To All You Mums

Happy Mothers' Day to all you mums out there in blogland. It's not mothers' day in the UK: they celebrate Mothering Sunday sometime in March; but our calender has served to remind us. This day is associated with flowers and so you'll see some of the floral arrangements we've enjoyed in different churches.
The village churches have provided us with alot of browsing time. Besides the flowers, there are usually interesting plaques. One William Keyte left money in his will to buy 7 good, hearty milk cows to provide the poor of his village with milk. That was back in the 1600's and the trust is still going strong only now the milk is sold to a dairy and the money distributed to the poor. In Northleach church the other day, one of the "big three wool churches" along with Cirencester and Chipping Campden, we were reading about the people commemorated by the brasses and one man left money so that 4 pence could be given to every inmate released from Gloucester jail, 4 pence being a days wages back then.
Then there was the blind clock tower of St. Eadburgha. It has no face or hands but rings the hours. The clock has to be wound every day - 100 pulls of the rope - and the villagers have been doing this for centuries, not the same ones. Our local church, St David's has an epitaph to a man who tried to cut a corn off his foot, the knife slipped, cut off his toe and he died.
We have yet to find a Church of England church locked but all the non conformists ones are locked tighter than a drum. Wonder why.