One of those traveller’s moments

High up on the Mendips is an ugly building above Charterhouse on Mendip, rather like a grim family house. I drove past it on Sunday and was intrigued to see a sign outside saying ‘St Hugh’s Chapel. Welcome’. It was an irresistible invitation. Inside, there was an oak-panelled chapel of pure beauty, the Arts and Crafts creation of an architect called Caroe for a well-heeled London vicar who had fallen for the Mendips. The rood screen carried the rood – so unexpected if you have seen very few such screens and even fewer with the rood intact. Beyond it stands the reredos, exquisitely and intricately carved in the same wood. One can imagine the wind-swept congregations gathering to be inspired by such a place.

These spontaneous ‘discoveries’ are a joy – like entering the nearly-destroyed church of St James in Bristol, to find a Norman church of unaffected and ravishing beauty. It is by the bus station, a monument to modern banality.