St Michael, Bockleton, Worcestershire

 

Just a place on the OS Map heading north, and we could not understand why it was not listed in the book on Herefordshire churches we had with us. Eventually it clicked that we must have crossed into Worcestershire, but the OS Map Aidan was using had no county boundary shown and therefore dates from when the two counties were united as one. Anyhow the clue was there staring us in the face as this sort of screen affair to the Norman doorway is a Worcs feature, and here both doorways have it. The tall and over-large Norman side windows to the nave must surely be an alteration. C13 chancel and north chapel of c1560 for the Barneby family. Inside a fantastical wooden screen seperates the nave from the chancel; it is by Woodyer as is the large east window filled with Kempe glass of 1906. Pretty stone font with heads and cusped arcading also Woodyer but quality work. Dumpy arcade to the chapel, but as you pass through the screen you spot the ornate monument to Robert d1597 and Mary d1574 Barneby made in 1594 by the dutchman Gerard Holleman. To the west of this a very good Victorian memorial to William Wolstenhulme Prescott d1865 signed by Thomas Woolner 1867. It has a peaceful effigy of the young man who contracted a fever and died after tending to his dying gamekeeper, a seen shown in the panel on the tomb chest. Finally a mention for the tower, an odd C17 or C18 affair with a crude Y-traceried west window.