You’d have to go a long way to beat the door at Kilpeck church, but the western wall has a place all of its own. You might be forgiven for thinking it was a bit of Norse construction and the swirling lines of carving look like zoomorphic creatures, or Celtic knots… but not your typical Norman… or anything you might reasonably expect to find adorning a church in a tiny English village five miles from the Welsh border. Yet, at first glance, you might miss it.

Three huge stone dragons, with protruding and coiled tongues, jut out from the corners of the wall and below the west window. A fourth is broken. Each of them is different, as if showing the sequence of the opening of the mouth… which makes them sound rather Egyptian too, though I wonder how much the inner meaning of such symbolism is universal.

The dragons do not go unchallenged though… a dog, or more probably a lion, bites at its neck. A fleur de lys curls around the attacker, and I wonder what that might mean.

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