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Home , Bishop of Chelmsford, Canterbury Cathedral, John Milner (bishop), Nathaniel Westlake, Tyntesfield, William Waynflete

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ECCLESIOLOGY TODAY Journal of the Ecclesiological Society, successor to the Cambridge Camden Society of 1839 Registered Charity no. 210501 Issue 31, May 2003 Inside Front Cover Q3 3/6/2003 2:13 pm Page 1

CHAIRMAN’S COMMENTS

Members who have been with the Society for some time will be saddended to hear of the recent death of Anna Zaharova, who was very active in the Society’s affairs in the 1980s.We hope to carry an appreciation of her work for the Society in our next issue.

Now for an apology, or set of apologies. I have been a bit of a bottleneck in the Society’s affairs of late, for a variety of reasons. As a result, the promised new format of Ecclesiology Today has not yet been finalised - we need to get the details right, and I have held matters up. Nor have we yet transferred all the stock of the Society’s publications up to Whitby, where Dr Ockelton is setting up shop for members wanting to buy back copies; she has, however, been kept busy selling very sastisfactory numbers of Kenneth Richardson’s book on Southwark churches. Finally, as I write, the Society’s annual conference on 4th October is still being shaped: I hope the success of our previous conferences will encourage you to book, even though full details are not yet available.

Now, two appeals for help. First, we are reviewing our visits policy, as attendance at these is highly erratic and sometimes too low for comfort. If you have any views about how we should set about organising our visits programme in future, please drop me or Christopher Webster a line.

Secondly, we are looking for someone who has some experience as a researcher and writer, lives in London, has access to a computer for word-processing, and would like to write an article on some aspect of the history of the Society since 1879 (when the current Society was founded).This is for our 125th anniversary next year.We can point you to the relevant archives and give guidance. Contact me or Dr James Johnston if you’d like to find out more.

Finally,as you’ll see from the enclosure, our AGM is on the 2nd July.The business part of the evening is normally carried out pretty briskly,so that the centre of gravity remains the lecture and informal reception.We should have a pleasant evening, and I and other members of Council look forward to seeing you there.

Trevor Cooper May 2003

Cover picture:All Saints’, Margaret Street, London, Baptistery window by O’Connor c.1857 (Michael Kerney). See page 47. Eccles 31 ver 2Q3B 3/6/2003 1:52 pm Page 1

CONTENTS

‘UNLUCKY EXPERIMENTS IN STATUES’: RESTORING THE WINCHESTER GREAT SCREEN 3 Geoff Brandwood

THE VICTORIAN CHURCH 13

A TRAFFIC IN PIETY:THE LURE OF CONTINENTAL 14 CHURCH FURNITURE IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY Charles Tracy

BOOKS FOR SALE 22

FATHER CLIVE LUGET & THE VISIONS OF MIDDLETON 23 Robert Halliday

THE HISTORY OF ILAM CROSS, STAFFORDSHIRE 30 Phil Mottram

BOOK REVIEWS 37

ODDS & ENDS 44

LETTERS 47

TYNTESFIELD 47

CHURCH VANDALISM 48

CHURCH CRAWLER REPORTS 51 Phil Draper

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Sedding’s overall design for the Great Screen published as part of the obituary tributes to the architect (Builder, 10 October 1891).

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‘UNLUCKY EXPERIMENTS IN STATUES’: RESTORING THE WINCHESTER GREAT SCREEN.1

Geoff Brandwood PHILIP JACOB was the Archdeacon of Winchester from 1860.2 He became a much-loved figure in the city and the diocese and, after his death on 28 December 1884, thoughts turned immediately to creating a suitable memorial to him.A public meeting in early January decided this should take the form of restoring the enormous 15th-century reredos at the east end of the Cathedral, usu- ally referred to as the ‘Great Screen’.3 A Memorial Committee was set up to collect funds and thus began a project that was to last fourteen years, occupy two of the key architects of the late Gothic Revival, and was, in its earlier stages, to be attended by a catalogue of unhappiness and misunder- standings bordering (with hindsight) on the comical.

The medieval screen and its fate. The Great Screen was part of wider scheme for the east end which may have been planned under Cardinal Henry Beaufort (bishop 1404-17).4 It was carried out under his successor, Bishop William Waynflete (1447-87) and involved three inter-related schemes – the erection of Beaufort’s chantry,a new shrine to St Swithun in the retrochoir, and the building of the Great Screen itself as a division between the retrochoir and the chancel. Work went on for about twenty-five years and was complete (or very nearly so) by the time St Swithun’s relics were translated in 1476. Within less than a century the screen had been depopulated of its numerous statues and denud- ed of its rood group.The exact timing of removal is unclear but, at the latest, they would have all gone under the extreme Protestant Bishop Horne whose Injunctions of Bishop Horne of 1571 ordered the demolition of all ‘superstitious images’.5 The only figure carvings to survive in situ were the four angels in the spandrels over the doors on either side.6 In the 17th century, under Bishop Curle (1632-47) a large baldacchino was erected and about 1750 the screen was classicised by the installation of urns in the niches: then, if not earlier, the canopies over the niches in the lowest and middle tiers (other than over the doorways) were removed.7 The urns and and baldacchino were themselves removed, probably about 1820 and for most of the 19th century the Great Screen presented a bare, forlorn appearance. It is hardly surprising that the restoration of the screen to its former glory became a Victorian ambition.

Restoration – the first phase In 1885 the idea of restoring the screen was by no means new. Owen Carter (1806-59), the Winchester architect under whom G. E. Street had trained, produced a picture of the screen restored but nothing came of this.8 In 1878 G. G. Scott was approached for his opinion.9 Thus he might have added this scheme to his vast portfolio of cathedral works had not death intervened the same year.Then, in 1880, Street was consulted and pointed out that quite substantial repairs would be needed before new statues could be installed since the screen was in ‘a most mutilated and unfin-

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ished condition’.10 Once again death (in 1881) precluded any action and, furthermore, the then Dean, John Bramston, felt his age sapped his energies for what he knew would be a huge undertaking. By the time the Jacob Memorial project came into being there was a new Dean, George William Kitchin, appointed in 1883, and who had previously taught history and classics at Oxford. It was he who set up a Cathedral Committee in 1884 (before Jacob’s death) to advise him and the Chapter on matters concern- ing the fabric. This also involved the laity, notably Lord Henry Scott (Baron Montagu of Beaulieu from 1885) and Meville Portal of Laverstoke Park, both of them strong- minded individuals whom we shall encounter later. In an attempt to draw up clear lines of responsibility, the Cathedral Committee minutes set out that, for the screen restoration, there must be sufficient funds available (£3,500), that the architect and artists were to be appointed by the Dean and Chapter, and that Dean and Chapter were responsible for whatever was done.11 Ultimate responsibility, therefore, for the care of the fabric lay, as it always had done, with the From a carte de visite, c.1870 (author’s collection). Dean and Chapter. The Jacob Memorial Committee set about fund-raising but found the £3,500 target impossible to achieve. A closing date of Easter was set but by early March only £1,880 was in (including £300 from the Dean and Chapter) and this trickled up to a final total of £2,055.14.3 so a full restoration was out of the question, even just of the central part.12 The question now was which architect to appoint. The names of G. F. Bodley (‘who has achieved architectural honour in Oxford and elsewhere’) and J. D. Sedding (whose reredos for St Clement, Boscombe was cited) were put forward to the Dean and Chapter

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although, as so often with the selection of architects, we do not know exactly by whom or how the choice was made.The job fell to Sedding in March and once again we do not know why this rising star was selected over his older and more eminent rival. How Bodley felt at being set aside for a man whose only previous major work was St Clement’s, over a decade before, we will, of course, never know.Sedding, who would normally have expected to earn 10% commission on such a job, agreed to settle for 5% plus travelling expenses.13 At the outset, and, as it were, emblematic of the future problems, there was the complicating fac- tor of John Colson. Colson had served loyally as Cathedral architect since 1858 and a vague hope was expressed by the Memorial Committee and the Dean and Chapter that Colson ‘might be asked to give his taste and local knowledge to the work’ and ‘have some share and charge under [Sedding] in the Restoration.’14 The idea developed that Sedding should pay Colson a gratuity but there is no indication that the latter contributed to the project or received any payment. This untidy situation seems to have had no adverse consequences whereas the arrangements for carrying out the restoration did. Sedding had an acutely developed sense of the architect as artist, and a strong Ruskinian view of the role of the craftsman and his labour. Whenever he had the chance he would use contractors and artists whom he knew and trusted, and so he made a ‘strong recommendation’ that there should be no competitive tendering for the Winchester restoration.15 Two sets of work were required – repairs to the stonework of the screen, and statues to populate the niches in it. Sedding persuasively urged that an offer from Charles Trask and Sons of Norton- sub-Hamden near Ilminster be accepted for the stonework and that Edward Onslow Ford be selected for carving the twelve figures for the central part of the screen.16 Trasks were Sedding’s favoured contractors and carvers for a great many works while Onslow Ford came with the recommendation that he was a member of the Royal Academy and had a couple of statues on exhibition there.Trasks were duly appointed and Ford was asked to submit a plaster figure of St Paul.

