Is this ground still sacred? Is it consecrated, considered holy by those who walk through its doors? This shell, echoing with the remnants of its occupants and visitors, is closed: if the people who designate it sacred no longer attend, does the sacredness remain?
Perhaps it maintains holiness innately, the separation from the mortal and the dirty worn into the flagstones by the thousands of sinners who have entered and left clean.
I run my fingers along the pew walls and they come away grey. A filthy ruin drenched in the smell of dust and decay possesses the ability to cleanse. The touch-dry font is empty of water- this cleanliness is not physical, and there are no bodies clustering at its edges to be washed.
The atmosphere is permeated with subaudible sounds from the outside, noises of the movement created by lives being lived in the sun of the morning, serving not to fill up the space so much as emphasise a lack of motion. And a lack of heat.
The same way the local sandstone floor absorbs wrongdoings, it draws warmth from the air deep into the earth crushed beneath its weight and stores it away from my skin.
Within the north transept chapel, a step is layered upon another in a platform, in front of stained glass smeared with grime. A table maintains still, patient vigil against the adjoining wall. Both are achingly bare in the way only surfaces once displaying significance are.
The platform bears no effigy, the table no bread and silver for communion. If there were a goblet of bloodied wine once sat there, it has long since evaporated to soak into the parched moistness of the peeling walls.
*
The people who came to worship remain in fragments and remnants.
Their marks of individuality become blurred in the mass of past presences. Their omission becomes evident in their former attendance.
Music remains on the organ stand, yellowing and curling.
Each centre of the box pews bears the wear from sitting, fidgeting, shuffling bodies: rubbed pale and curved. Scratches carved deep in the flesh of the wood.
In some the wooden floorboards bear the marks of kneeling in prayer, in contemplation. I wonder if it was peaceful? Or violent, maybe even desperate? There may have been no emotion at all; the kneeler came and went feeling no different, if a little more pious as their guilt is absolved by the flagstones.
There are other places where they might have knelt. Within the apse, benches sit low against the fence separating them from the altar table.
The benches’ crocheted cushions are torn and frayed, colourless under the grey-brown dirt. If in prayer or receiving communion, they could look upon the Lord’s Prayer painted down the sides of the curved wall.
Some of the words are no longer readable. The letters are missing.
*
Ceiling, structure and beam are rotting. Slowly being eaten away to become more of nothing than before.
When the church ceased to have a purpose, it lost its function, and has been left to quietly fall apart.
From the two floors of the nave and standing within the north chapel, the bones have been laid bare: to gauge damage for future restoration, but the removal of the paint and plaster leaves the underlying structure jutting out from the ceiling like ribs.
While following the crack lines of the plaster I run into the plaques lining both walls of the knave. Tucked to the side out of sight yet demanding attention in their resplendent reflections and ornate carving.
The shining smooth surfaces are dedicated to the dead. Trying to immortalise and conceptualise individuals no longer alive and physically present.
The plaques are lit by wonky electric light fixtures, usually left off.
The ones on the south wall of the nave are occasionally brighter in the light shining through the hole in the roof.
A volunteer dedicated to restoring what is not here plays the organ.
The swell of sound tastes as rich and dusty as the space it echoes through.
I’m acutely aware of how silent it was before.