St Mary and St David, Kilpeck

     In the end our day out became a churchcrawl through western Herefordshire, the area known as Archenfield, that is, roughly, Herefordshire west of the river Wye. It formed the eastern part of the ancient post Roman kingdom of Ergyng.  Welsh continued to be spoken here until the mid 19th century. Deep country, and it is where the great political dynasty of the Cecils originated, being Welsh speaking gentry who supported Henry Tudor's bid for the English throne.

     Our first point of call was one so long on my list of churches to visit: Kilpeck.  It did not in anyway disappoint.  Even the bf, for whom (so he claims) all churches look alike was impressed. Indeed on many people's list, for while we were there there was a steady trickle of visitors. It is an unique and beautiful building. Small, and as they say, perfectly formed. Raised on a mound at the end of a narrow lane that was once the High St of a now lost village, with a ancient and rambling farmhouse for company.(The rest of the village is away behind some trees) it looks out over a pastoral landscape. An ancient landscape too, for church stands not only within the remains of a Norman castle but is thought to be built over a Roman villa that itself stands within a larger prehistoric earthwork. The very round shape of the churchyard hints at a Celtic post-Roman origin.  There appears to have been a church here as early as 640 AD. Conjectural links have been made to St Dubricius, a local bishop. A church, like so many in western Midlands (ie St Helen's Worcester; St Mary de Lode, Gloucester; St Peter & Paul, Leominster; St Andrew, Wroxeter; St Peter, Lichfield, and Wenlock) then that does not owe anything to Canterbury and the Roman Mission.  But I digress.

     The church is perhaps one of the most perfect surviving Norman churches in these isles a simple structure of apse, chancel and nave. There is no tower, only a bell-cote above the western gable.  There is, perhaps, something Anglo-Saxon about the general proportions. However what makes this church so unique and wonderful is the carving, the sculpture. It is quite extraordinary, and there is lots of it. A surfeit of it. It is highly inventive, joyous and times gorgeous and intricate. Breath taking. It has puzzled historians for years as they try to fathom its meaning (some of it does seem very mysterious, even occult) and its origins - Scandinavian, perhaps Irish influences, which may explain that rude sculpture, the Sheila-na-gig high on the exterior of the apse and that everybody knows about. Aesthetically, to me at least, there seems have been a desire, on the exterior at least, to contrast sculptural elements with areas of blank walling. To achieve a sort of balance of parts. The sculpture is concentrated on the eaves cornice, the south door and on certain architectural elements on the w front such as the window (echoes of Late Antiquity there) and the three wonderful dragon heads (like the ones that decorate the great Norman monastic gate house at Bury St Edmunds).

     Inside sculpture is concentrated on the chancel arch (a remarkable group of statues) and in the apse. Remarkable it is that so much of this sculpture survived the Reformation.  I have begun to think that much more survived that first onslaught of iconclasm than is generally thought. All that aside the interior is full of atmosphere, there is even a west gallery for choir and musicians. The graveyard is, itself, possessed of some wonderful eighteenth century headstones. What more could one want?