Phase one. Trasks probably started work in August when Ford had already begun his St Paul. But there were already signs that all was not well. A remarkable set of correspondence in the Cathedral Archives shows Henry Scott and Melville Portal, as lay members of the Cathedral Committee, at odds with the Dean. Already disgusted by the unsatisfactory Sedding-Colson proposal, they considered the Dean was by-passing the Committee in his dealings over the screen and wrote a letter of protest.17 The hostility simmered away, not getting any better, and by 1887 correspondence between Portal and (now) Lord Montagu describes Kitchin as ‘shifty’ and ‘that wretched Dean’.18 Feeling they were getting nowhere with a Dean whom they saw as refusing to consult, they plastered the correspondence over the pages of the local press in the summer of 1887.19 Precisely where the rights and wrongs of the matter lay is now hard to judge, but Portal and Montagu do rather come down to us as obnoxious, all-knowing spokesmen for the laity.Their action certainly provoked a couple of stiff letters in the press in support of the Dean. One writer – ‘Wykeham’s Kin’, writing from London – ‘finding now that [the Dean] has unexpected difficulties to struggle with’, was actually stimulated to send Kitchin a donation of £200 to do with as he thought best.20 Then there was the matter of the sculpture itself. Kitchin had taken a look at the St Paul when 5 Eccles 31 ver 2Q3B 3/6/2003 1:52 pm Page 6

Early 20th century postcard of the East end of Winchester Cathedral, with the Great Screen (author’s collection).

London and wrote to Henry Scott in July 1885 that, even though it was in a very rough state, ‘I feel, I confess, uneasy about it: … There seemed no inspiration in it!’21 When the Cathedral Committee viewed the statue in its niche it recorded an opinion ‘decidedly favourable to the work of Art’ but then promptly went against this by making a string of criticisms ranging from the lack of the accustomed beard and the fact that the drapery was too full and modern.22 To make matters worse the statue seems to have been placed in the wrong niche and thus appeared out of place.23 Portal then discovered a St Peter, modelled by Ford, was on its way down to Winchester: ‘who ordered that S. Peter?’, he asked, ‘ & what about the Instructions – & whose.’24 No doubt his finger pointed at Dean Kitchin. St Peter fared no better than his companion and in December the Cathedral Committee recorded that the keys were too small, the draperies should be more ecclesiastical, a new head should be modelled and so on and so on.25 Not surprisingly the unfortunate Ford resigned in June the following year and all work on the statuary was suspended. No wonder Dean Kitchin later referred to ‘unlucky experiments in statues’ when he came to publish his book about the restoration of the Great Screen.26 To compound matters, the work had been proceeding without an overall plan. It was true that only enough money was available to work on the centre part of the screen, but the Cathedral Committee put its foot down in September 1885 declaring that ‘no farther steps should be taken … with respect to the Statuary until Mr. Sedding’s general drawing of the [whole] Screen and figures has been submitted to and approved by this Committee.’27 Sedding said he would submit this in about two months and, indeed, something seems to have been available for December when the Cathedral Committee ‘highly approved of the general restoration as suggested in the drawing’ by

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Sedding.28 Yet,strangely, in May the next year (1886), there are press reports of a fully worked-up drawing for the completed screen with figures executed by Nathaniel Westlake and shown at the Royal Academy but which the Dean pointed out no-one had yet seen in Winchester.29 If this was a revised design, it was a somewhat tactless move by Sedding, especially in view of hostile reactions reported by the Hampshire Chronicle quoting from the Building News: the local paper also carried a letter from a London correspondent with a whole string of highly critical remarks about the figures.30 Hardly the sort of thing to engender confidence down in Winchester! And what of Trasks who were restoring the stonework? Everyone seems to have had the high- est praise for what was done – the problem was the speed of doing it.Trasks were expected to finish the work on the central part of the screen by the end of 1886 but it dragged on until the middle of September the following year. Dean Kitchin reported to the Jacob Memorial Fund that ‘He had mentioned the matter to Mr. Sedding, and had again and again protested against the way in which the work was proceeding, but the reply had always been “It is the kind of work which must be done very slowly”.’31 At the end of 1887 the Jacob Memorial Fund was winding up its accounts and the first phase of the Great Screen restoration was at an end. No-one can have found it a good experience. However, whatever the problems may have been, there was no immediate question of sacking Sedding and Trasks.As scaffolding was still in place, the Dean and Chapter asked Sedding to get an estimate for the remainder of the stonework repair. Naturally he turned to Trasks, and although the architect considered their £2,338 ‘a decidedly moderate estimate’,this opinion was mostly certainly not shared by the Dean and Chapter as we shall see.32 So, the Jacob memorialists had got the stonework of the centre part of the screen restored, but following the rejection of the Onslow Ford work, not a single statue. Out of their hard-won funds they had had to pay Ford £180 for his rejected figures as these had been granted certificates (as it was pointedly noted in the accounts) by Sedding. There was even a dispute with Sedding over his own account. He had charged an extra of £30 for using Westlake to draw the figures on the general design and this was objected to and never apparently paid. Sedding, for his part, was much concerned that it might appear he was being dismissed.As he had been engaged for the works paid for by the Jacob Memorial Fund and there was a small amount of money still remaining in the Fund (£335), the Dean proposed a facing-saving formula – namely that Sedding would continue as adviser till this money had been used up and would be able to draw a commission.33 Sedding, indeed, seems to have kept some sort of involvement and is to be found commenting on the statues of St Birinus and St Swithun in 1889.34 The haggling over the account, however, may never have been fully resolved by the time of the architect’s tragic and premature death from pneumonia in April 1891, aged only 52.

Phase two – Winchester goes it alone Having rejected Trask’s estimate for the remainder of the stonework restoration, the Dean and Chapter opted for a cheaper, in-house solution.The work was carried out by the Cathedral masons under their foreman, Mr Hodges with A.Whitley, the Cathedral sculptor, as the stone-carver. The

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designs for the canopies, pedestals etc. were by George Herbert Kitchin – ‘my architect son’ as the Dean referred to him (this convenient family arrangement, of course, greatly annoyed Lord Montagu and Melville Portal).35 Supervision of the work was by Brook Taylor Kitchin.36 The work lasted sixteen months and was completed at the start of 1898: it cost £1,015 – less than half Trasks’ estimate. There was also the important question of who was to be represented by statues.The Society for the Preservation for Ancient Buildings, which opposed the whole restoration enterprise,37 pointed out there was no way of knowing which the original statues were or what they looked like. While the latter may have been true, it was firmly thought that the large figures had been the Four Doctors of the Church, St Peter and St Paul, St Benedict and St Giles, Edward the Confessor, St Edmund, St Stephen and St Lawrence and the local saints, St Swithun, St Birinus, St Hedda and St Ethelwold plus St John and the Virgin flanking the rood.38 They were to reappear in the executed scheme.The smaller statues, 34 in all and for which there was no record, were more problematical. There was (of course) argument over whether post-Reformation figures would be allowed. In 1886 the Dean had come up with the idea of including Isaak Walton,‘the Father of Anglers’ who had lived in the Close and was buried in the Cathedral (unsurprisingly, one objector was Lord Montagu).39 A statue of Walton did indeed appear – after further questionings as to whether 17th- to 19th-century ‘saints’ should appear on a 15th-century screen – and was paid for by the ‘fisher- men of England’. However, Gilbert White, the great Hampshire naturalist failed to materialise, but Bishop Ken, John Keble and Queen Victoria (who paid for Edward the Confessor’s statue) did.40 The opportunity may have encouraged speculative ventures by sculptors. In the autumn of 1887 Harry Bates, a sculptor who seems to have been well known to Sedding, sent a plaster cast of St Michael down to the Cathdral yard.41 The Cathedral Committee flatly refused to even look at it but there it remained, irritating them at least into the summer of 1889.42 Also in late 1887, Kitchin announced he had allowed a local sculptor, Ernest Fabian, to model a statue of Bishop Beaufort: this met with the approval of the Dean and Chapter though the reaction of the laity to this independent action can perhaps be guessed.43 No statue by Mr Fabian – ‘our clever and rising fellow- citizen’44 – in fact appeared in the completed screen. The question, then, was who would receive this prestigious (and lucrative) commission.After the false starts, the Dean and Chapter and Cathedral Committee decided that the remaining statues should be by one hand – a position strongly advocated by Melville Portal. After Ford had resigned, the Cathedral Committee is known to have looked at photographs of work by Thomas Nicholls (Burges’s favourite sculptor) and decided it liked what it saw.45 In November 1887 Nicholls was engaged for the statues of the central panel. But once again hopes were disappointed and the artist proceeded much more slowly than anyone wished, at least in part through ill-health during 1889. Nicholls eventually did carve eight figures for the centre of the screen.46 It was evident that other carvers would have to be used if the job was to be brought to the reasonably speedy conclusion which was aimed at through the active fund-raising appeal (launched by the Dean and Chapter in late 1888). Pressure to finish the scheme was exerted by a desire to have everything ready for the enthronement of Bishop Anthony Thorold on 3 March 1891. This was duly achieved as Dean

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Plan of statues on the screen from G.W.Kitchen’s book on the Great Screen: it is still used at the Cathedral to identify the figures to visitors.

