Tilmanstone Church

As I said yesterday I visited Tilmanstone and took a look at St Andrew's Church. The first thing that I noticed was the stocks outside the lytch gate. A double set of stocks, if brought back into use could well be used as part of a solution to the behavioural problems that our society is now faced with! I certainly haven't seen any others around, and I was surprised to see then there.

The inscription on the Lytch Gate entreats us to "prepare to meet thy God", you can make your mind up about that.

Tilmanstone was probably founded by the Jutes in the 5th Century, after the departure of the Romans and it had a church in Anglo-Saxon times. The present building dates from the 11th and 12 centuries.

The church was dedicated to the Knights Templars and the nave and the chancel still have Norman windows on the North side.

The tower was added in the 13th century and there was a major restoration in 1884. The ancient Yew tree in the church yard is said to be 1600 years old on the village information board but other references say it is at least 700 years old. The weather vane, just visible on the tower is unusual, it is a flying swan with widespread wings and out-stretched neck.

The only birds I saw today were in the garden, as I repaired and replaced my feeders. Chaffinch numbers remain high but I'm still waiting for my share of migrant finches (Bramblings and Siskins), they normally turn up for a few days in march, so I'm still hopeful. This evening at the monthly KOS indoor meeting Don Taylor, co-author with Stephen Message of "Waders of Europe, Asia and North America" gave a talk about his passion for waders, one I must admit I share.

This week the number of visits to my pictures on flicker reached 50,000, which includes 30,000 hits on individual pictures. I must say that this has surprised me and today one picture reached 100 hits, it not my favourite but so far it's my most popular photo, click here to see it.