It was a crisp winter’s day over Warwickshire, the sun picking out the gold in the Cotswold stone houses of Ilmington. A whiff of applewood smoke came down on the breeze as we followed Middle Street past medieval fishponds to the cruciform Church of St Mary.
Among the oak pews of this beautiful Norman building scurry Arts and Crafts mice, the signature speciality of the Yorkshire master carver Robert Thomson. The carpenter set these humorous little rodents in the pews and pulpit of St Mary’s in the 1930s, and they still raise a smile today.
In the nave hangs a wonderful embroidered map of the orchards of Ilmington, its hem sewn with the names of apple varieties found here — Howgate Wonder, Laxton’s Superb, Siberian
