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ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY
Journal of the Ecclesiological Society, successor to the Cambridge Camden Society of 1839 Registered Charity no. 210501 Issue 30, January 2003
Interior view of Cockayne Hatley Church, Bedfordshire, 26th-27th December 1827. Pen and ink drawing by J.C. Buckler. B.L. MS 36356, f.30. By permission of the British Library. Inside Front Cover Q3 23/1/2003 11:12 am Page 1
CHAIRMAN’S COMMENTS
With this issue you will find the Society’s programme for the year.Thanks again to Christopher Webster for organising this. He is always open to suggestions for future events. My apologies that there is no date for the AGM and its accompanying lecture. Pressures unconnected with the Society have meant that I am a little late in organising this. Full details will appear in the next edition.The date will be a weekday evening in May or early June. Our Annual Conference goes from strength to strength. This year it will be held on Saturday 4 October. The topic will be the post-Commonwealth and early Georgian church interior.We will concentrate on the period 1660–1720 - a time which saw a degree of con- sensus emerging about how a church should be arranged, which was to last until the upheavals of the nineteenth century. Details will follow in the Spring edition of Ecclesiology Today. Incidentally,those who suffered the heat and stairs of the last conference will be pleased to know that a new venue has been found, with just one shallow flight of stairs, and modern, silent air- conditioning. We had thought that this issue would be the first in our new format, but this change has been unavoidably held over, and we now hope to launch the new design in the Spring issue. However for this and the previous issue we have been using a new typeface, which we hope you find lighter and easier to read than the previous one. Tucked inside this issue you should find a Gift Aid form (as I write, it is not quite clear whether it will be enclosed or not - if not, it will be in the Spring issue).As you will know,this allows the Society to reclaim tax (further details on the form). Please spare a moment to fill this in and return it to the address shown - it will help our finances considerable. Incidentally, there is no need to wonder if you have filled one in before on behalf of the Society because a) this is the first time we have issued it, so you can’t have! and b) it causes no problems if you fill in more than one. As I mentioned in a previous issue, a volunteer has stepped forward to distribute the Society’s publications.We are now moving our stock to the new location. I hope to give you more details in the Spring, including a list of back stock for sale. Our programme and publications do not happen by themselves. I am sure you will want to join me in thanking all those - members of Council and the many others - who have con- tributed to the Society’s activities in 2002.The steady growth in the Society is surely a vote of confidence in their efforts. The new and updated edition of the catalogue of Stained Glass Marks and Monograms is now available from NADFAS, at a cost of £12.50 inclusive of post and packing. Cheques, payable to NADFAS, should be sent to NADFAS House, 8 Guilford Street, London, WC1N 1DA. It provides a very full listing, with diagrams and index. The sale of an important collection of books on ecclesiology and the Gothic Revival (to be sold as an intact collection) is being handled by Nancy Sheiry Glaister from whom further details are available at 18 Huntingdon Street, London, N1 1BS.
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CONTENTS
THE MONASTERIES OF SHIRE, NORTHERN 3 ETHIOPIA Niall Finneran
ODDS & ENDS 10
CHURCH CRAWLER REPORTS 11 Phil Draper
A TRAFFIC IN PIETY:THE LURE OF CONTINENTAL 22 CHURCH FURNITURE IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY Charles Tracy
LETTERS 31
HISTORIC CHAPELS TRUST 35
THE TWELFTH-CENTURY ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH: 42 A REVIEW OF THE SOCIETY’S 2002 CONFERENCE Bruce Watson
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR 44
ST SAVIOUR, COALPIT HEATH 45 Eric Bray
ODDS & ENDS 48
BOOK REVIEWS 49
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THE MONASTERIES OF SHIRE, NORTHERN ETHIOPIA
Niall Finneran
THE HIGHLANDS of Ethiopia have been Christian since at least the end of the fourth century. According to the early church histories and Ethiopian tradition, the king of the Aksumite Empire of northern Ethiopia, Ezana, presided over a kingdom that in its heyday in the first half of the first millennium AD enjoyed extensive trade links with the eastern Mediterranean world; Ezana was converted to Christianity by a Syrian named Frumentius, and the new faith was enthusiastically embraced. Soon churches were built, pre-Christian motifs on coinage were removed and replaced by crosses, and burial traditions changed.With the arrival of the so-called Syrian nine saints in the sixth century, Christianity took hold in the more peripheral regions of the Aksumite polity, and monasticism became firmly established.The processes of evangelisation, going hand-in-hand with political conquest, survived the predations of the raids by the pagan queen Gudit at the beginning of the 1000s, and the jihad of the Muslim warlord Gragn in the 1500s. Ethiopian Orthodox Christianity, rigidly monophysite, retains a number of idiosyncratic cultural and ideological traits, and remains proudly identified with the state itself. In terms of sources for the study of ecclesiastical art and architecture, the Ethiopian Orthodox Church is fairly well catered for. The magnificently illustrated African Zion (1993) catalogues a recent exhibition of Ethiopian church painting, icons and processional crosses, and is integrated with a very useful overview of the history and development of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church by a number of noted scholars.This remains the standard work for understanding the cultural his- tory of the Church. Specific research on the architecture of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has tended to concentrate geographically upon the northernmost province of Tigray, the Aksumite heartland and home of some of the earliest churches and monasteries in Ethiopia.The late Ruth Plant’s 1985 work Architecture of the Tigre, Ethiopia represents the culmination of many years’ trav- el and work in that province, and the book contains a number of descriptions of rock-hewn and free-standing churches from that historic region, although the western portion of Tigray (which we consider here) is under-represented. Finally, in connection with monasticism, the key work on the famed monastery of Debra Damo remains that of the British architect Derek Matthews, who helped restore this important hill-top settlement in the 1940s (Matthews, D, 1959,The Monastery of Debra Damo, Ethobia, Archaeologia 97: 1-58). In summary, much work has focused upon the churches and monasteries of Aksum and the countryside to the east, but little is known about that corner of Tigray that spreads westwards towards the Sudan border.This brief contribution seeks to shed some light on the ecclesiastical history of a hitherto poorly understood area --the region of Shire, northern Tigray (figure 1). Moving some 30 kilometres to the west of the ancient ecclesiastical centre of Aksum, the landscape becomes perceptibly lower closer to the Sudanic steppe lands.This is the historic region of Shire, centred upon the town of Inda Selassie. In November 2001, the present writer directed an archaeological survey in this area with the goal of identifying as many multi-period sites as possi- ble. In practice, this meant a great deal of coverage of prehistoric and early historic-period sites, but
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Above: Figure 1. Location of the Shire region within Ethopia Opposite: Figure 2. Sketch plan of the monastic complex of Giorgis. Key: a: male church; b: graves; c: food store (lower) and refectory (upper); d: new concrete meeting building; e: circular dwelling huts (tukuls); f: beehives; g: belfry.
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Figure 3. The painted refectory building/store at Giorgis. it soon became clear that extant church and monastery sites could tell us a great deal about the nature of settlement in the area during medieval times (i.e. after the end of the Aksumite period at around 1000 until around 1600). As a rule, the three monastic establishments considered here date from the era of King Dawit I (1382-1413) when the region --hitherto inhabited by the pagan Kunama pastoralist peoples-- was finally subjugated and brought into the sphere of the Christian state.The founding of these monas- tic communities had at once political and religious connotations. The monasteries formed the spearhead of the evangelisation effort, and the Christianisation of the emperor’s new subjects allowed for speedier political integration. Monasteries were very well endowed materially by the Emperor and his cohorts; ecclesiastical land-holding systems (gult) played an important role in the generation of revenue for these newly-established monasteries. Many studies have emphasised the role of gult awards in the socio-economic life of rural Ethiopia up until its abolition under the Marxist Junta or Derg in 1974 . In terms of structure, gult awards of land and goods by emperors and other high-ranking feudal officials to monasteries show marked similarities to English Anglo- Saxon land charters; an invocation is followed by the name of the grantor, the reason for the grant, the type of grant (often hereditary), a list of officials to administer the grant, an "immunity clause" and a sanction . The most important monastery in Shire is that of Giorgis (St. George), situated atop an amba
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Figure 4. Sketch plan of the monastic complex of Enda Abuna Aron Gedam. Key: a: male church; b: baptistry; c: graves; d: two-storied dwelling; e: stela demarking male and female zones; f: gatehouse and belfry. or flat-topped hill some two kilometres east of Inda Selassie. The walled monastic compound con- sists of church buildings, a communal refectory and a number of associated tukuls -- traditional cir- cular houses -- as homes for the 10 out of the 100 attached monks who actually live in the monastery (figure 2). Although nominally under the head of an abbot or Debra Alekha, the community is largely egalitarian and the monks mainly pursue communal agricultural pursuits in order to support the monastic community. In common with most Ethiopian monasteries, there is a single church for men and a mixed church where females may separately worship.The churches
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are of a circular rather than square form; this circular form of church owes more architecturally to the southern parts of Ethiopia than to the ancient tradition of square church building in the north, a tradition that has its roots in pre-Christian Aksumite secular architecture. Most of the buildings have been reconstructed in recent times, but the monastic refectory/storage building would appear to be the oldest building here, and its walls are painted with a rich variety of biblical scenes (figure 3). Of special interest in regards to reconstructing the wider gult system formerly centred on this monastery is a manuscript held at the treasury that has hitherto not been studied. This manuscript, known as the Woingel Zawerk, lists the gifts to the monastery from the time of King Dawit and his contemporary the Patriarch Bartolomeus in the 14th century through to gifts by local Dejazmatches (local military functionaries) and later emperors such as Fasilidas, Dawit II, Bakafa and Iyasu. Most of the awards consist of church furniture, goblets, vestments and cattle. Land and villages were also given to this monastery over the years, from an initial award of 14 by Abuna Bartholemeus, which was enlarged to 25 villages in the 17th century by Emperor Fasilidas. Of these 25, we were able with the help of locals to locate upon a map 18 of these villages, all of which are still inhabited. In complete contrast to the wealth and size of Giorgis, the small monastery of Enda Abuna Aron Gedam, Zukutur Ezeheran, presents a stark contrast. This small monastic compound of approximately 40 metres by 50 metres in extent (figure 4) comprises a mixed church located to the north of the compound, a spring of holy water covered by concrete construction, and the main monastery with circular male church, belfry,gatehouse and a single square two-storied dwelling for the two resident monks; a single hermit is also attached to the site. A single standing stone to the north of the church demarcates the male-only and mixed zones. As a small monastery, the land awards that came its way were largely on the poor agricultural areas and, with the dismantling of the gult system in 1974, the monastery has struggled to survive. Now only two monks are left, and they are forced to rely upon the charity of local people in order to survive. In a few years the monastery will surely fall into abandonment. Another contrast is afforded by the monastery of Debra Abuna Abay, some 40 kilometres south-west of Inda Selassie, Shire.This is one of the most famous monastic foundations in Ethiopia, is devoted to the teaching of Qedasi or liturgical chants, and attracts large numbers of students from all over Ethiopia to learn this ancient art. As a teaching establishment, this community presents a different set of social and architectural features. The foundation itself dates from the time of Emperor Amda Seyon (1314-44), and was awarded extensive gult over the centuries. The monastery itself has been completely destroyed three times during its history, the last time during the Ethiopian-Italian war in the 1930s when the community harboured a large number of resis- tance fighters, and was subsequently razed by the Italian forces. Very little of the original architectural fabric survives of the male church of St Samuel or the mixed church of St Michael -- as with Enda Abuna Aron Gedam, above, the gender-based zones are rigidly defined, although here an ornate cross, rather than crude monolith, marks the divide. The church of St Samuel was rebuilt using money provided by the last emperor Haile Selassie dur- ing the 1950s. Essentially a three-storied, eight-sided construction with ambulatory (figure 5), this structure pays homage to the circular, more recent southern Ethiopian style of church architecture
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Figure 5. The male church of St Samuel, Debra Abuna Abay. Photo by Michael Harlow. rather than the rectangular/square form so prevalent elsewhere in Tigray.Of particular note are the richly-carved wooden doorways.As a combined teaching establishment and monastery of consid- erable size, we see far more dwelling places, classroom areas, treasuries, storerooms and larger refec- tories present to cater for the community, although the students themselves have no dedicated liv- ing space within the monastery; they are lodged with local farming families, and often pay for their keep by acting as farm labour during harvest time.The monastic hierarchy is grouped beneath the abbot, or Abba Minet, whilst the scholastic hierarchy is headed by the Mesgeber Qedasi. This unique amalgam of scholastic centre and monastic establishment marks this monastery out as an intrigu- ing potential anthropological and historical study. This contribution has discussed in outline three very different types of monastery within a small area.We have a major monastic centre, a major scholarly centre of national importance, and, at the other end of the scale, a very small and poor monastic establishment.All of these monasteries are, in varied ways, tied to their immediate landscapes and wealth holdings. The success of these land holding economic systems is mirrored in the scale and grandeur of the monastic architecture. This contribution has highlighted the need for more archaeological and historical work on monastic communities away from the core Aksumite centres. In terms of comparison with the archaeology of Coptic monasticism in Egypt, we still know very little about the socio-cultural
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development of Ethiopian monasteries on the wider scale , and it is hoped that future work will elucidate what appears to be a very opaque and yet potentially intriguing regional picture in the wider context of global monastic systems.
