Stained glass and stinging nettles

I can't resist returning to St Margaret's church at Lower Halstow, even though my first visit involved a long walk and a lot of stinging nettles - good for the circulation according to Pamala, my unsympathetic and much fitter friend. So is corporal punishment I assume but we won't pursue that subject now.

St Margaret's sits at the head of a creek on the Kent marshes - Great Expectations country. The air smells of grass and salt and at low tide there's a network of tiny streams wandering over the mudflats. When the tide rises the fish begin to jump.

On the summer evening when Pamala and I picnicked and I suppurated from plant inflicted wounds by the creek the fish show was spectacular. So many were leaping and fly catching the water's surface was dimpled all over as though we were sitting in the midst of a great rainstorm that was coming from below rather than above.

So to the font - it's lead and dates from the eleventh century. The figures on it are angels and kings and they stand beneath archways, one next to the other, in a ring that reaches all round the font.

One of the charming ladies who guards the church has a theory the font was brought to England from France by an Anglo-Norman aristocrat who owned land in north Kent and Romney Marsh. As the font must weigh a ton I can't imagine why he bothered. Still it was the days of plentiful, cheap horse and serf power and it's a rather romantic idea. The night after visiting St Margaret's I dreamt of the font floating up the creek on a rising tide like a little leaden coracle.

As we've just passed Armistice Day I must mention St Margaret's stained glass 'Abide with me' window. It shows a soldier in the trenches facing an apparition of Jesus. In the background the sky is splintered by an exploding shell.

The window is based on a Christmas card Brigader General Roland Bradford was going to send to the men of his platoon in 1917. Bradford was killed in December 1917, just before Christmas, aged 25.