pumpkinstrokemarrow

To take our minds off these knotty problems, BH suggested a swing through Mickelham, a village in the Mole Gap. Contains, amongst other things, a gastro pub called the Running Horse, a private school related to Gordonstoun and the benefits from which are to be had from £25,000 a year per pupil. You would have to be earning a lot more than I ever managed to extract from HMG to be able to afford this, even supposing one thought mixing one's sprogs in with the wannabee toffs rather than getting on with regular, lager drinking folk was a good plan. Perhaps Cameron should claw back a little extra by stripping the charitable status from these places.

There was also an unusual church, so unusual that Pevsner (or at least one of his young collaborators) was moved to some dry wit on its account. He even talked of the chancel arch being duffed up. Perhaps this is the sort of slang one acquires at the school. We were told that there had been a church to St Michael and all the angels (Michelangelo in Italian?) since Saxon times and that chunks of the present fabric were late Norman. Neither the Saxons nor the Normans seem to have thought it worth their while to plant a castle there to guard the gap against aliens marching up from Sussex, although the Normans did get around to planting one at Betchworth around, the corner to the south east. There is, I think, the odd pill box in the vicinity but those, of course, were rather later.

What was unusual, for me anyway, was the Norman, Romanesque or Byzantine style of the extravagant renovations in the 19th century. Usually such things are done in the Decorated style, and while Norman & etc is common enough in the low church prayer booths in towns which were built in considerable numbers at about that time, I have never come across it in the country. All in all, as they say about the amber nectar, an amusing little church.

Three more oddities in the outer regions. First, it seems that if you are a viscount either you come big or you just rate a bigger gravestone. The viscount's stone here must have been about ten feet long and three feet wide. Didn't say anything about burying his horse, dogs and family with him. Second, despite it being rather a dinky part of Surrey, some of those buried here could not afford grave stones and had to settle for grave boards. Maybe four feet long by one foot deep and mounted along the middle of the grave. Name and details painted on the board by the local sign writer. But not sure that I approve of renovating such things. They should be allowed to moulder away undisturbed along with the remains of the person concerned. From that point of view, wooden board much more sensible than a stone board. Third, somewhere at the chancel end, was a bit of wall built in a chequerboard pattern with one foot alternating squares of dressed black flint and white clunch. A rather grander version of what can be seen in the garden walls at either or both of Hampton Court Palace and Nonsuch Park Mansion. Must go and check.

After the church, a stroll in the woods behind, mainly beech. Which appear to have naturally regenerated after some fairly drastic clearance event about 30 years ago. Maybe a hurricane. Which gave the wood a flavour quite unlike that of undisturbed mature woods - but a flavour which did not seem to include any birds.