ST LAURENCE'S — a personal appreciation by Margaret Reynolds

My favourite Christmas carol is 'In the Bleak Midwinter', both for the words by Christina Rossetti, and the famous tune by Gustav Holst.

So when I came to live in Wyck Rissington I was delighted to find that the organ in the church – installed in the 1870's – was played by the young Holst when he held his first appointment here in 1892–3 as a young man of seventeen.

St Laurence's has many other treasures.

The oldest parts of the church date from the C12th, but the massive stone tower and the C13th chancel are especially beautiful.

Sitting in the congregation, I have come to love the view of the East window for its harmonious arrangement of two tall lancet windows surmounted by lozenge–shaped lights.

Pevsner explains that this is a 'kind of primitive plate tracery' anticipating the complicated stone carvings to be seen in later arrangements.

The faces of the angels in the C19th glass are faded and the detail of their garments lost, but the holy spirit in the dove descending above them seems to me to bring its promised peace.

There are two, more complicated and showy windows, – one C14th decorated, and one C15th perpendicular – in the South wall of the chancel, both with glass from the late C19th. But the true jewel here is one that you have to seek out.

There are three plain lancet windows on the North side and one on the South, each containing remnants of early C14th glass. In the one South wall lancet this includes a Crucifixion.

Christ's face is obscured – as perhaps it should be – but the childlike shape of His body on the rare green glass of the cross against its blue background ornamented with sun, moon and two stars is exquisite and moving.

That scene is my favourite place in the church.

I like to think of the thousands of others who have contemplated its beauty and its pain since the medieval craftsman put it there.

But Wyck Rissington church is full of corners that have witnessed sorrow and joy.

There is the C12th former North doorway through which so many of them walked. There are the piscina niches in the chancel where the guilty came in fear.

There is the stone font under the spectacular tower arch where the hopeful carried their children.

The font, dating from 1200, is one of the older pieces.

But the signs of a living church are still here today. There are always flowers.

The children love to see the embroidered kneelers depicting the different houses in the village.

There is a copy of Enid Chadwick's My Book of the Church's Year given by Canon Harry Cheales – vicar here from 1947 to 1980 and well known eccentric – 'to interest youthful visitors'.

The fabric of St Laurence's is old and precious.

Its place at the heart of the village is also precious but will be always renewed, always young.

Margaret Reynolds