Friday 2 December 2011

Dorchester Windows

To brighten up the beginning of December, here's some pretty windows from Dorchester Abbey, Oxfordshire. Dorchester-on-Thames is a tiny (very beautiful) village now, but in the Anglo-Saxon period it was the seat of a bishop whose diocese extended over a large part of central England. The see was moved to Lincoln in 1071, but an abbey was built on the site of the Saxon cathedral; post-Reformation, the abbey became the parish church of the village. The result is that Dorchester has a glorious church completely out of proportion to its size. The church has many interesting features, of which the windows are perhaps the least remarkable; but I like these pictures, all the same.

These pictures were taken on three different occasions: bright summer's day...


(that's a restored medieval wall painting there, by the way)

and a rainy spring day...


and an early evening in autumn.

I may be the only person in the world who likes pictures like this one. I could just look at it for ever.


More colourful, and perhaps more attractive to normal people:








Birinus is the missionary who converted the Saxons in these parts c.635. We have him to thank for all this.


This is the great east window:


But this kind of window is still my favourite:

Welcome to December.

No comments: