Very interesting, and also rather sad. Sounds like this is all that remains of a vanished community.
I notice the building has an apse, too. Not far from me an Evangelical protestant church group is building a new church. This also has an apse. (So that we're talking about the same thing, I mean the rounded bit at one end). This got me thinking about cultural memory. The symbolism of the apse is really only understandable in Orthodox and Roman Catholic traditions (and since the 1950's, much less so in the latter): it is the symbolic location, at the head of the building, of Christ. The sanctuary directly in front of it represents heaven, and the main body of the church is the earth. Earth and heaven are joined by the rood screen or iconostasis, which would both have featured icons of saints (and still do in Orthodox churches). This is all alien to protestant ecclesiology, but one still finds protestant churches being built to the same plan, because that's the shape of a church. And then on the RC side, you see churches built in the shape of a shoebox, despite the fact that this obscures some of the ancient symbolism.
I think too much. I should drink more.
