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).