Good Shepherd, Dockenfield

Time to consider that church I mentioned visiting on my trip to the Frensham area - Good Shepherd, Dockenfield, a chapel in Frensham parish dating to 1910 and designed by W Curtis Green in a sort of Arts-and-Crafts style. It's normally shut, and I was kindly shown around by the incumbent, picking my way between the mums and children attenders at a toddler group which is small but doubtless much appreciated, considering how little there would be to do in the immediate area otherwise. Apart from the great cross on the outside of the east end, its arms terminating in the symbols of the Evangelists, the church's fixtures and fittings all look a little later than the building itself - a satisfyingly bulky font, a rood beam, and the Instruments of the Passion right up under the roof. The east end culminates in a curtain and reflects a fashion around that time that finish not in a window but a monumental wall. This is a building clearly influenced by the Catholic tradition, though probably more because expectations had moved in that direction by the interwar period, rather than anything more conscious.

The newest addition is the rather charming Good Shepherd window, dedicated in 2002 and designed by Pauline Baynes, who had lived in Dockenfield for 60 years and had illustrated books by Tolkein, CS Lewis, Richard Adams, and many others.