Rodney Stoke, Somerset – Thankful Villages #07 from Darren Hayman on Vimeo.

The seventh instalment of Darren Hayman’s Thankful Villages project

Rodney Stoke is dominated by St. Leonard’s church. It stands tall and proud on a small rising by a sharp bend.

The village is partially named after the Rodney family and many of them are buried in the church. A small room to the side of the alter houses tombs and statues of the Rodneys. Some of them are beautiful and macabre. Others are unintentionally comical.

Arthur Mee describes them in detail in his Somerset guide book: part of his series, The King’s England, from which the name Thankful Villages derives. I follow the directions from nearly a hundred years ago and hunt for hidden carvings behind pews and altars.

A man arrives to read the electricity meter. We search for the meter together but it cannot be found. Just strange, stone ghosts.

The words spoken on this piece are from Arthur Mee’s entry for Rodney Stoke in The King’s England.

View the previous Thankful Villages posts here.