'I have been here before'

 Summer weather being with us at last, I went for a walk yesterday, a little way out of town. Along the way, I came upon a handsome church standing in a large, well kept graveyard, and had a sudden strong feeling that 'I have been here before'. As I drew near, and walked up the churchyard path, it all came back to me – this was the first church that I found standing open when all others had been (and continued) closed for months on end by the pusillanimous C of E in response to the Covid panic. I had rarely been so glad to find a church open, and, of course, I wrote about it on this blog: here's the link.  All Saints, Alrewas (pronounced to rhyme with 'walrus', and with a root meaning of 'alder swamp') is now what it was then, unpretentious (though unusually wide) and full of interest – including the fragment of wall painting pictured above. This survives high up on the North chancel wall, and according to Pevsner is 15th-century work, showing a bishop and his acolyte. It's not in a very good state of preservation, but I think it is rather beautiful, and I wish there was more of it: it looks like an elegant design. 
  The walking was good, much of it along the towpath of the Trent and Mersey canal, and beyond Alrewas I came to the church of St Leonard, Wychnor ('village on a bank'), which stands alone in the fields, the remnant of a deserted medieval village. And it does indeed stand on a bank, with a fine view over the 'humps and tumps' of the former village and beyond to blue rolling hills. The church was closed, as it usually is, but by all accounts there isn't much of interest inside. When I was walking around the exterior, the sun happened to strike through the building and caught a corner of a stained glass window, illuminating the face of a fox – a curious effect. I learn from the online guidebook that the window of which I was seeing a corner – from the wrong side – was installed as recently as 2007, to commemorate members of the Walker family, and was made by a local craftsman, Graham Chaplin. Depicting the four seasons, it looks like a fine piece of work. Another day I might find the church open and have a proper look.