Running out of steam

You tend to forget the origins of phrases like this. William and I had a reminder this morning, while visiting Toddington Station and the Gloucestershire and Warwickshire Railway. From the window of the old carriage that serves as a museum, I photographed a volunteer bending his back to shovel the coal into the firebox of this '28xx' class heavy freight locomotive, built in 1905. Rescued from the scrapyard, it has been lovingly restored over a period of 29 years. Besides eating up coal, it needs 3,500 gallons of water to fill its tank.

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.

Compton Abdale

Cousin Trevor is over from Sydney, and has come to stay the weekend, together with his sister, who is from Suffolk: we have never met her before. Today, I drove them round on a scenic tour - past the top of Upper Coberley, through Lower Hilcot, Withington, Compton Abdale, Hazleton, Turkdean and Aylworth. Then lunch at the Black Horse, Naunton, and afterwards on through Kineton to Ford and Toddington, to see the railway (Trevor's work was in that world). Finally, back - via Winchcombe and its Railway Museum (where I had a sleep in the car) - to Cheltenham.

In St Oswald's, Compton Abdale, above the crocodile-mouth water spout, I found this somewhat out of the ordinary altar frontal.