No one knows why it is stranded like this. St Mary’s church near Over Silton lies abandoned in the fields in a hollow beneath the hills. Abandoned? No roads lead to it and no electricity lines, but it has its own vibrant set of parishioners. For a start there are the milch cows winding their way to the farmer’s shout as we walked up the field path. Then the grasshoppers stridulating in the graveyard. And the swallows who greeted us at the door. They have just finished nesting in the porch and under their nests lay the artist’s palette of their droppings. “If any one complains,” local experts had explained when they kindly showed me round recently, “we’d just point out that the swallows go to church more than anyone else.” I had been so struc