40. Somerset Churches : St. Lawrence & The monuments of The Rodney Chapel, Rodney Stoke, Somerset

This trip was taken before Christmas on a cold and drizzly day. Little did I know that inside was the story of a family whose history spanned court intrigue and civil war and whose artistic legacy and dedication to faith, cost dear. The Memorial Thanksgiving Window, installed in 1920, was vandalised in December 2025 and a Crowd Funding page set up to raise £500 to help fund the repair. At the time of filming, just £295 (£320 to date) has been raised by The Friends of St.Leonards group. Like many villages in Somerset these days, most of the homes in the village are out of reach of those who grew up there. In a place there many of the pretty stone houses and cottages are worth upwards of over half a million, the pittance raised by just 11 kind people seems quite an irony given the legacies of their past Benefactors. Like many rural churches, St.Leonards is on the "at risk" register (Chirch of England Care Records). BIBLIOGRAPHY The Buildings of England : North Somerset & Bristol, Nikolause Pevsner, Penguin, 1958 Church of England Care Records www.churchofengland.org