St Peter at Gowts, Lincoln

One exceedingly sunny day, I was invited to visit a series of City Centre churches in Lincoln:

St Peter at Gowts, St Mary le Wigford, and St Benedict’s

We started with St Peter at Gowts, a handsome old church, with a long history, including a lovely tower from the 1000’s.

Inside the church much of the decor and furnishings are much much newer than the fabric of the building, with much of it from the Victorian Era or later.

St Peter at Gowts has some gorgeous painted ceilings, especially at her east end.

Even the ceiling of the north aisle is painted in a rather charming shade of green. It’s so easy to go wrong with green, but this really works.

You’ll see the font at the end of the north aisle, there. It’s quite an interesting one, said to be, at least in part, a repurposed Roman column, with later decoration. As holy water is supposed to return to the earth it has a drainage hole that runs down the centre and out under the church - unlike many others I’ve encountered it's not become blocked.

As you may have spotted behind the font, the church also has some charming stained glass.

Up in the tower there's a little door in the eastern wall. It opens out into the nave of the church…

If you climb over the great big beam in front of it, and squat in the opening, high above the church, you are treated to beautiful views of the nave from right below the ceiling - and a unique perspective of the ceiling itself.

Looking around in the tower itself, you’ll find a gorgeous clock, and general tower ephemera.

I also found a dead bird in the tower, which, cool Goth vibes aside, serves as a rather sad reminder of National Heritage's assessment of the condition of St Peter's as "poor" with "slow decay"

Before we left to explore the other churches, St Peter’s had one last surprise in store. The church has a hall, and out behind said church hall, and used to store an incredible amount of junk, is a range of gorgeous medieval stables, just sitting there, unknown and unnoticed, locked away in the centre of Lincoln.

Then off we headed, to St Mary le Wigford!