All Saints, Turkdean, Gloucestershire

4th July 2011

I set off for a day in the Gloucestershire Cotswolds, and a day of open churches. The first church was one I believed I had never been to before, but as I pulled up outside all felt rather familiar, and indeed I was here in April 2004 when there had been a sprinkling of snow on the ground. This was also the first day proper of using my new digital camera and seeing how long the battery would last. I had bought one spare. All Saints is a pleasant small church, originally Norman. A Perp tower was inserted into the west end of the nave, but it seems shortly afterwards that a decision was made to rebuild much of the church adding a south aisle. The porch shelters a fine C15 doorway, but fragments of the original doorway to the west and built into the walls of the tower and the porch. C19 neo Norman chancel arch, with a pretty screen of a surprising date - 1949. The font and the pulpit are crisply detailed Perp but retooled. BoE mentions a wall painting in the spandrel of the arcade, and for the second time I missed it; it must be very feint.