Church on Sunday

The title only refers to the fact that it is Sunday when I’m posting this picture of a church; in fact I’ll be down at the beach scouring it for plastic and fishing industry waste and cleaning it up rather than sitting in church singing and asking for any supernatural help with the problems we have created. Whatever you feel about religion though, we have certainly spent some effort on creating the places people gather to have their rituals over thousands of years, even in the tiniest villages.

Technically I might have saved this picture for a Thursday Doors post, if the interpretation of a door is loose enough to encompass this alternative stile entrance to the church at Warbstow. There is a conventional gated entrance, via a path and through a tidily mowed grass bank at the front, but this side entrance to the churchyard is from an un-metalled livestock and field access lane.

The stile is of the ‘coffen’ type, a few large slabs of granite placed horizontally in ‘treads’, forming 30 – 45cm (12 – 18in) deep pits between them for discouraging livestock use but allowing human access. There is more information about the different granite stile umm.. styles you can find around the countryside on this link.

Photographically I was taken by the dappled light spots forming a nice funnel shape through the Cornish hedge, for the eye to follow through and in to the rather basic church tower and churchyard beyond.