Acknowledgements The following participated in the field work outlined above:Ato Asfaw Arefaine, Dr Chester Cain,Ato Goitom Nega, Mr Michael Harlow and Ato Tafesse Gebreghziabher.The Society of Antiquaries of London and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London and the British Academy Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship scheme provided financial assistance.This paper is respectfully dedicated to the memory of the late Ato Gebre Kidan Wolde Hawariat.
ALL SAINTS HOSPITAL, EASTBOURNE
This book has just appeared. It charts the history of Woodyer’s remarkable hospital complexs in Eastbourne and the work of the no less remarkable Harriet Brownlow Byron, the Mother Foundress. Opened in 1869 to provide recuperative care, the most spectacular building is the magnifi- cent chapel that equals anything that Woodyer did elsewhere. Since its inception the hospital use has been maintained, though this long chain of events will soon be broken as the hospital falls out of the National Health Service and passes to developers. Hopefully the chapel will find a new use and be preserved so that future generations can admire the architectural energy of their Victorian predecessors. Copies of this excel- lent book can be obtained from Bob Mulvey, General Manager, All Saints Hospital, King Edwards Parade, Eastbourne BN20 7XA. Copies cost £12 including UK post and packing.. Cheques to East Sussex Hospitals NHS Trust.
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CHURCH CRAWLER REPORTS Phil Draper
RESIDENTS BLOCK CONSERVATION FUNDING Parishioners in West Somerton, Norfolk, hoped to get Lottery funding in their third bid to restore medieval wall paintings in their church but found that other residents of the village foiled their plans. English Heritage, advisors to the Heritage Lottery Fund, turned down the application because the 14th-century paintings at St Mary’s church were being desecrated by excrement from bats which roost in the church during the summer The religious images came to light during Victorian restorations. In the last 12 years the PCC has made three applications for their restoration but the first two, although they resulted in grants, only raised funds for the restoration of the walls which suffered from damp, and to the tower and its bell. Churchwarden Pauline Burckitt said ‘We are disappointed but still hopeful that we will get funding. Something like this would be very,very costly and our parish of 200 simply cannot afford it.This kind of work can only be undertaken by experts and we would have to put the project out to tender but it would be well worth it’. Following advice from English Nature, the bats were found not to be from an endangered species and it is liaising with the parish on how to remove the threat which the bats posed.The church is the resting place of the “Norfolk Giant” Robert Hales, who was born in West Somerton in 1820 and measured 7ft 8in.
West Somerton church, Norfolk
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WEST COUNTRY BRASS THEFTS The church of St Mary at Swainswick in the hills north of Bath, North-East Somerset, is a fairly ordinary building dating back to Norman times. For over 550 years it had been home to a small beautiful brass memorial to Edmund Forde †1439. The figure was 25in in length and had ‘three inscription scrolls emanating from his head and shoulders’ according to Pevsner.The figure has been chiselled out from the sanctuary floor and stolen, almost certainly on the same day as the larger (37in) beautiful brass of Elizabeth Walsche †1441 was stolen from St Mary Magdalene’s church in the nearby village of Langridge. She was depicted in widow’s weeds with a dog at her feet. The inscriptions were left at both churches. Elizabeth had been removed at some time (probably after the Victorian chancel was built) into a display cabinet south of the chancel arch, and here is a rub- bing of the brass together with a note explaining that this is a temporary arrangement pending the return of the brass. It could be that a replacement could be made, but this will not happen at Swainswick where a lady explained to your newshound that the brass covered a grave and as such cannot be disturbed. Probably on the same weekend, late July or early August 2002, St Cyriac’s church at Lacock, Wiltshire was also targetted. Here the thief managed to steal the group of 5 daughters, all wearing
St Mary, Swainswick
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pedimental head-dresses and the single large son in civilian dress from the fine Tudor brass to Robert Baynard †1501. A few weeks later on 24th August the Trinity from the 1534 brass to Sir Edmund Tame was stolen from Fairford church in Gloucestershire.
St Mary Magdalene, Langridge
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Holy Cross church (better known as Temple Church), in the centre of Bristol.
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BRISTOL’S TEMPLE CHURCH RUINS TO BE RE-ROOFED? English Heritage has announced ambitious plans (Sept 2002) to re-roof the blitzed ruins of Holy Cross church, better known as Temple Church, in the centre of Bristol which are under its guardianship. The plan which is out for public consultation is to turn the ruins into a glass centre, showing the history of glass pro- duction in the city.The ruins were conserved in 1999 by English Heritage at a cost of £160,000 and it then commissioned a study by a group of architects to find a suitable way of reusing the church. English Heritage is working with the Diocese of Bristol and the Bristol Blue Glass Company and, once approved, the scheme could be completed within five years. The church was originally built by the Knights Templar in the C12,but was rebuilt on an ambitious scale in the C15.The church was burnt out in the air raids of 1940. Little sur- vived the fire, except the famous leaning west tower, which Royal Engineers sappers were about to dynamite as a dangerous structure St Martin’s church,Waithe, Lincolnshire immediately after the air-raids until a local pointed out that the tower had leant in that alarming way for five hundred years! To see it yourself look at http://www.geocities.com/churchcrawler/bristol/temple.htm
CAUSES FOR CONCERN St Martin’s church in Waithe, Lincolnshire is in an atrocious state and has been closed for worship for a number of years. Apparently the structure is now unsafe, according to Alan Barton from the University of York who wrote to members of the Church Crawling internet group voicing his con- cerns for this building. John Ketteringham in his Lincolnshire church bells book believes there are three medieval bells in the Anglo-Saxon central tower, which he couldn’t get access to for confir- mation due to the weight of pigeon droppings on the trapdoor.With the exception of the tower and the Early English nave arcades the rest of the church is of 1861 by James Fowler of Louth - an architect whose work is becoming more appreciated following his near-ridicule in Betjeman’s Antiquarian Prejudice. Alan reports that ‘Fowler’s interior decoration is superb, banded brick in the nave and profuse use of tile in the chancel apse. Lozenge-shaped tablets incorporated into the apse record the burial in a vault beneath the chancel of members of the Haigh family, who paid for the
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All Saints,North Street,York
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rebuilding.The Haigh’s were prosperous wool mill owners in West Yorkshire who set themselves up as gentry in the 1840s at nearby Grainsby Hall.’ The archbishop’s commission on the future of the City of York’s churches reported on 3rd September 2002 and it recommends that four of the medieval churches in the city centre (all Grade I listed) should be closed. These are: All Saints North Street, St Helen Stonegate, St Martin cum Gregory Micklegate and Holy Trinity Priory Micklegate. The waiting period could be a disaster for All Saints and its priceless collection of medieval stained glass. It is also mystifying as the church has an average Sunday attendance of 50. St Lawrence, perhaps York’s best Victorian church (1881- 3 by J.G.Hall), built alongside remains of the medieval church of the same name is also on the hitlist. Other churches in the city under threat of redundancy are St Barnabas (Hornsey & Monkman 1902-4), St Chad (W.H.Brierley, 1926), St Luke (Demaine & Brierley, never finished, 1900-2), and St Thomas (G.F Jones 1853-4). More information, with links, on the All Saints, North Street website www.allsaints-northstreet.org
EUROPEAN NEWS - FRANCE Rouen Cathedral in Normandy was a less well-known victim of the terrible hurricane winds which devastated parts of Northern France and Paris, including the trees in the Royal Park at Versailles, in December 1999. One of the angle pinnacles of the central tower was blown off (NE), and fell through the roof and vault of the choir, damaging internal stonework and smashing sever- al of the fittings below, including the bishop’s throne. Several holes made in the floor have now been filled in and the vault and roof repaired. However, in July 2002 the low sanctuary screen, now missing two lamps, and the throne were still awaiting restoration and clearly showing the damage which they received.A closer look also reveals damage to the stonework of the south choir wall. On a happier note the same visit discovered that the choir aisles and ambulatory were exhibiting the soon-to-be-replaced statues of the west front which is nearing the end of a lengthy restoration/conservation. Most statues have been conserved, with parts recarved, but a few are com- pletely new and are displayed alongside their very worn originals.When in position high on the west front they do not appear that big, but they are in fact close to life-size.Work is continuing to reposition these statues in the last few months and should be nearing completion later in 2003. Incidentally the unusual openwork iron spire on top of the central tower is the tallest in France at 151 metres (495ft). Luckily it was not this which toppled onto the roofs below. The exterior of Bayeux Cathedral’s east end is also undergoing a major restoration, together with the west fronts of the Abbaye aux Hommes (St Étienne) in Caen, and St Pierre (Cathedral) in Lisieux. The astonishing concrete church of St Julien in Domfront dating from the 1920s has won its fight to be listed and thus qualify for government grants to repair the failing central tower. Hopefully the money will come through before a major catastrophe ensues. Nets are suspended over the vast central space inside to catch “flakes” of falling masonry, and are draped over the out- side of the spire itself presumably for the same reason. The church remains open to visitors and in use.
