CHURCH CRAWLING

A transporting and gloriously entertaining journey through the hidden lives of England s rural parish churches from building conservator and church rescuer Rachel Morley The poet John Betjeman coined the phrase church crawling to describe his days out visiting churches In the spirit of Betjeman Rachel Morley s book captures the magical experience of poking around a dusty village church only to have it transform through her expert eyes into a portal to the past one that brings England s people and history to life in the most colourful moving and unexpected ways Through their wall paintings and monuments their graffiti and plaques their jumble of furniture and curios Morley shows these buildings to be the expression of centuries of communal memory and folk culture time capsules of connection to ancient and medieval ways of thinking to revolutions and wars to lives both glorious and humble Along our journey we meet the Lincolnshire hermit who squeezed a devil from a man with his belt the lovers struck by lightning before they could get married and the rope sliding steeplejack who flew from a spire before falling to his death We discover the folk cure poor man s aspirin and how it explains the gashes in church walls we follow Victor Franken