Ss Peter & Paul, Gosberton

     A little jaunt on Saturday into the fens. We ended up at Gosberton on the silt fen between Spalding and Boston.  The church is large and sprawling (like the village), cruciform in plan, and crowned with a massive and elegant crocketed spire.  It is almost entirely Curvilinear Decorated and Perpendicular - the east window is Victorian in best Middle Pointed.  In all a fine piece of architecture.

   The inside is wide and multi-vista'd, reminding me strongly of St Peter and Paul Algarkirk, though there is none of the Mid-Victorian richness of the latter. In many ways however the interior is a disappointment - there are no fittings worthy of the architecture, and chancel is impossibly dark thanks to indifferent Victorian glass. Impossible, in fact, to photograph. And also - regular readers may guess what's coming - it is full of well meaning but awful modern clutter - notices, things. How many of our churches are slowly being wrecked by all this, submerged under all that dross? Another example: before Christmas we drove over to Ketton, and I was hoping to take some photos of the interior for social media, but it was a pointless quest. The place was a mess. A superb building like that deserves better.  Back at Gosberton, Pevsner says that the east window is by Comper. It isn't.

     But on the west end of what is a very large parish and amidst a very bleak stretch of fen sits something that is by Comper.  Well Comper & Bucknall to be correct.  A small rather charming mission church dedicated to two Lincolnshire saints St Gilbert of Sempringham and St Hugh of Avalon, of 1904, with a half-timbered nave, porch and vestry and masonry chancel.