A flying man, a fiddling vicar, and a spire shaped like a space rocket all feature in a new book about country churches. Mike Priestley reports

On the chancel wall of All Saints' Church in the East Yorkshire village of Pocklington is a much-worn plaque. It records the death in 1733 of Thomas Pelling, "A Flying Man".

The burial register elaborates. It says that Mr Pelling was killed "by jumping against the battlement of ye Choir when coming down ye rope from ye steeple."

Confused? You might well be. But John Timpson explains it all in the splendid book Timpson's Country Churches (Weidenfeld & Nicolson, £20).

He writes: "Mr Pelling, it seems, was a travelling stuntmen who donned bat-like wings attached to his arms and legs, and suspended himself by one heel from a pulley on a rope.

"The rope was attached to a pinnacle on the tower, and the other end should have been held taut by a windlass near the former Star Inn. But it was allowed to slacken and the Flying Man crashed into the roof."

There is many an odd tale to tell about country churches, and Timpson tells them well. Many odd characters to write about, too. Like one of the eighteenth-century vicars of St Mary's Church not far away from Pocklington, at Lastingham.

The Reverend Jeremiah Carter had 13 children and to supplement the family income his wife kept the Blacksmith's Arms just across the road. Sometimes Mr Carter would play the fiddle there to entertain the customers.

John Timpson reports that "When the archdeacon queried this extramural activity, Jeremiah penned this admirable reply: 'My parishioners enjoy a triple advantage, being instructed, fed and amused all at the same time. Moreover, this method of spending their Sunday is so congenial with their inclinations, that they are imperceptibly led along paths of piety and morality'."

One of the country's oddest-looking churches has to be the one pictured here in one of Christopher Dalton's many fine photographs in the book, St Michael the Archangel at Llanyblodwel in Shropshire. Its tower-cum-spire looks, as John Timpson rightly observes, like a rocket on its launch-pad, waiting for lift-off.

He adds: "It is over a hundred feet high, free-standing except for a Gothic brick arch linking it to the church." And he comments that its appearance is "perhaps appropriate for a 'sky-pilot'!"

Inside, he reports, "all the available wall-space is covered with painted decorations and biblical quotations, and there is a profusion of elaborate carvings - galleries, screen, organ-case, pulpit, bench pews. There are so many distractions that it must be no mean feat for a preacher to hold anyone's attention."

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