The Rest Is History - 96. The UK’s Best Churches

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

There are estimated to be around 16 thousand churches in England alone. But which are the finest in the UK? Tom Holland and Dominic Sandbrook are joined by the director of Friends of Friendless Churches, Rachel Morley, to decide a top ten. They also discuss some of the listeners’ favourites. Just remember: cathedrals not allowed! *The Rest Is History Live Tour 2023*: Tom and Dominic are back on tour this autumn! See them live in London, New Zealand, and Australia! Buy your tickets here: restishistorypod.com Twitter:  @TheRestHistory @holland_tom @dcsandbrook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Thank you for listening to The Rest Is History. For weekly bonus episodes, ad-free listening, early access to series, and membership of our much-loved chat community, go to therestishistory.com and join the club. That is therestishistory.com. if you came this way taking any route starting from anywhere at any time or at any season it would always be the same you would have to put off sense and notion you are not here to verify instruct yourself or inform curiosity or carry report you are here to kneel where prayer has been valid that was T.S. Eliot in Little Gidding the last of the four quartets and Little Gidding is a very beautiful tiny little church very hard to find that was the final point in my recent exciting tour of middle england which um dominic has laughed at me about but it it was laughing now it was uh it was a kind of a wonderful wonderful

place and a reminder that um in a sense uh churches are among our most kind of intimate way to to get in touch with history um ell um again in in little giving elliot famously said that history is a pattern of timeless moments and you kind of can really feel that i think in churches or am i being overly romantic dominic no i don't think you are at all i think uh certainly um to bring out my inner john bull which is never much suppressed i think england's wealth of of parish churches is the envy of any country in the world i mean these fantastic historical sites whereas you say the sort of the the layers of the of the past just seem to kind of strip away as you walk inside the church and you

you know you're standing where generations of people stood you're looking at what you know endless generations have looked at and a place that they took immensely seriously they're kind of even now you don't have to be a believer to feel that these places are kind of weighed down with the solemnity and the seriousness of of the sort of faith of ages yeah and also i mean the coming of christianity and then the reformation and then i suppose the sort of faith of ages. Yeah, and also, I mean, the coming of Christianity and then the Reformation, and then I suppose the process of de-Christianization has such profound influences on English, British, Irish history that I think that an episode devoted

to what churches can tell us about the past is more than justified. And I just want to put it on record because there has been suggestion on Twitter that the fact that you've had covid this past week and have i have it as we speak i have it as we speak i've risen from my sickbed to do this wow i mean this is this is like a kind of yeah something from the bible in itself it is um but people have suggested that i have snuck this in while you've been. But actually, Dominic, this is your idea, isn't it? Yes, it pains me to admit it, but it is my idea.

Because, Tom, I happen to know the absolute best person in the entire British Isles to... You can't say British Isles. I just did. The Atlantic Archipelago, I believe. Inside British Isles to talk about did. The Atlantic Archipelago I believe. Inside British Isles to talk about churches. She's an Irish woman. Her name is Rachel Morley. She's a former winner of Person of the Year at her old school. She's the director of the Friends of Friendless Churches and most of all her big claim to fame she is my sister-in-law and here she is hello rachel hello ronnie rachel hi tom

thanks for that dominic you're very welcome you were person of the year i was embarrassed about it no i'm not embarrassed i was person of the year but i find it very strange that you suggested this topic because anytime when i come to visit and i talk about churches or i bring them up you always just kind of put your head in your hands and say not a bloody not another bloody church there's a lot of rolling of eyes goes on in my house yeah exactly so um so I'm surprised uh I'm as surprised as anybody to be here today so Rachel Rachel actually wants to live with us Tom she lived with us for uh 18 months no only about 10 oh it felt like it felt like. Did you take Dominic around lots of churches? I hope so.

I did not, no. Oh, missed opportunity. He wouldn't come with me. There's no point. What can you do with this man? I know, I know. No, but this is ridiculous because Dominic has suggested this subject.

So Dominic, I mean, this is a great theme. This is a great theme. So how are we going to do this? Rachel, you have chosen your, I mean, we said 10 best. Best is, I mean so let's how are we going to do this we get rachel you have um chosen your i mean we said 10 best best is i mean it's a hopeless phrase 10 top churches and we put so i put i put a request for for kind of people's suggestions on on twitter and i don't think we've ever had um quite the response that we had that i mean we had more people reply to that than i think anything we put out before an immense range of uh of suggestions um dominic we had what did we have we had um we had uh some entirely predictable ones from yeah people who've appeared on the show so

dan jackson uh author of uh northumbrians um obviously went for a northern church they were all northumbrian ones um jonathan wilson um son of sunderland he went for st peter church monk weirmouth which is of course a brilliant choice um that's the one um that uh famous for beadede the glory of the North East, what else did we have we had, so Rachel we had a lot of enthusiasm for Durham Cathedral

we had Simon Sharma yeah he chose Magnus Cathedral Kirkwall do you agree with that choice Rach? I do not, no well okay the reason why is because you asked for churches and so many people gave you cathedrals I mean that's right a rookie's error well it's not what you asked for so why would they be telling you cathedrals? Simon Sharma didn't even read the question. He didn't even read the question exactly so there we go um and I guess the thing is uh I'm

really nervous because this is a massive responsibility okay um and it's been done so many times before like obviously betjeman did his best british churches right yes and on that yes so on that just sorry just so we also have him for giles fraser um famous vicar famous vicar famous vicar top vicar um and he suggested st ennardock yeah yeah st ennardock uh in north cornwall which is a wonderful church um has a spire that looks like the tail of a stegosaur um and it's but also it's where john betjeman is buried and john betjeman he loved his churches didn't rachel has been to st ennardock church with me i have oh so you have been to a church dominic i have, yes. It's a great church.

It used to be covered by sand dunes, didn't it, Rach? It did, yeah, exactly. And it's got a golf course all round it. It does, yeah, it does, it does. The vicar used to have to climb down through a ladder, didn't he, in the roof? In the spire, yeah. In the spire.

Because it was just poking out through the sand, yeah. So, Rach, does that qualify St. Anadoc as one of the top churches? It's great church it's not on my list oh okay okay so we said what are the qualifications you brought for your choice of the top 10 and we're including ireland as well as britain well we'll see about that um let's just say okay so betjeman has done it he did a thousand best churches there's's Alec Clifton-Taylor, there's Pevsner. They're kind of like the giants of 20th century talking about churches.

