In ‘Church Going’, the poem that gives this charming book its title, Philip Larkin talks about ‘one of the crew that tap and jot and know what rood-lofts were… Some ruin-bibber, randy for antique’. Well, Andrew Ziminski is king of the ruin-bibbers, randy for antique churches. He doesn’t just know what a rood-loft is; he’s also repaired loads of them. For 35 years, he has been a church conservator. In his first book, The Stonemason, he brilliantly explained his job. In this sequel, he takes us all round the church, from gravestones to altar cloths, and explains every conceivable aspect of the great parish church.
Guides like this have been done before, but not by someone who actually repairs churches. Ziminski has dug deep into the stone skin of these buildings and can tell you exactly how they were made. He knows the difference between Victorian materials – American pitch-pine roof joists – and the ancient, local oak used for his latest project, the medieval church of St Mary’s, Steeple Ashton, Wiltshire. He is so dedicated to saving churches that he even travels around with a bucket of lime putty to touch up loose sections of tombstones scaled off by frost.
Our churches are under constant siege from the weather. Some grotesques – those creatures on church walls that, unlike gargoyles, don’t disguise spouts – have been subjected to constant saturation and freeze-thaw weathering for 500 winters, progressively losing their detail. Deliciously, they are known as ‘hunky punks’ in Somerset.
Ziminski lives in Somerset but has worked all over the country, so he knows, for example, that the best lych-gates (the covered gateways at the churchyard entrance) are found in Kent.
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