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Rouen Cathedral
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St Julien in Domfront.
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EUROPEAN NEWS - ITALY I am sure that no-one that reads this journal is oblivious to the splendours of Italy’s city in the sea,Venice. However depending on when you were last there - or if you are thinking of going - you may not be aware that the city and arch- diocese of Venice have embarked on a major restoration of many of the churches. Some have been completed, some are nearing completion and open to visitors, but many others are com- pletely swathed in scaffolding and plastic out- side, inside or both. Don’t let that put you off going, as well-over two-thirds are still open, that is 30-40 churches, including the major sights St Mark, San Giorgio Maggiore, the Frari, San Zanipolo (SS Giovanni e Paolo), Il Redentore and Santa Maria della Salute. However at the end of September 2002 among the churches closed for foreseeable future were Tolentini,San Maurizio, Angelo Raffaele and San Simeone Piccolo, the latter in a prominent position on the Grand Canal opposite the main station. Santo Stefano and Carmini are open but the west ends of both still have work proceeding.A San Stae,Venice few churches have been closed and converted into other usage. San Vidal serves as a conference and exhibition area, and San Lorenzo, a large Dominican church, looks ready for conversion like San Biago into accomodation. Others, like Santa Maria Formosa, San Giovanni Elemosinario, San Stae and Venice’s cathedral until 1807 San Pietro di Castello, clearly show the end results of a major careful conservation and redecoration. Fifteen of Venice’s churches are kept open every day 1000-1700 by the organisation Chorus under the banner “Tesori d’Arte a Venezia”,“the churches of Venice - the museum in the city”. There is an admission charge of 2 euros to each church, or a combined pass to all fifteen for 8 euros. The money raised is used to continue the restoration of other churches, and in time further church- es will be added to the scheme.A book on the churches is available (in full colour 8 euros) and the whole idea is promoting the artistic treasures that survive in these buildings. Each church has a lam- inated guide-sheet available in major languages, together with a longer audio-tour guide if pre- ferred. See the works of Bernini,Tiepolo,Titian,Tintoretto,Veronese, even Rubens, the list is end- less, and the best part is that the architecture can be appreciated at the same time! There is a web- site at www.chorus-ve.org which will give you further details. In a city where opening times for churches vary greatly, it is useful to know that these fifteen will be open for most of the day, espe- cially for us English who are still out in the midday sun!
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JOTTINGS Following on from edition 28 of Ecclesiology Today, St Paul’s Church in Portland Square in the cen- tre of Bristol is now completely swathed in scaffolding and polythene as the long awaited work by the Churches Conservation Trust gets underway. People are now living in St Matthew Moorfields and St Michael-on-the-Mount-Without is deteriorating rapidly thanks to vandalism. Apparently work is underway to convert the church at Forncett St Mary, Norfolk into shel- tered housing.The unbuttressed west tower dates from the C13, especially the lower stages, and the upper stage is mentioned in a will of 1432. It has Perpendicular bell-openings that were replaced in a general restoration of 1869. The battlements have flushwork panelling to the north and west sides only. The nave and chancel are later with the chancel built in 1869. The north porch is cur- rently roofless. Rotherfield Greys church in Oxfordshire is to receive a southern extension of parish rooms to be accessed by a new door in the south wall of the nave. Excavations were underway this sum- mer in the churchyard in advance of the work beginning.The same visit noted that signatories in the Visitors’ Book are few and far between, probably due to it being kept out of reach behind the locked railings of the north chapel which houses the splendid C17 Knollys monument. St Andrew’s church at Clay Coton in Northamptonshire is currently offered for sale. Dating back to the C14 and recently renovated, it is available for £850,000 which is not bad for a church listed by Bridget Cherry as near-derelict and threatened with demolition in 1971.The exact same price tag is also attached to the sale of All Saints church in Waldershare, Kent; the nave and chan- cel were virtually rebuilt by Ewan Christian, but with two flanking red-brick chapels to the chan- cel of c.1700 which contain some important memorials. If no-one comes in to buy, then this church is worthy of preservation and the Churches Conservation Trust must be considered a prime candidate for future management. On 7th September 2002 St Julian’s church at Wellow, North-East Somerset, was targetted by thieves who chiselled away one Victorian carved head from a frieze of eight large corbels, leaving a hole in the wall. Hopefully this does not mean that other structural architectural features will be removed from churches in use. It’s bad enough that such features are lost through closure, demoli- tion and conversion. St Andrew’s church at Chew Magna south of Bristol also suffered a similar attack in the same month, although it seems that the motive was more vandalism than theft.The Elizabethan tomb of Edward Baber †1578 and his wife †1601 was the object of mindless destruc- tion when carved figures on the superstructure were removed, and one of the cherub heads was taken off.This tomb was not long ago restored to good condition.
AND FINALLY.... I enjoy putting together these pages for the Society but can I issue a plea to all members for more news to keep this column alive! So from your travels and holidays, or from your scans of local papers, keep in mind your Ecclesiological Society Newshound! Items of interest can be sent to me electronically or via post, together with a photograph if possible (with SAE for return if desired). Comments and suggestions also gratefully received. My address is Phil Draper, 10 Lambley Road, St George, Bristol BS5 8JQ, UK or via eMail [email protected]
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A TRAFFIC IN PIETY:THE LURE OF CONTINENTAL CHURCH FURNITURE IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY Charles Tracy
THE EXISTENCE OF a large body of church furniture from the Continent in English churches is little known about and generally ignored.Yet when the golden age for the transhipment of this material to our acquisitive shores was already underway, Gustav Waagen observed:
... when the storm of the French revolution burst over different countries of Europe ... scarcely was a country overrun by the French, when Englishmen skilled in the arts were at hand with their guineas.1
This somewhat bizarre efflorescence of the Romantic movement was, indeed, ultimately a product of the French Revolution. It was fuelled in England by the revival of interest in the Middle Ages, engendered, in part, by the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and the re-instatement of Roman Catholicism after a three-hundred year prohibition. In this as yet pre-archaeological Gothic Revival phase, equivalent in some ways to the attempted re-creation of medieval interiors by the likes of Charles Stuart, Lord Stuart de Rothesay (1779-1845) at Highcliffe Castle, Hampshire in 1830-34, and the 6th Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth, Derbyshire shortly after 1836, are the theatrical furnishings of half a dozen modest English rural parish churches. An early example, from 1826 onwards, is at St John the Baptist, Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire, where perversely Baroque furniture from Flanders dominates the nave and chancel (Pl.1). Nikolaus Pevsner commented that: ‘The backs (of the choir-stalls) abound with Catholic saints, looking very Catholic indeed’ (Pl.2).The church has two sets of altar rails, one in the chancel, said to have come from Mechelen, another hoisted up on to the false-organ loft at the west end. On the reverse there are also some Flemish organ loft railings, c.1700, with carved musical instruments. For good measure a very large Flemish pulpit was manoeuvred into the church and found a somewhat inappropriate place in front of the west tower (Pl.3). Sadly this was sold to Carlisle Cathedral in 1963. Finally the family pew in the north aisle has a delightful made-up frontispiece at the west end. Its woodwork is supposed to have come from the church of St Bavo at Ghent, but it is a confection of 16th and 17th century work. St Wilfrid’s Chapel, Brougham, Cumbria (Pl.4), has been described as ‘one of the best early 19th century antiquarian ensembles in existence’.2 It is a small 17th-century aisleless building, again, crammed with alien woodwork.The chapel was re-furnished in the late 1830s, probably by William Brougham, the younger brother of Henry Peter, Lord Brougham, later Lord Chancellor.3 With stallwork and benching along the sides and, originally, the pulpit in the middle, the climax was the fine Flemish carved altarpiece at the east end, necessarily divided into three.An early 16th- century north-country English screen was installed at the west end. Disappointingly, apart from the altarpiece which has also been acquired by Carlisle Cathedral, there is otherwise no authentic Continental church furniture in the chapel. Even so it is a theatrical confection of English and Continental refugee fragments on the lines of the furnishings at St Leonard, Old Warden, Bedfordshire, an interior dryly characterised by Pevsner as `a mass of woodwork indiscriminately
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Plate 1. Interior view of Cockayne Hatley Church, Bedfordshire, 26th-27th December 1827. Pen and ink drawing by J.C. Buckler. B.L. MS 36356, f.30. By permission of the British Library. 23 Eccles 30 ver 2 Q3 23/1/2003 11:17 am Page 24
Plate 2. St John the Baptist, Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire.View of stall backs on north side of chancel.
Plate 3. Flemish pulpit, formerly at Cockayne Hatley Church, Bedfordshire (now at Carlisle Cathedral). Drawing by Henry Shaw. From R.N. Cust, Some Account of Cockayne Hatley, Bedfordshire (1851).B.L. Shelf Mark C 106 l.22, opp. p.10. By permission of the British Library.
