fugitive evidences

 Fellow Church-Crawlers will know so many of the tiny indications that still remain in English parish churches of ancient, godlier, times. That opening in a medieval chancel ceiling through which once hung the chain which supported God's Body in His pyx ... that minute piece of painted plaster which preserves the last remnant of one of the twelve original Consecration Crosses ... the mere square inch of Renaissance glass in an almost invisible angle of the tracery suggesting that, in the very last days before the Reformation, the church had invested in an expensive set of fashionable windows ...

I've got a new one for  you. Outside in the Yard ... probably, if it is angular, in a corner ... some pieces of masonry, not large but big enough to hold ... yes; reliquaries.

"Ther was a chapple in the parishe of Sct Newlan in Cornwall called Sct Neghtons of the saint to which it was dedicated, which chapple had a yard belonginge vnto it in which ther were foure stones on a little mount or hill at the Northwest corner wher the crosses and reliques of Sct Piran, Sct Crantocke, Sct Cuthbert, Sct Newlan were wont to bee placed in rogation weeke, at which time they vsed to meete ther and a sermond made to the people, and the last was preached by persone Crane in Queene Maries tyme, as I have bene credibly informed by a preist who had bene an eye witnesse."

I wonder if, anywhere in this Kingdom, such unrecognised stones might still hide away behind the brambles.