The Northern Vicar Blog

When we are on holiday our blue astra doubles as a white van. Like an idiot I had buried the road atlas somewhere on the back seat, so it is a good thing I have a decent sense of direction. Eventually we ended up in Whitchurch, a nice little town, had coffee at Etzio – website – really a nice-looking pizza restaurant, but they quite understood when all we wanted was coffee. We got a nice welcome, and must go back for a proper meal sometime. Then we went and explored the church – well, to be honest, I explored...

We went down to the main road and the village of Cressage – Christchurch at SJ593040. It is a busy main road and three steps up into the churchyard. A welcome notice by the door. There is a nice local history exhibition inside and some information about the church. The medieval church of St Sampson’s was situated at the west end of the village, probably on the site of a Saxon church. The Reverend George Onions Bird was Curate 1839-53 and raised funds to build this new church, presumably much nearer the centre of the village. When this new...

Just south of Berrington, our stop was Cantlop Bridge. Thomas Telford was County Surveyor for Shropshire between 1787 and 1834 and probably designed this bridge in 1818. It has a lightweight lattice structure of cast iron, showing how technology had moved on from the Ironbridge. We continued on via beautiful narrow roads to St Peter’s church in Cound, grid reference SJ558050. We parked next to the church in the grounds of the Guildhall, and discovered they have a bookshop. The Guildhall looks fun – with its own website – with a village celebration of Agincourt later this month (an historical...

Thursday morning – let’s have an explore of village churches south of Shrewsbury. We started at All Saints, Berrington SJ530069. Narrow roads past lovely houses bought us to this church with a nice solid tower. It is in a circular churchyard – a pre-Christian sacred grove? The church was mentioned in Domesday, and the font is probably from a similar time. Seven heads accompanied by a lighted candle, a beast of some form, and a cockerel. Light of the world, beast perhaps equals lion (“Your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion” 1 Peter), and denial of Christ. High up...

It’s Tuesday 4 August 2015 and we drove south from Ironbridge to Much Wenlock, found a parking space, and had a wander round this lovely town. First stop was a lovely second hand bookshop – website – I had to return to the car once we’d been there.  We walked to the parish church of the Holy Trinity – open and beautiful. It is just north of the town square at SJ624000, and has two websites, one for the parish, another for the team. In the Diocese of Hereford, it is in a team of 12 parishes, served by two...