St Peter's Hascombe

A church interior for you today. I've celebrated mass at St Peter's, Hascombe, which thanks to its great 19th-century Tractarian incumbent Canon Musgrave is a bit of an Anglo-Catholic adventure playground, but didn't have a chance to look around. The week before last I went back for a good poke about and even found the light switches which illuminate the dazzling gold on the rood screen. It's a riot of paint, brass and mosaic. The fish motifs are especially fun, and I haven't seen the candle sconces with reflectors anywhere else. The lavish interior is rather belied by the quiet and unremarkable outside.

  

Was the lady herself anywhere around, I wondered? At first I thought not, then found a list of the saints depicted in the paintings around the altar and there St Catherine was. She's right at the bottom, against the floor. I can't tell you how hard it was to get this snap. I wouldn't have recognised it as her, either, though that is indeed a spike of a wheel just below her somewhat frond-like hand. She seems to be hefting it on her shoulder which, if it's anything like that jaw, is well up to the task.