In a recent post, More Jottings, I mentioned joining the National Churches Trust. It turns out to be rather a bargain. The minimum subscription is £30 and when you join you receive this 192 page hardback coffee table filler that sells for £20.
So cast your bread upon the waters and wait for the postman to knock on the door. It won’t fit through a letter box. The photography and text will make you want to go on a church crawl. Twenty-six churches are described. The oldest is St Laurence in Bradford-on-Avon, built somewhere in the region of 700 AD. I visited in April last year, see Burton in Bradford on Avon. In the interest of veracity I must point out that my excellent book falls a little short in calling it St Lawrence throughout. The newest is a Catholic church in Lancashire, St Mary, Leyland, built in the 1960s.
I should mention that all the churches in the book are in England although the Trust makes grants to churches throughout the UK. The most northerly is St Martin in Brampton, Cumbria. To digress, I once saw in the New Year, far from soberly, in the centre of Brampton. The Quaker Meeting House at the quaintly named Come-to-Good in Cornwall scoops the prize for being most westerly and southerly. Holy Trinity at Blythburgh in Suffolk is the most easterly.
I hope you will be tempted to join the National Churches Trust or to put in an application to patch up your church roof, or both.