Bucolic

As I drove to Deal to do the shopping I saw the old windmill and thought of blipping it. It was the sudden appearance of hundreds of sheep in the field in front by such a busy road that grabbed my attention. And separated from the mad traffic by a few strands of electric fence. The moody light seemed just right.

I turned round in the entrance to a farm shop and pine furniture place and went back to Ringwould to turn around to park.  I'd been up the little lane before but this time I stopped at the church - St Nicholas.

There are two yew trees in the church yard that are reckoned to be 1,000 and 1,300 years old. The forest (wald - Saxon) used to stretch from the village to Canterbury 15 miles distant.) 

The church itself is 850 years old. I've passed it by each week for five years and wondered why it has the funny little onion dome on the tower.

Turns out this was added as a navigational aid for shipping in the Strait and paid for by the Cinque (Sink) Ports commission or sheriff ('his' seat is in Walmer Castle down by the coast). When presumably it was all sheep walk and there were no trees to hinder mariners' views of the tower.

The church was open and recumbent in its dark black and white hues, broken only by the brilliant stained glass. Not a soul about. Nothing stirred but for the drip of water somewhere. And then the bell chime.

I went on and took my snap of the windmill and sheep and did the shop. Stopped in on John on the way back and saw the windmill from a different angle.

In the churchyard was a gravestone with an anchor. It turned out it was for a young man killed in the 1930s in a railway accident.

There is some fine flint-knapped masonry on the church.

Extras.