Give me lithic lookouts that watch for priestly misdoings and slowly hiss at the miscreants. Give me stone guardians that roar against all evils – not just those convenient to a church. Give me spirited stones with eyes that do not blink when it comes to staring down hate. – #CLNolan

For when they hold the Feast of the Archangels and they make much in their sermons of St. Michael defeating Satan, I ponder why so many churches resemble nothing other than forts. Angels and saints that need stone security against the world fail to impress me. – #CLNolan

Hookland is ghost country. Hookland is witch country. If you suspect some monstrous thing is lurking in your nightmares, you might just find it in that place of legends. – #CLNolan, Children’s Hour, BBC Regional Programme, 1936

The land becomes cold to the touch. The year turns towards restless ghosts and mists with a thousand tiny teeth. The dead in their dream incubation chambers come close to waking. They sniff the air for an alarm call of bonefire smoke and a rotting carpet of fallen apples. = #CLNolan

I feel it is no bad thing to walk the lanes of England as a child would. Over the wall an orchard to scrump. Around the turn of the path the hope of ghost glimpse, faery encounter. To walk with an enchanted heart is my aim and none shall dissuade me from it. – #CLNolan

I visit neglected churches and abbeys often not out of holiness, but a desire to walk behind phantom monks, spectral nuns. If I feel closer to the numinous for treading in haunted footsteps, it is largely accidental. – #CLNolan

If after death I walk as a shade across an English ghostscape, I shall choose the old paths, the ancient ways. I will navigate by hollow hills, tread a haunted hodology. My living map of folklore will be the territory I'll tread. Harrowhounds shall pad beside me. – #CLNolan

We go to the woods to have our souls entangled. We go to the woods in hope of encountering wonder, wild magics. Some deep, cave-old part of us knows it as a sacred space just a we know it as a place of possible peril. The woods whisper to our souls. – #CLNolan #Woods

The boneyard's lithic lookouts stare into a thousand tomorrows. Grounded angels of the long watch. Guardians of the territory of grief. They refuse my attempts at conversation as if they're too busy or I'm no part of the ineffable plan, so I talk to the dead instead. – #CLNolan

Pew ends that functions in many churches as wooden bestiaries are often polished by playful hands of children bored by the drone of a poor Sunday homily. It interests me to see which animals they will not touch. For instance, they refuse to handle the Fethrower. – #CLNolan

Give me a house of the dead that has stood through time and I will tell you a hundred stories. Tell its phantom folklore, its time as a giant's throne and Devil's Hencoop. Tell you how it whispers the land's long memory to all standing below it. – #CLNolan #StandingStoneSunday

Those churches which act as stone bestiaries call me to visit. They are lithic libraries, places where my eyes and fingers can trace stories of wonder. In them I may meet the fabulous beasts I've dreamed about since childhood. They are gateways into folkloric joy. – #CLNolan

Those lonely churches, near feral and half-swallowed by the land, cannot help but become folkloric nexus. Tales of tunnels used by smugglers come up under their altars. Their boneyards are patrolled by baleful Grims, their crooked spires are navigations for witch-flight. – #CLNolan

Come the twilight stretching on Sunday shadows, come the ghosts of Gartford to St. Mary in the Meadows for evensong. They leave their cottages, tread the lanes to join its spectral congregation. To hear canticles sung and tut about the fashions of the living. – #CLNolan #Evensong #Ghosts