A TIME-WORN TOWER
The ancient tower of Somersby church is squat and square, it boasts no uprising spire pointing to the sky. The soft sandstone of which it is built has crumbled away in places, and has been patched here and there with red bricks and redder tiles. Its weather-worn walls are now moss-encrusted and lichen-laden; tiny weeds and grasses—bird or wind sown—find a home in many a crevice of the time-rent masonry. The tower is a study of colour, its rugged surface shows plainly the stress and stains of countless winter storms. Yellow and gray stones, green grasses and vegetation, ruddy bricks and broken tiles, form a blending of tints that go to make a harmonious whole, mellowed as they are by the magic hand of Time. The tower stands there silently eloquent of the past, beautiful with a beauty it had not at first, and that is the dower of ages; it looks so pathetic in its patched and crumbling state, yet in spite of all it is strong still. Generations will come and wither away faster than its stones will crumble down.
The most permanent feature of the English landscape is its ancient churches. Kingdoms have waxed and waned, new empires and mighty republics across the seas have been founded, since they first arose, and still they stand in their old places, watching over the slumbering dead around. But I am rhapsodising, and nowadays this is a literary sin. I acknowledge my transgression and will endeavour to atone for it by merely being descriptive for the future.
On the gable of the porch of Somersby church is an old-fashioned sun-dial—useful on sunny days to reproach laggard worshippers. This bears the not very original motto, “Time passeth.” A better motto we noted inscribed on an old Fenland country garden sun-dial as follows, and which struck us as fresh:—
A clock the time may wrongly tell,
I never, if the sun shine well.
Within the porch is a well-preserved holy-water stoup.
The interior of the church unfortunately shows signs of restoration, in a mild form truly, but still unwelcome as robbing the fabric of some of its ancient character. Surely of all churches in the wild Wolds this one might have been simply maintained. Possibly the poet’s wide renown has been the cause of its undoing; well may Byron sing of “the fatal gift of fame.” The church looks not now the same as when Dr. Tennyson preached, and his son, who was to make the family name familiar throughout the world, worshipped there. The obtrusive red-tiled pavement “that rushes at you,” to employ an expressive artist’s term; the over-neat seats—of varnished pine, if I remember aright—are clean and decent, but they hardly harmonise with the simple
“NEW WINE IN OLD BOTTLES”
rustic fane. Better far, considering the associations it has acquired, to have preserved the church as Tennyson knew it. Besides these signs of “new wine in old bottles,” architecturally speaking, we noticed an intruding harmonium; but this does not matter so much as it is movable, and the eye knowing this can conveniently ignore it, no harm has been permanently done, it is not structural. The instrument is inscribed—
To the glory of God
and in memory of
Alfred Lord Tennyson
September 1895.