And Simon Jenkins. Oh, yeah, and Simon Jenkins. But he sort of just ripped off Betjeman doing his thousand best churches. Well, he did. Hard-hitting opinion on churches here. We've got him. And also, he didn't even go to all of the churches and some that are on my list are in his a thousand best churches

which i think is just you know terrible that he uh yeah but also i think there's a there's a book that's the nation's favorite churches but again loads of people voted for cathedrals on that which i just don't understand i mean there are like 16 000 churches in england alone you have loads of choice you don't have to go for the obvious cathedrals anyway and then there's Jay Hume on Twitter and last year he did a um he did a world cup of major churches which was hugely popular um and the final two I think were uh Saint Saint Wolfram's in Grantham in Lincolnshire and Tewkesbury Abbey and in the end St. Wolfram's in Grantham home of Isaac Newton and well not home but he went to school there and Margaret Thatcher and that one won so that was very that was very interesting but basically uh thinking about it I was thinking

okay so what do you go for for the best you go go for the oldest, the biggest, the finest interior, the one with the tallest spire, the longest nave, the smallest? I mean, if you're doing cathedrals, you want to go for the tallest spire. Okay. I mean, I think we can all agree that Salisbury is the best cathedral. It's not as good as Lincoln. It's not as good as Lincoln. Lincoln's a better cathedral.

No, because Lincoln's fell down. Go on, Rachel. Because it was so great. Don't listen to Tom Holland. Anyway, that's fine. Talk over him. Okay, okay great I will and then there are the things like you know you've got churches that are called like you know the cathedral of the marshes the queen of the moors all of these and those are all kind of like great

churches but the thing is whenever you do lists and compile things like this it's always the same ones that come out you always get the same ones there's Saint Peter's Walpole Saint Peter's in Norfolk there's Saint Mary's Redcliffe in Bristol roslyn chapel fairford longmelford burford you know so there's no point in me going through all of those because everybody knows those and you know there are so many churches to choose from there are 42 000 places of worship around 42 000 places of worship in the uk so you know let's kind of let's look for actually ones that are a bit more interesting and not obvious choices so that's brilliant mine okay is that okay yeah that that is a that's fantastic specification nothing obvious basically okay so it's so your top 10 unobvious

yeah churches yeah i i have you are they in random order are you going from 10 to 1 or well they're sort of in random order what i tried to do was try and make a nice story so that they all they all kind of flow into one and the other we like a story oh we do like a story so yeah okay so what's so what are you kicking off with okay i'm kicking off with one which is one that I really like, obviously, because it's in my top 10. But I used to live near St. Mary the Virgin in Shrewsbury. And I absolutely love Shrewsbury. Dominic knows it's my favourite place in the whole of England. And St. Mary's Shrewsbury is a great church. You know, the river sort of carves out Shrewsbury,

the river defines Shrewsbury and the town sort of rises up from there and St Mary's is kind of at the top of that and it's a gorgeous old red sandstone church. It's got a great big spire. That's all lovely. The reason why I'm bringing it in, first of all, is that it's got a really, not just about the architecture,

but it's got a really interesting story around it. Dominic, I don't know if you know this you're a Shropshire native aren't you uh I don't know this I am a Shropshire native I blank out all church stuff because I leave that to you okay thanks so anyway it's all about uh the story is all about Robert Cadman and he was an 18th century steeplejack and rope slider and he used to perform all of these sorts of tricks and he was from Shrewsbury which rope slider and he used to perform all of these sorts of tricks and he was from shrewsbury which is lovely and he traveled kind of all around the country so he's in dorset and lincoln newspaper kind of saying these great feats of daring that this guy used to do um and he one of his kind of big tricks was he would climb up the front of saint mary's which

is you know a bits of a norman church in there so it's a really ancient church so he'd climb up the front of St. Mary's, which is, you know, bits of a Norman church in there, so it's a really ancient church, so he'd climb up the front of it. It was 250 metres up the church, then a 68-metre spire up to the top. He'd have a rope going from the top of the spire down and anchored into a meadow across the other side of the river.

So as he's going up, he's doing all kinds of sorts of, you know, tricks and making the crowd laugh and everyone's having a great jolly time. time anyway he gets to the top and then he puts on a wooden breastplate and there's a big groove down the center of it and he hurls himself onto this rope and he's meant to slide all the way from the top of the spire over the river over the meadows and kind of land you know perfectly standing on the other side. In one piece, preferably. He did that several times. That was fine. Except once.

Which was kind of the end of it. The last time he did it. Which was 1739. When the rope actually snapped. And he fell. And he died. So that's very sad. Oh.

But there's a plaque on the outside of the church. So right by the main door as you go in. So it's a big event in the church's history, right? So there's a plaque outside and it reads, Let this small monument record the name of Cadman and to the future time proclaim how by an attempt to fly from this spire across the Sabrina stream,

he did acquire his fatal end. It was not for want of skill or courage to perform the task he fell. But no, no, a faulty cord being drawn too tight hurried his soul on her high to take her flight, which bit the body here beneath good night. So that's lovely. So he's basically a failed tightrope walker. No, I mean, he had loads of success. He died when he was 28, but he had loads of success and he died when he's 28 but he had lots of success live fast die young but but yeah but but it's a really cool story anyway but beyond that the

church is really interesting so the actual building is great too go on tom i was just going to say on the topic of of kind of jumping off the top of churches um you've given dominic a shrewsbury one a shropshire one could i could i there's a famous wiltshire uh oh go on yeah um which is um uh ailmer of malmsbury the monk who um built himself a glider and hurled himself off the top of malmsbury and um he crash landed and lost the use of his legs but he didn't die. Oh, okay. So I'm just sticking up for... The people who jump off churches in Wiltshire are slightly better at it

than people who jump off it in Shropshire. I'd rather be killed. You might prefer to be killed outright, I think. It depends how... No, because then you have a long, profitable life as a hero of aeronautics. Well, a failed hero of aeronautics, surely. No, the glider worked anyway listen we're getting off and i'm just anyway i'm top 10 gliders rather than churches

dominic um i thought i guess i kind of thought of you with this one obviously there's a shrub shrub to your connection but also you recently did a nice go ape challenge so you were doing your own bit of rope sliding i did would you would you mean, do you think you were as good as Cadman? I was terrified. Tell us about this. I didn't know anything about this. We went in the summer. We went and did Go Ape with my son and two of his friends.

Now, the two friends had difficulties completing the course, so that left me and Arthur. And I found it absolutely terrifying. So Go Ape, for people who don't know, is this thing where you've got kind of platforms and walkways and kind of adventure playgrounds, I think, suspended high in trees. It's for sort of daredevil-type activity.