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Kitchin proudly noted in his published account of the screen. Apart from Nicholls, the sculptors were Richard Boulton of Cheltenham (35 statues), Edward E. Geflowski (10), Miss M. L. Grant (2) and Farmer & Brindley (1).47

The final chapter By 1891, then, the Great Screen had been restored: 56 statues were in place and £5,355 spent. But one vital item was missing. St John and the Virgin had their gaze fixed upon a blank cross. Before the Reformation it would undoubtedly have carried a figure of Christ crucified but the idea of such an image was inflammatory like no other to the stauncher Protestants of the Church of England.The annals of mid-Victorian consecrations are littered with accounts of bishops refusing to proceed until potentially idolatrous items were removed – and the Crucifix behind the high altar was the most dangerous of all (yet for some reason rood groups were commonly set in east windows without outbreaks of anti-Papal hysteria).Against such a background, it is not surprising that the Jacob Memorial Committee came out against the idea of a crucifix in 1885.48 This provoked a letter to the press from one, ‘Vox Clamanti’, who must have felt he was speaking for the forces of common sense against those of bigotry, when he said the idea that a figure on the cross could be worshippped was so puerile it would not be entertained ‘by reasonable persons in this country.’49 Yet, although sculpted roods were appearing in increasing numbers in the late 1880s and 1890s, there was still vehement opposition from time to time (e.g. the entrenched opposition to carver Harry Hems’ repeated attempts to donate one to his parish church of St Sidwell, Exeter in the ‘90s, and the refusal for a faculty at Paignton in 1904). Left to himself, J. D. Sedding, as a devout Anglo-Catholic, would unquestionably have opted for a crucifix (as at St Clement’s, Boscombe). Bowing to the local sensibilties, he had proposed a gilt copper cross slightly smaller than the bare medieval cross, but surrounded with an undercut frieze similar to that on Bishop Fox’s chantry nearby.50 Nothing in fact came of this. Later, in the drawing shown at the R.A. in 1886, he proposed a Crucifixion as part of his ideal scheme. In March 1888, with Sedding off the scene and the calico sheets concealing the screen coming down, the Dean and Chapter tried an experiment. A temporary cross was placed against the bare, medieval one with a running border of grape leaves and clusters surrounding it.51 If this proved popular the idea was have a cross of beaten copper. However beautiful the work might have been, this solution exposed the unsatisfactory situation of St John and the Virgin looking upon at a cross, not a crucifix.The first move to arrive at the logical solution came in 1891 when Melville Portal and some friends offered to partly fund completion with a crucifix:52 the idea, however, was not taken up. But significantly,attitudes seemed to be shifting even though Kitchin remained wary and suggested that a Christ in Glory might be the answer.53 But Portal, replying to Kitchin, noted those who might have been vehemently opposed to a Crucifix a few years were no longer actively hostile.54 The final breakthrough began four years later in 1895 when the new Dean,W.R.W.Stephens, consulted both G. F. Bodley and C. E. Kempe.They made independent reports but concurred in their views that only Christ crucified would be suitable.55 But matters once again languished as

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resources were diverted to urgent roof repairs and it was only in 1897, when Canon Valpy came forward to complete the screen as a memorial to his wife, that progress was made. His offer was accepted and the crucifix duly executed to Bodley’s design and carved by Farmer and Brindley.56 This work meant that Benjamin West’s picture, The Raising of Lazarus, had to be removed and this casualty was sold to the United States, ending up in a museum in Hartford, Connecticut.Although he had been excluded from the first phase of the restoration, Bodley at last had the opportunity to work on the magificent structure that is the Great Screen at Winchester: it was finally dedicated in March 1899.

Acknowledgement I am grateful to John Hardacre, Archivist at Winchester Cathedral, for allowing access to records about the Great Screen restoration. I am also grateful to Miss Greenhill,Archivist at the SPAB and to staff at the Hampshire Record Office.

Notes 1 This account amplifies that of Philip Barrett in ‘Georgian and Victorian Restorations and Repairs, 1775-1900’, in John Crook (editor), Winchester Cathedral: Nine Hundred Years 1093-1993 (Chichester, 1993), pp. 321-4. 2 He was rector of Crawley with Hunton from 1831 and a canon residentiary at the Cathedral from 1834. 3 It is unlikely anyone believed the Jacob Memorial Fund would generate enough money to complete the entire project. Dean Bramston told the meeting £5,000 would be required – as proved to be the case. The press reported stir- rings for alternative proposals, notably the completion St Paul,Weeke but there was never any serious challenge to the screen scheme. 4 For the medieval history see John Crook,‘St Swithun of Winchester’ in Crook [note 1], pp. 57-68, and Phillip Lindley, ‘The “Great Screen” of Winchester Cathedral: Part 2’, Burlington Magazine, 135 (1993), pp. 797-807. 5 Frederick Bussby,‘The Great Screen’, Winchester Cathedral Record, 47 (1978), p. 9. 6 Numerous (and very beautiful) fragments survive: see Lindley [note 4],‘Part 1’, Burlington Magazine, 131 (1989), pp. 604-15. 7 G.W.Kitchin, The Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral (Winchester and London, 1891), p. 12. 8 Ibid., p. 13. 9 Frederick Bussby, Winchester Cathedral 1079-1979 (Southampton, 1979), p. 245. 10 Barrett [note 1], p. 321. Street had encountered the screen at the very start of his architectural career as a pupil of Owen Carter from 1841: he used the top of the screen as a vantage point for sketching (A. E. Street, Memoir of George Edmund Street, R.A., 1824-1881 (London, 1888), p. 5. 11 Winchester Cathedral Archives, Cathedral Committee Minute Book,W49/3/1, 8 Jan. 1885. 12 Hampshire Chronicle, 7 March 1885, p. 4: accounts in Kitchin [note 7], p. 36. 13 Hampshire Record Office, Rough Chapter Minute Book, 36M48/book 3 (note facing 12 May 1885 entry). 14 Hampshire Chronicle, 7 March 1885, p. 4, 28 March 1885, p. 4. Colson (1820-95), was, like Street, articled to Owen Carter and developed an extensive, Hampshire-based practice, carrying out more church commissions than any other architect (see Brenda Poole, John Colson:A Hampshire Architect of the Victorian Age (Winchester, 2000). 15 Winchester Cathedral Archives, printed leaflet, The Statues on the Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral (November 1888). 16 Hampshire Chronicle, 25 July 1885, p. 4. 17 Winchester Cathedral Archives, Great Screen Boxes, Scott and Portal to Kitchin, 11 April 1885. 18 Ibid., Portal to Montagu, 2 October 1887, 15 June 1887.

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19 The correspondence seems to have appeared in the Hampshire Chronicle for 18 June. The letters are found in an undated cutting in the Winchester Cathedral file at the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings: the British Library Newspaper Library copy of the paper for 1887 has been unavailable for consultation while the copy in the Hampshire Record Office has had what appear to be the appropriate parts snipped out. 20 Hampshire Chronicle, 25 June 1887, p. 7. On 2 July (p. 7) Montagu and Portal had another letter printed, demanding a single hand be used for all the statues.The Dean got a second letter of support in the paper on 9 July (p. 7) from a ‘Winchester Citizen’. 21 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 17], Kitchin to Scott, 12 July 1885. 22 Ibid. [note 17], 10 August 1885.The story in the press, however, glossed over the problems:‘all that one could desire in a work of art of a sacred nature, combining dignity, a perfect pose, and an arrangement of robes’ etc. etc. (Hampshire Chronicle, 15 August 1885, p. 4). 23 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 17], Portal to Scott, 8 September 1885. 24 Ibid. 25 Ibid. [note 11], 17 December 1885. 26 G.W.Kitchin [note 7], p. 15. 27 Ibid., 11 September 1885. 28 As note 25. 29 Hampshire Chronicle, 8 May 1886, pp. 3 and 4. 30 8 May, p. 4, 5 May, p. 3.The writer of the letter was one Alfred Frampton. 31 Hampshire Chronicle, 1 October 1887, p. 3. 32 As note 15. 33 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 17], letters from Kitchin to Sedding, 26 November 1887, 12 January 1888.The Dean felt it necessary to explain the proposal to his bishop (letter, 2 January 1888). 34 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 17], 7 July 1889. 35 Hampshire Chronicle, 31 March 1888, p. 3. 36 He is named in the press (Hampshire Chronicle, 2 March 1889) but, curiously, is not named by Dean Kitchin in his book on the screen. 37 Rather belatedly Thackeray Turner of the SPAB complained in a letter to the Hampshire Chronicle, 30 July 1887, p. 3. He drew parallels with the restoration of the screens at St Albans and All Souls’, Oxford:‘the latter’, he said,‘is now in reality a new screen.’ 38 The main figures thus represented two Apostles, the four Doctors, four local bishops, two great monastic saints, two representatives of the diaconate and two kings of England. 39 Hampshire Chronicle , 14 August 1886, p. 4. 40 Debate about Walton led one correspondent to the Hampshire Chronicle (9 October 1886, p. 3) to propose, probably ironically,‘the more noble sport of hunting should receive at least an equal meed of honour’ and thus he proposed the late Mr Assheton-Smith of Tedworth. 41 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 11], 5 October 1887. 42 Ibid., 7 July 1889 when the Dean was asked to write to Bates to ask him to remove it. 43 As note 32: Hampshire Chroncle, 1 October 1887, p. 3. 44 Hampshire Chronicle, 31 March 1888, p. 3. 45 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 11], 12 June 1886. 46 Kitchin [note 7], before p. 17. 47 Ibid., p. 15. Strangely Kitchin’s text mentions 36 by Boulton but his plan indicates only 35 plus one by Farmer and Brindley which he does not mention in the text. 48 Hampshire Chronicle, 7 March 1885, p. 4. 49 Hampshire Chronicle, 21 March 1885, p. 3. 50 Hampshire Chronicle, 25 July 1885, p. 4.

