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| Marcé-sur-Esves church |
We've been planning to visit La Celle St Avant for while having heard that there were frescos in the 12th century church. However, we wanted a reasonable day, not one of those seemingly endless murky grey days we've been having.
So taking advantage of the emerging sun we sallied forth armed with the camera. Alas for the best laid plans. The church at La Celle St Avant was locked.
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| creation |
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| pentecost |
We saw a sign along a C road -- little roads always interest us -- to a village called Marcé-sur-Esves, which looked to be vaguely in the direction of home. Marcé turned out to have a lovely 11/12th century little church with a porch. We decided to see if it was open, which it was, and we were given a little treat. Inside instead of the usual, and to our eyes, often poorly executed 19th century stained glass we found very modern windows ablaze with colour from the sun shining in.
The beautiful stained glass windows were designed in 2003 by one Norbet Pagé, who was born in Marcé-sur-Esves but now lives/works in Azay-sur-Cher.
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| church at the end of the 19th C |
Dedicated to St Martin -- he's everywhere in the Touraine -- the church sports one of the little pewter 'footprints' which shows it is on one of the St Martin trails; long distance walking routes which run from Poitiers to Tours which we've written about before here.
13 comments:
Hello Niall and Antoinette:
Unfortunately, the best laid plans.....still, what a happy turn of events to have discovered your other gem of a church.
This sounds like just the kind of day which we should love. Sun shining and roaming the countryside in the comfort of a warm car just waiting to hap across something exciting. Lovely!!
I think the modern stained glass is fantastic. I'll look up the village in the atlas and add it to 'the list'.
@Jane & Lance - exactly :-) There's always something!
@Gaynor - do! It is a little gem.
I love the "creation" window.
SP
SP- the colours were really rich and with the sun streaming in each window was like a little jewel.
Little gems are everywhere and finding this one was a real treat for you. The modern stained glass windows are beautiful and such a surprise.
Absolutely loved the windows, I shall view them asap, thanks for the info. Charnizay
@Cuby -it's part of the fun anywhere you live finding the little gems. The modern glass worked far better than 19th cent glass -- well we thought so.
What a lovely bit of serendipity. You might never have visited this chuch otherwise. There's a lot of modern stained glass in our part of Normandy after all the war damage. Some is very pedestrian, but some is wonderful.
Gorgeous stained glass....differing greatly from the constipated style of some of the nineteenth century stuff.
And, as always, great discoveries on the byways...
@Perpetua - it was exactly that :-)
@Fly - LOL! Constipated describes the poor 19th cent stuff to a T!
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