And I kind of thought... Does Dominic strike you as a daredevil? An intellectual daredevil, surely. I'm loving this insight into how actually found it is seen by i thought i was going to have a heart attack i was so so terrified there was a thing we had to do climbing wall suspended between two trees um uh and it was a way of getting from tree to tree so jumping off churches wouldn't be your bag um i don't think it would i did there's a lot of zip wires involved in go ape so i mean that's basically what was going on in Shrewsbury

isn't it? exactly so yeah great choice Rachel oh that's fine but anyway just to say a couple more things about that church because it is gorgeous so it's lots of lovely Norman bits

lovely old red sandstone but when you go in it's got an amazing 15th century roof carved timber roof in the nave but i think probably the real kind of crowning glory of the church is the stained glass so it's got an almost complete jesse window in the east window from about 1330 it did come from the old saint chad's in shrewsbury which was um which collapsed uh unfortunately um but they've got that stained glass but also in all of the other windows or most of the other windows it's got some of the best collection of um 16th and 15th and 16th century continental stained glass I mean it's amazing you could spend hours looking at stained glass there it's just gorgeous but also if you're

in Shrewsbury you can also go to St. Elkman's's, St Chad's, the Abbey, you can go to the Old Market Hall and are you being paid by the Shrewsbury tourist board? I would like to be yeah I would like to work for Shropshire Tourism and Rachel can I just ask you just very quickly it's often when you go to churches you'll be told oh the stained glass window got destroyed in the reformation destroyed but shot by cromwell's troopers or whatever yeah how true is that do you know i mean is it is it a uh i imagine some of them were yeah but by and large by and large the idea that all stained glass window got smashed in the reformation um i mean i guess well, I guess two things. It depended on what it depicted and how obvious it was, I suppose, you know. But yeah, I guess some of it was. I don't know.

I don't think all of it was. I mean, definitely all of it wasn't. There's some great survivals. Presumably the more figurative, but also the more obviously sort of papist it was. Yeah. The more likely it was to be destroyed. It must be as simple as that, surely. And just whether the

church was occupied by at some point by soldiers yeah like like burford let's say yeah soldiers were billeted were in the church yeah yeah anyway rachel we're going far too slowly i know okay i'm going and this is a big one that was meant to be my short one so we need to hurry up um okay so uh from there uh my my kind of seamless uh segue into the next one is so that was you know great feats of daring you know brilliant people so there I go to North Wales to St Beno

Clinog Fair in Gwynedd. Do you know this one Tom? No. Okay great. Dominic I know you don't know so there's no point asking you. Sorry I know you don't. I know you don't. Anyway doesn't know what i'm asking you um sorry i know you don't i know you don't anyway so um st beno was probably one of the most important saints in wales um definitely in north wales uh his name me it's kind of a mutation of old watch and it means knowing cattle so even

that's not a name you want but also to day, he's still the patron saint of sick cattle and children. So there we go. So anyway, from that, you might think that Baino came from an agricultural background, but he didn't, actually. He was a grandson of a king of poets in the 7th century, and ultimately he chose the monastery over the monarchy. He packed off to Bangor and he became an abbot. He was a missionary, he travelled around a lot, that's all great.

There's 11 churches in total dedicated to him. One is the smallest, one of the smallest, St Benoist, Colborne and Somerset, which is very nice. But the one I want to talk about is St Benoist, Clunag Farr, and that's on the Clim Peninsula. And it is a 15th century whopper like it's just it's gorgeous it's huge it's massive big massive space it's got this gorgeous it's plain glazing no stained glass in the east window and but it's got you know a screen

misery cord it's got a lovely crocketed and sorry Dominic you won't like me using technical terms I know I was warned off using terms that people would people wouldn't know but anyway crocketed sedilia all of that sort of stuff it's great and but this church was the site of this the monastery St Beno's monastery so it's really interesting Beno was buried here he was interred in the monastery chapel. But the monastery and the chapel were both destroyed by Vikings in the 10th century. Coming from Ireland, presumably.

Were they? Why would Vikings be attacking North Wales? Were they coming from Dublin or something? Maybe, yeah. You don't care? I don't really care because that's not on my story and I have no time to talk about all this anyway so there's loads to say so anyway what's interesting is across the road there's a holy well and with saint beno's holy well and apparently if you went on your pilgrimage you could go to this holy well uh you could be dunked into the water and you

would be cured of anything from epilepsy, rickets and impotence. But to make it work, you had to go for a big dunking in the well, then go across the road to the church and sleep on top of Baino's grave for the night. So that was great. And then that was all fine. And that was actually a practice that continued until the 1700s. But nobody does it now. Nobody does it now because rather than the Vikings, the Victorians came along and said that the tomb was unsafe,

so they dismantled it. Oh, health and safety. For health and safety, yeah. Victorian health and safety. Goodness sake. But so Cadman's great gift, sort of, was sliding down ropes. Baino's great gift is bringing people back from the dead. So he did this lots of times. That was great, and it included his niece Winifred. She chose to be a nun, her

jilted lover chopped off her head, which seems to be an occupational hazard if you were a saint in Wales kind of back in the 7th, 8th century, 6th, 7th century. But Saint Winifred's well in Flintshire is on the site where her head fell off and apparently the spring came up and it's actually it's one of the most popular places in Wales absolutely gorgeous, it's called the Lords of Wales so that's great

so do people still go there to get healed? Yeah brilliant, how many? lots of people? loads of people anyway of people loads of people yeah anyway just very very quickly because there's loads of there's loads of great stories about bano but actually my favorite one is basically he was really popular everyone wanted everyone wanted a bit of him you know in his monastery and all this sort so he needed a bit of time to pray

so he what he used to do was he'd go out into the middle of a river and he had a rock and he'd kneel on the river to pray at night time anyway one night he was disturbed and he was he muttered something under his breath and obviously he's got a direct line to god so he said something like you know somebody should teach that person a lesson or something like that something to those effect and basically all of these wild animals came out of the woods and ripped this person to shreds and anyway beno beno just continued praying didn. Came back, and then he realised it was one of his pupils, a guy called Alhern. And he was, you know, Beinod was in an awful way,

but luckily he has this power of bringing people back from the dead. So basically, he just went around and gathered all the bits of him and put them back together. And he was fine, but he couldn't find his eyebrow. Beinod couldn't find one of his eyebrows. It was missing. So what he did was he looked around and he said, oh, okay. So he had his staff that he used to help get him out of the river.

And they had an iron tip. So he took the iron tip off his staff, stuck it onto Alherne's forehead, and gave him his other eyebrow. And from then on, this Saint Alherne, he became a saint, was known as Iron Eyebrow. Brilliant. So he's not the patron saint of plastic surgeons. No, just sick cattle.

So, yeah. Well, I think that's a great one as well. That's a very good one. And I mean, the whole thing people worrying about, you know, churches are worried that people aren't going to church. I mean, the option of being brought back to life, I mean, that would be incentive, wouldn't it? But, I mean, surely the option of being brought back to life

is a key part of the Christian faith, isn't it? Yeah, exactly. Oh, Dominic, stop it with your theological jokes. OK, so that's brilliant. So that's two. All right. Number three. OK, three.

