Bourne Abbey Church

   Bourne Abbey today.  The remains of the Arrouasian house of St Peter & Paul founded in 1138 by Baldwin de Clare brother of the Earl of Pembroke.   It was never very big but was under continual aristocratic patronage, starting with the Wakes & then the Hollands.  This pattern of sponsorship, which also included Joan, the Fair Maid of Kent, wife of the Black Prince, culminated in Lady Margaret Beaufort, mother of Henry VII.  In her first will her intention was to be buried at Bourne with her 2nd husband, Edmund Tudor, who was then buried in the Greyfriars church in Carmarthen.  In the end she was interred in Westminster Abbey and her husband remained in Wales (though moved to St David's cathedral at the Reformation).  The abbey was dissolved in 1536. The nave which had always been used by the parish was retained by them and the rest demolished. The monastic quarters that were to the north of the church became a private residence. They were not finally demolished until the nineteenth century.

   The grandest part of the church is the mighty west front; an incomplete attempt to create a two towered façade. Like many Early English facades it is very flat.  I put its unfinished state down to structural problems - hence the blocked windows and the great buttress - obviously a later addition.  The three central lancet windows are Victorian, replacing a single great Perp window.  The west door below is too a late Medieval insertion.  The bell stage of the tower and the clerestory are of the same period.  Tempting to assign them to the patronage of Lady Margaret, but there is no evidence, alas, for her involvement.  The south side is the most picturesque, with a porch and a truncated transeptal chapel. The chancel is I think post-reformation. I have no evidence; it's just a hunch  There are a number of good gravestones in the church yard and standing forlornly in a corner the former Grammar School building.

   Inside the west end, which is almost like a western transept, is interesting and monumental with a wall-walk at clerestory level and all sorts of incomplete fragments of architecture. Obviously something grand was attempted but abandoned for whatever reason. The nave arcade is robust Norman, but on the whole the interior is vast, big-boned and a bit empty. There are, alas, no fittings commensurate with the scale. The church was restored in 1868-9 by Edward Browning, son of Bryan so beloved of this parish.

Own work - Bourne Abbey Church

     I've only just finished this a mixed media work depicting the south side of Bourne Abbey in Lincolnshire - watercolour, charcoal, ink, wax pastel, pencil, collage.  Personally I think it a bit overworked in places.  The second image is to give you a rough idea of what it will look liked when mounted.

St John The Baptist, Morton

   St John the Baptist, Morton, stands at the end of the long and wide village street that leads from the 'high' land to the west, east into the fens. Morton has this long, linear pattern in common with the other three fen edge villages that have already appeared in this blog: Thurlby, Baston & Langtoft.  Like the latter two it has no village green as such (Thurlby had a village green but, in what can be only described as an act of vandalism, that was built over in the sixties and seventies).
   Morton is a grand, rather imposing church, being cruciform (almost), with a tall central tower, and built upon a mound.  Most of what you can see from the outside is Perpendicular.  There are north and south doors to the nave, but the main entrance is from the west.  The west door is protected by a porch - quite a rare thing. The top of the  tower is very close in design to the one at Bourne Abbey Church.  The interior is spacious, but, alas, there are no fittings of note.  The best thing is the space under the tower, which has a tierceron vault decorated with cusping and a circular bell-hole. I think that in Pevsner it is described (wrongly) as a fan vault. There are also a number of bold foliage capitals, the carving like that Langtoft (see previous post).

Lettering

   I'm quite fascinated by lettering and have periodically made various attempts at lettering.  Here, for instance, is a font that I have been working on in the last few days.  The initial inspiration for the lettering below came from reading that John Piper - an artists whose work I greatly, but not always, love - used lettering he found for his graphic work.  By found I mean in this case the lettering he found on gravestones.  I went to Bourne Abbey and took some rubbings from the slate tombstones there.  The variety was quite amazing.  It was all so beautifully cut.  Even on one stone you might find at least three styles of lettering used.  The initial design is for the sans serif 'e' directly inspired by the 'V' cut lettering I found.

Own work

   Here is a piece of my own artwork.  I hope you enjoy it.  It's multi-media - Indian ink, watercolour and wax pastel.  It's of the east end of Bourne Abbey Church in Lincolnshire.