Lawrence of Arabia’s Final Stop . . . in Dorset : A journey to a resurrected church in an English village leads to an unexpected discovery.

There they are, buried side by side, in a simple Dorset churchyard: Ethel Shrimpton and Lawrence of Arabia.

I wonder if they ever met?

It’s possible, since he was born in 1888 and she in 1885, but--given his travel record--not likely.

T. E. Lawrence, the archeological scholar-turned-war-hero, was born in Wales but lived most of his exotic life in other lands: France, Syria, Palestine, Egypt, India, Pakistan, Arabia. Then in 1923, after his dazzling military exploits had made him a legend, he enlisted--under an assumed name--as a private in the Royal Tank Corps and was posted to Bovington Camp in Dorset.

Nearby, in that green and rolling county, he bought Clouds Hill--a ruined cottage in a wood--which remained his home until he died in 1935, following a motorcycle accident on a narrow Dorset lane. He was 46 years old.

I don’t know a thing about Ethel Shrimpton, except what I read on her gravestone: she died March 11, 1968, at the age of 83.

Lawrence’s rough, granite marker, beneath an enormous cedar at the back of the cemetery, recognizes his old school ties. “To the dear memory of T. E. Lawrence, fellow of All Souls College, Oxford. Born 16 August 1888. Died 19 May 1935.” An open stone book rests at the foot of the grave.

His small plot holds a scraggly garden--primroses, begonias, a rosebush in need of pruning and two vases for cut flowers, which were mums when I happened by.

I had not set out on the trail of Lawrence of Arabia, and yet our paths crossed three times during two weeks in England: at All Souls College, where a clear-eyed photograph in Arab dress was startling in its likeness to Peter O’Toole, who played Lawrence in the 1962 Oscar-winning film; at a house at 2 Polstead Road, Oxford, with a blue plaque indicating he once lived there, and in the graveyard where I now stood, near St. Nicholas Church in the village of Moreton.

The church itself--about eight miles east of Dorchester--was the reason I came this way, and not because it was Saxon or Norman or otherwise ancient, but because it was new and, I’d heard, magnificent.

From the outside I had my doubts; it seemed just another graceful example of Georgian Gothic architecture. But the inside was sheer magic, like stepping into a lantern of white light. The walls are more glass than stone, and the glass is crystal clear, not stained to deep colors. Engraved in white on white, each tall, arched window sparkles like an heirloom Waterford goblet or a Steuben bowl, through which shines the sky.

The panes are all different, engraved with fanciful butterflies and birds, orchids and wildflowers, the sun and moon and stars. Because the church is dedicated to St. Nicholas, some windows shimmer with entwined ribbons, candles and Christmas trees. The mood is celebratory, even festive.

As I turned my head, on that day of gusting clouds, the sunlight shifted like a powerful beacon and struck the words on one window: “Remember the days of darkness.” Seven white candles are snuffed out, the smoke still rising.

That poignant message relates to Oct. 8, 1940, when a jettisoned bomb from a German aircraft made a direct hit and destroyed the church that formerly stood on this site.

The remarkable stylized windows of the new church, the last completed in 1980, are the work of Laurence Whistler, an English artist about whom I wish I knew more. Earlier, he created the engraved glass altar panels in the Lady Chapel of the splendid Sherborne Abbey, which I have yet to see.

I also have yet to see Clouds Hill, T. E. Lawrence’s two-room cottage, which was not open that day. In letters he called it “the centre of my world” and told of his beloved books and gramophone records and solitude. On May 8, 1935, he wrote a friend: “Wild mares would not at present take me away from Clouds Hill. It is an earthly paradise.”

Eleven days later he died.