Big one. We're staying in North Wales. This time we're going to St Brothyn's Llanfrothyn in North Wales. This is one... Say that again. Sorry. St Brothyn Llanfrothan in north wales this is say that again sorry saint brothan flanfrothan okay all right that's fine just checking that's fine did you think you might know what dominic if i did yeah i did exactly yeah okay fine and that one so this is this is a great church this

is one that i actually look after what's friend of the friendless churches but um this is a church where um uh there's one man and he basically changed the course of history after his death at this church so do either of you know a guy called robert roberts no no right okay i didn't think you did he was a northwellian quarry man in 1888. Who? Him. Him. That one.

You're a historian. Come on. So anyway, Robert Roberts died 1888 and he wanted to be buried next to his daughter. That was his one wish. But his daughter, but he wasn't a member of the established Church of England. He was a nonconformist. And that's where all the trouble began there's loads of kind of story about why this didn't work out for him but basically um the vicar wouldn't allow him to be buried in the church next to his daughter in the churchyard next

to his daughter and the scene was sort of set for a clash um so how it all happens was uh kind of uh robert roberts family went to a newly qualified solicitor a guy you will know definitely you'll know this guy if you don't know robert roberts um david lloyd george have you heard oh yes oh yeah dominic's hero dominic loves david yeah okay sorry it sounds like i've sort of picked Dominic's best churches. That's all right. That's how it should be. That was unintentional, but I thought I'd get this in. So basically, this burial is sort of what launched David Lloyd George's career. So basically, he was a newly qualified solicitor. He was age 25, and he took up this case, and he advised the family to just go ahead,

defy the vicar, defy the diocese, and he advised the family to just go ahead defy the vicar divide defy the diocese and bury robert roberts next to his daughter in the church i mean church of wales um churchyard but the vicar knew this was kind of brewing so he locked up the churchyard and all of this and so they couldn't get in but what they did do led by david lloyd george they went to this really remote church down all of these winding lanes they brought the body down by david lloyd george they went to this really remote church down all of these winding lanes they brought the body down there david lloyd george broke open the churchyard gates and by candlelight and lanterns they buried robert roberts next to his daughter all lovely until the vicar found out then there was a huge court case the jury voted in favor of the Roberts family, the judge voted in favour of the church,

not voted, you know what I mean, David Lord George appealed it at the High Court and eventually won. But that basically launched his career because then two years later he was voted the MP for Carnarvonshire and then he became, you know, the rest is history, as you might say. Oh, goodness.

Nicely done. Very nicely done. Has anyone ever done that before? They haven't, actually. Actually, no, you're the first. Oh, okay. Can I just ask, the daughter, how long had she been dead? Do we know? Oh, golly.

Was it a kind of mouldering body? It was a mouldering body, yeah. Definitely, definitely, yeah. So this is basically a battle between dissenters, Welsh dissenters and the established church, which was a huge political issue actually in the late 19th, early 20th century. I mean, completely forgotten now. Well, exactly, but also all of this stuff.

So, you know, David Lloyd George did, I mean, Lloyd George, I can probably just call him that. I don't need to give him his full name um uh but this case became sort of the catalyst for the establishment of the the church um in wales as well which um you know in which eventually happened in the 1920s so all of that sort of happened because because of this burial case which is really cool but just really quickly um the church is amazing too so saint brothan was a like sixth century saint it's the church is third now 13th century it's built on an uh right on the estuary um so right on the shore it's amazing 15th century roof massive timbers

absolutely gorgeous definitely go and see it okay well so a landmark in the history of disestablishmentarianism yeah exactly which is definitely a word we've never had on the podcast before um and before we move from that area yeah i just have a fourth one we've got four no no no this is just kind of a little you know this is this is 3a um so if you're if you really like your uh prime ministers, which I know some of the listeners to this show should do, you should go and see St. Daniel's in Howarden in Finchshire, which is where Gladstone was married in 1839.

Do you know this, Dominic? You're nodding. Yeah, Gladstone, Howarden. Yeah, of course. Fine. Grand. But apparently when they got married, the church was crammed to suffocation with females which you know some people might like um but uh anyway what's really interesting about this there's obviously that history but there's a memorial chapel to gladstone and the family commissioned gladstone's very good friend burn jones to design the window and it's an absolute i mean burn jones is great if you like him some people don't um but it's an absolute, I mean, Burne-Jones is great, if you like him. Some people don't.

But it's an amazing window. It's a nativity scene. You know, it's massive, all beautiful, kind of beautiful Burne-Jones style. But yeah, definitely worth going to see. If you like Prime Ministers, Burne-Jones. Wow, we do. Yeah, we love it. Yeah, on this podcast, we love Burne-Jones, we love Prime Ministers. So that's absolutely ticking every box.

And Rachel, we've been talking for half an hour, so I think should have a break really done you've done three i know you've got to get seven in so there's now huge jeopardy yeah will you be able to get your now seven into half an hour um guys don't go away yeah i'm not allowed to say that am i dominic because you it sounds appealing but but i mean this is so exciting well no one would want to go away because it is so exciting can you get seven Can you get seven into half an hour? Can you get seven into half an hour? Definitely not. In a minute find out. Bye bye. Bye.

I'm Marina Hyde. And I'm Richard Osman and together we host The Rest Is Entertainment. It's your weekly fix of entertainment news, reviews, splash of showbiz gossip and on our Q&A we pull back the curtain on entertainment and we tell you how it all works. We have just launched our members club if you want ad-free listening bonus episodes and early access to live tickets head to therestisentertainment.com. That's

therestisentertainment.com. Welcome back to The Rest Is History. We are facing a half an hour of intense excitement and jeopardy as our guest, Rachel Morley, the director of Friends of Friends Churches, former winner of Person of the Year, is going to see if she can fit her remaining seven churches into the last half hour of the show, having taken the first half hour to do three churches. It's massive massive isn't it

it's a high octane i mean this is unbelievable at its best okay so neither of you talk for the next half an hour please okay so and i'll just get it out fine okay next number four on my list uh oh i have i have a big intro to this because i want to try and fit as many churches in as possible so i'm just going to try my best okay right anyway who knows about commonwealth grace commission yeah i do i've been to it well done anyway okay there's a book there's a really good book that came out i think last year the year before called tomb with a view by peter ross he's got a great chapter in it uh and he told me lots about commonwealth grace commission that i didn't realize so things like uh if you're buried in a commonwealth grave cemetery your your stone has to be 813 millimeters above the grass and

the grass has to be cut between 3.5 and 6 centimeters I thought that was very interesting anyway this is kind of a segue into number four which is a world war churches chapels memorial churches chapels so I want to call out just two which would be very familiar, and I'm not going to have time to talk about them in any great depth, despite I've written loads. There's the Italian Chapel on Orkney, which is great. It's a prisoner of war, double Nissen huts.

