Hihgnam Church

After exploring Highnam Court, we took a wander down past the bottom lake towards the church, passing this carving on the way.

The church itself is fairly inspiring.

Which is good, because they have a medieval 'pinnacle' (that's 'spire' to you and me) in the grounds of Highnam Court, taken from Gloucester Cathedral.

Those who know this blog will know that I'm a bit of a graveyard groupie. Any excuse to look for unusual headstones and stone carvings.

There certainly were some interesting stones at Highnam.

Christogram

Christogram

Beautiful Grave Edging

However, it was a much more recent grave that caught my attention.

I'd never seen anything quite like this before. The sides were engraved with music.

 

 

 

Then, on the back, information about his life appears to have been interspersed with hieroglyphs depicting things I'm guessing he was fond of:

I'm not sure about the second one or the third one. The second I assume to be a building of some sort. The Taj Mahal springs to mind because of the spires, but I doubt it. The third is a symbol for something I don't know, religious probably.

As for the rest, I'm going to take a guess at: His house (Highnam Court), beekeeping, cricket, Bentleys (good man!), theatre, the Masons (of which I'm assuming he was one), Rolls Royce, and perhaps he was also a Magistrate too?

What a lovely and original idea.

The interior of the church is quite spectacular. Beautifully painted, lots of gold leaf. There's a gallery on their website, which probably does more justice than my fumbled shots.

When you stand right up by the altar, there is a tiny window just visible at the top of the bell tower. It's made from green stained glass with a red cross in the middle that glows like fire when the sun moves into the west. Truly stunning.

There was only one bell in the tower. Perhaps he wasn't such a fan of those.

Still, very pretty. There was also an abundance of Monkey Puzzle trees in the churchyard. Clearly somebody had a sense of humour.

And finally, a nice view.

Flat-bottomed Trees You Make The Rockin' World Go Round