I have no idea of this door’s true age, other than a sober thought that it predates Tudor monarchs and has seen much strife. The hammering and clattering of the centuries have unbowed its presence, standing mighty, a line of defence from the howling winter wind and summer rain, yielding to neither foot or musket ball.
Lines of time, tread marks, distant hands. I wonder where the tree that grew this door once stood and to what age it got, felled by a tough metal, preserved in its new form forever more.
There are church doors across the country whose age goes back that no receipt can trace. One such, from a Saxon age, hangs inside Westminster Abbey, still serving its intended purpose.
The large letter box shaped hacked gap of Alton’s town church door, was carved in a hurry by Parliamentarian soldiers during the English Civil War in winter of 1643. An urban skirmish occurred here, since coined the ‘Battle of Alton’. Soldiers attempting to get a better purchase for the their quarry within, a troop of cowering Royalists. A massacre no doubt ensued, but time has washed most of the cries and scars way, all but a few which now remain pinned to this heavy door, still barring the way to protect all those who rest inside.
Church of St Lawrence, Alton