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got together’ (Pl.5). At Brougham there are choir-stalls, arranged college-wise, made up from benches with reproduction stall ends.The stall canopies on the north side are a near copy of the Winchester Cathedral choir-stalls without the doubled bays.The major ancient component of the seating is the early 16th-century Northern French panelling on the desk fronts, with Flamboyant tracery.They probably came from chests. In all there are just four ancient Flemish stall standards, one of which, a stall end, has the IHS monogram prominently displayed on the side.The present reredos, which has been moved from its original position at the west end, and the pulpit, incorpo- rate some interesting low-relief Continental sculptured panels. Another important interior of this period is the small family chapel and parish church at Charborough, Dorset, built by Thomas Erle Drax, who died in 1790 (Pl.6).The building, which is almost in the garden of the residence, is late 18th-century Gothick.As Pevsner said, from the out- side you are led to expect ‘a dainty white stucco interior. Instead one is stunned by big dark wood- en spoils from Continental countries everywhere.They hardly leave you enough space to take them in individually’.A plaque on the west wall reads:
In the year 1837 this chapel was fitted up for Divine Worship by Samuel Wanley Sawbridge Erle Drax Esq. who heightened the walls and put up the present oak panelled roof erected the stone spire and embellished the inte- rior with oak carvings; comprising the pulpit altarpiece stalls and that elaborate work of art representing the life of Christ which was formerly the altarpiece in a church in Antwerp ...
Plate 4. St Wilfrid’s Chapel, Brougham, Cumbria.View of initerior looking east. Flemish altarpiece still in situ (now at Carlisle Cathedral). Copyright A. F.Kersting. 25 Eccles 30 ver 2 Q3 23/1/2003 11:17 am Page 26
Plate 5. St Leonard, Old Warden, Bedfordshire.View of interior looking west.
The two-decker pulpit is a showy mixture, containing decorative figures from the 16th to the 18th centuries, and some fine historiated Flemish Mannerist panels. The made-up stalls display two dates, 1626 and 1651.The altar rails are again very much made-up, and secular in style. There are two Flemish altarpieces of the early 16th century,one of which is the best and most authentic item in the chapel.4 The small rebuilt medieval church at Gatton, Surrey,presents another spectacular furnishings ensemble assembled in the 1830s. It is overloaded with choir-stalls from two different churches in the South Netherlands, altar rails probably taken from a Flemish rood-screen, chancel wainscoting with Burgundian panels, a made-up pulpit decorated with historiated early 16th-century panels, a made-up door from Rouen in the south transept and, as if that was not enough, a magnificent and quite unknown English West-Country screen at the west end (Pl.7)! A fine display of antiquarian taste can be seen in the chapel built for the Hibbert family in 1840 at Birtles, Cheshire (Pl.8).This remained in private hands until 1980, when it was presented to the Diocese of Chester.With its fine collection of Flemish and Dutch 16th and 17th-century stained glass, the ensemble is especially valuable because it is undisturbed. Most of the furnishings are made-up, as proves so often to be the case.The pulpit comprises four different components, and has two different 17th-century dates on it.An important feature is the remnants of a large suite of
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Plate 6. St Mary, Charborough, Dorset.View of interior looking east. Note stalls, altarpiece on south wall, reredos and made-up pulpit.
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Plate 7. St Andrew, Gatton, Surrey.View of interior looking east. 17th-century Flemish choir-stalls. Sadly there is only one complete stall left, but there are seven- teen bays of stall back panels, arranged at the west end and in the north chapel, with the canons’s names inscribed above each.5 Three more have been incorporated at the base of the pulpit. Between 1837-39 the cultured Anglican squire and friend of John Keble,William Crawley Yonge, supervised the building of a new church at Otterbourne, Hampshire (not illustrated), for the local landowner, and Tory member of parliament, Sir William Heathcote. John Keble was Heathcote’s tutor at Oxford, and he was persuaded by his former student to accept the livings at Hursley and Otterbourne in 1836.Yonge had studied military engineering in the Army as a young man, and undertook to build the church with the local professional architect Owen Carter (1806- 59).6 The building incorporates the precepts of the Oxford Movement and is very definitely pre- Ecclesiological in character. It is still an auditorium with no chancel screen, originally.The choir was positioned in a gallery at the west end.The pulpit is on the north side to the west of the chan- cel step, and the font was in the middle of the crossing.7 The pulpit is of some interest as a made-up piece. It is based on the Prior Silkstede exemplar at nearby Winchester Cathedral. This monument was later to become very familiar to Carter, as he was commissioned to design new steps and a canopy for it in 1848.8 The Otterbourne pulpit incorporates five fine late 15th-century low-relief figural Flemish or German panels, illustrating the Virgin, St Jerome, St Augustine, a pope and a bishop. The other two panels of bishops are of
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wrought iron. They must have been copies from two other ancient panels from the same set which, for some reason, were not available. Yonge’s daughter Charlotte discusses the furnishings at Otterbourne, saying that:
Mr Yonge sought diligently for old patterns and for ancient carving in oak, and in Wardour Street he succeed- ed in obtaining five panels, representing the Blessed Virgin and the four Latin Fathers, which are worked into the pulpit.9
This reference to ‘old patterns’ is of interest in the study of the practices of the furniture trade at this time.We are reminded of the wrought iron body of the pulpit at Butterfield’s Keble College chapel, built over twenty-five years later. Judging from the address, the broker who supplied not only the pulpit, but the altar rails and altar at Otterbourne was most probably John Swaby. In the six examples I have given of the transformation of small Anglican churches and chapels between 1825 and 1840 by means of the introduction of alien materials mainly from the Continent, it is impossible to discern any consistent motivation on the part of the patrons apart from a generalised, probably unconscious, nostalgic mind-set, which was then the ruling zeit geist. At Cockayne Hatley the Honourable and Reverend Henry Cockayne Cust, second son of Lord Brownlow of Belton, Lincolnshire, was the scion of one of the greatest aristocratic landowning families in England. As the second son he was fortunate enough to inherit the Hatley estate in
Plate 8. St Catherine, Birtles, Cheshire.West end of nave.
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Bedfordshire, comprising 1400 acres of land and producing a gross rental of about £1,500 a year. He was enormously wealthy and poured huge amounts of his inheritance into the rebuilding of the chancel of Hatley Church, and many hundreds of pounds on the imported furniture. Little is known about Samuel Drax of Charborough, the family still having a reputation for secretiveness to this day. Henry Peter, Lord Brougham and Vaux, who later became Lord Chancellor, appointed L.N. Cottingham to transform the existing Brougham Hall into a distin- guished neo-Gothic residence between 1830 and 1840, with the assistance of his brothers James (d. 1833) and William.This transmogrification quickly became known locally as the ‘Windsor of the North’.10 William then turned his attention to St Wilfrid’s Chapel.The Hibberts of Birtles Hall, Cheshire, were probably minor county gentry, although little seems to be known about the family that bought the estate in 1791. It is possible that they were West Indian sugar planters.11 Robert Hibbert built a new mansion in 1819, and it was probably he who filled it with paintings by Salvator Rosa, Bassano and Gainsborough.12 The 5th Lord Monson (1809-41), who was responsi- ble for the much more self-conscious antiquarian enterprise at Gatton Church in Surrey, during his short life travelled abroad a great deal. He erected Gatton Park nearby,a neo-classical residence with a marble entrance hall, which was supposed to have been a copy of the 16th-century Corsini Chapel at St John Lateran in Rome. In the second of these two articles I will examine in more depth the very different response to this Continental ecclesiastical woodwork refugee phenomen on the part of the recently legiti- mated English Roman Catholic church.
Charles Tracy’s book, Continental Church Furniture in England:A Traffic in Piety is available from the Antique Collectors’ Club, price £50 (ISBN 1 85149 376 X).
Notes 1. G.F.Waagen, Works of Art and Artists in England (London 1838) 1, 50. 2. In a letter from Simon Jervis to Miss F.Finch Dawson and Mrs Bouch, dated 24 July 1981. Quoted by permission. 3. K.W.Woods, ‘Netherlandish Carved Wooden Altarpieces of the fifteenth century and early sixteenth century in Britain’, Ph.D thesis Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London (1989), 211. 4. Ibid., 220-26. 5.The inscriptions are recorded in R. Richards, Old Cheshire Churches, 62, and the west screen is illustrated on Pl.66. 6. R. Freeman, The Art and Architecture of Owen Browne Carter (1806-1859) (Winchester 1991), 7-8. 7.There is a measured architect’s ground plan of the church in the Hampshire Record Office.The church was enlarged at Charlotte Yonge’s expense by T.H.Wyatt in 1875.A north nave aisle was added, and the chancel was extended into a polygonal apse. See Freeman, Owen Browne Carter, 7. He points out that the unaltered church at Ampfield, also built for Keble and designed by the Yonge/Carter partnership between 1838-41, gives a good idea of the original form of Otterbourne Church without the transepts. 8. Ibid, 21. 9. C.M.Yonge, John Keble’s Parishes (London 1898), 101. 10. M.Thomas, A History of Brougham Hall and Highhead Castle (Chichester 1992). 11. See the pedigree of the Hibberts of Marple in J.P.Earwaker, East Cheshire etc., ii, (London 1877), 55. 12. G. Ormerod, History of Cheshire, 3 (London 1819; second edition 1882), 711.
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LETTERS
From Nicholas Groves
Trevor Cooper’s most interesting article ‘New-Divised Anthems…’ (Ecclesiology Today May 2002) is accompanied by a picture of John Cosin, shown ‘either as a Doctor of Divinity or as Vice- Chancellor of the University of Cambridge’.There is in fact no doubt about what he is wearing: these are his DD robes. Without going into laborious detail, all doctors at both Oxford and Cambridge originally wore scarlet cloth hoods lined with expensive fur – e.g. miniver. Silk linings were later (c. 1530) allowed.The picture clearly shows the miniver-lined hood, worn so that the lining is fully visible. It is worn over the cappa clausa – a scarlet cloak-like garment, with, as can be clearly seen, a fur- edged opening for the hands.This formed the Congregation dress of doctors at Cambridge (i.e. for LL.D and MD also, but not MusD), but it seems to have fallen into disuse sometime in the 18th century. Oxford, of course, has kept its Congregation habit – the sleeveless scarlet garment worn over the black gown. At Cambridge, the cappa clausa was worn by the Vice-chancellor by virtue of the fact that he was always a DD; it continued to be so worn after the doctors gave up wearing it, and has become, by default, a sort of Vice-chancellor’s robe, though it is of course nothing of the kind, and even though Vice-chancellors are rarely, if ever, DDs these days! The hat Cosin is wearing is of the style known as the ‘Bishop Andrewes’ cap, and is again associated with the DD, but here it is merely the 17th-century form of the mortar-board, which DDs seem to have kept, when everyone else adopted the stiffened form which is still in common use.
