SERMONS IN STONE.

Dominion, Volume 6, Issue 1616, 6 December 1912, Page 5

SERMONS IN STONE.

•' "I have been staying for a month "> a diocese—Norwich—which has upwards of 650 old parish churches," says a writer in "The Church Standard.' (Sydney). "Some 128 others have disappeared en- . [v tirely, very niany of them'in the spacwUß ••■ ; protesting, times- of'-Queen Elizabeth,- < What would you think-jrou who worship in Oodnadatta or Warracknabeal— of seeing a paten used next Sunday from. -. which Annie Boleyn may, have receivcdi ' the consecrated .wafer, as at Brancaster; * > or which, as at Saham Towey,_ is worth more golden sovereigns than it. would carry? Tiny.little gems of twelfth, cen- .; tury glass, at'Burriham, Deepdale, or , Heacham-aii Augustine or Jerome. or < r ; one : of the four Latin doctors—bnnfl \ home to you what was tho thick t rich : gleam of amber light .'when grass was soft and thick, and would take the rich pigment into its- very, veins; Tho. paint* r j ings on chapel wall, and. fragments ..or rood screen as at Binham—an offshoot or St. Alban's, in' John's reign—tell how > our fathers knew tho art of making their) , _ : houses of. God ehtrancihgly glorious with* ' ~ ! in. The. priesfschamber.oyer.thp^.stoiiS,;, _ , porch,' reaching by a winding stone staircase, tells of,tho loving.attendance.upon:"""; the mysteries. The tiny round windows j low down in the south' wall of the chancel .„; mark where the sahotus beE was worked, -..-; Upon Saxon shrino that goes back to the davs of Felix (he landed from Bur- . .j j gundy'in 636, and- evangelised these ■■-,- 1 peoplo), Norman successors imposed their , ■ ■ j massive arch, and clustered pillars.. Early ; English and perpendicular and decorated ...; styles followed with modification and en- i largemenh ' The bolls wore hung in tho fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Tho . ; fontsaroii.mass of "gorgeous carving, ap- - i preached by flights' of stone paces, and , they have twenty-foot canopies. Tho ,i round towers are built of split flint, faced to a smooth edge. Tho stono for tho Ornamental- "flush work" was broughtfrom, Caen, in Normandy—where William the Norman had built the Abba'ye aurV' j Hommes... Twenty or thirty of the- - i churches' .(ohiefly. in the Broads), still . haVo thatched roofs-r-foi' the flag of the - 'v; country- is more enduring than gtraw" ■■■: : -^.I