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Updated: June 25, 2025
On one of the hills above the combe is a Roman encampment fenced with a rough wall of stone, locally known as Burrington Ham. Another picturesque spot in the neighbourhood is a glen called Rickford. The church, which stands in some fields near the mouth of the gorge, is a Perp. building with a low W. tower and a peculiarly graceful spirelet over the rood-loft turret. N.E. of Athelney Station.
The fine panelled roof covering the N. aisle should be observed, and the projecting figures on the wall-plate of the nave. Other features claiming attention are the unusual direction of the squints in the chancel arch, Perp. screens , rood-loft stair and turret in N. aisle, blocked priest's door in sanctuary, blocked squint in S. porch, carved font under tower.
The massive oak door has some curious iron fittings, and the interior of the church itself displays such treasures as a magnificent early Tudor roof and an elegant fifteenth-century chancel-screen, on the latter of which some remains of ancient painting exist. The rood-loft has unfortunately disappeared. Thame, just across the Oxfordshire border, is another town of the greatest interest.
Still later in the century, in 1796, Wyatt "the destructive" was directed to make a report on the state of the fabric, and to supply estimates for a restoration. Among other things he recommended the selling of the lead on the roof, the removal of the rood-loft, and the reducing of the number of bells from five to one. The nineteenth century began with works of destruction.
The hedge resembled a series of chapels, whose walls were no longer visible under the mountains of flowers that were heaped upon their altars; while underneath, the sun cast a square of light upon the ground, as though it had shone in upon them through a window; the scent that swept out over me from them was as rich, and as circumscribed in its range, as though I had been standing before the Lady-altar, and the flowers, themselves adorned also, held out each its little bunch of glittering stamens with an air of inattention, fine, radiating 'nerves' in the flamboyant style of architecture, like those which, in church, framed the stair to the rood-loft or closed the perpendicular tracery of the windows, but here spread out into pools of fleshy white, like strawberry-beds in spring.
In the niches of this screen are two bronze statues of James I and Charles I. We are now on the spot of the ancient rood-loft, where formerly stood the great rood, or crucifix, with the attendant figures of the Virgin and St. John, of vast size and value, being of silver, which were bequeathed to the minster by the notorious Archbishop Stigand, before the Conquest.
"I speak to thee, Peto," he exclaimed, "to thee, Peto, which makest thyself Micaiah, that thou mayest speak evil of kings; but now art not to be found, being fled for fear and shame, as unable to answer my argument." In the royal chapel at Greenwich there was more reality than decorum. A voice out of the rood-loft cut short the eloquent declamation.
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