43, Normandie Tower, Norwich NR1 1QR; 01603-764090 research @ burgon.org.uk www. burgon.org.uk
______
From John Salmon
S.Augustine's Church, Highgate, London now has a website
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and S. Mary Magdalene, Enfield, Middlesex
[The package costs £150 plus £30 a quarter (or £100 a year), plus about £7 to register a domain name. Total setup costs are about £250.] ______
From Gerard Purnell
I am planning to write an article about the architect Joseph John Scoles (1798-1863) and would welcome information about him. In particular I am looking for copies of letters or papers sent by or to him and letters or papers written by others relating to him or his works, Scoles’s works were chiefly churches or alterations to them.The churches, often Roman Catholic, were mainly in the London area, Lancashire, East Anglia and Wales.
The Byre Scethrog Brecon, Powys LD3 7EQ 01874 676487
[Ed: Scoles’s son became a priest and architect and was responsible for many Roman Catholic church designs, especially in the south. He is buried beside his church in Basingstoke. If anyone has any information on Scoles junior could they please make contact with the editor at the address inside the back cover or at j.p.elliott@vir- gin.net]
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From M Turland
We are investigating a locally important firm of architects and contractors, known from about 1845 to 1891 as “Kirk and Parry of Sleaford”.The business began with Charles Kirk the elder (1791- 1847) in 1830; became Kirk and Parry; about 1850 added Charles Kirk the younger (1825-1902); and continued after the death of Thomas Parry (1818-79); from 1891 as Kirk Knight & Co., the latter probably surviving until after World War I. A London firm, “Kirk and Randall” is possibly associated and has family links. Charles Kirk the younger, it seems, left the firm in 1870 to form Charles Kirk & Sons,Architects. At its height, Kirk and Parry had a London office and depots, and carried out building and railway contracts.These included the building or improvement of churches.We also believe work for the government and on docks was involved.The firm operated in various parts of the country. Kirk & Sons specialised in church restoration. Unfortunately, there is no archive of the firms. As a result we are having to assemble infor- mation as snippets, a matter of threads and patches.We wonder whether your readers can help us with a specific issue, from the early years of The Ecclesiologist? Our research has shown that Charles Kirk the elder, the founder of the firm, set the founda- tions for most of its future progress. Starting as a farmer and builder/designer in Leicestershire, he came to Sleaford, we think to take up the post of county surveyor for Kesteven (a job his father, William (1749-1823), had carried out for Leicestershire). He went from strength to strength with a variety of (so far as we know) mainly Lincolnshire projects. In his private capacity, these includ- ed three Sessions Houses; country houses; rectories; streets of workers’ housing; and two new rural churches. Sometimes he worked for/with well-known architects (H E Kendall;Vulliamy); often he seems to have been the designer himself. Latterly he built stations. Outside Lincolnshire we know of two notable projects: the Somerset County Asylum, and a Wiltshire church designed by G G Scott, at Zeals, 1842-46. (There are probably others which we have yet to discover.) It is one of Kirk’s churches which is the subject of our enquiry, that at Sausthorpe, Lincs, designed and built by Kirk 1842-44 for the Reverend Swan at a cost of £3000.This work appeared in the “Architects approved” list of Volume 3 of The Ecclesiologist. The question is, how did the work of a designer of seemingly local impact appear; and how did he manage to achieve the standard required for approved status? Was Kirk in fact a far more important “architect” than we assume, notwithstanding his omission from the Dictionary in Dixon & Muthesius’ Victorian Architecture? It would seem unlikely that on one occasion his work reached a standard of excellence and not otherwise. Has he been underestimated through not being London based (and not being a member of the RIBA)? And not having an archive? It has to be said that Kirk was in his later years, part of an old-fashioned approach - owning, in the 1840’s,his own brick works,Ancaster stone quarry, limekiln, and timber merchant, all at Sleaford (and also, a steam flour mill!). How did the church design come to the attention of The Ecclesiologist? Presumably via a member of the CCS or one of their friends - maybe Kirk submitted it, although we have no indi-
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cation that he had any particular interest in the CCS’s objectives (on the other hand, he must have had knowledge of such issues - otherwise he would not have been approved!). A study of the membership (in Webster & Elliott) gives hints for speculation. Reverend Swan was not a member. George Gilbert Scott was.Vulliamy and H E Kendall were not.A key member might be Frederick William Hervey, the Earl Jermyn and Marquis of Bristol from 1859-64; he was born in 1800 but his father, the 1st Marquis lived to 90.Their relevance to our question is this: the family owned extensive areas in and around Sleaford and Kirk could not have performed his pri- vate and public duties without contact (even though they lived at Ickworth). More specifically, the Marquis and the Earl were chairman and a trustee of Carre’s Grammar School at Sleaford (the Carres were ancestors of the Herveys); a new school and house had been commissioned in 1834.They were designed and built by Charles Kirk, as were the Carre Almshouse extensions in 1844. The two principal contributors to CCS in the early years, were Trinity and St John’s Colleges. The lst Marquis was a graduate of the former; Earl Jermyn above, of the latter. Is it a coincidence that the first and only Kirk to attend university,Charles the elder’s son, Charles (1825-1902), grad- uated from St John’s in 1849? Our working hypothesis is that the C Kirk referred to in The Ecclesiologist 3, is indeed the founder of Kirk & Parry, born 1791; died 1847. But it is feasible that it is not him, if unlikely. One possibility is Thomas Parry (1818-1879). He was articled to Kirk in 1834, we assume as an “architect” (although neither he, nor any member of the firm subsequently, appear in RIBA membership lists. By the early 1840’s therefore he could have been ready to design a church; and we think he designed c.1849 (or earlier) his own house,Westholme (“an ebullient essay in French C15th domestic Gothic” - Pevsner). Sausthorpe may carry Kirk’s name as head of the firm? Another candidate may be Charles Kirk the younger (1825-1902). His career included 61 church restorations and 4 new churches, after he graduated from Cambridge in 1849.We assume that he was trained by his father, and by the early 1840’s he might just have been capable of design- ing a church. But his subsequent new designs show none of the flair demonstrated at Sausthorpe (and indeed at the other new church of Kirk, at Deeping St Nicholas 1845-46). Kirk the younger has been attributed with Westholme; but we doubt it! (it may even be by C Kirk the elder, built after his death in 1847). So there we have it. If anyone has any knowledge of how Charles Kirk came to be in The Ecclesiologist 3 (or any other information about his activities, or those of his successors in the firm of Kirk & Parry), we would be very pleased to hear about it!
1 Jonathan Gardens Sleaford Lincs
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HISTORIC CHAPELS TRUST
THE HISTORIC CHAPELS TRUST was established in 1993 to take into ownership redundant chapels and other places of worship in England which are of outstanding architectural and historic interest. The object is to secure their preservation, repair and maintenance for public benefit, including their contents, any burial grounds and ancillary buildings. Building of all denominations and faiths can be taken into care except Anglican churches which are eligible for vesting in the Churches Conservation Trust. Therefore the Historic Chapels Trust is chiefly concerned with Nonconformist chapels, Roman Catholic churches, synagogues and private Anglican chapels. All the buildings taken over by the Trust are usually graded I or II*. THE SALEM CHAPEL at East Budleigh, close by the South Devon coast and the popular holiday resorts of Budleigh Salterton and Exmouth, is typical. The chapel closed as a place of wor- ship in the 1970s and was acquired by the Historic Chapels Trust in 1998. Built as a Presbyterian Chapel which later became Congregational, the chapel dates from 1719. It is square with a four-hipped roof, and walls of rendered cob. Inside there was a gallery across one end.The building was enlarged in 1836, the central entrance was replaced by two side doorways and further galleries added, these being supported on slender iron columns. The centre of the chapel is dominated by an iron column which is topped by a vaulted ceiling, the iron
Salem Chapel, East Budleigh, Devon
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Salem Chapel, East Budleigh (interior).
