St John the Baptist, North Luffenham

     I've probably said this before, at some time, on this blog, but I love this time of year -  transient, slightly melancholic, the soft sunny days of early autumn are to be savoured.  Yesterday was a fine example of one.

      A appeared, as planned, and we went into Rutland and the attractive limestone village of North Luffenham.  A more work-a-day place than some other villages in the county I could mention.  Perhaps more intrusion of Modernity too - thankfully the primary school is mostly screened from view by some ancient stone walls. The 'forecourt' that is shared by the school and the parish church is a prime example of how Modernism creates uneasy and meaningless public spaces. What is it meant to be?  Car park? Graveyard?  There were headstones.  So perhaps the latter.  This sense of dis-ease continued into the churchyard proper.  All for want of a proper boundary that would separate the sacred from the profane
     Anyway to the church.  A fine building it is. A really liked the spire, and it is a satisfying design.  The church is long and low, the chancel a Victorian rebuild by G E Street of all people.

     The interior is sadly a disappointment - oh the architecture is excellent enough - lovely Early English arcades with that rare thing, remains of the medieval painting - but the church is rather, and unnecessarily, dark having been scrapped and ribbon-pointed (Street again) and it is full of modern clutter. Certainly the church came off worse against Street by two falls and a submission but Street's victory was pyrrhic.  'Unappealing' says Pevsner and unappealing it is. The secular has stolen inside and there are boards for this and that and the whole thing is a visual mess and a terrible distraction from the numinous. It makes we wonder whether those responsible actually believe in the latter at all, and whether all the guff is a way of simply filling the vacuum. I've written in similar vein before I know.  My rant about the mess they've made of Oundle church springs to mind, and I suspect that this blog too often repeats my sense of frustration, despair and loss. The house of God deserves better. There needs to be a great purge.
     Perhaps I ought to stick with those things which are a delight, and there a number which need highlighting.  As I said there are the arcades - check out the capitals and the strange primitive faces that people the architecture (there are some fine Victorian ones too on the outside of the chancel).  Inside the chancel has a fine Dec. sedillia, some nice a memorial tablets, a riot of encaustic tiling (Street's best contribution, but still somehow inappropriate) and a good brass chandelier.
It is a building I dearly want to like, but I feel alienated by how it has been treated.