They used cement. They used things like corned beef tins to make candle holders and car exhaust to make the font. Really great. Rachel, let me interrupt interrupt one of our listeners suggested this kimberl kind of rufod kimru fod he suggested it so give yourself a massive round of applause yes great anyway moving on from that um there's a wales place of work there's a wales prisoner of war uh chapel which many people don't know about it's Hentland chapel near the River Tyvie that was a 1994 chapel again sorry 1944 chapel it's again it's a Nissen hut and they used all sorts of

things like berries tea coffee they burned fish or boiled fish bones to make glue and they decorated that's all great i have to go at really high speed so number four neither of those was number four no no those were those were just ones that deserve a mention they deserve a mention but they're not number four so number four it's probably one of the most moving places i've ever been in my whole entire life um it's the sandon memorial Chapel in Hampshire. Outside it's a really modest kind of red brick chapel but inside it is just I mean it's it's just this epic large-scale murals. The interior is

entirely painted by Stanley Spencer and it was done between 1920 and 1926 and it was built to honour the forgotten dead of World War I specifically Lieutenant Harry Sandham who basically he was on the Salonica front with Spencer he came back from the war but he died from he caught malaria they think while he was out there and he died once he came back but he doesn't appear on any official kind of list or anything because he wasn't kind of you know one of the the

official warden exactly great thanks Dominic anyway what's great about this is so it seems from so Stanley Spencer he worked as an orderly in Beaufort Hospital in Bristol and then he was out on the Salonika front

and basically they're a series of paintings so it shows his um his time in the hospital working in the hospital so it's like filling tea urns changing the beds doing the laundry um all of that sort of thing uh and then above you've got um scenes from um for scenes from Salonika and it's I mean it's so moving he painted himself into it so he's you know he's cooking rashers there's a dog licking out an empty Frebentos tin there's I mean but it's

it's so it's just so powerful because of the scale that they're on and then I have to miss out so much because I have no time but anyway the east wall is this resurrection scene and it's not like any other resurrection scene you will ever see it's basically um uh the in the center there's a carriage and the it's broken apart it's split apart there's bits of wood flying everywhere there are two horses which have collapsed right in the middle and it's just a chaotic scene right

in the foreground and it's all of these men who are getting out of their graves and they're picking up their white crosses and they're walking towards a figure barely decipherable in the kind of background and it's a little white figure of christ he's tiny and they're walking up and they're giving their crosses to christ and after that they walk past him and into kind of a peaceful landscape, which is Watership Down, which is near where the chapel is located. Watership Down as in the rabbits? As in rabbits. Yeah, but also it's a place, it's a real place.

So anyway, so that's absolutely amazing. But what was really terrible about this was when they came to consecrate the chapel, all the various bishops said they wouldn't consecrate it because it showed animals being resurrected. So the horses were kind of coming back to life and the dogs and stuff like that. And they said, animals don't have souls, so we're not going to resurrect it. Eventually, the Bishop of Guildford said he would consecrate the chapel, but only if they put curtains and stuff over the animals. My God, that's very harsh. Isn't it bonkers? Anyway, that is one of the most...

I haven't done it justice. Animals definitely have souls. It's completely bonkers. Spencer did this before Cookham and all that? Yes, yes. So Cookham is what he called a little suburb of heaven. There's all that kind of amazing stuff coming out of the graves. Exactly, exactly.

No, it's just, it's one of the... Yeah, it's just one of those. Sorry, I will just say there's one scene in it where it's in the hospital and they're meant to be disinfecting the bedside lockers. So they've got these copper baths and there's a man kind of, you know, putting them into the thing. But Stanley Spencer was really small. He was like five foot two and weighed less than seven stone and he couldn't

actually physically lift the um lockers into the bath to do the work and he paints himself into it and he's crouching he's hiding between the two baths and trying to kind of get away from it all um and it's just oh sorry I have no it sounds I'm thinking about it it's one of it's just yeah people more people should know about it it's so wonderful well thank you that's amazing

all right number five okay this is a very quick one this was meant to be my number five and my breaking point because I wanted to sing a little song at the end of it oh my god

you can't miss out on the song you can still do that all right okay just very very quickly so number five is St Nicholas's Worth in Sussex. So this is a...

It was once in a clearing of a forest. It's the largest Saxon cruciform church that still survives on its original foundations. The forest is now cleared and the church is sort of squeezed between the M23 and a housing estate in Crawley. But it is one of... I know, Dominic, you're makingley. But it is one of, like, I know Dominic you're making faces, but it is actually, like, it's one of the most important and ancient churches.

Somebody once described it as the most beautiful set of arches left to us by the Saxon world, which is great. Sounds good. Yeah. Anyway, interesting things about this is all the Saxon stuff, obviously, but in the churchyard you will find Robert Whitehead who does anybody know who he was?

no Tom he was the inventor of the torpedo oh that's a good fact it is a good fact and basically he sold his first torpedoes to the Austrians and then in 1912 his granddaughter went to like I don't know, not launch torpedoes, that would be terrible, to celebrate a new torpedo or something in Austria.

And she met the commander, who was George von Trapp, and she went on to marry him. They had seven children in 12 years. Then she died, and the husband got a move to salzburg hired a nun and needed a nanny who needed a nanny got a nun called maria and then they became the van trapp family choir and they there's a sound of music that is a very very good story that is a good story and i can see why you need a song well no i'm not going to sing the sound of music but basically there's so much saxon stuff about this so it's saxon arches saxon foundation saxon apps saxon windows i don't know if this is right but i i like to make up songs dominic will know this is

sort of a thing in our family and we like to make up random songs i think so i'm always making up songs tom so if i if i could give saint nicholas worth a song, I would call it... Sorry, I feel so embarrassed now, but anyway. I'm too Saxon for my shirt. Too Saxon for my shirt. So Saxon it hurts. Anyway, there we go. We've never had someone singing on the podcast throughout the Anglo-Saxons before.

But I think we should make it a rule. Anyway, there we go. We have to move on. Sorry, guys. Is that the only song? That's the only song. Sorry. Oh, I'm disappointed.

Sorry, sorry. I mean, who knows? I might come up against anything else. Spontaneously. The next one is Time and Space Church. Dominic, I know you like this. Sorry, Tom, you might like this too. I feel like I'm kind of leaving you out. Sorry. Anyway. No, no. You focus on Dominic I know you like this sorry Tom you might like this too I feel like I'm kind of leaving you out

sorry anyway you focus on Dominic he needs education he does need education yes anyway so Dominic I know you did a series or a programme on sci-fi didn't you a series Rach a series a whole series I thought it was just one off oh well

it's a great series if anybody would like to watch it Tomorrow's World. Tomorrow's World, there we go. The unearthly history of science fiction. Anyway, so I don't know if you mentioned this because I don't actually remember if I watched the programme. But first of all, I want to go to St John the Baptist Whitbourne in Herefordshire.