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replacing an earlier wooden column. The preacher’s desk and benches are most probably late 19th- century,though some earlier box pews remain in the galleries. Some time later a vestry and Sunday School buildings were added. The chapel has had a precarious existence from some time. In 1914 there were 290 seats but just 14 members plus 21 Sunday School children. By 1935 the numbers had dropped to 19, by 1950 to 10 and by 1970 it had joined with the chapel at Exmouth, had just 5 members and was served on an occasional basis by a Pastor from Topsham. The 1973 Congregational Year Book report- ed that there were no members, no Pastor and no Church Secretary. Anyone wishing to see the inside of this remarkable chapel should ring 01395 445236. BIDDLESTONE HALL used to stand at the foot of the Cheviots, some 12 km north-west of Rothbury and was the ancient home of the Selby family. It was mostly a Georgian-cum - Edwardian country house which was rebuilt in the late 18th-century and again in 1820. It was demolished around 1960 except for its Roman Catholic chapel which is a 19th-century building
Biddlestone Hall © Northumberland County Council erected on the remains of a medieval (probably 14th-century) tower basement. The chapel was in use until 1997 when it was acquired by the Historic Chapels Trust. In the aftermath of the Reformation and the Tudor break from Rome, Roman Catholic worship was illegal before 1778. However, this brand of Christianity continued to be practised in private by a wealthy minority who were serviced by priest imported from the Continent. Then in 1829 Catholics gained much the same rights as Anglicans and a religious expansion started in earnest. Chapels which had previously existed in secret within manor houses were built in the
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Opposite & this page: Biddlestone Chapel,Alwinton, Northumberland
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grounds and in the main towns. Fuelled by a general move towards a more sacramental form of worship Roman Catholicism, or its Anglican High Church alternative, were much in favour. Pugin led an architectural charge while Newman, Wiseman and others led the clerical advance. Even Protestant anger at the re-establishment of Dioceses to the Roman church could do little to halt the advances. The Biddlestone chapel is a spectacular manifestation of these developments. Outside not inside Biddlestone Hall, the chapel demonstrates the new found confidence and the absence of a need to remain secret. It also evidences the close links which existed between early nineteenth- century Roman Catholicism and certain noted wealthy families. Access can be arranged by ringing 01669 630270, 01665 574420 or 01669 620230. LONGWORTH ROMAN CATHOLIC CHAPEL, Bartestree, Herefordshire is another example of the advances of Roman Catholicism in the 19th-century. The chapel started life as a chapel attached to Old Longworth manor house and it was most probably built around 1400. After the Reformation the chapel fell out of use and the old manor house buildings became part of a farm. By the 17th century the chapel was used for cider mak- ing and the buildings remained in agricultural use until the mid-19th century when the then
St James (Longworth Chapel) Bartestree, Herefordshire (1869-70) beside the convent of 1863
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owner, Robert Biddulph Phillips, convert- ed to Catholicism. Eager to do his bit to take England back to its pre-Reformation past, Phillips restored the chapel in 1851 and founded the Convent of Our Lady of Charity and Refuge at Bartestree in 1864. When he died in 1864 Phillips was buried in the chapel. Phillips had always wanted to relocate the chapel so that it was next to the convent and this was done in 1869-70. It appears almost certain that the work was planned and overseen by E W Pugin,Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin’s son, though the chapel as rebuilt was not an identical copy of the medieval building but a Victorian reinterpretation which used much of the original material. The convent is now empty and plans for conversion to residential use seem- suncertain. In the interim the Historic Chapels Trust is protecting the building from any physical damage and hopes that the time will come when public access will Stained glass in Longworth Chapel be possible. The Trust owns 15 chapels:
Biddlestone Chapel, Northumberland Coanwood Friends Meeting House, Northumberland Cote Baptist Chapel, Oxfordshire The Dissenters’ Chapel, Kensal Green Cemetery, London Farfield Friends Meeting House,West Yorkshire Longworth RC Chapel, Bartestree, Herefordshire Penrose Methodist Chapel, Cornwall St Benet’s Chapel and presbytery, Netherton, Merseyside St George’s German Lutheran Church,Tower Hamlets, London Salem Chapel, East Budleigh, Devon Shrine of Our Lady of Lourdes, Blackpool, Lancashire Todmorden Unitarian Church,West Yorkshire Umberslade Baptist Chapel,West Midlands Wallasey Unitarian Church, Merseyside Walpole Old Chapel, Suffolk For more information contact the Historic Chapels Trust, 29 Thurloe Street, London SW7 2LQ (020 7584 6072), [email protected] and www.hct.org
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THE TWELFTH-CENTURY ENGLISH PARISH CHURCH: A REVIEW OF THE SOCIETY’S 2002 CONFERENCE Bruce Watson
IN MANY ENGLISH TOWNS and villages the parish church is the oldest standing building, where the community has gathered for centuries in joy and sorrow.Many of these splendid church- es date in part from the ‘Great Rebuilding’ of the late 11th and 12th centuries, a time when the parish system was being established. However, due to subsequent rebuilding and the insertion of new windows, few English Romanesque churches survive today as complete structures. It has been estimated that by 1200 England possessed circa 8000-9000 parish churches of which at least 2000 partly or wholly survive. There is a relatively high proportion of Romanesque fabric surviving within the medieval church- es and chapels of the West Midlands; figures of 63% have been quoted for Worcestershire, 58% for Herefordshire, and 39% for Warwickshire. Paul Barnwell, reviewed the evidence for church building in Northamptonshire between the reforms of Pope Gregory VII (1073-85) and the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215. The historic county of Northamptonshire contains some 300 medieval churches, including at least eight Anglo- Saxon examples, but as the Domesday Survey records some 48 churches it can be seen that many Saxon churches have been lost due to rebuilding. In some instances this rebuilding may have con- nected with the buildings being upgraded from chapels (served by itinerant priests) to parish churches.A lot of rebuilding during the 11th and 12th centuries clearly focused on the chancel; in some instances this consisted of adding a chancel, but in many instances it involved enlarging exist- ing chancels, and often rebuilding small apsidal ended ones. The rebuilding of chancels was undoubtedly connected with the new emphasis on the importance of communion, which in turn may have been connected with the practice of relocating altars from the east end of the nave into the east end of the chancel, so the priest was now physically removed from the congregation in the nave.To permit the congregation a better view of the activity around the altar wider chancel arch- es were constructed. Interestingly it appears that many parishes were rebuilding their churches to take account of new liturgical practices before the Fourth Lateran Council. According to Helen Gittos, historians can tell us little about the liturgy of the 12th-century English parish church services as no manuscripts survive, prompting the suggestion that many directions were oral or that many clergy were illiterate. Surviving material includes Pontificals from major churches, and details concerning processions proceeding from parish churches to mother or major churches on important festivals including Candlemas and Palm Sunday.It is know that these processions sometimes halted at the church doors for prayers and also that betrothals were some- times carried out at the church door and the speaker emphasised the significance of the door as a liturgical station. The impact of 12th-century theological change on liturgical fittings and architecture of parish churches was outlined by Carol Davidson Cragoe. The increasing importance of commu- nion was reflected by the spatial provision of larger chancels and the siting of altars directly in front of larger east windows, showing that the ideas of the Fourth Lateran Council were widely followed.
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Until the early 12th century it appears that many piscinas were possibly freestanding wooden or stone pillars, connected to below floor drains or soakaways, but from the 12th century onwards pur- pose-built niche piscinas were being constructed in chancel walls. This change was not down to hygiene, but was a reflection of the changing beliefs. Once it was accepted that during Mass the Eucharist transformed bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, then the preparation and cleaning of the vessels used and the disposal of unused materials achieved new levels of importance and ceremonial. Interestingly increasingly better educated and trained clergy may well have been the driving force for this change at a parochial level, but the possibility that some parishioners were well-informed about the theological debates of the day should be considered too. Another change which began during the late 12th century and became widespread during the 13th century was the tradition that the parishioners should maintain the nave: previously the whole of the church had been maintained from the parish tithes. It is probable that the building of rood screens to demarcate the nave from the chancel started during the late 12th century, but cer- tainly became widespread by the 13th century.The roods provided a new focus for popular devo- tion and also served to emphasise to the parishioners which part of the church they paid for and had free access to and which they did not. One of the architectural gems of many English Romanesque churches are their doors and elaborate tympana, which have survived the ravages of time and rebuilding campaigns remarkably well. Duncan Gavins in the course of his research has examined 475 examples of tympana mostly concentrated in the South Midlands and the Cotswolds. Many examples have been lost in East Anglia due to the use of poorer quality stonework. Of the tympana he examined, 90% were in nave doors. Generally these face outward for the benefit of people approaching the church door (there are only 31 internal examples), and consist of a semicircular block or composite stones. The favourite decorative motif was the cross, but rarely the Crucifixion. Other examples depict drag- ons or St Michael the Archangel or St George slaying dragons. It is possible that some plain tym- pana were originally painted, but nobody really knows.What is surprising is that after all this cre- ativity connected with church doors in the 12th century, the tradition suddenly ends. Is it a possi- bility that this was because all architectural interest and therefore funds moved to the chancel dur- ing the 13th century? The rite of baptism has always been an important part of Christianity,so fonts have long been an important fixture in our parish churches. In fact some churches would have acquired fonts dur- ing the 12th century,when they achieved parish status. Paddy Drake, who has just written a splen- did book on The Romanesque Fonts of Northern Europe and Scandinavia (Boydell and Brewer 2002, price £67.50 to society members, tel. 01394-411320) spoke on some aspects of the subject. Romanesque fonts depict a wide range of decoration, varying from geometric motifs now reinter- preted as divine symbols, foliage, architectural scenes (mostly arcading or interlace) humans and ani- mals.The animals represented are both mythical and real – the lion (with eyes open to symbolise watchfulness) being the most popular. Humans are often represented as groups of paired warriors fighting – symbolising the eternal struggle of good against evil. Today the interior of most of our parish churches is either austere stonework (due to plaster stripping by 19th-century restorers) or white painted plaster, but originally these bare walls were
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alive with brightly coloured figures, few of which now remain. In a society where few were liter- ate there was no point in painting prayers or texts on the church walls. Instead the artists chose to portray scenes from the Bible or the lives of the saints as symbols of faith while the attention of sinners was doubtless regularly drawn to the scenes of damnation. David Park described some surviving examples of wall painting in 12th-century English parish churches. Houghton-on-the-Hill, Norfolk, dating from c. 1090 and only discovered during restoration work in 1996, is considered to be the oldest surviving example of church wall paintings dating from this period.The Houghton paintings depict the creation of Eve, and the Trinity.The ‘Lewes group’ of Sussex churches are considered to the best surviving group of 12th-century English wall paintings.The paintings within the nave of Clayton church are exceptionally well pre- served, they were rediscovered in 1895 and date from c. 1140.The figures are arranged in two hor- izontal tiers, depicting the Last Judgement, and Christ in majesty.At Coombes church the nave wall paintings were rediscovered in 1949 and date from c. 1100. They depict the Visitation,the Nativity and Christ in Majesty.At Hardham church the wall paintings were rediscovered in 1866 and date from c. 1120-40; they are largely complete, but badly faded.The nave scenes are arranged in two tiers; over the chancel arch are scenes from Christ’s early life, scenes from Hell are on the north wall and the Nativity is depicted on the south wall. On the east wall of the chancel Christ is flanked by Elders and Apostles. To conclude with a personal view, several themes emerged from the conference. Firstly, it proved that the 12th-century parish church is an exciting and dynamic field of study, with a lot of ongoing research worthy of publication. It is pleasing to be able to report that the recent Courtauld Institute survey of Romanesque Sculpture in Britain and Ireland is now in the process being made publicly available as a corpus via the Internet. Secondly, the importance of the publication of research in this field of study cannot be overstressed, as good publications act as the springboard for further research. The scarcity of publication on certain important topics is well illustrated by the example of English medieval fonts. Since Bond’s 1908 seminal publication, there has only been one major publication by Tyrrell-Green (1928) until Drake’s new publication. Lastly, I personally feel that there is a yawning gulf between us and the 12th-century con- gregation and their churches. The sources of evidence available to us – architecture, art history, archaeology, history and theology - are all informative to a degree, but even taken together there are still gaps in our knowledge.To me our surviving medieval wall paintings are a metaphor for our perception of our 12th-century parish churches - they are faded, often incomplete and not yet completely understood, but nevertheless offer us glimpses of beauty and piety.
LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
After each edition of Ecclesiology Today we receive a considerable amount of correspondence and we publish as much of this as is possible. It is much more difficult for us to process material that comes to us in typed or handwritten form. So if you can manage material on a disc, CD or by e-mail then send it to [email protected] by e-mail or to the address inside the back cover in other forms.
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ST SAVIOUR, COALPIT HEATH Eric Bray
THE ECCLESIASTICAL PARISH of Coalpit Heath was created from parts of the civil parishes of Frampton Cotterell and Westerleigh by an Order in Council dated 26th April 1845. William Hewitt, on behalf of the inhabitants of Westerleigh, sought aid for the building of a church in Coalpit Heath from the Church Building Society. From The Churchgoer, published some time in early 1846, we are told that four years previously three men, members of the Church Building Society,alighted from their carriage on the common at Coalpit Heath and, accompanied by an old man and a respectable resident, proceeded on foot across its wooded heath to seek ‘a place for the Lord, a habitation of the mighty God of Jacob.’ They had not walked far when their attention was attracted to a smooth spot of glade, adjoining the road and the lark, starting up at their feet, soared heavenward singing his song of gladness, as though he would invite with his sweet omen the selec- tion of that very spot for the sacred structure. They decided that here the future Church of St. Saviour's should stand. It was designed by William Butterfield (1814-1900), a particular favourite of the Cambridge Camden Society. Butterfield was born in London on 7th September 1814. At 17 years of age he was articled to a
Above and opposite: St Saviour, Coalpit Heath by William Butterfield (1844-5), his first Anglican church. Built in a 14th-century style. The lychgate displays much of the muscular originality that was to manifest itself in his later designs.
