Sunday 23 July 2017

Offord Cluny

Why All Saints, locked no keyholder, should be impenetrable is, well. impenetrable to me. It's in the middle of the village and has neighbours so there seems no obvious reason to keep it in lock down.Oh well the next nine were all open.

The village is so called because the famous Cluny Abbey in Burgundy was lord of the manor from the C11 to the early C15.

ALL SAINTS. Primitive C13 S arcade with octagonal piers and single-chamfered arches. N arcade of three bays with round piers, octagonal abaci, and double-hollow-chamfered arches with broaches. That must be late C13. The chancel arch matches. Otherwise a Perp church, built of cobbles, with a W tower, a clerestory and a nave roof with six carved figures. The minimum brick chancel is of 1726. - PULPIT. Elizabethan with two tiers of the familiar broad blank arches. - COMMUNION RAIL. 1752. - LECTERN. With minor Jacobean panels. - (STAINED GLASS. E window, 1850, and typical of that date. GMCH) - PLATE. Cup of 1756-7.

Grotesque (1)

Corbel

Grotesque (2)

OFFORD CLUNY. A village of charming things, it has a mill and a weir, a peep of lovely river scenery from a bridge, a manor house of mellow 18th century bricks, and a house on the wayside with gabled dormers above its Jacobean timbers. Its attractive porch was built in 1668.

The church walls are watched over by grotesques, one a very terrifying fellow crouching above a buttress. The tower has stood since the 15th century, but the nave, arcades, and chancel arch are 13th century. To craftsmen of Stuart times Offord Cluny owes its panelled pulpit, a reading desk with a fluted frieze, the altar table, and an oak chest with two locks. The medieval font has had a strange adventure, for it was found in pieces under the churchyard trees and has been put together to preserve it, in the hope of restoring it to its proper place.

Up in the roof are figures that have long been looking down on the worshippers below. All have their hair bound in front with a diadem and cross. One has a censer, another is in armour, a third is a seraph with feathers and wings, and there is a figure with a book and a hammer, one with a sword and shield, and one at prayer. They have been here since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

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