St Kenelm's parish Church, Clifton-upon-Teme, Worcestershire

St Kenelm's is the parish church of Clifton-upon-Teme and is dedicated to the Anglo-Saxon Saint Kenelm (or more likely Cynehelm).

There are eight English churches (in total) dedicated to St Kenelm at Clent, Worcestershire; Enstone, Oxfordshire; Minster Lovell, Oxfordshire; Stanbridge, Dorset; Sapperton, Gloucestershire; Alderley, Gloucestershire; Upton Snodsbury, Worcestershire and Clifton-upon-Teme. All, with the exception of the one at Stanbridge, Dorset, are within the boundaries of the old Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Mercia.

In legend, St Kenelm/Cynehelm was a member of the royal family of Mercia, a boy king and martyr, murdered by an ambitious relative despite receiving a prophetic dream warning him of the danger. His body, after being concealed, was discovered by miraculous intervention, and transported by the monks of Winchcombe to a major shrine. There it remained for several hundred years.

The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Mercia (if measured in landmass alone) was the biggest of the Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of England, stretching from the border with the Kingdom of Northumberland (which ran more or less from the position now occupied by Liverpool) across the country to the Humber estuary, down the length of the English/Welsh border. To the east, it bordered the Kingdoms of East Anglia, Essex and the South Eastern Kingdom of Kent. And to the south, it bordered the Kingdoms of Wessex & Sussex. 

My home in the modern city of Birmingham is fairly close to the centre of the Kingdom of Mercia and less than 20 miles from the site of the great Anglo-Saxon cathedral at Lichfield (the Norman one we see today is said to be on top of the old Anglo-Saxon building).