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builder in Horseferry Road, but the indenture was cancelled after three years when he entered an architectur- al office in Worcester, where he stud- ied early English church building. It was through the patronage of his uncle, Mr W D Wills, the Bristol tobacco manufacturer, that he obtained his first Anglican Church architectural commission which was for St Saviour’s at Coalpit Heath. This was the start of a long and distinguished career which included designs for over 100 churches, new and restored, including Keble College, Merton College and Balliol College Chapel, all in Oxford, Adelaide, Perth and Melbourne Cathedrals in Australia as well as many churches, colleges and schools throughout the United Kingdom, Australia and South Africa. John Gay of Downend was awarded the contract to build St. Saviour's and signed the drawings on
3rd July 1844.The estimated cost was £1,900 and the period for construc- tion 10 months.The eventual cost was to be £2,674 and it was completed in October 1845. This was quite an achievement bearing in mind the labour content of the work, the spe- cialist trades and the detailed work at the finishing stage such as stained glass, floor tiling and joinery. The Church of St Saviour was consecrated on 9th October 1845 by the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol in the presence of about 40 clergy and a congregation of 500.
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The Coalpit Heath Vicarage by Butterfield (1845), north-east corner added 1863. A very functional design which was well ahead of its time. Now a private residence. Coalpit Heath is now a pleasant commuter village bounded by Frampton Cotterell, Yate, Downend and Westerleigh, with a population of about 8,000. The area has changed significantly since the church was consecrated. The coal mines which dominated the community are now all closed, and the majority of its inhabitants commute into Bristol and its surrounding environs. St Saviour’s Church remains at the heart of the community, standing proudly as a landmark and focal point Christian fellowship and worship which has continued unceasingly throughout its history. The church is Grade II, and this places a responsibility on the Church Council and the community to protect the building and retain it in the manner in which it was originally con- structed. In the last 5 years they have spent over £25,000 doing just that, and now another £120,000 is needed to fund replacement of the north facing roof. Both Butterfield and the church are important to students of ecclesiology and 19th-century history,so we wish the Church Council well in their attempts to raise what must appear to be, an impossibly large sum for the small con- gregation that now uses the church.
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ODDS & ENDS
BOOKS FOR SALE Mr C A J Orr has a list of church books for sale. Some members may be interested in contacting him for details at 7 Rigby Court, Norwich NR2 1NT
SIR SAMUEL MORLAND AND STUART ESPIONAGE The 2003 King Charles the Myrtyr lecture will be held at the Parish Church in Tunbridge Wells on Saturday 25 January 2003 commencing at 2.30 pm. The speaker will be Dr Alan Marshall from Bath Spa University. Sir Samuel Moreland (1625-1695) was a diplomat, inventor and subscriber towards the build- ing of the Parish Church.
STAINED GLASS & COSTUME LECTURES Nigel Swift and Chrys Plumley are giving a series of lectures and also organising day and longer visits. Details can be obtained from Nigel Swift at 18a Ringwood Road, Walthamstow, London E17 8PP (020 8521 7053).
CORRECTION The last edition of Ecclesiology Today contained an article by Richard Durman - Spiral Columns in Salisbury Cathedral. Illustrated on page 32 was a photograph of the Kempe window in the South choir aisle in Lichfield Cathedral. The date for this window both in the text and in the title of the illustration was given as 1843. The correct date should be May 1895 and reference to the Kempe Studio's Commission Register reveals that it was a new cartoon produced for this window.Kempe's shield with three wheatsheaf logo and his Master Glasspainter A E Tombleson’s logo can be clear- ly seen in the two mouchettes either side of the top quatrefoil. We are grateful to Philip Collins from The Kempe Society for this information.
BASIL CHAMPNEYS (1842-1935) & JOHN PRICHARD (1817-86) Phillis Hertzel and Susan James are anxious to know of any information members may have on either of the above architects and especially any material on the time Champneys spent as a pupil of Prichard between 1864 and 1867. It seems that neither the Cathedral nor the Diocesan Archives hold any material on Prichard’s work on Llandaff, though he most probably spend a considerable time there, and it was at this peri- od that Champneys would have been a pupil. They are aware of Champneys Memoir and Correspondence of Coventry Patmore plus other arti- cles and books written by Champneys. However, they have little on the Llandaff work. If you can help you can contact them at 18 Trafalgar Road, Cambridge CB4 1EU.
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BOOK REVIEWS
Ian Lochhead: A Dream of Spires: Benjamin Mountfort and the Gothic Revival (Canterbury University Press, Canterbury, New Zealand, 1999), 364 pp., illustrated, NZ$79.95 (under £30) + p&p. Hbk, ISBN 0-908812-85-X. Available by credit card from the CUP: order online www.cup.canter- bury.ac.nz: email [email protected]: fax 00 64 9 443 9403: by post Canterbury University Press, Private Bag 4800, Christchurch, NZ.
Benjamin Mountfort (1825-98) was an architect deeply committed to the Gothic Revival, almost an exact contemporary of William White and James Brooks and just a little younger than Henry Woodyer and J. L. Pearson. He believed that Gothic was suited for buildings of all types and all places and put this belief into practice in a string of commissions from the 1850s until his death. His work is in many respects a mirror of the course of the Gothic Revival in the second half of the nineteenth century. But it is not well known to most of us: that is simply because it is on the other side of the globe in New Zealand where he became its leading architect. Mountfort is now the sub- ject of a fine book by Ian Lochhead who teaches art history at the University of Canterbury and who has been fascinated by the architect for over 25 years. Mountfort received his archi- tectural education in England during the heroic years of the 1840s although it is not certain to whom he was articled. The most likely candi- date is the Cambridge Camden Society’s favourite, R C Carpenter, or it was possibly that important pio- neering Goth, L N Cottingham. The way architects’ careers took off (or failed to take off) is a curious and unpredictable business. Despite good designs for a school and churches which were every inch in accordance with contemporary taste, Mountfort had no breakthrough and decided to emigrate to the infant colony of New Zealand. He arrived in Canterbury, a new settlement with
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a rag-bag of buildings, in 1850. It was no easy task for an architect to forge a career here and it was not until the latter part of the decade that work became prolific.There were difficulties to over- come.While English architects could call upon generous patrons and an unprecedented variety of materials, this was not the case in fledgling New Zealand. Timber was the main building material and Mountfort was to build a string of varied and often enterprising churches, despite the fact that one of the earliest and most ambitious, Holy Trinity,Lyttleton (1851-5) became unsound and had to be taken down.The climax of Mountfort’s timber churches is St Mary’s Pro-Cathedral (1886-98) whose interior is as stunning E. B. Lamb’s tours de force at Gospel Oak and Addiscombe.As the colony and its prosperity grew in the 1860s so did architectural possibilties, culminating in the Canterbury Provincial Council Chamber of 1864- 5, a magnificent hall under a transverse rib-vault. There are also schools, museums, houses, com- mercial buildings, all true to Gothic ideal. Like the English provincial architect, Mountfort had to spread his talents across the whole gamut of building types. Even though he could not visit build- ings on the cutting edge, he kept in touch with developments through the architectural press. A great feature of this book is the way it fits Mountfort’s story into the broad sweep of the Gothic Revival and thus informs us about the latter. It is well-written and splendidly illustrated (including a section of colour plates), making much use of drawings and old photographs. It is also extremely good value. GKB
Charles Tracy: Continental Church Furniture in England: A Traffic in Piety (Antique Collectors’ Club, 2001), 295 pp., 348 pls, 19 col. pls, £50.00. Hdbk, ISBN 1 85149 376 X.
This, we are told, is the product of 20 years of research by Charles Tracy,the acknowledged author- ity on church furniture, and it would be hard to imagine a more sumptuous publication to trans- mit the fruits of his endeavours.This is a hitherto largely unexplored subject, yet it should come as no surprise for us to learn that alongside the well-researched field of the English acquisition of Continental Classical works of art was an equally serious, if less extensive, passion for medieval Gothic items. Helped by a network of unscrupulous dealers, and given a huge boost by Napoleon’s commitment to closing religious houses, the trade in these often exquisite items flourished, espe- cially after 1815.The Gothic Revival, the reinstatement of Roman Catholic worship in England, the development of Tractarian and Ecclesiological church arrangements all encouraged and legit- imized the introduction of outstanding Continental furnishings into new or restored English churches. For both the Anglicans and the Catholics, these items provided ‘instant’ historical links to the old religion. The book comprises two sections. Firstly, there is a series of chapters providing a chrono- logical overview of the process and subjects of the trade, examining developments from the late Middle Ages to the present day.The remaining two thirds of the book is devoted to the catalogue, usefully divided into such topics as lecterns, pulpits, altar frontals etc., in which 130 key items have been selected for detailed scrutiny.These pieces are meticulously catalogued, illustrated and con- textualised. This is a text and production of exceptional quality and it is likely to remain the stan- dard work on the subject for the foreseeable future. CW
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Brian Andrews: Creating a Gothic Paradise: Pugin at the Antipodes (Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery), 246 pp., illustrated, A$79.95 (under £30) + p&p. Pbk, ISBN 0-7246-7242-7. Available by credit card from the Tasmanian Museum and Art Gallery, GPO Box 1164, Hobart, Tasmania 7001, Australia ([email protected] and www.tmag.tas.gov.au). The cost in sterling is: Hardcover £30 (limited edition of 200 signed copies), Softcover £15.77. Postage is £7.72 and the book will arrive within 3 days! Contact [email protected]
This is an extraordinarily well-pro- duced book and a must for every Pugin scholar. Brian Andrews is an expert on Pugin in Australia and he has just curated an exhibition on Pugin’s influence which is doing the rounds of Australian cities. Alexandra Wedgwood wrote the Foreword and Rosemary Hill produced a chapter on Pugin the man. The remainder is vintage Andrews and the reader will finish this volume with an excellent knowledge of nineteenth-century attempts to convert and settle Australia, and of the relationship between the leading clerics and the architects they employed. Henry Hunter (1832-92) gets special attention. Hunter was a local architect who did much to apply Pugin’s ideas after the latter’s death. Throughout the chapters are sup- ported by a catalogue of the exhibition, each item being described in great depth along with a listing of all appropriate refer- ences. The whole thing is beautifully illus- trated with masses of colour. For those lucky enough to be visiting Australia in the coming months, the exhibition itinerary is:
14 September to 10 November Tasmanian Art Gallery, Hobart 14 December to 26 January Bendigo Art Gallery, Bendigo 14 February to 18 May National Library, Canberra 5 June to 20 July Powerhouse Museum, Sydney
This really is an excellent book and well worth the price. JE
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Paul Avis: The Christian Church:An Introduction to the Major Traditions (SPCK, 2002), 220 pp., £19.99. Pbk, ISBN 0-281-05246-8.
