It was quite a novel symbol of
decay and neglect. On the wall, close to the street, there were certain
eccentric inscriptions cut into slabs of stone, but I could make no sense
of them. At the end of the house opposite the turret, we peeped through
the bars of an iron gate and beheld a little paved court-yard, and at the
farther side of it a small piazza, beneath which seemed to stand the
figure of a man. He appeared well advanced in years, and was dressed in
a blue coat and buff breeches, with a white or straw hat on his head.
Behold, too, in a kennel beside the porch, a large dog sitting on his
hind legs, chained! Also, close beside the gateway, another man, seated
in a kind of arbor! All these were wooden images; and the whole
castellated, small, village-dwelling, with the inscriptions and the queer
statuary, was probably the whim of some half-crazy person, who has now,
no doubt, been long asleep in Bebbington churchyard.
The bell of the old church was ringing as we went along, and many
respectable-looking people and cleanly dressed children were moving
towards the sound. Soon we reached the church, and I have seen nothing
yet in England that so completely answered my idea of what such a thing
was, as this old village church of Bebbington.
It is quite a large edifice, built in the form of a cross, a low peaked
porch in the side, over which, rudely cut in stone, is the date 1300 and
something. The steeple has ivy on it, and looks old, old, old; so does
the whole church, though portions of it have been renewed, but not so as
to impair the aspect of heavy, substantial endurance, and long, long
decay, which may go on hundreds of years longer before the church is a
ruin.
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