St Benedict, Glinton

     I spent a week back in Lincolnshire in the beginning of December catching up with people and things.  I took the opportunity to pop over to Glinton and have a look at the parish church of St Benedict, a building that has connections with the poet John Clare (1793-1864). It was here that Clare went to the village school, which was then located in the N. chancel chapel and here too that the love of his life, Mary Joyce, lived.  The day of my visit damp, cold and thoroughly miserable.  It seems a long way off as I type theses words in a spring-like Swansea. Like Helpston and Northborough, Glinton suffers from proximity to Peterborough and the slow defeat of 'village' by 'suburbia'.  All three are stone-belt villages that sit on the wide flood plain of the Welland. To the east beyond Northborough and Glinton (which is, I think, on some sort of gravel peninsular) lie the fens. Places then that one wouldn't necessarily associate with charming stone-built cottages.

     Be that as it may St Benedict's and its large graveyard sit midway along the straggling High St. The spire is quite something - tall and quite out of proportion with the squat tower below, it changes angle about two thirds of the way up.  Quite a landmark and unique, I would guess. Dramatic too. The church less so, small, with a noticeably tall Perp clerestory. In the porch are a couple of large, much worn effigies, male and female, removed from inside.  They probably took up too much floor space - the interior is on the small side, but that tall clerestory does add a much need sense of drama and verticality.  (Note the large corbels high between the windows - evidence of an earlier, perhaps more interesting nave roof) All that said the interior is, quite frankly, dull; a victim of conventional Anglican taste. The font is possibly the best thing - square, Norman and carved with abstract patterns.  One wants, however, a little mystery.