BRIANW

By BRIANW

Angels Of St. Mary's, Burham

Me and my brother decided to have our own Christmas party today. So we headed to the Red Bull at Eccles for full on turkey with all the trimmings (plus an oversized Yorkshire pudding each). The food, atmosphere, staff and wine were all just perfect. To add to the ambience our table was right next to a lovely, warm open fire. We just had the best time.
On the way back we stopped at St.Mary's Church, Burham. My brother mentioned the fact that you could actually go inside and it was then that I saw these beautiful angels raised above the altar (see extra for a "profile" view of them - I loved how it looked as if a wing had brushed through the wet plaster as it set). This is what my brother found about the church and included in his blip on the 26th September:

This flint and ragstone Norman church stands peacefully under the North Downs, on the Pilgrims' route to Canterbury and has a history stretching back over almost 1000 years. It is sited where the original village of Burham would have stood but was deserted and left largely redundant by 1850 (it finally closed in 1973 but it is now thankfully in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust and has been re-opened to the public), the village having already relocated some years earlier to higher ground a mile away from the River Medway as it expanded and became known as a "cement village", after the discovery of the manufacturing process for Portland cement (so called because of its resemblance to Portland stone). A new church was built at the new location in the 1880's - ironically this church no longer exits as it had to be demolished due to its poor foundations, whilst St Mary's is still standing proud after nearly a millennium.

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