The West Door of Uffington Church

My day didn't go as planned. Having dropped Ben at the bus stop just after 7.30am I was surprised to receive a text at 8.10 asking what time I was taking Alex to work. The bus had arrived, but an electrical fault meant that the doors wouldn't open! So I ended up making an unscheduled trip to Stamford - amazingly Ben was only ten minutes late to college.

This change of plan gave me the opportunity to do some food shopping and have a gentle walk round Uffington on my way home. I didn't want to go too far, as the horrible Christmas cough has now been replaced by a full on head-cold! 

Uffington Church is located in a very peaceful spot, and has an interesting churchyard full of woodland wild flowers. Today I was excited to see that the first snowdrops and primroses were in flower, and the rooks were paying attention to their nests. 

The church has some fine features - I particularly like this rather ornate west door, which is described as follows in British Listed Buildings "The west doorway has elaborate continuously moulded surround having bosses and vine scroll to the outer concave order, and moulded hood. In the spandrels are carvings of jousting helms with peacock devices." 


I do enjoy architectural descriptions - such wonderful words and phrases - spandrels, ogee, clasping buttresses, chamfered string courses, embattled parapet with corner pinnacles, light cusped headed windows with quatrefoils and brattished transomes - they all sound superb even if I don't fully understand what they mean!