Archæologists say that our church is 'a perfect gem.' The walls are very thick, nearly three feet in some places, and the axe marks are still visible. The nave and chancel are about 1100. There is a Norman priest's door on the south side of the church and a perfect Norman arch, dividing the nave from the chancel. There are two of the consecration crosses still remaining, and some bits of Saxon work.
There is no tower, but a little shingled wood turret with two bells, one of which is cracked. The pulpit and the canopy over it are 1628, and there are some splendid ancient candlesticks of brass. The church has small Norman lights mixed up with early English ones, and the pews are all old oak.
Uncle Jasper is simply absorbed in the history of the little place, and one day he showed me the deeds and some of the old Churchwarden accounts. I will copy out the one I like best, although he says it is not sufficiently 'early' to be really interesting.
'ACCOMPT FOR YE YEAR 1685.
£ s. d.
Received from ye ffor: Churchwarden 00 10 02
Reed ffrom ye psh on Two Rates .. 01 17 03
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Totall Received 02 07 05
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to ye house of Correction .. .. 00 12 04
Ffor Bread and wine & at ye Comm 00 07 06
ffor necessarie Repaire of ye Church 00 15 07
ffor Releiving poor passengers .. 00 02 06
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Payd out 01 17 11
Rests due to ye psh .. .. 00 09 06
These Accompts were examin'd and Allowe'd by us
FRED SLOCOMBE ROB COCKRAN
WILLIAM COPP ALLIN VELLACOTT
I'm sure they had an awful bother to make the accounts balance, they must have got so muddled with all those noughts, especially Rob Cockran. I suppose Tommy Vellacott is a descendant of Allin's, and I've just remembered that there is an old woman who lives at the last house in the village and her name is Slocombe. She is thrice widowed and exceedingly rotund. She says she has only the Almighty to look after her now, and that all her troubles went innards and turned to fat. She has varicose veins. These things do link one up with the centuries.
(Father has just looked over my shoulder and says that really, 'after all the money that has been spent on my education!' But I don't know what he means. I'm certain varicose is spelled correctly, for I looked it up in the dictionary.)
It seems that some land and some money were given to the church by William the First 'for the health of his soul.' (Perhaps he'd been beastly to Matilda of Flanders and gave it as a kind of penance.) Father says, 'Oh, no. Probably it was a thank-offering when she died.'
'But,' I said, 'did she die first?' Father remarked that he thought she shuffled off this mortal coil in 1084, but that he couldn't bother to remember an unimportant little detail like that about a woman!
Apparently it was quite a nice bit of land, sufficiently large and fertile to supply pasture for '80 romping, roaming, and rollicking swine.'
Some of the things the tenants had to do were very quaint. How would the village people like daddy to come down on them now to 'dam the water to overflow the meadows once a year,' and if they didn't do it make them pay a halfpenny? Or supposing they got a message that they had 'to fill two dung carts every two days or pay twopence,' or 'thresh and winnow white wheat,' and for every two bushels that they didn't do have to pay 'somewhere about three farthings.'