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51 Hampshire Chronicle, 31 March 1888, p. 3. 52 Winchester Cathedral Archives [note 11], 9 April 1891. 53 Kitchin to Portal, 31 October 1891. 54 Portal to Kitchin, 12 October 1891. 55 G. W. Kitchin, The Great Screen of Winchester Cathedral 3rd edition (revised by W. R. W. Stephens: Winchester and London, 1899), p. 29. 56 Bodley had designed the tomb to Bishop Browne placed in the nave in 1894.

THE VICTORIAN CHURCH

BETWEENTuesday 23 September and Friday 26 September 2003 Sarum College in Salisbury will be running a course on the Victorian church: why the churches were designed or reordered as they were and how this architectuarl activity linked with the religious changes that emenated from the Oxford and Cambridge movements. The format will comprise a mix- ture of lectures and visits, with a whole day devoted to tutor led visits to various buildings in Oxford. The Revd Dr Tim Macquiban (Principal of Sarum College) will deal with the religious and social history aspects and Dr John Elliott will provide the architectural angle. Sarum College used to be the the- ological college for the Salisbury Diocese but now provides an educa- tional offering comprising MA and Certificate courses as well as an and Open Studies programme. It is locat- ed within the Close, with splendid views of the cathedral. This course is available on a residential and non-residential basis and further information can be obtained from Sarum College, 19 The Close, Salisbury SP1 2EE (01722 424800) and on the web at www.sarum.ac.uk Interior of Salisbury Cathedral

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A TRAFFIC IN PIETY: THE LURE OF CONTINENTAL CHURCH FURNITURE IN THE EARLY 19TH CENTURY

Charles Tracy

[This article is continued from the January 2003 edition of Ecclesiology Today]

AS WE HAVE already seen in the earlier part of this article, the interest in acquiring Continental church furniture coincided with the Gothic Revival. But most of the material transhipped to England is post-medieval in origin. By contrast much of the furniture at the newly established and constructed Roman Catholic St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham and St Mary’s College, New Oscott, chosen and installed by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, is of late-medieval date. Yet again at Oscott the magnificent altar-rails are full-blooded Baroque and dated 1680 (Pls 1 and 2), as are the choir-stalls, of the early 18th century. Otherwise, all the Gothic-style furniture used in Pugin’s churches was contemporary. The re-establishment of the Catholic Church in England was set in train by the Catholic Relief Act of 1791, which permitted the re-opening or building of family chapels. This was followed

Plate 1. St Mary’s College, New Oscott, Sutton Coldfield,Warwickshire Central section of Flemish altar rails, inscribed 1680. 14 Eccles 31 ver 2Q3B 3/6/2003 1:53 pm Page 15

nearly forty years later by the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829. One of the earliest public Catholic churches was Bishop John Milner’s, St Peter’s Chapel,Winchester, built in 1792. It was designed by John Carter, after a sketch by Milner. It was in some ways a prototype for the Catholic church of the 19th century, with its functional Georgian architectural proportions, Gothic decorative vocabulary and plain modern furnishings.1 Milner resembled several other protagonists of the re-established church, who followed him, in his profound knowledge of English ecclesiastical history and love of his native medieval architecture.2 Nevertheless his chapel contained no ancient furniture except for a battered English 14th-century statue of the Virgin and Child. Surprisingly perhaps, whereas there are around two hundred and fifty churches in England with at least one fragment of imported Continental woodwork, the number of Catholic institutions so endowed seems to be limited to five.The explanation Plate 2. St Mary’s College, New Oscott, Sutton Coldfield, is partly that the new Catholic churches Warwickshire. Chancel, north side. Flemish early-18th-century were built to a budget from money raised by choir-stalls. a small number of enthusiasts and perhaps a local patron. Foreign furniture would have been difficult and expensive to obtain. St Chad’s Cathedral and Oscott College (the latter which has been characterised as the nerve centre of the Catholic Revival),3 were wholly exceptional commissions, being prestige projects, and the first two monumental Catholic buildings to be erected in England since the Reformation. In her parallel study of north European panel paintings in England, Christa Grössinger similarly found that almost all of the churches containing such objects are Protestant.4 The furniture imported for use in Anglican churches was mostly not French, Gothic or medieval. In contrast to Lord Shrewsbury and Pugin’s well-known methodical combing of the Belgian antiques trade, much of the material was probably bought on the spur of the moment by travellers at the start or finish of the Grand Tour.A few of the buyers were Low Church aristocratic patrons of livings, sometimes clerics themselves, for whom the utility of the objects was paramount. Of course such an outlook could not possibly be further from the religious and antiquarian high- mindedness of Pugin:

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Now, however, when neither the terror of the rack nor any political restriction pre- vents them from celebrating the holy splendours of their ancient ritual, now is the time to direct the attention of all back to days of former glory,and from the inex- haustible source, which the talents of the middle ages furnish, draw the materials of all future works.5

Although the collecting of Continental church furniture by Anglicans seems to have been a somewhat haphazard affair, the example of the transplanted Roman Catholic the- ological college at New Oscott, and of the new cathedral in Birmingham, demonstrates that the business was taken altogether more seriously by the Romanists. In both cases it was the architect and recent Catholic convert A. W. N. Pugin who was the inspiration and driving force behind the deliberate and cost- ly introduction of ancient and exotic arte- facts. If the Lichfield architect, Potter, had not been removed in 1838, Oscott would have got a utilitarian box-like chapel, furnished economically with modern materials. Plate 3. St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. The manner of Pugin’s appointment to Chancel north side. Netherlandish choir-stalls, c.1520. take over at Oscott is given in the diary of Dr Kerril Amherst, second Bishop of Northampton (1819-83), as follows:

The new College was then approaching completion, and Dr Weedall, recognising the talent of Pugin, placed the work of completion and adornment of the Chapel, Sacristies, the principal rooms of the house in Pugin’s hands.6 Pugin had just become famous in 1837, in which year his Contrasts were read in the refectory during dinner, and in that year he made his first visit to Oscott, with an introduction from Lord Shrewsbury (this was Earl John), who had taken up his views with ardour.The New College was then approaching completion ... Dr Weedall was not slow in recognising the talent of Pugin, and the enthusiastic genius of the latter so won upon the president that he confided to that architect the completion and adornment of the chapel, and the furnishing of the sacristy and principal rooms.The great object of interest in the still incomplete building was a room, now the Vice-president’s, in which what were called ‘Pugin’s things’ were kept.These chiefly consisted of ancient carvings, statues and pieces of church and domestic furniture ... These things spoke directly of the faith that was in the man who

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Plate 4. St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham. North-east end of nave. Pulpit (detail). Flemish. Probably before c.1520.

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designed and executed them; the ‘Old Fellows’ as Pugin was fond of calling them. Often as the time drew near for the occupation of the new house, we took delight in spending hours there in helping to distribute and arrange the various objects, and we used to hear Pugin’s loud voice (a vast!) as he gave directions, sounding through the corridors, or his ringing laugh when he was struck by some ridiculous idea. He was then, quite a young man, not more than two or three and twenty, beardless, with long, thick, straight black hair, an eye that took in everything, and with genius and enthusiasm in every line of his face and play of his features.7

It is clear that Pugin’s unique attribute was seen by the Catholic authorities as his ability to create through architecture, and more particularly neo-Gothic ecclesiastical interiors, a setting worthy of a re-established Church of Rome. As an anonymous writer put it at the time:

He has been actively employed amidst the edifices of Belgium, Germany, Switzerland and Normandy, ransacking ecclesiastical archives and storing his mind with facts, and his sketchbook with illustrations, to assist him in the noble, though somewhat arduous task, of re-Catholicising this once Catholic nation.8

The ancient components of the chapel furnishings were the 15th-century Flemish reredos, bought from the London dealer Edward Hull for £600, the Baroque choir-stalls purchased from Webb of Bond Street for £92, and the altar rails (Pls 2 and 1).9 The stone pulpit, originally in the north-east corner of the sanctuary, and the reredos were designed by Pugin.The total cost of the furniture at Oscott College is said to have come to the very large sum indeed of £3,576.13s.10d. Thomas Walsh,was Vicar Apostolic of the Midland District throughout the conception and con- struction of the new college, and the driving force behind it.10 He must have been deeply impressed with Pugin’s work there because in 1838, when he had become Bishop of Birmingham, and immediately after the completion of the project, he commissioned the architect to design a new cathedral, without even consulting his re-building appeal committee.11 As everyone knows, his judgement was fully justified. Pugin designed a fine building, and as at Oscott he took pains to create a homogeneous Catholic Gothic interior, that was inhabited by suitable ancient and modern furniture. The Earl of Shrewsbury paid for most of the former, having played an active part in its collection abroad. His gifts included the canons’ stalls said to come from St Mary in Capitol, Cologne (Pl.3), the pulpit from St Gertrude, Leuven (Pl.4), a 15th-century brass lectern from St Peter’s, Leuven, a ciborium, a large ewer and basin, and a pair of brass candlesticks and six plates formerly the property of Cardinal Odescalchi in the seventeenth century.There were other prominent benefactors. Pugin himself gave a 15th-century statue of the Virgin and Child, thought to have been the first such image to be displayed in England since the Reformation. Later in 1846, he gave the organ. The high altar, and the rood screen and loft were the gift of John Hardman, senior, of the Birmingham stained glass company. His son, John Hardman, junior, gave the bishop’s throne, a made-up piece designed by Pugin, in 1854, presumably in memory of his father who died in the previous year. The cathedral cost nearly £20,000, about £14,000 of which was paid by Bishop Walsh out of a legacy.His other gifts apart, the Earl of Shrewsbury gave £1000, and the Hardmans, father and son contributed a total of £1,800.12

