The Church of England recently published bleak statistics. Average attendance at rural church services on Sundays is down to 19. Almost a third of those are 70 or over.

But these figures don’t account for the thousands of church crawlers who, like me, spring in at peculiar hours with our guide books.

I can’t walk past a church without going in to have a look. Open the musty visitor book in most rural churches and you will find comments written by people from across the globe.

All have their own reasons for stopping. For me it’s mostly architecture and occasional, thrilling peeks into our medieval ancestors’ obsession with the macabre.

Take for example the memorial to Alice, Duchess of Suffolk, which has stood in Ewelme church since the 1400s.

The sculptor lays her out on her back in the dress of the day. You’d be forgiven for walking straight past. But get down on your knees. Look underneath.

Here is Alice again, rendered in stone as a corpse in a state of advanced decomposition. It’s a reminder – a memento mori – than no matter how grand your life becomes, you cannot escape your death.

Today’s memento mori might show a woman wearing Gucci and clutching an iPhone. But underneath the corpse would look the same.

A similar example can be found in Burford church. On the arch as you walk through there churches would usually have a Doom painting, depicting the Last Judgement. The one at South Leigh church near Witney is heavily restored but vivid.

Every church has a story to tell. Sometimes the stories are more subtle but there is always something to fascinate.

Unfortunately, while getting behind your national football team seems obligatory, getting behind your national heritage is perceived as a bit weird. Subsequently there’s much indifference.

I was recently horrified to read about the plight of the Fryer Monument at the village church in Harlton, Cambridgeshire.

One of the finest examples of alabaster sculpture in the country, it shows a father, mother and son. It has sat there, much admired, since 1631. Then last November someone walked in and, for no reason, hacked the mother’s face off. The vandals haven’t been caught. It makes my blood boil.

Even the police have been accused of indifference about the ongoing theft of metal from church roofs. The accusation was made in 2011 when Ecclesiastical Insurance received claims from English churches totalling £4.5m.

There is so much to gain from looking at the built heritage that surrounds us.

When people travel from all over the world to take a closer look at our past, then why don’t we?