“The chancel’s one comfort, choir stalls with misericords, survive intact. They are unusual. The carved scenes are not compressed under the bracket but spread across the whole underside of the seat. The themes are traditional and include a fine fox preaching to geese, normally a satire on a bishop.”
“Sarah, the daughter of Sir Henry and Lady d’Avigdor Goldsmid, was drowned in a sailing accident near Rye in 1963. The grief-stricken family commissioned the Russian artist, Marc Chagall, to design a new east window for their local church in memory of their daughter.”
“The reason for visiting it is the glass, from Morris & Co in its prime. Speldhurst is a good example of what so much Victorian glass is not, part of an aesthetic whole with the architecture. It glows on all sides.”
“The whole is as voluptuous as any aristocrat’s saloon.”
“The church’s location is charming, with an old yew and bench outside the porch. The building is plastered white on the outside while the interior is dark and cosy.”
“The east windows of chancel and chapel have the best curvilinear Decorated tracery in the county…In the reredos every crocket and finial has broken into bud. To the right of the altar a Green Man starts out of the leaves, vomiting foliage.”
“Shottesbrooke was erected in 1337, a rare example of a church built from scratch in the Decorated style and unaltered since…Light pours in from all four points of the compass. Decorated windows are filled with curvilinear tracery, and a clear west end admits the evening light.”
Disappointingly closed…
“It’s faintly scruffy charm is an Esher surprise…the monument shows Princess Charlotte giving charity to the poor of Esher.”
A Photo Pilgrimage to England's Thousand Best Churches 