Weirdly, we didn't mention that in our science fiction series. Well, Dominic, that is a huge oversight on your part because at the end of the 17th century, that is when Francis Goodwin, the Bishop of Herefordshire,

he was living next to the church and he wrote the world's first science fiction novel, The Man on the Moon. Very good. The Man in the Moon. You didn't know that?

Get the title right. The Man in the Moon. The Man in the Moon. Anyway, basically, very quickly, it's a Spanish man man called domingo gonzalez he's stranded on an island and he trains a flock of swans to um uh to basically uh what's the word i'm looking for to basically fly him away in a cart and they fly him up to the moon and when he gets to the moon or when he's on his way to the moon he realizes that actually copernicus was right that the uh the earth is not the center of the universe and it revolves around the sun and when did he write this at the end of the 17th century right very very end of the 17th century

and he also describes gravity gravity which is decades before isaac newton would ever go on to discover it godwin's buried in the church out in whitburn that's not the church this is again just the same oh god that's not even the church it's notburn. That's not the church. This is again just a segue. Oh God, that's not even the church. It's not the church, it's not the church. Anyway. There's so little time. No, no, no.

You keep doing these segues. So little time, but so many churches. Anyway, then, so we talked about Isaac Newton. From there, we go to St. Peter's and Paul

and Market Overton in Rutland. Basically, Isaac Newton's mother was from there. He spent a lot of time there. The church at Market Overton has lots of lovely Saxon elements and in the churchyard they discovered a bronze Saxon water clock something that was developed or derived from the ancient Egyptians

Newton was fascinated by this and it spurred on his studies and experiments into time and space and apparently there's a sundial on the church. And he donated it to the church in kind of gratitude for it kind of spurring on his studies. Anyway, the church that I want to talk about, which is actually number six. Neither of those were the church. No, no, no. Unbelievable.

No, no, no. Anyway, but there's so many good churches. But basically, it's St. Gregory's, Kirkdale in Yorkshire. I think somebody definitely mentioned this on your list. I'm pretty certain. So above that church, you will find a preserved Saxon sundial. Oh, yes. Yes.

That's wonderful. That is a good one. Great. I'm glad you know it. Yes. And it's next to where William Buckland found the hyena bones in the cave. That's correct. Oh, Tom. Tom, you're ruining my ending. Oh, I'm sorry. Oh, sorry, Rachel. Sorry.

It's fine. It's fine. No, but I love that church. Okay, that's good. But you know that there's like a, it's got like the longest inscription in Saxon English on that sundial. Do you know it? Do you know what it says? I can't remember, but I do i do remember no he doesn't remember okay great so i'll read it out to you very quickly so it says orm the son of gammel bought saint gregory's church when it was utterly broke and fallen and caused to be made anew from the ground he dedicated to christ and saint gregory in the days of king ed Edward and the days of Earl Trosty. Haworth bought me and Harith wrought me and brand the prior. So from that you can date the sundial to about 1055, 1065-ish,

when Edward the Confessor was king, right? That's all great. Tosty is better known as Tostig the brother of my cat the name of my cat there you oh great yeah lovely and it all connects it all connects it all connects but basically then tosti um was killed uh he kills the gamal in that inscription and then eventually he was himself killed at uh stanford bridge yeah basically but the sundial is great it's um it was covered it remains in such good condition because it was um plastered over for about 700 years and was only discovered in 1771 but remarkably it's actually the sundial is a reused grave slab so when the when orm son of gammel says in this inscription

that he the old church was broken down they reused bits of that much earlier church which 20th century excavations found to be um about eighth or ninth century which is really cool so they found like carvings and stuff like that in the walls um and yeah there's loads of lovely cross slabs and all of that sort of stuff in the in the walls which is great anyway that's right about buckland quarry man 1821 i think yes um found uh nearby from there uh reopened a cave stone age things hyena bones but also um hippopotamus bones and it is yeah okay tom you okay, Tom, you know what. Yeah, yeah, no, and it's such a kind of dramatic setting. Yeah, absolutely.

Go down from the church down and... Yeah, it's fabulous. Yes. All right, let's crack on. What are you on now, number eight? Number seven. Number seven. Oh, my God.

This is a quick one. Okay, this is weird animals to weird animals, sort of. So hippopotamuses to turkeys great okay so um most people think of churches they think of christmas that's definitely what the church of england and stats will tell us anyway but also there's a yorkshire church that celebrates not only the coming of christ but also the coming of the turkey does anybody know what saint andrews boynton in yorkshire no i don't know okay. It's a gorgeous church but there are turkeys everywhere in the church and the reason is because William Strickland of Boynton,

he bought the first turkey to Britain. So in 1526 he went to America to find his fortune. He went looking for gold but came back with six turkeys. Basically he bred them and then he sold them and they became so popular he became really rich he was able to build a country house he became an mp in the reign of queen elizabeth um but he adopted the turkey as his kind of family symbol so there's a turkey lectern there's turkeys in the window there's turkeys all over the tombs it's great. So first turkey came from him. And also when he was trying to get his coat of arms, he used the turkey.

And his little sketch of a turkey is the earliest depiction of a turkey in the whole of Europe. That's fantastic. What a claim to fame. And why shouldn't turkeys be in churches? Why shouldn't they be in churches? They're God's creatures. That's right, yeah.

But also, as old as a turkey is, the church is absolutely gorgeous. Inside, it's like a Georgian box. Beautiful. Redesigned by John Carr of York in the 18th century. Green panelled pews. It's got clustered columns, cornice, plaster puttees, swags, medallions. It's got this flourish of a staircase. Absolutely gorgeous.

And my favourite is a really lovely Norman tub font where it's got intersecting arches, kind of little, almost kind of classical capitals and plinths on the arches. And it's kind of got this greenish tinge and it's absolutely lovely. Loads more to say about that, but we have no time. Okay.

