A Morning on Gower: St Cattwg, Cheriton

      Thursday morning and a trip to the far north-west of the Gower peninsular.  A wonderful morning it was, travelling around such a remarkable and beautiful landscape.

      Our first stop was Cheriton, a tiny village nestling deep in the valley of the Burry Pill.  Atmospheric and remote. The church is small but rather monumental thanks to its clear design and heft. It consists of nave, sturdy tower and chancel - three simple volumes.  There are no aisles, but there is a south porch and a Victorian (N) vestry disguised as a N Transept. The church dates from the 13th century, but one could believe it is earlier still - the walls are thick, windows are rare, small and simple in design.  There is a simplicity and primitive quality to this structure that is entirely satisfying.

     The only decorative elements are the really fine s door and the corbels that help support the arches under the tower. Indeed they are the only real carving inside the church for the the interior is just as simple as the exterior which, alas was rather dark when we visited, but then it was pouring with rain outside - a passing shower really but very heavy.  The interior, however, was very moving; a holy place one felt. I was particularly taken with the relative narrowness of the two crossing arches (how 'Anglo-Saxon' this arrangement seemed) and felt the e wall of the nave was crying out for two cathedral-scale icons; Pantocrator on the right (S) and Theotokos on the left (N).  But then, forgive the wild conjecture, that was perhaps how a wall like was actually used at one point, covered in images. St Benedict Biscop decorated his monastic churches with icons he obtained in Rome, and later Anglo-Saxon clerics on pilgrimage to Rome bought among other things silks manufactured in the East Roman Empire and the Caliphate with which to make vestments and altar hangings.  But I digress, but we forget that Rome in the Early Middle Ages was one of the centres of Byzantine civilisation, the walls of its churches sheathed in mosaic and its altars and priests dressed in Byzantine silks. Hard sometimes to believe that the Roman Rite was actually conducted in a space such as Santa Maria Antiqua, it hardly seems to 'fit'. But that really, really is another post.

     No fittings of note except that the Victorian vicar here, the remarkable, scholarly J D Davies, not only had the roofs coloured (quite successfully), but made a number of the fittings himself - slightly clumsy, to be honest, but fun.