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As has already been stressed, the furnishing of these important Catholic buildings is quite unrep- resentative of what was going on elsewhere. It is true that at Stonyhurst College there were Continental choir-stalls at this early date. Moreover the Dutch Baroque pulpit at St Elizabeth, Bescar, near Scarisbrick Hall may have been introduced into the earlier church there in the 1840s.13 But these comparisons are insignificant besides the prodigality of the Birmingham commissions.At Oscott and St Chad’s,it was the dynamic partnership of the enthusiastic Pugin and the wealthy and generous Lord Shrewsbury on the one hand, and the committed Dr Weedall and Bishop Walsh on the other, that has given currency to the idea that the Roman Catholics were principally responsible for the traffic in Continental church furniture in the 19th century.These are both unusual high-profile commissions, and do not typify the bulk of Roman Catholic patronage during the 19th century. Perhaps there is no better evidence that Pugin had ‘a good eye’ than the late 15th-century lat- ten lectern which he acquired, for St Chad’s Cathedral. It is supposed to have been one of a pair from Leuven, disposed of in 1789.14 The date is probably a misprint because the edict con- fiscating the property of the religious houses in Belgium was not issued until 6 November 1796.15 It is more likely that the lecterns came from the auction of the fittings of St Peter’s, Leuven, which is known to have possessed a pair, in 1798. Pugin’s lectern must have been in hiding for over thirty years, whilst its companion suffered an ignominious fate. It was being transported to the Louvre by the French invaders of the Low Countries, when, having almost completed its journey, whilst crossing one of the Seine bridges, it fell off the wagon into the river.16 The St Chad’s specimen was imported by Edward Hull, who obtained it, according to Samuel Meyrick, in Brussels.17 Meyrick included the drawing of it by Henry Shaw in his book Specimens of Ancient Furniture etc., published in 1836. Lord Shrewsbury seems to have purchased it and presented it to St Chad’s cathedral. lt was certainly one of the most idiosyncratic items of church furniture brought to England during the entire 19th-century.It was eventually sold to the Metropolitan Museum, New York, 18 where it is now displayed in the Cloisters. The Chapel, Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk. What is surprising about Pugin’s furnish- West end. Detail of late 16th-century Flemish choir-stalls.

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Plate 6. The Chapel, Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk. East end. Altar rails (detail). Flemish, early 18th century. ings at Oscott is that, inspite of his dedication to Gothic, the most important of them are from the Baroque period.As we know already from Henry Cust’s activities at Cockayne Hatley (see Part 1), this tendency was already well established. In truth there was only a limited supply of medieval woodwork on the market and a glut of 17th- and 18th-century material. Indeed Pugin’s perceived inconsistencies were quickly put right at Oscott soon after the commissioning of the chapel, when, according to Bishop Amherst, ‘Dr Moore turned out of the chapel everything which was not Gothic’, and replaced the railings with a screen designed by Pugin.19 Luckily James Wheble was able to buy them back in 1872. It is not known if the choir-stalls were also removed at the same time. Another important Roman Catholic patron was Sir Henry Bedingfeld of Oxburgh Hall, Norfolk, although his building work is mainly undocumented. He started to refurbish the house in 1829 but the detached chapel in the grounds was not completed until 1837, and the furnishings installed in the following year.20 Pugin was probably the architect, but there is no documentary proof. There are some fine late 16th-century Flemish stalls, raised up at the back of the chapel (Pl.5).There are also altar rails at the west end (Pl.6), as well as others protecting the altar proper. The carved wooden altarpiece from Antwerp that is there now was not part of the original furnishings, but purchased in Bruges some time before Sir Henry’s death in 1862.There seems to have

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been another altarpiece originally, which might have been the work of Pugin.21 Bedingfeld loved old wood carving. He was naturally drawn to the Low Countries as he had contacts there. Members of his family had entered convents in Ghent during the 16th- and 17th -centuries.22 Augustina Bedingfeld, the great grand-daughter of Margaret Pole, who was behead- ed for her faith in 1541, was Prior of the English monastery of Nazareth in Ghent during the mid- 16th-century She was later characterised in the Register of the Acts of the Vicars General of Bruges as: ‘Religiosa optima et prudentissima atque ad regendum capacissima’.23 After the Napoleonic Wars the whole family settled in Ghent to live more economically.24 In the 19th-century Sir Henry’s own sister was a nun at a convent in Bruges.25 Sir Henry also imported woodwork for use in the house.

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The handful of patrons, both Anglican and Roman Catholic, who have been discussed above, represent only the tip of the iceberg, when one considers the number of churches in England with fragments of Continental woodwork of one kind or another. It is clear that the motives for acqui- sition were legion, perhaps the principal one being the availability of the material.Although I have concentrated on the early period, the boom time for this activity ran from the second to the fourth decades of the 19th-century.In the Anglican church many of the most idiosyncratic interiors, such as Gatton (1830s), Cockayne Hatley (1830), Brougham (late 1830s), Charborough (1837), Otterbourne (1839), Birtles (1840) and Old Warden (1841) were created well before the precepts of the Ecclesiologists had ‘made it very difficult for ... incumbents ... to know what new types of furnishings could be inserted without offending either the bishops or the congregations’.27 As Pevsner observed about Cockayne Hatley: ‘Thirty years later no one would have dared to intro- duce such a display into an Anglican church’. By then the Ecclesiologists had turned their backs firmly on Rome. For the English Catholics the espousal of European art where it was affordable is entirely understandable. The Anglicans who indulged in this activity were eccentric antiquaries smitten by the Romantic ideal. In any case, they were too socially and financially independent to concern themselves with the strictures of the church authorities.With family ancestral monuments crowding in on every side, and an ostentatious and comfortable provision of accommodation for the living, a rural parish congregation of grateful estate tenantry was probably prepared to tolerate an alien and probably mystifying display of theatricality in their village church, even if it meant that, as at Gatton, Cockayne Hatley and elsewhere, farmers were expected to sit every Sunday in the stalls of 17th- century Belgian monks.

[Charles Tracy’s book, Continental Church Furniture in England:A Traffic in Piety (ISBN 1 85149 376 X) is available from the Antique Collector’s Club, price £35.]

Notes 1. John Milner, The History, civil and ecclesiastical, and survey of the antiquities of Winchester (Winchester 1809), p. 230.

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2. Ibid. For an up to date assessment of Milner, see M. N. L. Couve de Murville, John Milner, Birmingham, 1986. 3. R. O’Donnell,‘Pugin at Oscott’, J. F.Champ (ed.), Oscott College 1838-1988 (1988). 4. C. Grössinger, North-European Panel Paintings (London 1992), p. 16. 5. From Pugin’s, First Lecture at Oscott. Quoted in A. Farrell,‘Pugin and Oscott’, The Oscotian, 3rd Ser., 5 (1905), pp. 107-114. 6. Quoted in Paul Millar,‘The woodcarvings at Oscott’, The Oscotian, 3rd Ser., 14 (1913), p. 140. 7.W.J.A.,‘The History of St Mary’s College, Oscott’, The Oscotian, n.s.20 (1920), pp. 184-89. 8. Quoted in ‘A report on the opening of the college’, Catholic Magazine, ii (1838). 9. R. O’Donnell, ‘Pugin as a Church Architect’, from P.Atterbury and C. Wainwright, Pugin A Gothic Passion (New Haven and London 1994), p. 79. 10. J.F.Champ, Oscott,Archdiocese of Birmingham Historical Commission (Birmingham 1987), pp. 3-4. 11. M. Hodgetts, St Chad’s Cathedral, Birmingham (Birmingham1987). 12. For an up-to-date summary of the donations, see Hodgetts, St Chad’s, pp. 5-6. 13. C.Tracy, Continental Church Furniture in England.A traffic in piety (Woodbridge 2001), cat. K/12 and Pls 216-18. 14.W.Greaney,The building, museum, pictures and library at St Mary’s College Oscott (Birmingham 1899), p. 10. 15. F.van Kalken, Histoire de la Belgique (Brussels 1954). 16.This story is related in Greaney, St Mary’s College. 17.The lectern is mentioned and a drawing by Henry Shaw. See H. Shaw, Specimens of Ancient Furniture, Pl.XIV. 18. O’Donnell, Pugin as a Church Architect, p. 101, Pl.187. 19. Greaney, St Mary’s College, p. 14. 20. A.Wedgwood, A.W.N. Pugin and the Pugin Family: Catalogues architectural drawings in the Victoria and Albert Museum (London 1985), p. 81. 21.A watercolour of the interior of the chapel, painted by Sir Henry’s daughter Mathilda probably in the 1840s, shows an altarpiece. See K.Woods, Netherlandish carved wooden altarpieces of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries in Britain, Ph.D. thesis, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, Catalogue section: Oxburgh Hall, 230-31. 22. Ibid., p. 230. 23. The English Convent (at Bruges), n.d., p. 15, Note 1. 24. Ibid. 25. Ibid. 26. P.F.Anson, Fashions in Church Furniture 1840-1949 (London 1969), p. 84.

