Dr. Simon Cotton is honorary senior lecturer in chemistry at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. and a former churchwarden of St. Giles, Norwich, and St. Jude, Peterborough. He is a member of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Life was not kind to Germaine Cousin (1579-1601). Her stereotypically cruel stepmother forced Germaine to have her bed in a shed, and she was not allowed to go to school, working instead as a shepherdess.
In the 10th century onward, church builders in the Auvergne region of France lacked access to marble and limestone, so they made the most of the volcanic stone available to them.
