Southoe

St Leonard. open, is a curiously attractive building, a blend of stone and brick which works surprisingly well. Also good Norman features

ST LEONARD. A Norman S doorway with about as many motifs as could be accommodated. One order of shafts with trellis decoration. In the l. lozenges one pellet each, in the r. a cross of pellets. One capital with a kind of stylized upright shrubs, the other with the same trellis with pellets. Abacus with a lozenge-chain, roll moulding covered with saltire crosses or lozenges, extrados with saltire crosses, hood-mould with billet, tympanum with chequer and inside with zigzag for good measure. The chancel arch is Norman too. Responds with  angle-shafts, small, coarse scroll capitals. Pointed arch with a step and two slight chamfers, perhaps a little later. Of the late C13 the chancel, which has not only lancets but also Y-tracery. Of the same time the S arcade: three bays, round piers, double-chamfered arches. The N arcade is Perp, of standard elements - the E side externally is a little more ornate than the rest. Late Perp the brick clerestory and the brick NW tower. The church otherwise is of cobbles. - MONUMENT. (Coffin lid with a foliated cross, but the cross-head replaced by the bust of a man. GMcH).

SOUTHOE. It rests in peace by the Great North Road and it has something of veritable beauty from Norman England. It is the doorway into its church. Let into the arch above the door is a stone like a chess-board, the tympanum, and over it in the round of the arch are mouldings of crossed bands and diaper ornament. The shafts and capitals of the doorway are extremely rich, carved in squares and diamonds by a 12th century craftsman.

For centuries there lay in the churchyard the battered stone figure of a priest who has now been brought under the shelter of the roof. The churchyard wall has 13th and 14th century stones, and among them we noticed a carved Norman capital. On a chancel buttress is an old scratch dial. The tower is Elizabethan and looks down on the turret of the pre-Reformation sanctus bell.

Flickr.