Kilpeck and Kempley - small churches that pack a big punch

South Entrance 

I'm not a churchgoer in either the religious or the Philip Larkin sense of the term, but some churches are worth a visit. St Mary and St David in Kilpeck in Herefordshire is a tiny church in a tiny village which will take your breath away. Its Romanesque carvings by masons of the  Herefordshire School date from around 1140 but appear almost surreally pristine in the sharpness of their definition. They are characterful, clever, witty and deeply symbolic, combining realism, fantasy and abstraction in a beguiling and thoroughly modern mix. The tiny triple-arched doorway is supported by double columned jambs carved from single pieces of sandstone. The left side has two helmeted warrior figures turned towards the entrance with weapons raised, almost as if they are guarding the doorway. Above the tympanum which represents a tree of life, there are arches of fantastical figures and beakheads with an angel flying, wings outstretched in the centre. Some 86 corbels mark out the the roofline, each individual, distinctive;  some quirky, some cute, some downright obscene. The famous sheela-na-gig squats laughing at our outrage, ambiguous enough to have been spared Victorian bowdlerism and still a mystery today. A hare and hound cuddly enough to be straight out of a children's story sits alongside man-eating animals, elegantly craved birds and fish and characterful human faces. 

Inside the space is small, sparse, slightly musty despite being well-tended, with plain white-washed walls and a simple three part structure - nave, chancel and apse. The chancel arch is supported by three tiers of figures, unidentified saints or evangelists, possibly including a St Peter holding keys. There are suggestions that they may have been influenced by similarly groups figures on the cathedral at Santiago de Compostela, in itself an incredible idea for a tiny church that feels remote today. But it doesn't really matter: the figures' power is in their characterisation and observation, creating each as individuals and giving them a sense of life despite the blank eye sockets. The absolute highlight in this box of treasures are the 'river' vaults  in the apse. They appear to flow form four mouths in the centre of roof, perhaps the four rivers of Eden, their rippling structure defying the solidity of their architectural purpose and perfectly melding naturalism with abstract design.

Detail of  Apostles, St Mary's Church, Kempley Gloucestershire

About 20 miles east lies another remote rural church, St Mary's at Kempley. A plain, and oddly pink-painted on one wall, exterior belies an interior of ghostly faint Romanesque frescoes, long hidden beneath white-wash and now revealed as an echo of what must have been a glorious sight. The church and the earliest frescoes in the chancel date from about 1130 and depict the Apocalypse. On the ceiling, Christ sits in majesty on a rainbow surrounded by angels and the symbols of the evangelists, his hand raised in a blessing that is intended both for the apostles who line the walls, their heads tilted towards him, their hands raised in surprised wonder, and the priests who stood below to administer the Mass. Above the chancel windows, their deep bays exaggerated by foreshortened chequering, sit representations of Jerusalem as the heavenly city. 

The complexity and completeness of this decorative scheme would have been only just visible to the general congregation, but there are fragments of later murals in the nave. High on the wall above the chancel arch and now barely visible, is scene of the three Marys at the tomb; but this is actually the scene reenacted by priests, bringing the Bible to life for their illiterate audience. Elsewhere the murder of Becket, St Michael weighing souls and St Christopher are all visible. Most intriguingly, there is a Wheel of Life, dating from the 15th century: indistinct now, it would have once shown the 10 ages of man from cradle to grave, surrounding a central figure of Christ. The random positioning of these remaining designs, and their spread throughout the nave, suggests that once, on the eve of the Reformation, the whole small church would have been exuberantly decorated.

It is easy to forget, that what we now see as art or history, or as something with spiritual significance, was in the late Medieval period, a piece of total education, designed to bring knowledge, fear, hope and obedience to a population for whom churchgoing was a basic reality of life. What are now quiet rural backwaters, with a musty smell of disuse were active and alive - funerals and christenings, sermons, music, confession, candles. What now remains is a fractional glimpse of that reality. The Kilpeck sculptures would have been painted, their blank eyes drawn in, their costumes coloured - it would have been gaudy, perhaps more like a Hindu temple than a Christian church to modern sensibilities, certainly more like a Spanish Catholic shrine. The Kempley paintings would have been bright and all but overpowering, like a glorious frescoed chapel in an Italian duomo. And what we also forget, is that these churches are a rarity because of the rampant iconoclasm which the Reformation unleashed in England, leaving a terrible legacy of destruction and loss which is somehow swept under the carpet of history. Search out these small treasures and rejoice in the anonymous craftsmen who made them and the society which took pleasure and comfort from such creative beauty.