Roger le Poer, better known maybe as Roger of Salisbury, is a Norman who rose from being a priest in a small chapel near Caen to being Bishop of Salisbury, Lord Chancellor and Lord Keeper of England in the reign of Henry I. This is (maybe) his effigy in Salisbury Cathedral.
In 1130 or thereabouts, it’s a mistake to get bogged down in dates over such a passage of time, he built a castle and church in Devizes. Simon Jenkins in his England’s Thousand Best Churches remarks that he might still recognise them in this quintessential English country town. The church, St John’s, is remarkable. It suffered a serious fire in 2006 and, thanks to the insurance company, the Norman chancel now looks as it did a thousand years ago. Here is some purple prose from Simon Jenkins who wrote this when the stonework was blackened with age before the fire.
“The chancel wins the day, tunnel-like, a stage-set for a Norman drama of incense, hooded monks and drawn swords. Seen from the nave it is a forest of shafts, rising to a low rib vault. This frames the extraordinary east end, a riotous tableau of blind arcading, intersecting arches and zigzag carving. The poppy heads on the choir stalls stand to attention in the foreground.” My take is that it is one of the best Norman churches I have seen in England. The Perpendicular nave in many other churches would be the main attraction but here the Norman chancel wins the day, as Simon says.
After that, a walk along a canal should be an anti-climax but the virtuosity of Roger’s Norman architects is reprised by the engineers who built the Kennet and Avon canal. They created a flight of twenty-nine locks rising 237 feet over two miles, a 1 in 30 gradient.
It’s not rocket science, as they say, to make the locks. The problem is to pump enough water up to the top of the flight to keep them filled. Originally this was done by a pumping station filling large side ponds. This is still the case but since 2012 the pumps are solar powered, shifting five thousand million litres of water every year; coo!
I am reluctant to return to the contentious EU referendum but I’d like to mention that in the pub where we are staying the double yellow-headed amazon (not the barmaid) that you might recognise as a parrot and the publican calls Pele says “Brexit” – either a reflection of local opinion or because he reads The Daily Telegraph on the floor of his cage. He also recites Shakespearean soliloquies – but only in private.
It is not often one meets such a wise parrot.