So we've got two left. Three left. Oh, we have three left. Oh my goodness. Okay, I'm going to be really quick. I'll try you've got 10 minutes oh okay the next one is a long one okay so so this this is kind of all this is so exciting for the listeners finding out whether you're going to do it or not okay let me just look at the time fine 15 minutes okay fine 10 10 all right tom i get it fine um so the next thing is all about like superstitions and magic and churches so

first of all i want to just give a mention to this is not the church by the way i want to give a mention to saint cadfins in gwynedd which is it's got a crying night it's a 13th uh 1350s effigy and basically apparently the knight has been crying for about 650 years but but uh there's like water dripping out of his right eye all the time this is my right eye um uh but somebody did some research and actually it's a fault in the stone there's well there's there's there's the very similar thing at bartholomew the great oh right okay yeah where there where there was somebody who was crying and then they fixed the drains and it stopped. Yeah, it's pretty much that sort of thing,

which is sad. From there, a really popular church is St. Issue, Patricio and Powys where there's a kind of a rusty painted skeleton on the west wall. He's holding up a shovel and a hourglass um and people have tried and tried and tried to whitewash him out but he keeps seeping back to the surface so it can't get rid of him that's lovely then um kind of staying around that area

there's st michael's and cascob and there's an inscription on the wall which i think is really which i think is brilliant where i kind of that kind of superstition and faith kind of you know kind of the mixture is really good so it's a um about 1700 and the inscription reads oh lord jesus we beseech thee for thy mercy that this holy charm abracadabra make your thy servant does it really say abracadabra? It says abracadabra, yep. Make your thy servant Elizabeth Lloyd from all evil sprites and from all their diseases. Amen. So that's good. So, yep.

And then just very quickly to say that one such evil sprite could be Lilius Addy who's in Scotland. So she was a witch who died in prison in Scotland in 1704 she's buried on the shore of Torrey Bay in Fife and she's they put like a massive sandstone slab over her grave so that she couldn't get out basically and she was a witch because she confessed probably under great torture to having sex with the devil so that was unfortunate.

But basically, her body was dug up in the 19th century. Her skeleton was sold off, made into walking sticks, all of those sorts of stuff. What? I'd happily have such a walking stick. It's awful. It's a terrible thing. I know. And people, there's a group in Scotland that are trying to kind of get her. Bring all the walking sticks back together.

Yeah, exactly. And bury her properly. Anyway, anyway but just get on them well i kind of so that lady you know admitted to having sex with the devil that's fine but in shropshire there's halston hall where there's a guy called mad jack mighton i don't know if anybody knows of him no okay yeah i know him okay great so you, this fella drank six bottles of port a day. He fed his dog steak and champagne. He went duck shooting naked on a frozen lake. He dressed up as a highwayman and ambushed his guests. He rode a bear into dinner as a kind of a spectacle.

But he was absolutely fine, so there was nothing kind of untoward about his behaviour, and he's buried in the crypt. So, you know, they didn't have to bury him under a big mass of sand, so on and so on. But anyway, the church... It's everyday sexism, isn't it? It is, yeah. But hold on, she'd been having sex with the devil.

She hadn't been riding a bear. They're two very different things. No, but she didn't actually have sex with the devil, Dominic. She was probably tortured. She died in prison probably because they tortured her I just think we should take a bit of a open minded approach to these okay fine

anyway number 8 is Ayn Hallow on Scotland hold on that wasn't even number 8 no no no but these were just kind of this is the preamble I like a preamble okay very very quickly Ayn Hallow is an island um in orkney um and it was once in the grip of a magic spell and it was completely inaccessible to humans

so and the stories go that it was occupied by the finn folk who are kind of you know sorcerers sort of dementory type people um uh and uh they used to abduct children and all that sort of stuff but basically humans eventually did make it over there and by the salt and the sign of the cross they retrieved the island from the finn folk and they built a little church there and for a long time it was thought that the soil of this Ain Hallow was so sacred and that it would repel anything that was undesirable so even rats and mice so people used to like to go and get a handful of soil to kind of keep all the undesirables from their house anyway really quickly because i don't have very much time um this is uh this is a really kind of ancient old norse church on Orkney. It's just a ruin now. It was kind of rediscovered.

It was the church was repurposed into a dwelling in and around the 16th century. Nobody knew it was there until it was discovered by chance in 1851. But it is hugely important, massively under-researched and yeah you can see bits of the Norse kirk, you know the porch, the gables, the naves, the chancel walls. They're kind of all sorts of there. And is it under research because it's so difficult to make you can live there? Is it under research because nobody... You can go out there one day a year.

One day a year? Yeah. So no wonder it's difficult to research. Exactly. Anyway, very quickly, because we have no time. Moving on. So what I love about churches is all the stuff in them. Is number nine now this is number nine yeah very quick um number nine okay big shout out to big shout out to saint bothwell's hardin in west sussex it's it's this is the

preamble again this is the preamble okay big shout out to saint bothwell's hardin in west sussex which has some of the oldest wall paintings in the UK. It's got the Annunciation, the Massacre, Adam and Eve, George and the Infidels, Doom, Flight into Egypt, all there. Amazing. Date to about the 1100s, on the side of a road, cars flying past, nobody knows it's there. Great. And it survived because it was whitewashed? Or was it just so obscure? Correct. Yeah. Okay.

St. Lawrence, Brought it in Buckinghamshire. Brilliant church. On the outskirts of Milton Keynes. It's really great wall paintings. Nothing on the outside. Inside, 15th century wall paint. Massive George and the Dragon. You've got dooms.

You've got blacksmiths. You've got all this sort of stuff. What I love is it's got a little panel called the Warning to the Blasphemers. And you've got all these kind what I love is it's got a little panel called the warning to the blasphemers and you've got all these kind of you know contemporary um dressed 15th century fellas and looking all nice and dandy and in the middle is a pieta and Christ is kind of lying there and his body is kind of being pulled apart so it's like the skin is shredded off his arms and legs and there's blood dripping around and these guys um are like you know they're

drinking and they're playing you know i don't know backgammon or something and they're swearing on christ's body and basically and and some of them hold up bits of bones and heart and stuff like that and it's um that every time you swear on christ's body or you blaspheme uh you're prolonging christ's suffering there we go anyway the real star number nine is st caddox clank harfin in vale of glamorgan so these one soon not st thomas's not st thomas's in salisbury no it's not this is a better one tom sorry much better actually because the salisbury one is lovely but actually it's been really over restored sorry about that please don't't kill me or hate me.

Anyway, this is a great church. A little whitewashed church in the Vale of Glamorgan. The wall paintings were only discovered in 2008. And they are some of the best in the whole of Europe. Unbelievably beautiful. So you've got a huge George and the Dragon. You've got the Virgin Mary blessing him. You've got the princess.

