Of sky and stone (Churches of the Marsh II)

St Mary the Virgin - St Mary in the Marsh (England), August 2016

Straddling the counties of Kent and East Sussex in the south-east of England, the wetlands of Romney Marsh hold the special appeal of out-of-the-way places. Their very distinctive landscape is mostly made of immense skies, low grass and extensive grazing fields criss-crossed by drainage ditches. The Marsh is not devoid of a certain otherworldliness, which famously prompted the local clergyman Richard Harris Barham to write in The Ingoldsby Legends : "The world according to the best geographers is divided into five parts, namely Europe, Asia, Africa, America, and the Romney Marsh".

Romney Marsh is also known for the various churches scattered around it, testimonies of the small communities who lived there throughout the centuries. Showcased here is St Mary the Virgin, located in the almost eponymous village of St Mary in the Marsh. It was an almost perfect day to discover this fine building, erected on the site of a former Saxon church and the oldest parts of which date back to the 12th century : the warm light of an English summer, white clouds and vapour trails slowly dissolving in the luminous sky, the sun playing on the old stones... The burial place of Edith Nesbit (author of children's literature classic The Railway Children), St Mary is more of a traditional English village church than St Thomas à Becket, lost in the wilderness, but it certainly does not lack majesty and character.