Evesham St Lawrence

I blipped the outside of this church about a month ago, and as it was too horrid to play out today I thought I'd go and check the interior.

This is the South Chapel, which I especially liked because of the fan vaulted roof. There is a wider view here. The font is a copy of the mediaeval original (which is still in the church, and appears to have been made out of hypertufa containing an inadequate amount of cement, though I'm possibly being unfair). The floor is of encaustic tiles, and would look jolly nice relaid in my house. The main window is interesting because it was made by J. Hardman - who more famously created windows for the Houses of Parliament in London, and for both the Anglican and Roman Catholic Cathedrals in Sydney, New South Wales.

There's another lovely window at the far end of the chancel, which was one of the last to be created by Thomas Willement, one of the most successful stained glass designers of the early Victorian period. In the north wall there's a C20th window celebrating Simon de Montfort, regarded today as one of the fathers of Parliamentary democracy, who was killed at the Battle of Evesham in 1265. His corpse was dismembered by the victorious forces of King Henry III, but his supporters collected up all the bits they could find and secretly interred them at Evesham Abbey; his grave then became a site of pilgrimage, until the King got wind of it and had Simon dug up and redistributed over unconsecrated ground - which I would describe as being an extremely ungracious winner.

The last item in the church that entertained me was this old funeral cart, which according to the label came from the nearby village of Pebworth. I think it's rather cool, but I can't quite imagine it being used - it's clearly designed to be propelled by humans rather than horse-drawn, and Pebworth is perched on a steep hill with the church at the summit: I have a vision of mourners desperately trying to hang on to the thing to stop it rolling away and crashing. Maybe that's why it wound up first at the local museum, and then here.

Before heading off for coffee I popped into the adjacent Church of All Saints (the current Parish Church of Evesham), which I'd never been inside before - there's a shot of the interior here.