UPTON. CHURCH : ST JOHN THE BAPTIST

This was an absolute delight!!! Shortly after leaving Castor and heading for Sutton I found myself at Upton instead....begging the question how it is impossible to miss a complete village!!!!

  Upton is a really small village just a few miles from Castor, but their church, St John The Baptist, is light years away from St Kyneburghs.

  Going through the village, follow the arrow that points to the church, past the houses, over the cattle grid (good job that I wasn't wearing my heels!!) and in to a grass field. Go past the small herd of cows having their Sunday morning breakfast and you find yourself at St John The Baptist. In the middle of a field about 150 yards from the nearest house.

  This church is tiny but it is in well kept grounds and a village as small as Upton does very well to support a church at all.

  One intersting feature of this church is that dogs gravestones are lined up alongside the North Churchyard wall. A little further investigations have shown that these belong to gamekeepers dogs, who were interred just outside of the church grounds. See photographs right and second from bottom.

  Also, those with an interest in archaeology might appreciate the man made earthworks which can be found close to the church.

  As I said earlier, an absolute delight to look at this one. Something a little out of the ordinary...but I bet that this is perishingly cold in Winter!!!!

  On my way back from this church, as I headed back towards Upton village itself, I turned around for a long range shot of this lovely little church, in the middle of a field, with nothing else near it, I took the photograph below....ignoring the fact that there are no sandbags or red coated soldiers, does it remind anyone else of the mission at Rorke's drift before the Zulu's attacked it!!!

Nice time looking at Sutton...once I could find it. Missed the sign post for the village and ended up somewhere about two miles down the road, still there was a church there as well so no problems!! On the way back, I found out why I had missed the turning to Sutton.....no signpost!!!!

  Lovely village, with the church being ideally set in some really nice coutryside. The church of St Michael and All Angels is to be found on Lovers Lane!!!

  Made a return trip to this church at the start of Spring and the church grounds looked beautiful with the Spring flowers out.

  On both instances of my visiting this church it was locked, but fellow local churchcrawler Chris Stafford was able to get inside on his visit and the photograph of the stained glass window was kindly submitted by him.