BOOKS FOR SALE

DAVID GREENHALGH, who used to produce the Ecclesiology etc booklists and who is now retired, is selling most of his collection of books (which comprises mostly books on churches) through Bloomsbury Book Auctions. He hopes that the sale will take place in the late Spring or early Summer, the date depending on how long it takes to catalogue the collection. If any members are interested they can contact the auctioneers at:

Bloomsbury Book Auctions 3-4 Hardwick Street London EC1R 4RY 020 7 923 6940 www.bloomsbury-book-auct.com

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FATHER CLIVE LUGET AND THE VISIONS OF MIDDLETON

Robert Halliday

IN 1933 THE Essex village of Middleton received nationwide attention after Father Clive Luget, the parish’s Anglo-Catholic rector, claimed that visions of the Virgin Mary had been seen there. At the time it was thought that Middleton might come to rival Walsingham or Lourdes. This was not to happen, but the episode remains an unusual sideshow in modern English church history. Middleton is a rural parish of 877 acres near the north Essex county border, about one mile south of the Suffolk market town of Sudbury. Its population, which stands at 135 (1991 census) was a mere 94 in 1931. The parish church of All Saints extends only 66 feet from east to west. Built of flint with stone dressings, it possesses a wooden bell turret instead of a tower.1 The nave, dating from the twelfth century, is 32 feet long, containing an outstanding Romanesque south doorway with a fifteenth century wooden door, sheltered by a fifteenth century timber porch. A Romanesque arch leads into the chancel, a fourteenth century building, 34 feet long. The chancel was probably built for the College of St. Gregory in Sudbury, which was founded in 1374 by Archbishop Simon of Sudbury,who endowed it with the manor of Middleton in 1380.2 Between 1769 and 1929 five members of the Raymond family were Rectors of Middleton. Oliver Raymond, the second of the line, who held the post from 1823 to 1889, left a great impression on the church, commissioning Anthony Salvin junior to restore the building in 1853, installing some unusual stained glass, and having a large Rectory built to the south. William Maynard Raymond, the last of the line to hold the post, became warden of St. Mary’s Home at Great Maplestead (a nearby offshoot of the Clewer community). He was succeeded by Ernest Sawyer, an elderly Anglo-Catholic, who retired in 1931. Ernest Sawyer’s successor, Clive Luget, was then aged 48. Born Frank Clive Luget in Exeter in 1883, he seldom, if ever, used his first name. He entered the London College of Divinity at 24 and then studied at Durham University. After being ordained a priest in 1910 he served as a curate in seven churches in the Greater London area. Between 1923 and 1925 was curate of St. Stephen’s church at Clewer, where the Anglo-Catholic convent would surely have left an impression on him. He next became curate of St. Michael and All Angels Church at Walthamstow.3 In 1931 Clive Luget published The Vision of Latton Priory, a religious novel for children. The narrative describes how the author and some friends visit the ruins of Latton Priory in Essex, where they experience a vision in which they return to the Middle Ages and observe monastic life. The monks of Latton are guardians of ‘The Sacred Stone’, a miracle-working mineral, and various boys have to undertake tasks to be admitted to ‘The Brotherhood of the Sacred Stone’. The vision ends and the author and his companions find themselves alone in the ruins. The Brotherhood and the Sacred Stone were fictional creations, but The Vision of Latton Priory shows that by 1931 Clive Luget was greatly interested in visions and the revival of medieval religious life. At Middleton Clive Luget assumed the title Father Luget and often wore a biretta and long robes. He made incense to his own formula, using it extensively in services, and instituted a St. Martin’s Guild, an informal social club for young men which he had started at Walthamstow, to

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entertain members of his new congregation and friends from London. In November 1931 he reopened and reconstructed a holy water stoup inside the nave doorway.4 Clive Luget also became friendly with a Dr. Thornber, a Sudbury resident and a talented organist, who became active in church life at Middleton.5 On the evening of 11 December 1932 a phenomenon occurred in Middleton. One parishioner who remembered it was Bertie Andrews, then aged eleven. A bright, glowing ball of light moved freely around the village, hovering before him. Several other people saw this light, including Clive Luget, who observed it to the east of the Rectory, over a hillock in the garden known as The Mound. Deeply impressed, Clive Luget would claim (in undoubted sincerity) to have seen the Crucifixion above it for five minutes, with the Virgin Mary kneeling before it. Two days later, at about 7.30 pm, Dr.Thornber and his seven year old son, Francis were at the Rectory with Clive Luget when another light appeared over The Mound. Dr.Thornber went to investigate, and was seen to fall into a lying or kneeling position, after which the light arose and disappeared. Francis Thornber had a propensity for seeing visions, and saw Middleton church as it appeared in the Middle Ages, with three people looking through an opening in the chancel wall. Francis described this vision to Clive Luget, who asked him to mark the site of the opening on the wall with a pencil. Scraping the plaster away,they found a blocked cavity,which was identified as a leper squint or a hagioscope. Reconstructions of any church’s appearance in the Middle Ages must remain open to speculation, yet Francis’s vision showed a remarkable understanding of church architecture, especially since the interior and exterior walls of the chancel were covered with plaster, which hid the stonework.

All Saint’s, Middleton, Essex in about 1940. The hagioscope that Father Luget opened in the south chancel wall can be seen just east of the box-tomb enclosed by railings.

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The following year (1933) Father Luget decided to describe the visions at his morning service on Sunday 12 February (the day after the Feast of Our Lady of Lourdes). At that time The People reported stories with supernatural connections. Obtaining advance notice of Father Luget’s inten- tions, The People ran a front page feature on the visions, quoting Clive Luget’s description of the Virgin Mary ‘she stood shining with a brilliant white light for several minutes. It was the most entrancing sight I have ever seen’. The Virgin Mary had given messages to Francis Thornber, but had told him not to repeat them yet.6 An account of the Sunday service appeared in The Suffolk Free Press (the local newspaper of the Sudbury area). Seventeen people (excluding the choir and church officials) attended. Dr.Thornber played The Middleton Carol, which he had composed in honour of the visions, on the organ. Incense became so overpowering that two ladies had to leave the church. Father Luget gave a sermon on John the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ, and then described how he had seen the Crucifixion the previous December. Since then he had seen the Virgin Mary many times.

Sometimes the figure appears to be dazzling white, at others it is blue and about five feet six inch- es in height. The figure is of a young woman in a long flowing robe or cloak with a girdle. Her hair is covered, but she has a most beautiful face. You cannot see her feet. With the appearance I had a distinct feeling of warm rays just as you feel when the rays of the sun strike you.

Father Luget observed that the Virgin Mary had last been seen in England in the Middle Ages at Walsingham. Although uncertain what her re-appearance signified, he believed that many people would come to the Cross. Believing that the Virgin Mary wished the church to be restored to its original condition, he had re-dedicated it in her honour. The Suffolk Free Press described how a spring had risen in the Rectory grounds and then dried up, but Francis Thornber had dreamed that this would rise again (although one sceptical resident stated that this spring had previously risen and fallen naturally). Another report of the service in The East Anglian Daily Times said that cele- brants at Middleton had seen a vision of a beautiful woman (although they may only have been asked to imagine her appearance).7 Newspaper reports attracted the attention of Philip Rand, a Kensit Wycliffite preacher at Ipswich, who was the Eastern Counties representative of the Protestant Trust Society. He came to Middleton and posted notices announcing that he would hold a protest meeting the following Sunday (19 February). That day two policemen were stationed at Middleton in anticipation of dis- turbances. However the morning service went ahead, attended by 26 people, including the choir. While incense permeated the atmosphere Dr.Thornber played Love’s old sweet song on the organ. Robert Bryant, the sexton, in a cassock and lace-trimmed cotta, with a medallion hanging around his neck, tolled the bell as an acolyte lit candles on the altar. At the stroke of eleven Father Luget left the vestry wearing a cope and biretta, accompanied by servers and acolytes. After showing rev- erence to the altar he censed the church as Dr. Thornber played All hail the power of Jesus’ name. Clive Luget gave a sermon on the parable of the sower (an appropriate subject for Sexagesima Sunday) and delivered communion, elevating the host while a Sanctus bell was rung. When Philip Rand arrived at 3 pm, it was estimated that between 400 and 500 people had

