More extra miles being walked by our demolishers - well not ours exactly - as they delivered all the plaques that had once graced the chapel walls to my driveway to await transfer to our graveyard where they will form some sort of lasting memorial to, er, the building!  The sale contract requires them to salvage and return to us four inscribed foundation stones from the front of the building (which will come down quite soon now) but we had accepted that the plaques would have to go with the building.

So now my drive looks like the yard at the undertakers - littered with monumental stonemasonry - and reversing onto it is 'interesting' as fit my Saxo into a smaller space than usual avoiding damage to the plaques and protecting them from vandals and thieves.

Just in case burglar Bill passed by I have photographed them all, and the one below recalls the first ever minister of this church... from Orton to Gorton in two centuries!

Some how I can't see a plaque to my memory ever being erected in a church - for which I am extremely grateful - nor will I serve a congregation for 50 or more years as this chap evidently did!

PS If the image makes you wonder about the manse wall maybe I should point out that the plaque is on its end so the photo has been rotated (hence the rather strange perspective effect) - Dibley may have its quirks but building houses by laying bricks on their ends isn't one of them!

Over the last few weeks I have had quite a few conversations with the demolition team next-door, and they have shared odd memories of what the street was like in the 1950's when they grew up here.  Yesterday one of them said, 'oh, we found some bits you might want' which turned out to be programmes from 'sermons' (as it happens those held by the Methodists who borrowed our, larger, building) in 1966, 1977 and 1986.  At one level these very grubby pamphlets, posted through my letterbox last night,  are utterly worthless, at another they are valuable historical documents.  They could so easily have been consigned to the gehenna (can I call a long-running bonfire that?!) at the far end of the site but someone spotted their value and rescued them.  That sounds like an extra mile walked to me.