St Mary the Virgin, Aldermaston, Berkshire

Welcome to another instalment in my #churchproject that I’m sharing across multiple Hive communities and my own blog. This #churchproject post is going out on the brilliant #wednesdaywalk community run by @tattoodjay

Quite often churches are in beautiful locations and this one is no exception, where it’s perched on a hilltop overlooking rolling countryside for miles around, as we are on the edge of the Wessex Downs here, an area that includes West Berkshire, Wiltshire, parts of Hampshire and Dorset.

Aldermaston is an interesting village and I wish I knew more about it, as down the road is the AWE, which stands for Advanced Weapons Establishment. It’s a strange place because the village is so serene and quiet, yet behind it is this place surrounded by barbed wire, high security and decades of secrets. Some of it not so secret, as around the corner is of course the infamous Greenham Common, now another place of serenity, as a site of special scientific interest, with its heather, wild ponies etc.

Aldermaston church dates back to the 12th century and walking around it was fascinating, there are some very old gravestones there, interesting details in the church. Some inscriptions I couldn’t quite make out other than they were….old!

I doubt this old lantern has been lit since the Victorian era.

I always take a photo of church signs because when going through photos in Lightroom they act as markers between one church and the next.

This gate is dedicated to the people of Aldermaston parish who lost their lives in world war 1

The best picture I got of the church in it’s entirety and I’m finding 7:30pm a good time for photography at this time of year, especially over the summer months, as the light at any other time of the day can be very harsh.

Love the hexagonal clock, hang on I just said above it was 7:30, is the clock running slow? Had they not set it for British summertime?

Details like this fascinate me. Is it a two headed beast? Two birds side by side? There were two of these carvings just above the front door to the church. They are in fact Doves, the symbol of peace, love etc. https://seearoundbritain.com/venues/st-mary-the-virgin-church-red-lane-aldermaston-berkshire-rg7-4hr

Next to the door is this stone tablet, a very old stone dating back to 1700.

Behind the church I found some very old stones, that charted the lives of people born in the late 1700s who got to see the turn of the century, as they lived into and died in the 1800s. The moss on this stone drew my attention photographically.

Doorways are a sub-project of the church project in a way.

The stone cross memorial to three people, Edwin James, Philip Gerard and Violet Herrin. Three generations I think. One of whom died fighting over Nazi Germany, clearly a pilot.

The main entrance to the church and will keep an eye out for open days here, it’s worth seeing inside, there are some old wall paintings inside and beautiful stained glass.

Love benches against walls for some reason, another sub-project perhaps?

This old iron cross was fascinating, no details on it and I’d have to ask someone who looks after the church if they knew, or look up the records. I’ve come across a few of them around the country. Any ideas?

The light was lovely, picked out the grasses and dandelion clocks.

Where does this pathway go? It leads into the grounds of what was Aldermaston Manor, a place nobody can get into nowadays and has security.

Former doorway?

These stones were very hard to read but with the help of AI;

Thanks for the image. Here’s the transcription of the gravestone, as best as I can make out:

⸻

To the memory of
ELIZABETH
wife of EDWARD KENRICK Esq.
of the County of Worcester & daughter of
WILLIAM HICKMAN Esq.
She was born the 17th May 1780 & died on the
17th of April 1833 in the 53rd year of her age.
A most tender wife, an affectionate mother.
To her husband and nine children
her death was an irreparable loss.
Her life was a model of excellence.
A daughter, a wife, a mother and a friend.
In her death an example of
Christian piety and resignation.

⸻

There’s an additional inscription near the bottom, but it’s quite worn. It seems to say:

“Here also lie the remains of EDWARD, son
of the above W. and E. HICKMAN
… [illegible] 1842 …”

The Church Project

There are some 16,000 churches spread across the UK and all have some interesting stories to tell. Whilst I’ve never been a church goer at any point in my lifetime, apart from a short period of time when Tina and I would take Alice (my step-daughter) to our local church where we lived at the time, as she wanted to learn more about Christianity; I think we all got more than we bargained for, then moved house and haven’t been back since. Religion perhaps isn’t for us but churches are, they’re for everyone. I think this is because for the two of us, we’ve both grown up with an immense gratitude towards churches, we got dragged around them as kids by parents who had some fascination with these ancient places. Ok I used to hate the national trust, garden centres, churches, scones and jazz. Now I love those things and churches too. Then of course Tina and I got married in a Methodist church, North Camp, Farnborough where Alice went to her youth club as a young girl some years before.

This project is very much a husband and wife thing, it gets us out, we explore and discover places we wouldn’t have known existed otherwise.room for