Old walls and standing structures, it’s like everywhere you look there’s another weighty question worth the wait pondering.
This intriguing blocked up small entry leads me to wonder, firstly, why so small? Perhaps I’m looking at the flint remains to a building, one which stood on the same piece of ground where the current ancient church now sits?
A further thought then sparks, that maybe this doorway has sunk into the earth, as steadily the bodies begin to pile high. It’s true for me that for a lot old dwellings, to venture in is to step down into eternal space and time, the ground over the centuries steadily beginning to devour.
Head to Italy and you’ll find old churches where 3rd century vaults sit some 20ft below. In fact even within England’s own London metropolis, there are sunken remains in crypts where we can witness Roman street level and that eternal time.
These clues to a church’s distant past sweeps me in, with tidal thoughts of those who stepped before me. Life is fleeting; as a singer once soundly put it, ‘One minute you’re here, next minute you’re gone’. Thanks Boss.
Holy Trinity Church, Cookham