PICTURE the outside of a church. Here’s the porch, here’s the steeple, here’s the parish noticeboard. It’s all very ordered and all very charming—except for the gruesome faces on the roofline. They leer down at us as if they know something we don’t, their nostrils flared and their teeth bared. Some have horns, others have fangs or lewd, lolling tongues. They are stone made ugly, their face-ache features frozen into cackling disdain for the weak humans below. Very few of them have what you’d call a benevolent gaze.
Gargoyles and grotesques still stare down from many a church, cathedral, college and country home. But what are they exactly, why are they there and how did these imps in the guttering
