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Not far from Blandford Forum in north Dorset is the hamlet of Chettle, which is owned by one family and in some ways has barely changed in a millennium.
The local matriarch, Susan Favre, 73, emerges from one of the tenanted thatched cottages that dot the countryside like thistledown. She is bearing mugs of tea.
Her family owns everything we can see — including, she insists, the pretty church outside which we sit, surrounded by long grass and mossy gravestones, after a walk that took in bramble-strewn byways, sweet-scented meadows and any number of ancient churches.
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The church at Chettle, St Mary, looks ancient but is in fact Victorian. “My great-great-grandfather pulled it down and put it up again,” says Susan. “Unfortunately he forgot to get a faculty [official church consent]. There was a terrible row when the bishop turned up. He wasn’t expecting a new church.”
Next a rosy-cheeked country parson, the Rev William Johnstone, bumbles up in a frayed black jumper. He hasn’t had a funeral for years, he says, but has done a lot of weddings.
Then we are joined by Barry De Morgan, a twinkly pilot whose plane, from which he takes aerial photographs of the Dorset churches, has been grounded by high winds. He asks whether the girls at the Knoll House Hotel in Studland, where I have been staying, are still as pretty as they were in the war.
A furry black caterpillar inches by in the afternoon sunshine. Don’t touch it, we are warned. It stings.
Our walk had begun a few hours earlier at nearby Stubhampton. From there we took the footpath to St Mary’s Church, Tarrant Gunville, then headed towards Barton Hill Farm, turned left to join the footpath to St Mary’s Church, Tarrant Hinton, and finally followed bridleways across open country to Chettle.
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At Tarrant Hinton we peered through the “leper’s squint”, an architectural device that allowed the sick outside to see what was going on at the altar.
There is also a beautiful Renaissance Easter sepulchre with the inscription Venire et videte locum ubi positus erat Dominus — Come and see the place where the Lord is laid.
This part of England is peopled with sprightly men and women who are all terribly “proper” in the old-fashioned sense and seem to spend their lives doing good works, including trying to prevent their ancient churches from falling down.
Lady Mary Morshead, for instance, daughter of the late Sir Owen Morshead, the founder of Dorset Historic Churches Trust, has done sponsored walks from her home to the church at Sturminster Newton and back. Another fundraiser sends his labrador round the village of Charlton Marshall with a collecting box on its back.
It returns laden with coins. David Seymour, the vicar of St Mary, Sturminster Newton, plans to cycle to all 37 churches in the Blackmore Vale deanery. George Browning, a retired bishop, has done Ride and Stride on his horse, Clot.
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All their efforts are much-needed: Blandford Forum alone needs £2 million and, as my charming pilot says, you don’t collect that kind of money at coffee mornings.
“It’s difficult,” admits Major-General John Alexander, the current chairman of Dorset Historic Churches Trust. “Heritage buildings don’t have the same cachet as animal welfare or hospice charities.”
So where was God in all this? No one really said. But we looked everywhere, and that’s where we found Him.