart from its situation, it's not one of my favourite buildings though it feels much loved and cared for.



Pevsner seems to have missed the rather mysterious face in the farmhouse wall high above the entrance to the church from the road.

Art and recession

This is "stodgy" Cheltenham House (Pevsner's description), in Clarence Street, Cheltenham. "Offices to let" signs are up; and despite it being mid-afternoon of a weekday (today), no traffic is to be seen along this, the Cheltenham inner ring road. Yes, we are in a recession.

Built in 1972 for the HQ of what was then the Cheltenham & Gloucester Building Society, Cheltenham House cruelly conceals the town's only mediaeval building, the neglected and not-at-all-stodgy St Mary's Church. Barbara Hepworth's sculpture Theme and Variations, attached to Cheltenham House, provides some compensation for this: it is Cheltenham's most prestigious (though hardly most conspicuous) piece of public art.

The C&G left Cheltenham for Barnwood, near Gloucester, abour two decades ago, since when parts of Cheltenham House seem to have been more or less continuously vacant. What hope is there now, therefore, that someone will ring DTZ to say "Yes please, I would like to become your new office tenant," as the advertising boards invite us to do?

Actually, I feel that Pevsner is a bit hard on Cheltenham House: I rather like the building's gentle curve, its ashlar facing and copper-coloured window trim: it's just in the wrong place. And those five hideous posters completely overpower Theme and Variations.

And so does recession compromise art. It puts artists and craftsmen out of work: commissions are stalled, even cancelled. There is less ready money to ensure great works of art - particularly historic buildings - can be adequately maintained. Craftsmen builders, picture restorers, musicians all find their skills untreasured.

The paradox is that recession brings unemployment, meaning more time for those who, having lost mindless but well-paid jobs, seek to develop hidden talents by creating new works of art, notwithstanding there may be no present market for it. And doesn't hardship so often bring out the best?