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assembled to hear him. Using the boot of his car as an impromptu platform, Philip Rand said he hoped the audience would forgive him, but he had never heard of Middleton before reading the newspaper reports about the visions. Thus he was very surprised to hear that the Virgin Mary had left heaven to come here. He had met Francis Thornber, a polite boy who answered questions read- ily, and after speaking to Francis he wondered if the figure seen had identified herself as the Virgin Mary, or if the visionaries only believed this to be the case. He had not met Father Luget, but he could see that Anglo-Catholic practices were taking place at Middleton. While the law guaranteed religious toleration, nobody had the right to teach Roman Catholic doctrines in an Anglican Church. He had accordingly drawn up a petition to the Bishop of Chelmsford, which condemned the use of wafer bread at Holy Communion and the reservation of the sacrament at Middleton. The petition further criticised Clive Luget for celebrating Mass and acquiring ‘unenviable notori- ety’ by stating that he had seen visions of angels, cherubs and the Virgin Mary. It was therefore hoped that the Bishop would investigate these practices and put a stop to them. The meeting dis- persed as darkness fell.8 A second protest meeting on 26 February had to be held in a nearby barn because of bad weather, but Philip Rand claimed that 65 people had signed his petition.9 The Protestant Truth Society continued to sponsor further protests, culminating with a three-day programme of events from Saturday 18 March. These included open meetings in Sudbury Market Place and an illustrated lecture in a public hall, although a Sunday demonstration at Middleton was disrupted by a thunder- storm just after it started. The Suffolk Free Press reported that events at Middleton were the main subject of conversation in the Sudbury area over February and March. Some correspondents to the newspaper ridiculed Protestant Truth Society’s activities as misguided and dreary,observing that visions were respectable according to the Bible and also to science and psychology. Eventually most observers concluded that the Christian faith was open to many interpretations, while the significance of visions and the correct form of Christian worship was a matter for individual conscience. By April the Suffolk Free Press felt that it could give Middleton no more publicity,10 while the members of Middleton parochial church council wrote to the Bishop of Chelmsford stating that many protestors did not belong to the Church of England.11 Father Luget continued to attract visitors to Middleton throughout 1933. A party of five clair- voyants saw the Virgin Mary, and one claimed that statues were hidden in Middleton church. Two spiritualist sisters called MacKay, from the nearby village of Long Melford also believed that they saw the Virgin Mary, and became active members of Father Luget’s congregation, joining the Parochial Church Council. John Bazille Corbin, Rector of Runwell St. Mary in Essex was so impressed by events that he wrote a hymn in honour of the visions. Clive Luget acquired written depositions from at least twelve people who had seen visions at Middleton. Although some witnesses were children, one was a magistrate. Most agreed that they had seen a ball of light, even if they were uncertain of its significance.12 One possible explanation is that the lights were phenomena variously known as Earth Lights, Ghost Lights or Corpse Candles. There has been little scientific investigation of these, but theories as to their origin include build- ups of natural gas, or tectonic forces caused by movements in geological deposits. Sightings of sim-

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Father Luget in the Rectory garden with his dog Quackie. ilar lights at Barmouth over 1904 and 1905 coincided with a Welsh religious revival.13 The ability to perceive phenomena that are not normally apparent to other observers is not unknown: eminent figures who possessed this gift included the philosopher Spinoza and the poet William Blake. It is clear that Clive Luget was neither dishonest nor a self-publicist. At first he was willing to speak to press reporters about his visions, yet, as interest in the visions grew he did not contact the newspapers to promote or defend his position. Possibly newspapers did not provide the publicity he desired. Yet he would describe his experiences to individual visitors, to whom he could be a convivial host. Evidently he preferred to discuss his visions and beliefs at a personal level with those who seemed genuinely attentive. Although the results of such meetings cannot be quantified, individuals may have benefited from meeting Father Luget. Father Luget stayed at Middleton, where he continued to see visions, especially of angels, on a daily basis. One parishioner recalls that he told her mother that there were angels in the churchyard trees, and said,‘let me convert you’, asking to hold her hand, thinking that this would permit her to share the vision (to no avail). He believed he was in contact with an entity called Brother Bramarte who produced Latin messages on the Rectory walls. He copied these, but he unfortunately stored his writings in the Rectory cellar, where the damp destroyed them. A relative described childhood visits to Middleton: services were often difficult to follow, since they were

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conducted in Latin. The midnight service on Good Friday was unexpectedly interrupted by a loud crash, which Clive Luget later explained represented the rending of the tomb. Yet it is recalled that he was very good with children, organising Christmas parties in the Rectory and Easter Egg hunts in the churchyard that elderly parishioners still remember with affection. From the late 1930s Clive Luget’s eyesight deteriorated, and by the late 1940s he was nearly blind. In 1948 a feature in the Suffolk Free Press reported that services at Middleton were often unattended and the church was decaying, while the churchyard was overgrown, yet Father Luget’s faith in the visions had never wavered. He was convinced that a healing spring would rise at Middleton, and he planned to build a monastery around it.14 (Father Luget refused eye surgery, as he was convinced that the spring would heal him.) Three years later the diocesan authorities intervened. On 7 July 1951 Bishop Sherard Falkner Allison of Chelmsford convened a public meeting at Middleton to discuss the parish’s future. The appearance of reporters from the national press angered Bishop Allison, who said he did not want ‘cheap publicity’.15 Clive Luget was retired on 30 November 1951. He died on 28 April 1952 at the Walnut Tree Hospital in Sudbury, aged 69, and was buried in the City of London Cemetery.16 Father Luget’s plans for Middleton can be compared with Alfred Hope Patten’s restoration of the Shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. It was not coincidental that this was consecrated in 1931, and that a spring was found under the new building. Clive Luget was a priest associate at Walsingham17 and he obviously hoped to repeat Alfred Hope Patten’s achievement, but he lacked the necessary support and organisation, while Middleton lacked Walsingham’s historical significance. (People could reach Walsingham by train, but Middleton even lacked public transport connections.) The Mound was later built over. A spring occasionally rises in the Rectory grounds, but it is regarded as a natural feature. Middleton was united with the neighbouring benefices of Great and Little Henny, and the parochial church council was reconstituted, while Middleton Rectory became a private house.18 Oswald Alexander, the Rector of Henny,instituted a restoration of Middleton church. The unusual wooden bell cote was beyond repair, and replaced with a smaller, box like, structure. The hagioscope that Clive Luget had opened in the chancel was closed.19 Middleton church is now well cared for by a team of dedicated parishioners. In recent years there has been a renewed interest in the events of 1933. During 2001 and 2002 Father Barry Hall, an Essex clergyman organised pilgrimages to Middleton in honour of Father Luget’s memory,culminating in a service in Middleton church, when the Reverend Corbin’s hymn in honour of the visions received its first public performance.

Acknowledgements I owe a great debt to the parishioners of Middleton in the preparation of this article. Eric White, Joy Chinnery, Evie Bryant, Kathleen Andrews and the late Bertie Andrews all provided reminiscences of Clive Luget. Fay Garwood, an ex-parishioner, loaned photographs of Middleton. Canon John Lord of Hindolveston, Norfolk, a long-standing friend of Clive Luget supplied much

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helpful information. John Corbin’s son, Christopher and Clive Luget’s nephew, Ray Luget furnished further reminiscences, and Barry Wall of the Sudbury Local History Society was also helpful, (providing an introduction to Heather Bell of Sudbury, who also remembered events of 1933).

Notes 1 The Reverend Henry Fynes-Clinton, Rector of St. Magnus the Martyr church in London visited Middleton and produced a typescript account of the visions and subsequent events which form the basis of this article. The current pamphlet guidebook A Directory of Belchamp Churches describes Middleton and 25 other Essex parish churches. For a more detailed survey see An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Essex (Royal Commission on Historic Monuments, 1922) 3: 182-3. Philip MorantThe History and Antiquities of the County of Essex (1758) 2: 275-6, is still worth consulting. 2 Victoria History of the County of Suffolk (1907) 2: 150-1. 3 Who’s Who in Essex (1935) 182 outlines Clive Luget’s early career. 4 Parochial church council minutes (still kept in Middleton). 5 Henry Fynes-Clinton wrote that Dr.Thornber left Middleton in July 1933. He died in a road accident in Ipswich, Suffolk Free Press 30 July 1936. 6 The People 12 February 1933. 7 Suffolk Free Press 16 February 1933; East Anglian Daily Times 13-14 February 1933. 8 Suffolk Free Press 23 February 1933; East Anglian Daily Times 20 February 1933. 9 Suffolk Free Press 2 March 1933; East Anglian Daily Times 27 February 1933; ‘Anglo-Catholics see Virgin Mary’ The Churchman’s Magazine March 1933, 88-9. 10 Suffolk Free Press 2-9 March 1933; 23 March 1933-6 April 1933. 11 Parochial church council minutes. 12 Henry Fynes-Clinton described events during the later part of 1933. Sadly,the witness statements that he mentions have disappeared. 13 To my knowledge, Paul Devereux Earth Lights Revelations (1989) is the only book on the subject available to the general reader. I disagree with some of the author’s conclusions, and cannot accept his belief in ley-lines. I also pos- sess insufficient knowledge of geology to comment on his methodology in this field. But this is a well-referenced introduction to other sightings. Another study is R. Maclagan ‘ghost lights of the West Highlands’ Folklore 8 (1908) 203-56. 14 Suffolk Free Press 28 October 1948. 15 Suffolk Free Press 5 June 1951; 10 July 1951; News Chronicle 9 July 1951; Daily Herald 9 July 1951. 16 Suffolk Free Press 30 April 1952. 17 Information supplied by Martin Warner, Priest Administrator at Walsingham. 18 Suffolk Free Press 11 December 1951. 19 Suffolk Free Press 5-12 January 1961.

