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.
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