You've got the people in the tower. But what's really cool is it's got the seven deadly sins and the seven acts of mercy. I've seen it. Have you? I've seen it. Oh good, oh good, hooray. I have. It is better than St Thomas' and Salisbury. Yes, okay. No, you're right. Brilliant, thank you. I mean of course you're right but no you're... Oh I'm really glad, phew, okay because I only have about one minute to do the last one but just very no rachel you don't just take your time okay because this is quality this is quality so it's fine all right okay well just really quickly okay so this church is brilliant i've said about the saint george and the dragon it's also got um a death and the gallant which is completely unique so you've got kind of you know a nice again kind

of a nice contemporary dandy fellow. And then a skeleton and a shroud kind of like looking over him. Seven Deadly Sins, they are in brilliant condition. And what I love about them is there's like a central beast and it's got multi heads. And the heads kind of come up and in the jaws of each of the kind of subheads um of this beast there's a little panel that contains the each um each of the seven deadly sins and it's just they are so I mean they're just amazing so in each one one of my favorite ones is gluttony which is um there's a man and he's kind of got a big swollen stomach and his uh buttons are popping off his vest and there's a and there's kind of got a big swollen stomach and his buttons are popping off his vest and there are kind of empty glasses all around him.

And there's a little demon who's pulling back his head and forcing more beer down his neck, kind of forcing him to drink more. And they're just, I mean, they're just so brilliant. And just to say they were discovered completely by chance and they were getting some work done to the wall plate they were repaired doing a little bit of timber repair and the builder saw a bit of red paint and said oh that might be interesting completely by chance and really some of the some of the best in in europe so there we go dominic you should go there okay last one now i'm really worried that we're going to end on a low point because I've kind of just raced through and I've kind of just kept something really

quick for last. But anyway, this is Literary Connections. So, you know, loads of literary connections. Thomas Hardy, you know, love of my life. All of that sort of stuff. This one is Saint Michael and All Angels in

Hathersage, which is... Do you know it, Tom? Making a noise? No? I think so. Okay, so this isn't a hardy church, but it's basically a 14th century church. Lots of all interesting things,

but the big thing here is the heirs. They're absolutely everywhere in the church. They were the lords of the manor for about 800 years, so you can see them on the font, the porch, the memorials on the walls. Sorry, that's their surname. Ayres, yeah, sorry. Sorry, E-Y-R-E-S. Basically, in 1854, Charlotte Bronte came here. She attended services with her friend

who was Ellen Nusey, who was the sister of the newly appointed vicar. And she, basically, Charlotte Bronte took loads from this church and her kind of time in Hathersage to write Jane Eyre, which is great. So the village of Hathersay becomes the village Morton. Henry Nusey, who was the vicar, becomes St. John Rivers, who, you know, says Jane or whatever. And Jane Eyre is obviously named after the Eyres which is great. And then very finally in the churchyard

apparently that is also apparently the resting place of Robin Hood's great friend Little John Little John? Because in 1784 Captain James Shuttleworth discovered a massive femur,

a massive thigh bone that was over a metre long. Oh, it must have been him. Must have been him. So basically, that person, the person the bone was attached to would have been over eight feet tall. And there's only one person in all history. That could be. Why did they think it was Little John?

They probably just wanted tourism or something. Even in 1784. No, I think there's a legend that Little John's hat and coat used to hang his hat and coat in the church and stuff like that.

They kind of knew he was around there. So they just said it. So that was your number 10, Rach? Yeah. And you didn't choose any churches from your native country well I didn't because when you said it to me first of all you didn't include Ireland

and actually you gave me the wrong date you gave me the 13th of August so I had been working to different dates so the list was kind of ready for a long time so anyway so i was working to that and then tom i nearly died when you said britain and ireland uh so yeah that was panic well i mean huge apologies to our irish listeners and to you rachel sorry dominic's incompetence i mean i can choose one very quickly but it's uh yeah your fate yes let's have an yes so basically an irish one i will it's

you know it's an obvious choice for me but it's my local church we grew up in turnus cross which is a 1920s suburb of cork city in ireland and the church there is amazing uh it was built in uh about 1920 started building in about 1929 i think and but it is the first concrete church in the whole of ireland and but also some people say it's um the first modernist church in ireland but it was designed by a guy called barry burn who was a student of frank lloyd right he was based in chicago he never even got to see the church but it's i mean it's just amazing what i love about it is it kind of takes um it draws on like christ the redeemer so it's a amazing. What I love about it is it kind of takes... It draws on Christ the Redeemer. So it's a massive Christ with open arms.

And you kind of walk under the doors under his arms. And it's limestone on the outside. Limestone sculpture. Really interesting kind of... The way the trusses are arranged internally. So it's beautifully lit. Kind of a stepped gable. All of this sort of stuff. Lovely black marble and all that sort of stuff anyway let's put that let's put that in

as 11th and you know i think we really need to find a way to put this list somewhere don't we i mean i guess we should put images on online tom shouldn't we we'll put the and yes and when we publicize this on twitter we'll we'll add so Rach if you send us the list that would be great because that's a fantastic array you've given us. I can't thank you enough. And Rach, well Rach this is, you should plug your charity. So you're the director of Britain's leading churches charity. Other church charities are available but they're not as good let's be honest. Yours is the friends of friendless churches so tell us just a tiny bit about this extraordinary named organization okay

fine uh so the friends of friendless churches we were founded in 1957 and it was basically it was the 13th of july churches were being demolished being declared you know being declared redundant and just being left fall apart and And this Welshman, who was our main founder, Ivor Bulmer Thomas, gathered a group of all his friends. Tom, you spoke about T.S. Eliot. T.S. Eliot was one of the founders. John Betjeman, John Piper, Lady Mander from Wittick, Roy Jenkins, all of these people got together and they called themselves the Friends of Friendless Churches. And they would be the group that goes out and defends these buildings when they are no longer used for worship. And that's basically what we do.

Churches are closing. More churches are probably going to close. But they are some of the greatest buildings. They are the spiritual investment of generations they're like i mean they are regardless i i think they kind of transcend time and race and religion and that they are just saturated with kind of human experience they also contain some of the best art and architecture they're everywhere um and that they should be protected for everybody and not sold off to private individuals and that's what we do. We work in England and Wales. We're non-denominational.

We currently have 60 churches in our care and we take on more every single year. And we do it with a grant of £120,000. So we kind of work on a shoestring. So, yeah. Okay. Well, I can't thank you enough for that. And I think that your selection

eminently proves what you said about churches. I mean, they're kind of incredible fascination. Well, I guess... Thanks so much. Sorry. I guess what I wanted... Sorry, Tom. She's still going.

Well, no, I guess the reason why I kind of chose these ones is that you don't need to go to kind of... Even the smallest and most obscure church, the one on the side of a motorway, is still packed with history, even if it's, you know, Saxon, inventor saxon inventor of the torpedo von traps it's all there um yeah you know yeah yeah okay thank you very much rach thank you everybody for listening visit your local church

donate to the friends of friendless churches and most of all listen to the next rest is history we'll see you all next time. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Thanks for listening to the Rest Is History. For bonus episodes, early access, ad-free listening, and access to our chat community, please sign up at restishistorypod.com. That's restishistorypod.com.