Visited Howden minster to day which is quite local to me, in fact I seem to live in the “minster triangle” of the North ! In places around the outside of the building there has been some restoration work done in new limestone. The stone is so white, and the edges and angles so crisp it is amazing. I always assumed that the skirt around the base of this and other similar buildings was always rounded, yet the restoration blocks demonstrate that these actually came to a sharp edge, it is the weathering...

Watched an interesting program on BBC 4 last night about the attitudes of medieval people, and how their lives were governed by the constant battle between the imaginary forces of good and evil. The program was able to explain how the church fitted into all this and why it was so important.
I’ve always been surprised by just how many abbeys, minsters, cathedrals and churches there are about, left from the middle ages. Were people really that religious or the church so wealthy that they could...