More border-crossing, with friends this time, took us across into Worcestershire and to Leigh (pronounced "Lie"), prettily hidden among lovely country lanes.

First we visited the huge beautifully-preserved barn at Leigh Court, built c.1344 (when the trees used were felled) to provide storage for the Grange of Pershore Abbey, which the site then was. We remember just how rich and powerful some of these abbeys had become, and why (ecclesiastical matters apart) they were such a sitting target for Henry VIII's asset-stripping.

The church too is no mean structure for such small place (although we remember that Anglo-Saxon foundations such as this had large parochiae, in theis case running up into the Malverns) and that is the influence of the Abbey too. The structure we see is basically a Norman rebuild on the site of an earlier Anglo-Saxon foundation, with the usual later mediaeval extensions and Victorian renovations.

Our eyes were caught by the striking Romanesque statue of Christ, now in the South Aisle but once in a niche on the outside of the north wall (whose core is Anglo-Saxon). Pevsner tries to make it a coffin lid of c.1220, but shape and style are all wrong for that and with the V&A I go for nearer 1100 and very likely a proud feature of the Norman re-build, looking out perhaps to the monastic accommodation.

There are some fine Devreux memorials to enjoy, but even more lively is the stained glass window by Thomas Denny (of the Traherne windows in Hereford Cathedral and much more: see https://www.thomasdenny.co.uk. (I had the privilege of dedicating some of his work in St Catherine's College, Cambridge - see https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/about-us/chapel/about-chapel/wisdom-window where a fine address by Denny is reproduced).