St Martin’s Church, Exeter

Of St Martin’s Church in the historic city of Exeter, the Churches Conservation Trust states:

The roughcast exterior of red volcanic stone with bright, white beer stone windows makes it look a little bit like a fancy gingerbread house.

This rather charming description is not without merit, even though the building in question was consecrated in the last year of Anglo-Saxon England. If its builders knew of the coming slaughter and social upheaval that would soon be upon them, they might have prayed as they built.

The inside is rather narrow but light, with the Ten Commandments boldly dominating the space above the communion table. Whatever social turmoil this ancient structure has witnessed, whatever revolutions in church and state, God’s moral law remains in force, undisturbed and unaffected, though it be broken, relegated, ignored and desecrated. We might live in a more peaceable England than 1066 (though this might soon change), but right is still right and wrong still wrong: there will be a great reckoning.