Malcolm Sinclair 💀✍️

If you’re seeking sanctuary from the madness of this world, is there anywhere better than a place like this? I feel that I could stare at this image for hours. Simple yet sublime. Lacock Abbey yesterday, warmed by the afternoon sun.

Hardman glass inside the enormous private chapel within Arundel Castle. Like everything else at Arundel, it is rather striking - literally in the case of Holofernes, who is about to have his head struck off by Judith. #StainedGlassSunday

It’s golf Tiger, but not as we know it. Mid 17th Pieter de Hooch painting at Polesden Lacey.

The Gold Room at Polesden Lacey in Surrey today. Rich golden decor or a lone wooden chair in the corridor outside? I know which I preferred 🪑

This is really an appalling end to a chronically-neglected heritage asset. The reason the stained-class windows won't have come out is they would cost more to take out than they would sell for... but is that really "preservation first" as the City Council say?

... or for the excitement of finding out if the modernist is going to live up to the expectations he raises among the premodernists when mentioning hellmouths. We're going to need some slightly-bored-looking, slightly-feline-looking hellmouths.

Avebury, Silbury Hill, or the West Kennet Long Barrow. A veritable cornucopia of walking options 😍 #FingerpostFriday

Beckford’s Folly: Fonthill Abbey ‘desert of magnificence’ built for William Beckford, ‘England’s richest commoner’ (1760-1844), whose art collection included Bellini's Doge Loredan 1501, Raphael's St Catherine c 1507. National Gallery London | JMW Turner, Watercolour of Fonthill 1799, Bolton Museum

“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things thro’ narrow chinks of his cavern.” William Blake, 1790. A back door at William Burges’ Knighthayes Court, Devon #AdoorableThursday

Wonderful painting at Dunster Castle. ‘A Religious Allegory with Sigur Thomas Copley’, an Elizabethan Catholic recusant who lived his last years in exile and died in 1584. Can’t say I understand it all but that’s the Reformation/s for you.

Deirdre. By Jacob Epstein, from circa 1940. In front of Eagles and Doves, a painting by William Frend de Morgan - arts & crafts friend of William Morris. At Knighthayes Court in Devon recently.

“Oh ye who have your eyeballs vexed and tired, Feast them upon the wideness of the sea.” John Keats. #WindowsonWednesday View last month from the 19th C Round Tower at Watermouth, North Devon.

One more image for Michaelmas Day, from Christopher Whall’s wonderful if tragic window of 1918 in Chippenham commemorating the death of three Wilson sons in the Great War. Below these four Archangels are scenes of mourning and battle, but they stand resplendent all the same.

Tis Michaelmas, the feast day of St Michael and sometimes also his fellow Archangels Gabriel & Raphael. Here are the three of them at Great Cheverell by Mary Lowndes in 1920.

Silbury Hill, the largest prehistoric built mound in Europe, a mere 4500 or so years old. Always a joy to walk down the avenue of standing stones at Avebury, up the slope to the right and then this comes into view 😍

West Kennet Avenue at Avebury today in the wind and then rain. Timeless as ever 💚 #StandingStoneSunday

“You would see faces that were worth a second look Those were years when something whispered”. Gottfried Benn. Fragments of medieval glass in Cirencester yesterday. #StainedGlassSunday

Hugh Easton’s 1937 Fruit of the Mystic Rose #stainedglass in Cirencester, with 13th C font in the foreground and the 1638 Monox Tomb in front of the window. #StainedGlassSunday

The Boleyn Cup, made in 1535 for Queen Anne a year before her head was removed by Henry VIII. Kept behind reinforced glass at St John the Baptist in Cirencester.

Fly buttresses, fly. The 600+ year old strongly buttressed tower of St John the Baptist in sunny Cirencester today. #SteepleSaturday

Excellent afternoon in Bath today with my oldest to hear Anthony @scaramucci.bsky.social give an insider’s view on many things Trump 🤮 as well as a deeper analysis of the roots of populism in the USA. Funny, insightful and even humble at times. Good stuff.

More of the rarely used St Mary’s, Old Dilton - replaced by a new church in the 1840s and so escaped Victorian “improvement”. Though the font is 19th C. Arms are George III - small but rather nice. Lovely triple decker Georgian Pulpit too. #LesArmoiriesduVendredi #FontsonFriday

You get a better standard of dress in Bath bookshops. @toppingsbath.bsky.social

Stillness personified. Heron on the Kennet & Avon canal.

