Simon Knott

Lewis Grassic Gibbon's masterpiece 'Sunset Song', the first part of 'A Scots Quair', has a description of a rural Scottish kirk as it appeared in the winter of 1911, with its ruined tower and stained glass.

'Only coarse creatures like Catholics wanted a kirk to look like a grocer's calendar'.

'Here lived the architects Augustus Charles Pugin born 1762 died 1832, Augustus Welby N Pugin born 1812 died 1852'

A somewhat neglected memorial plaque high above Great Russell Street in Bloomsbury, not far from the British Museum for #MemorialsMonday.

On the feast of St Clare, she stands on the right with the Blessed Virgin in slightly mawkish glass by Hardman & Co, 1912 at Fornham All Saints, Suffolk.

Fornham All Saints: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/fornhamas.html

3/3 St Clare and a prioress in 16th Century Flemish glass now in the Burrell Collection, Glasgow. She's the patron saint of needleworkers, television and extra-sensory perception, and today is her feast.

2/3 St Clare on the left holding a monstrance and St George with a sword on the remarkable 16th Century roodscreen at Horsham St Faith, Norfolk. The vandalism probably occured within twenty years of the screen being made.

Horsham St Faith: www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/horshamstfai...

Today's the feast of St Clare of Assisi, 13th Century foundress of the Poor Clares. Here she is on the c1500 roodscreen at Trimingham, Norfolk. 1/3

Trimingham: www.norfolkchurches.co.uk/trimingham/t...

Jo Gilbert is an Aberdeen poet who writes and performs in Doric. Though walking the streets of Aberdeen can be a Doric stramash itself.
bsky.app/profile/simo...

Doric is the dialect of Aberdeen and NE Scotland. When the Scots arrived in north Britain in the 5C and 6C, the culture and language of the indigenous Picts were subsumed and gradually pushed north-eastwards. Doric may be Britain's last surviving urban dialect with Pictish influence.

St Lawrence has the unusual distinction of being patron of trades requiring open fires (cooks, bakers, charcoalmakers etc) and those whose trades are threatened by them (librarians, booksellers, and, as you say, archivists).

2/2 'we are the north east and this is oor hame your hame we are hame - Jo Gilbert'

Painted window shutters in Littlejohn Street, Aberdeen.

'what's the English for sotter or greip or smore, or pleiter or glanching, or well-henspeckled? And if you said gloaming was sunset you'd fair be a liar - Lewis Grassic Gibbon'

Painted window shutters in Littlejohn Street, Aberdeen.

And here is Icklingham All Saints, one of two medieval churches in this busy village along the Mildenhall to Bury St Edmunds road.

Icklingham All Saints: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/icklinga.html
#StainedGlassSunday

Two 14th Century saints at Icklingham All Saints, Suffolk. One holds a martyr's palm, the other what might be a fuller's club, making him St James the Less. The church is in the care of @TheCCT and is open every day.

Icklingham All Saints: www.suffolkchurches.co.uk/icklinga.html
#StainedGlassSunday

I was once in a school production of Erpingham Camp. One of the milder ones, but still might raise an eyebrow in these more puritan times...

3/3 St Lawrence with his book and grid iron on the screen at Ranworth, Norfolk. Today is his feast (though celebrated tomorrow, as it's Sunday).

2/3 The Martyrdom of St Lawrence, burnt on a grid iron, a 15th Century boss in Norwich Cathedral. He's the patron saint of those who work with open fires. St Vincent, a fellow 3rd Century Spanish deacon, suffered a similar martyrdom, and their stories were often conflated.

Today's the feast of St Lawrence (although celebrated tomorrow as today's Sunday). A 3rd Century deacon martyr, he's on the screen at Ludham, Norfolk, with his grid iron, the instrument of his martyrdom. St Apollonia, a fellow martyr, holds a tooth in pincers beside him. 1/3

I see Nature and Nurture have cancelled each other out in today's Philip Larkin birthday derby...

Perfect timing by the EFL to arrange the Coventry vs Hull match on Larkin’s birthday. The classic Larkin derby, nature vs nurture.

2/2 In letters to Monica Jones from Belfast, Larkin told her of bike rides he'd taken out into the countryside of Counties Antrim and Down. Churches he visited gave rise to 'Church Going', one of the most famous poems in 'The Less Deceived':

As well as today being Larkin's birthday, this year it's 70 years since the publication of his first mature volume, 'The Less Deceived'. The poems in it were mostly written during his five relatively happy years in Belfast, and the volume would be published in 1955, the year he moved to Hull. 1/2

I'm sure that's right. An affectation, but a powerful one.

2/2 A plaque outside the Royal Station Hotel reminds us that Philip Larkin was a regular here, taking his Sunday lunch in the Brigantine Room. Behind the hotel on the station concourse is a statue of Larkin, and by a sign advertising the hotel's wedding packages, a witty product placement perhaps.

Philip Larkin was born #OTD 9 Aug 1922. The Royal Station Hotel, now simply the Royal Hotel, stands beside Paragon station on Ferensway, Hull. His poem 'Friday Night at the Royal Station Hotel' imagines the hotel on a Friday night, as he waits for Monica Jones to arrive on the train from Leicester.

2/2 The poem was not published in his lifetime, but has since become one of Larkin's best loved poems.

Larkin usually worked over his poems for weeks, but just a single draft of this one exists, dated the day before her birthday.

Glass by Powell & Sons, 1920 at Aldborough, Norfolk. Little lives.

The poet Philip Larkin was born #OTD 9 August 1922 in Coventry. In 1950, while working in Leicester as an assistant librarian, he formed a lifelong relationship with Monica Jones.

On the 7th of May, 1977, he gave her the book 'Thorburn's Mammals' for her birthday. Inside the flyleaf, he wrote:

2/2 Thomasz Tuszko's Carmelites window at St Mary's Inverness, 2013. St Faustina beneath the Holy Trinity on the left. On the right, St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, St Thérèse of Lisieux and St Teresa of Avila.

Today's the feast of St Teresa Benedicta of the Cross, better known as Edith Stein, German philosopher and Discalced Carmelite, murdered in Auschwitz #OTD 9 August 1942. She appears in a detail of Tomasz Tuszko's Carmelites window in St Mary, Inverness, 2013.

The Abbey Stadium is on that road, the nearest thing Cambridge has to a cathedral! #CambridgeUnited #COYU

Yes, though exhausting too!