Step inside for the surprise: a white-and-pale-blue Gothick interior like spun sugar, all ogee arches and pinnacles. John Bateman had the medieval church rebuilt between 1749 and 1752 in the Strawberry Hill taste of his friend Horace Walpole’s circle, and it’s reckoned the finest 18th-century church in Herefordshire. The old Norman chancel arch and doorways weren’t thrown away but re-erected in 1756 as an eyecatcher on the hill above, the weathered Shobdon Arches. The church at Shobdon is open and free.
