stoup

``Holy Clerk,'' said the knight, when his hunger was appeased, ``I would gage my good horse yonder against a zecchin, that that same honest keeper to whom we are obliged for the venison has left thee a stoup of wine, or a reinlet of canary, or some such trifle, by way of ally to this noble pasty.

"Hi, Dame Eliza, bring a stoup of your best to Will to clear his throat.

30 Expect ne daintys, But be sure to find An hearty welcom, & things geud in kinde; Clean snaw-white Nap'ry shall or Table spread To deight yr Gob shall Serviteurs be laid, The Stoups & Trenchers shall be made for fine And tho not Siller, shall like Siller shine Reflect each transient Image as they pass And do the office of a Keeking Glass.

The six stoups are a group of standing stones by the main Guisborough to Whitby road at the top of Birk Brow on the A171 outside Guisborough.

They reminded me of the churches we used to go to in Alexandria: the same smells, the same dirty water in the holy water stoups, the same candles standing crooked on the altar, the same flowers thrust anyhow into brass vases by hands which would for ever remain ignorant of Constance Spry, the same sense of the place being used as an extension of the living-room.

In 1945 a Cork mill owner even commissioned him to design the new Church of the Annunciation at Blackpool, and to supply statues of Christ and the Madonna, a carved panel depicting the Annunciation, to carve the main altar, two side altars, baptismal font, holy water stoups, and to design brass candlesticks for the altar, and four panels depicting the evangelists for the tabernacle doors.

"The water contained in stoups can easily become a source of infection and a means of rapidly spreading the virus," he said.