Viewed in a South Somerset garden on the last day of August.

 Crab apples, slow-worms and the sunset viewed on the last day of August.

Crab apples.

Slow-worms in a compost bin.

Cumulus Congestus boiling up over the Blackdown Hills in Somerset.

After a showery morning on the 28th August the afternoon brought forth Cumulus Congestus clouds boiling up over the Blackdown Hills in Somerset.

Cloudscape over the Blackdown Hills in Somerset on 28th August 2020.

Cumulus Congestus over the Blackdown Hills in Somerset on the 28th August.

Epitaphs of interest. At rest in the Churchyard of Christ Church, Redhill, North Somerset is C.T.D. "Sox" Hosegood FRAeS.

 The epitaph on his gravestone includes the description “A good egg”.

Charles Thomas Dennehy “Sox” Hosegood FRAeS is best remembered for his career in aviation.  He joined the Royal Navy just after the outbreak of World War Two and gained his Fleet Air Arm wings in July 1940.  Late in the war he was one of the first six Naval Pilots sent to America to convert to helicopters on the Sikorsky R4.  In March 1945 Hosegood became the Navy test pilot at the Joint Service Helicopter Test Unit of the Airborne Forces Experimental Establishment (AFEE) at Beulieu.  He left the Navy in November 1946.

In 1952 Hosegood became Chief Test Pilot of the Bristol Aeroplane Company’s Helicopter Division.  He worked on the Bristol Sycamore, the first British helicopter to gain its Certificate of Airworthiness.  He made the initial flights of the Bristol Belvedere and saw it into service with the RAF.

After Westland took over Bristol’s Helicopter Division in 1963 Hosegood joined the South Western Electricity Board to set up their Helicopter Unit for power line inspection duties.  He managed the Helicopter Unit for 20 years up to his retirement by which time it had expanded to cover power line inspections for 4 neighbouring Boards.

He is buried in the churchyard of Christ Church in the village of Redhill, North Somerset.

Source:

https://www.aerosociety.com/news/obituary-charles-thomas-dennehy-sox-hosegood/

The Church of England and "The hastening death of the parish".

As readers of this blog may have noticed I enjoy photographing churches and wandering around churchyards.  I am obviously stating the obvious, but there is history inside the church as well as outside where the locals are laid to rest.  Churches with their nineteenth century and earlier architecture make wonderfully picturesque photos, and when exploring a churchyard I always find something of interest whether it be a grave of a notable local or an interesting epitaph on a headstone.

An English town or village would not be the same without its church so it is sad to see that many churches are now unused.  Thankfully, many have been taken over by various church conservation trusts, and they do a fine job in preserving them. 

The Church of St. Thomas in the Somerset village of Thurlbear.  It is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Therefore I was disappointed to read an article in the 8^th of August edition of The Week.  It suggests that the Church of England will become more remote from its parishioners resulting in fewer active churches – no doubt more will regrettably close.  I reproduce the article, first published in The Daily Telegraph, below.

The C of E is killing off the parish church.

Giles Fraser

The Daily Telegraph

The parish church – “for centuries the bedrock of the Church of England’s engagement with communities throughout the land” – is dying, says Giles Fraser.  It’s not just secularisation that’s killing it, but the controlling nature of Church leaders.  As a recent piece by Revd Stephen Trott in The Church Times pointed out, the rot set in back in the 1970s, when the assets of individual parishes were effectively nationalised by the General Synod.  This enabled money to be redistributed from wealthy parishes to smaller ones, but it also spawned a burgeoning central administration that has since employed ever more accountants, administrators and archdeacons.  Ever fewer communities, meanwhile, have their own vicar.  Covid has accelerated this trend, with talk of digital aids such as zoom reducing the need for “analogue priests”, and the Archbishop of Canterbury ordering parish clergy not to enter their own churches over Easter to pray.  Such centralisation is a “recipe for institutional collapse”.  “The hastening death of the parish will tear the beating heart from many a small place that is reliant upon church to help organise its common life.” 

A lovely late evening sky over South Somerset.

I was struck by the beauty of the late evening sky over South Somerset on the 8th August about half an hour before sunset.  

The mares' tails were fascinating.

The South Somerset village of Ashill and its Church of St. Mary.

I passed through the South Somerset village of Ashill recently, and stopped to have a quick stroll around.  The village is just a few hundred yards west of the A358 and sits peacefully in the shadow of the Blackdown Hills.

Thirty four years ago Paul Newman described Ashill in his Somerset Villages, (Robert Hale Ltd., 1986):  “The village centre blends brick house with Victorian Gothic and sturdy stone cottages: a tight sociable combination of dwellings served by a primary school and a post office.

Ashill’s church durably combines Norman, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular work.  Inside snowy whitewash blends with honey Hamstone, creating an effect of delicate austerity.”

I couldn’t see the Post Office, but there is a pub and the school is still there with just beside it the Church of St. Mary with a pair of giant yews in its churchyard.

The Church of St. Mary in the South Somerset village of Ashill.

There is a Commonwealth War Grave sign on the church gate so I walked through to pay my respects.  The grave was that of Driver Charles Frank Donald Ottery of the Royal Army Service Corps who was killed on 29^th September 1941 aged 25.  He was the son of William Baker Ottery and Hannah Jane Ottery of Ashill, and is at rest beside others with the same surname; presumably relatives.