A Charlotte Brontë of wood and stone

Sarah Losh is not forgotten (as the subtitle of this book suggests) in her own village of Wreay (pronounced ‘Rear’), south east of Carlisle in Cumberland. The locals refer to ‘Miss Sarah’ as if she were still alive, rather as they speak about Lady Anne Clifford at Appleby. Anybody who has visited the village and seen the extraordinary church built in 1841-2 by Miss Losh at her own expense will know why. Travellers are met with the apparition of a small Roman basilica stranded on a village green, embellished with mind-blowing carvings. They are partly inspired by fossils, obscure natural history specimens and esoteric symbols.

The Losh graves in the churchyard are strikingly odd and personal too. They comprise naturalistic boulder-like slabs carved with shells, branches and palm trees. In one corner a large stone pinecone commemorates some pine seeds (and the sender) sent to Sarah Losh by a soldier friend, Major William Thein, massacred (with 16,000 others) by the Afghans on the North-West Frontier.