South Luffenham. CHURCH : ST MARY THE VIRGIN

The first Saturday in 2008. I had already written this off as a dead loss a few days previously due to predicted bitter cold and heavy

snow. For a time the Met Office had put just about the whole of the UK under a Severe Weather Warning, but things in the Peterborough area turned out not to be anywhere near as bad as we expected, and in the end the only problems that I had on the day was blinding sunshine!

  This was due to be a four church crawl of Rutland, my favourite county, with three of the churches in question being visited for the

first time. I had taken the bus from Stamford, and got off at my first point of call, which was South Luffenham.

Not being a driver, I rely on public transport and was going to walk between the four churches, ending up at North Luffenham, where I would get the bus back to Stamford, and then back to Peterborough.This would give me about five miles of walking, and the chance to burn off some of the Christmas excesses.

  South Luffenham church is to be found in the middle of the village, surrounded by some very nice houses, and with a small

village green in front of the church. The church has a square tower, with castellated top, and a two broach steeple coming out of the top of that. Very nicely carved gargoyles, albeit very weathered, surround the tower high up and there are two extremely well carved

and evil looking grotesques on the east wall. These look relatively modern, and certainly not as old as the gargoyles.

Sadly, some impressive looking and very ancient graves were for the most part very badly weathered and illegible.

  The church was locked; in fact even the porch was padlocked, which is very rare in this part of the world where most churches are open and welcoming