This book provides an introduction to the major traditions of the Christian church, including the Orthodox Church, the Reformed Church, the Churches of the Anglican Community and five oth- ers. Each is given its own chapter, written by a respected scholar from within that tradition.The book explains how they understand themselves as ‘church’, how they relate to other churches, and how they approach issues of unity and diversity within the orbit of ecumenism. It sets out their structure of ministry, authority and oversight. It expounds the fundamental theological commit- ments that, at one and the same time, keep the churches apart in organizational and structural terms, and link them together in an extended common life and mission.Above all, perhaps, it tries to show what ‘makes them tick’.The book has much to say about ecumenism – both explicitly and implicitly - but does not seek to play down the real and important differences between the denom- inations. Instead it identifies the living traditions, the strengths and integrity of each. This is a concise, but detailed and informative book, of real value to those wishing to know more about the ‘other’ traditions and perhaps reach out across the boundaries that separate them. It should encourage intelligent, informed dialogue while not attempting to side-line the more dif- ficult issues inherent in ecumenism. CW
Derek Spruce: The Church in the Bury:A Thousand Years of All Saints, Odiham (Odiham PCC, 2001), 89 pp., 13 pls, £6.00 inc. postage. Pbk, ISBN 0- 9541444-0-6. Copies are available from Odiham PCC, Longfield,The Firs, Odiham, Hants, RG29 1PP.
Published histories of individual churches can be of variable quality, especially if written by over- enthusiastic local historians. However, this book is decidedly from the upper echelons of the genre, the format of which is fairly predictable: key events in the chosen church are set within a wider national context.The danger is that we end up with primary school history interspersed with local events. Derek Spruce follows the standard format but, within its constraints, succeeds admirably in presenting his material in an engag- ing and scholarly manner. It is well researched and augmented by good illustrations, endnotes, bibliography and index.
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In some respects, the history of All Saints is unremarkable and literally parochial. However, the book’s value extends beyond a purely local one. Historians of the national scene will be inter- ested to see documentary sources quoted for such things as seventeenth-century pew rents, the early eighteenth-century inventory of altar goods or the 1837 seating plan showing the newly erected galleries. CW
Brian Wright: Somerset Dragons (Tempus, 2002), 192 pp., many b/w pls, 26 col. pls, £12.99. Pbk, ISBN 0-7824-26806-0.
Despite the apparently secular nature of the subject, the book is remarkably rich in Christian saints, churches and history, and a large proportion of the illustrations is of ecclesiastical subjects. We are all familiar with St George, but apparently thirty-nine other saints in the western tradition encountered dragons (although not all in Somerset!). However, the generic term ‘folklore’ is perhaps the most appropriate categorization for the book which examines the stories and representations of dragons and dragon slaying in the county. In this interesting survey of dragons and their legends, the most comprehensive for any county in Britain we are told, Brian Wright explores the history of dragon lore and looks at the ways in which dragon stories have been interpreted over the centuries. This is unlikely to become mainstream reading for Ecclesiological Society members, but at the same time it is not entirely without relevance to their inter- ests. CW
PUBLISHERS If you have a book which you would like reviewed please send a copy to Christopher Webster The Old School Aberford Road Barwick in Elmet Leeds LS 15 4DZ
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PUGIN & THE CAMBRIDGE CAMDEN SOCIETY
Rosemary Hill
[The following letter appeared in the Pugin Society’s journal True Principles (Summer 2002) and is reproduced here by the kind agreement of the Pugin Socity and Rosemary Hill because of its interest to members.]
I WRITE IN RESPONSE to Anthony Symondson’s stimulating review of A Church as it Should Be: The Cambridge Camden Society and Its Influence,(True PrinciplesVol 2 No 3,p.19), to suggest that the story of Pugin’s relations with the Camdenians is more complex and less unhappy than he paints it. The Society certainly was ambivalent towards Pugin, but it was not uniformly hostile. This is apparent, as Fr Symondson implies, in the decision not to make him a member yet to use as their emblem a seal that was, unmistakably, of his design. Perhaps the best account of their mixed feelings is given by Benjamin Webb and John Mason Neale in the introduction to their translation of the works of Durandus (1843), where, having refrred to Pugin as ‘that master mind’, they go on to lament: cum talis sis, utinam noster esses!’ (Being what you are, would you were of us!’) It is difficult to see in what sense the Camdenians ‘stole’ Pugin’s ideas.As far as ecclesiology was concerned their principles, like his, were derived from common antiquarian sources, notably Durandus. When the Society was founded, in 1839, Pugin had yet to complete any churches with deep chancels or with encaustic tiles. Nor had he written anything on the subject. He was not particularly commit- ted to English models in gothic and preferred the Perpendicular to the Middle Pointed. In the Society’s first year its members surveyed and documented over 150 medieval churches. They had as vice presidents Robert Whillis and William Whewell, authors respectively of Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages (1835) and Architectural Notes on German Churches (2nd edition 1835). Neither of them needed Pugin to tell them about the history or the construction of Gothic buildings. Willis indeed anticipated True Principles (1841) when he wrote in his Remarks:
Romans attempted concealment and hence introduced discordance between the decoration and the mecha- nism of the structure.The Gothic builders in later times more wisely adapted their decoration to the exact direc- tion of the resisting forces required by the vaulted structure. (pp17-18)
The reason that Pugin, as an individual, and the CCS, as an undergraduate society, had influence so vastly in excess of their numbers, was that theirs were ideas whose time had come, ideas that were arising simultaneously and independently in many minds.To ask ‘who thought of it first’ is not, perhaps, the right question. Ruskin was accused of plagiarising Pugin on the basis of ideas taken, with acknowl- edgment, from Willis. Pugin himself was attacked, both privately and publicly, for plagiarism.The attacks were unjust, but he was certainly influenced in the development of his views between 1839 and 1843 by the Camdenians and (as he acknowledged) by articles in the Tractarian magazine, The British Critic. It was all part of that necessary exchange of ideas that constitutes any significant artistic or intellectual move- ment. The suggestion that having taken up Pugin’s ideas the Camden Society ignored him, in order to try and limit his influence, is not borne out by the evidence.The Society’s magazine, the Ecclesiologist, was generally sympathetic to him.When it suddenly attacked him in 1846 in an article on ‘The Artistic 55 Eccles 30 ver 2 Q3 23/1/2003 11:20 am Page 56
merit of Mr Pugin’, Pugin was astonished. The attack, part of a wider crisis in the Society, was not repeated. The Ecclesiologist actively promoted the idea that Pugin should decorate the Palace of Westminster to redeem what they thought was a banal design by Barry.Of his Glossary a reviewer wrote: Never was there a more useful subject or one more practically treated: never – in modern days at least – were illu- minations more exquisite in correct outline or more gorgeous in contrasted colours.’ (August 1844). Successive contributors thought St Marie’s, Rugby ‘pretty’ and ‘laudable’, the restoration of St Mary’s, Wymeswold ‘most judicious’,and while compelled to criticise St George’s Southwark, the Society’s cor- respondent did so with regret, emphasising the difficulties under which Pugin had laboured. Of course the ecclesiologists found fault with Pugin; they found fault with everyone. Had thy really ignored him, he would have been an object of considerable envy among his fellow architects, few of whom escaped unscathed, and many of whom fared worse, despite their Anglican credentials. On the same page as the account of Wymeswold, we find this about Pugin’s friend, Benjamin Ferrey, who was actually on the Society’s list of approved architects:
S. Mary,West Lydford, Somersetshire.A small Perpendicular church has lately been taken down, and built again upon the old foundations and after the original design. Such a plan, if not ingenious, is at least safe.The archi- tect employed was Mr Ferrey. How many cathedrals, churches, chapels, we wonder, would satiate a first-rate London architect? Or is his willingness to undertake jobs absolutely illimitable? There is need here of reform. (Ecclesiologist, new series,Vol 1, p.286)
After 1845, as A Church as it Should Be explains, the Society’s momentum began to decline, and Pugin had less to do with it. However, he reaped the fruits of its influence. Although he only built on completely new Anglican church (St Lawrence, Tubney) he was increasingly employed to restore or extend existing churches. Many of these commissions came, directly or indirectly, through Society members, and after 1845, when his Catholic practice declined, more than half of Pugin’s church work (excluding stained glass) was for the established church. These commissions varied in scale, but many were substantial works and could never have been undertaken without the knowledge and consent of the Anglican authorities. Thus, though Pugin undoubtedly met with anti-Catholic prejudice from members of the Camden Society and others, it is doubtful whether it impeded him professionally.Pugin himself never complained of it. It was the archi- tects who imitated him, notably Hansom and Wardell, and took work for the Catholic church, that he felt he should have had, whom he resented. Personally Pugin was on excellent terms with several Camdenians, including Benjamin Webb. Webb was justified in his later claim, made during the ‘Art-Architect’ row between E.W.Pugin and the Barrys, that he had been an ‘intimate’ friend. In 1849, when he was curate at Brasted in Kent, Webb commissioned a window from Pugin and he supported him in his row with the Rambler magazine at a time, toward the end of his life, when Pugin was professionally and emotionally at a low ebb. Pedantic, opinionated, self-righteous know-alls; the members of the Camden Society were, en masse, all these things. It would be a pity, however, as well as an injustice, to accuse them of anything worse with regard to Pugin to whom, all in all, they were more of a help than a hindrance.
[Anyone wishing to join the Pugin Society should contact Jack Kleinot, 33 Montcalm House,Westferry Road, London E14 ]
56 Inside back cover Q3 23/1/2003 11:13 am Page 1
OFFICERS OF THE SOCIETY
CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL & HON. DIRECTOR OF PUBLICITY: Trevor Cooper, MA, MBA, 38 Rosebery Avenue, New Malden, Surrey KT3 4JS. e-mail: [email protected]
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