Time has stood still not just for decades but centuries at Old Dilton near Westbury. Lovely to go back there today ahead of a talk I am doing nearby in a few weeks. Churches unspoiled by Victorians are such special places.

I’m forever blowing bubbles. Pretty bubbles in the air. Late 16th C Memorial brass to Nicholas Grobham with a strange image of a bubble blowing boy (far left of full image). Hard to photograph as in a glass case. St Mary the Virgin Bishops Lydeard, Somerset. #MementoMoriMonday

The smiling sunken pillbox of Porlock Weir earlier this month. #SundayStonework

On a random stop at Bishops Lydeard in Somerset a couple of weeks ago I came across this Ninian Comper window beautifully set by him under a golden tester. Rather superb. #StainedGlassSunday

Spire Cross in the heart of Exmoor last week, near the Caracatus Stone and on the way to Tarr Steps. #FingerpostFriday

The Caratacus Stone on Winsford Hill in Exmoor. Suggested to be inscribed in the 6th C in memorial to the 1st C British chieftain who defeated the Romans. Now protected by a more modern structure. #StandingStoneSunday

#StoneworkSunday Tarr Steps in the heart of Exmoor this weekend. Stone slabs laid across the River Barle, making an idyllic crossing at this time of the year. Such beautiful and unspoilt part of the world.

#SteepleSaturday St Brides 1703 wedding cake spire, the highest in the City of London other than St Paul’s. Designed by Wren, albeit slightly reduced in size after an 18th C lightning strike.

#WindowsonWednesday Knightshayes Court, the William Burges designed country house in Devon, with drought ridden fountain and lawns recently.

‘I could have told you Vincent, this world was never meant for one as beautiful as you.’ Faces at the Courtauld this week, in chronological order: Manet, Van Gogh, Lautrec, Fry. All superb in their way.

A site of worship for almost 2000 years (remarkable really) and probably one of the most rebuilt churches in the country, the interior of St Brides Church just off Fleet Street in London yesterday. #TilesonTuesday

Capped in 1703, last restored in 1933, this rather strange looking oak framed spire is originally 13th C - on a rare sunshine free day last week in Porlock #SteepleSaturday

The sun going down at Lynmouth this evening after a swim in the sea and a bag of chips on the beach.

19th Century Lime kiln right on the beach at Hunter’s Mouth in North Devon. The kiln is over a mile from any road and only reachable by narrow paths, but was the best way to create lime for building or soil improvement from stone shipped there from Wales. A different era!

Always #lookup - a must at Knightshayes near Tiverton. The William Burges designs were mostly tempered down or replaced but his spirit is there. The first ceiling was his style & ? some parts of the fireplaces may have been. The rest is still beautiful if Crace not Burges.

Cleopatra puts the poisonous asp to her breast (not asparagus as the autotext suggested!), and other scenes from Anthony & Cleopatra - late 17th painted leather wall hangings from the Spanish Netherlands at Dunster Castle. #TextileTuesday

William Burges’ Knightshayes Court in Devon. It could have been close to the greatest of Victorian Uber Gothic but most of his interior designs never came to fruition. Still a great visit though.

Close ups of 17th & 18th C portraits at Dunster Castle. Most visitors just walk by such images these days. I love their timeless characterisations.

RIP Yoshi, May 2014 - July 2026. Breaker of hearts in life and in death 🐶💔🥲

Nice font and cover at Christ Church at St Leonard’s on Sea. Only had time for a quick holiday visit sadly. #FontsonFriday

#WindowsonWednesday Bodiam Castle in today’s sweltering heat.

I do love a good flying buttress or two. St Mary’s Church in Rye today.

The simplest exterior design, but look at the explosion of colour on the glass inside. One of Marc Chagall’s smaller windows in the glorious All Saints at Tudeley. #TraceryTuesday

Marc Chagall’s sublime and moving east window at All Saints, Tudeley today. As beautiful an image as I have ever seen 💙 #StainedGlassSunday

Reasons to be Cheerful Part One: J’ay Bonne Cause. Thynne Family hatchment in Longbridge Deverill. #LesArmoiresduVendredi

Is it a bird, is it a plane, is it a font? The frankly weird memorial font by flamboyant Art Nouveau sculptor Alfred Gilbert who also designed the fountain & statue of Eros in Piccadilly Circus and the Alexandra Monument in London. Longbridge Deverill #Wiltshire #FontsonFriday