Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in PrestonAtticus
History
Our Churches and Chapels: Their Parsons, Priests, & Congregations: Being a Critical and Historical Account of Every Place of Worship in Preston
Atticus
Preston (Lancashire, England) -- Church history
Our Parish Church has a good contour, and many of its exterior
architectural details are well conceived and arranged; but, like
other buildings of the same order, it has got a multiplicity of
strange hobgoblin figure-heads about it which serve no purpose
either earthly or heavenly, and which are understood by hardly one
out of five million. We could never yet make it out why those
grotesque pieces of masonry--gargoyles, we believe, they are called-
-were fixed to any place of worship. Around our Parish Church and
half-way up the steeple, there are, at almost every angle and
prominence, rudely carved monstrosities, conspicuous for nothing but
their ineffable and heathenish ugliness. Huge eyes, great mouths,
immense tooth, savage faces and distorted bodies are their prime
characteristics. The man who invented this species of ecclesiastical
decoration must have been either mad or in "the horrors." An evenly
balanced mind could never have thought of them, and why they should
he specially tacked to churches is a mystery in accordance with
neither King Solomon nor Cocker. The graveyard of our Parish Church
is, we dare say, something which very few people think of. We have
seen many such places in our time; but that in connection with our
Parish Church is about the grimmest specimen in the lot. It has a
barren, cold, dingy, unconsecrated look with it; and why it should
have we can't tell. Either ruffianism or neglect must at some time
have done a good stroke of business in it; for many of the
gravestones are cracked in two; some are nearly broken to pieces;
and a considerable number of those in the principal parts of the
yard are being gradually worn out. We see no fun, for instance, in
"paving" the entrances to the church with gravestones. Somebody
must, at some time, have paid a considerable amount of money in
getting the gravestones of their relatives smoothed and lettered;
and it could never have been intended that they should be flattened
down, close as tile work, for a promiscuous multitude of people to
walk over and efface. The back of the churchyard is in a very weary,
delapidated and melancholy state. Why can't a few shrubs and flowers
be planted in it? Why is not the ground trimmed up and made decent?
From the time when the Egyptians worshipped cats and onions down to
the present hour, religious folk have paid some special attention to
their grave spaces, and we want to see the custom kept up. Our
Parish Church yard has a sad, forsaken appearance; if it had run to
seed and ended in nothing, or had been neglected and closed up by an
army of hypochondriacs, it could not have been more gloomy, barren,
or disheartening. The ground should be looked after, and the stones
preserved as much as possible. It is a question of shoes v.
gravestones at present, and, if there is not some change of
position, the shoes will in the end win.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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