We went down to Milton Abbey in Dorset for a school run there. I did the short course and still came last! But afterwards we wandered around the Abbey, founded in honour of the grandson of King Alfred.

The later excrescences, including grand eighteenth century, passed me by.

I seemed to hear very faintly and feel the presence of the Benedictine Monks in this spaces, five hundred years ago. The remotest echo, but there in the imagination. The church was freezing cold, but there was an inner warmth.