It's the Easter Monday Bank Holiday, so we all have the first day of Summer Term off. We will meet tomorrow at 9:00 for our first intensive session dedicated to the study of mostly local medieval art. In relief of a little preparation fatigue, and to get some needed exercise, I took a busman's holiday and rode the 10 miles or so south to the small town of Ricall where Pevsner tells me there is a fine Norman doorway. It's a sunny day with a north breeze and I was there in just half an hour taking the old railway line, now converted into a popular bicycle path, directly there.
The superb ornately carved doorway is protected by a porch facing south into a quiet churchyard. It was made there in the early to mid 12th century, probably by the master sculptors working on the well funded and sumptuous Selby abbey (q.v.) five miles down the river. It has four orders becoming more abstract moving outwards. The overall effect is stunning.
Unfortunately, there's a locked gate across the porch, so I couldn't get very close.
There are several surviving Norman doorways in the city of York and we'll visit a couple of them tomorrow on our first look tour of the city's monuments. Nine hundred years ago, we suppose, most of the churches had entrances like this one. You would pass under them often, the hair on the back of your neck standing up in the presence of the scary beaked birds, your heart pumping a little faster in the presence of the serpent curled around the tree in the garden of Eden.
Pevsner tells us that the entire church except this door was dismantled in the 1830s. Each stone was labeled, then put back in its original location once the foundations were updated. So the church looks very healthy despite its impressive age. This kind of love of heritage has a lot to do with why England is such a treasure trove of art and architecture today.
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