Green chapels

Lately, I’ve been fascinated by small country churches – the quirkier, lonelier and more dilapidated, the better. There are several fitting that description on the high ground west of the Fens, where I often walk and cycle. Pictured below is All Saints’ in the shrunken medieval village of Denton. It fell into ruin in living memory, last seeing a service in the 1960s.

I was recently reminded of another melancholy ruin on watching David Lowery’s big-screen retelling of Sir

Gawain and the Green Knight. Garlanded with ivy, the shell of St Mary’s at Woolley is a dead ringer for the Green Chapel, where the Arthurian hero’s supernatural adversary resides. Coming across these forgotten churches, I can’t help but feel a poignant sense of loss. They were hubs of community life for generations.