Ilminster Minster

Or, to give the church its full title, The Minster Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Ilminster. We visited the Minster on Friday morning before heading back home from Somerset. The main photo is taken from the Nave Altar looking down the Nave to the Gallery and church entrance. The extra is of the High Altar and the reredos of Caen Stone that was installed just before the First World War.  The statues were painted in what the church guidebook describes as "mediaeval" colours in 1954. The Minster, which is referred to as a "magnificent example of Perpendicular architecture", dates from the second half of the 15th century.  It is featured in Simon Jenkins's 'England's Thousand Best Churches'. I was particularly impressed by the oak gallery which also accommodates the organ. The Wadham Chapel contains a number of Wadham family memorials including brass effigies of Nicholas and Dorothy Wadham who were the founders of Wadham College, Oxford. They died in 1609 and 1618 respectively and it looked like they had been the subject of very many brass rubbings over the years. The Lady Chapel is home to a remarkable set of large, loose leaf books which contain the biographical details of each of those from Ilmister who perished in the two World Wars. These are recorded both in the original handwriting of  the Reverend James Street who was the vicar at the outbreak of the First World War and began keeping the record, and that of his  later helpers, together  with typed copies. They are fascinating historical documents which, in their unadorned narrative of everyday lives, reveal - as is ever the case - the human cost of war. .