Church Going by Andrew Ziminski: A joyous guide to the country church

CHURCH GOING by Andrew Ziminski (Profile £25, 416pp)

Church Going is available now

Did you know there are more churches in the UK than pubs? Or that more than 600 parishes in Wales begin with the prefix ‘Llan-’, meaning land, followed by the name of a saint, to make the likes of Llanbedr or Land of St Peter? 

Churches are the stalwart of most towns and cities, the focal point of many a village or hamlet and often the grey gash cut on a lonely landscape. But when was the last time you crossed the lychgate threshold? 

Stonemason Ziminski has spent much of his life restoring some of these beautiful buildings and in the process has gained encyclopaedic knowledge of their every nook and cranny. 

Combining examples and the history of each church he encounters, this insightful book is stuffed full of ecclesiastical wonders. Split into three sections, the churchyard, the church exterior and the interior, Ziminski follows the journey any visitor would go on as they enter a church. 

 If you have ever done a lap of a churchyard you might have noticed that the north side is often rather less populated with graves. This is because it used to be reserved for unbaptised infants, drunkards, suicides and others deemed damned. It is not surprising then that the door on the north side of the church was called The Devil’s Door. 

While working on a lock at St Peter and St Paul’s, Kilmersdon, Somerset, the normally unshakeable Ziminski was spooked initially by such ‘north side’ spirits. Every time he opened the door he felt a ‘strange and unnatural force pulling the door closed, no matter how hard I tried to keep it open’. 

Flummoxed and a little offput he finally realised that the unholy intervention was the work of generations of spiders – a huge cobweb acted as a restrictive hinge drawing the door back to its closed position. 

Despite the rather dour nature of the subject, Ziminski adds an impressive amount of levity. 

For instance, altars, the holiest of holies in a church, were at one point seriously under threat. After the Norman Invasion, altars were positioned away from the east wall of the chancel (the eastern end of the church, often separated from the main body by a screen). 

St John’s Cross (concrete replica), Iona Abbey, Iona, Scotland

But in the early 13th century altars became central for the Eucharist, the rite in which bread and wine become the body and blood of Christ. The sacred nature of such a transformation led to the altar’s return to its eastern position. The clergy felt it right to keep the mystery of the Eucharist from the prying laity by turning their backs to them. 

This exclusion did not go down well and added fuel to the Protestant reformist fire. Things got so bad that in 1550 Edward VI ordered the destruction of every altar in his realm. But, given their weighty nature, many didn’t travel far. 

They became paving slabs, foot bridges – and in one case a nearby farm used an altar as ‘a convenient slab on which to salt meat’. 

What becomes abundantly clear in this rather joyous book is the skill and devotion to design and masonry that went into every church. 

Ziminski leaves us with the sense that even if you are not entering these hallowed places to commune with the Lord, you should go and appreciate the improbable artistry to be found.