Scott Willoughby Church

The Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer dates the little Church of St Andrew at Scott Willoughby in the following way:

CHURCH (Early Medieval/Dark Age to Modern - 900 AD to 2050 AD)

So it was built after the year 900 but some time before the year 2050. That comes as a relief, because I was planning to date it to the twenty-second century, but I now I know better. I did laugh at the allowance here for the possibility that the church has not even been built yet. That dating is a clear example of hedging one's bets. 

To be fair, though, it is a difficult one to date. The neatness of the stonework and mortaring looks nineteenth-century, yet within is a piece of interlacing Saxon masonry, a Norman font and seventeenth-century pews and pulpit, painted a peculiar shade of blue.

Despite its combination of historical styles and furnishings, this plain little church, or more aptly, chapel, is somewhere I could attend for worship. No statues, no paraphernalia, no nonsense; just prayers, hymns, readings and sermons. There is something timeless about it; it is old yet new, ancient yet modern; interesting, yet plain. So the authors at the Lincolnshire Heritage Explorer are still correct; it is a typical church of the 900-2050 period. To some extent, it is like the glorious message which, I trust, is still preached there: the timeless gospel of grace. Whatever our condition, whatever the era in which we live, whatever the continent on which we roam, the gospel is the news we need to hear, the message that we must receive, the hope for which we yearn.