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THE HISTORY OF ILAM CROSS, STAFFORDSHIRE

Phil Mottram

ONE OF THE best ways to arrive at the picturesque Staffordshire village of Ilam, is to come down the steep hill from Blore. After an exhilarating view of the Manifold Valley and the entrance to Dovedale from the open, twisting road down Blore Pastures, the lane narrows between hedges before turning sharp left over the river bridge at the entrance of the village. The delightful ‘sur- prise view’ which greets one just beyond the bridge owes much of its beauty to a handsome memorial cross in the foreground. Its design is based on the Eleanor Crosses, with which Edward I marked the stopping places on the last journey of the body of his queen, Eleanor of Castile, from Nottinghamshire to Westminster Abbey in London, after her death in 1290. Indeed the sorry state of Ilam Cross might lead one to think that it too was over 700 years old. But in fact it is only just over 150 years since it was set up by another grieving husband, Jesse Watts-Russell of Ilam Hall. Jesse’s father, Jesse Russell sen., was a prosperous businessman, who made a fortune in London - in the first place as a soap manufacturer and later as a successful investor in the City exchanges. In the conventional phrase he became ‘one of the richest men in England’, though retaining the careful habits of a self-made man. He did however spend freely on his eldest son, sending him to Eton and Worcester College, Oxford - an important connection for Ilam Cross - and buying the Ilam Estate for him in 1809, as a family home on his engagement to Mary Watts. Jesse Russell jun.’s fiancée was the heiress of David Pike Watts,a brewer and vintner of London, also a fabulously rich man. Jesse and Mary were married in 1811 and, shortly after, made Ilam their principal country home. David’s two sons having died in the Napoleonic Wars, Mary was his sole heiress and, when her father died in 1816, Jesse Russell took the additional name of Watts to continue the name. Mary Watts- Russell commissioned the memorial to her father, which is such a magnificent feature of the church at Ilam, from the greatest English sculptor of his day, Francis Chantrey, another important contact in the history of Ilam Cross. Jesse Watts-Russell and Mary started a family and, by 1840, had produced eight children when the family was plunged into grief by Mary’s death at the age of 48. The bereavement came at the end of a period during which Jesse had radically changed the appearance of Ilam. The old Ilam Hall of the Port family had been demolished and a new home, designed by John Shaw in the ‘Baronial Splendour’ style, finished in 1827. In the same year the building of an imposing new vicarage was started. At the time of Mary’s death, the scheme of model cottages which is such a feature of Ilam scenery, was just being finished and they had almost certainly been designed by George Gilbert Scott, who was also the architect for an ongoing, Ilam Cross, Ilam Staffordshire

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thorough restoration of St. Mary’s Church in Stafford, substantially funded by Jesse Watts-Russell. Scott also became an important contact in the story of Ilam Cross. It would be easy to look on Ilam Cross as a beautiful and interesting, though not particularly significant, local curiosity. In fact it illustrates the way major national movements and events can impinge on a small village as remote as Ilam in the middle of the nineteenth century, when bitter controversy raged in the Church of England. Relations between Church and State were in tur- moil and the Church itself was also rent by discord between those who supported the Oxford Movement and those who resisted its tenets. Many people in the Church of England, both clergy and laity, were horrified by what they saw as the Oxford Movement’s affront to their protestant heritage and sought ways to symbolise their determination to resist a drift back towards Rome. They wanted also to remind forgetful members of the Church of the martyrdom of Anglicans, who died for their refusal to abandon the Reformation. They proposed to erect a memorial to three Protestant leaders,Thomas Cranmer, Nicholas Ridley and Hugh Latimer, who were burnt at the stake as heretics, in Oxford in 1555/56, after Queen Mary set about restoring the Catholic faith as the state religion of England. In November 1838, opponents of the Oxford Movement set up a working group, the Martyrs’ Memorial Committee, to conduct a public appeal and to make arrangements for a suitable public memorial in the centre of Oxford, as a warning of the dangers of neo-Catholicism. In December Jesse Watts-Russell contributed generously to the appeal. Of the hundreds of donations listed in the subscription book, his was one of only seven of £50, a figure exceeded only by three others. So he had taken a close interest in the Oxford Cross nearly two years before Mary’s death. By March 1840, it had been decided that part of the Martyrs’ Memorial should take the form of a cross, based on the surviving Eleanor Cross at Waltham,and a private competition was held to select an architect/designer. Mary Watts-Russell died in the following August, when preparations for the Oxford Cross were well advanced, the foundation stone eventually being laid on 19th May 1841. Jesse Watts-Russell’s connections with the people erecting the Martyrs’ memorial were close. He was, of course, an old Oxonian himself. From the designs submitted to the competition, the win- ning design was that by Jesse’s friend and collaborator in the transformation of Ilam, George Gilbert Scott. Sir Francis Chantrey, also a close friend, having not only created one of his greatest master- pieces for Ilam Church but also having advised on much of the redevelopment of Ilam, was consulted about the sculpture of the three figures of the Martyrs. But, not being able to undertake the work himself, he agreed that his principal assistant Henry Weekes should do the carving under his supervision. Chantrey’s part in the project sadly came to an end when he died on 25 November 1841. This was the background against which Jesse Watts-Russell considered what would be the most appropriate design for a village memorial to his wife Mary. He decided to adopt the Eleanor Cross model with the addition of a spring of pure water for the villagers. This idea was probably suggested by the fact that the surviving Eleanor Cross at Geddington, not far from Jesse’s other estate near Oundle, has a spring incorporated in its base. He was clearly in close touch with George Gilbert Scott at the time and chose as architect John Macduff Derick, an Oxford architect whose

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Ilam Cross from a postcard of c.1905. design for the Martyrs’ Memorial, had been rejected. Perhaps he wanted to give Derick a conso- lation prize and almost certainly commissioned the design from him in consultation with Scott. Indeed, the pinnacle of the cross at Ilam (now sadly destroyed) was closely modelled on that of the Martyrs’ memorial, so Derick seems to have been familiar with Scott’s design. Derick’s design for Ilam was however significantly different from his rejected design for Oxford, probably indicating a sensitivity to location and, perhaps, respect for Jesse’s personal taste. The Oxford Cross took until the spring of 1843 to complete, though the inscription is dated to the laying of the foundation stone in 1841. It is constructed mainly of magnesian limestone. Scott did not like the stone from the famous quarry at Mansfield Woodhouse in Nottinghamshire, from which the stone for the new Houses of Parliament was taken, but found a material he preferred in a nearby disused quarry.1 However, the statues of the three martyrs were carved by Weekes in Caen stone from France, blocks of which were obtained from the stock held by Canterbury Cathedral, through the initiative of Dr.William Buckland, the famous geologist and Dean of Westminster, who was an extremely influential member of the Martyrs’ Memorial Committee.2 This choice of material turned out to be unfortunate, since the stone did not weather well in Oxford, even though the statues are sheltered by the deep niches in which they stand.3

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On Ilam Cross there are six statues of female figures and a topographical dictionary of 1849 tells us that they were ‘carved by Richard Westmacott in Caen stone’.4 A local guide to Ilam, published in 1841,5 announced that a monument to Mrs Watts-Russell ‘is now being erected in the village’, which means that the decisions about the Ilam cross and its figures had been taken speedily. At Ilam, the choice of stones was doubly disastrous. The basins for the spring water and the first four courses of stone are constructed of a local triassic material, probably from a quarry a few miles away at Stanton, a sandstone cemented with barite.The same stone was used for Jesse’s new hall, the new vicarage, the road bridge, St. Bertram’s Bridge and the mullions of the model cottages. This excellent freestone has stood the test of time well. But the main structure of the cross is entirely of a variety of Cotswold stone, possibly from near the famous quarry at Doulting in Somerset. The use of Caen stone for the figures compounds the problem, since both of these oolitic limestones have proved to be seriously affected by weathering. Three of the surviving figures of Queen Eleanor on Waltham Cross, the model for both the Oxford and Ilam crosses, have been replaced by replicas and the originals John Macduff Derick’s rejected design for the deposited on loan to the Victoria and Albert Museum in Martyrs’ Memorial in Oxford (Bodleian MS To. Gen. a. 4, fol. 8r.) London. It is a great irony that, after more than 700 years, the figure on display is in a better state than the figures on both the Oxford and Ilam Crosses. The irony is accentuated by the fact that, as the original medieval accounts for the work on the figures on Waltham Cross con- firm, it is also carved in Caen stone.6 Close inspection shows the material to be much more dense and made up of much smaller grains than that at Ilam. Perhaps, at Caen, stone of such high quality was worked out in the middle ages and, by the middle of the nineteenth century, only coarser grained stone of poorer quality was available, or perhaps cheap enough. It may also be the case that, since the industrial rev- olution, acid rain has made atmospheric erosion much more searching and destructive, though this would not explain why Waltham Cross fared so much better. A badly damaged figure. By September 1841, The Sheffield Mercury reported: The effect of erosion.

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ILAM CROSS. - An exceedingly beautiful stone cross has just been erected in the centre of the little village of Ilam, in Staffordshire, by J.W. Russell, Esq., of Ilam Hall, in memory of his late wife. In general design, this exquisite and appropriate structure may,perhaps, be said to bear some resemblance to the established Eleanor Cross, near Waltham Abbey. It is forty feet in height, ter- minating in a very light and graceful ornamental cross: the arrangement and execution of the tabernacle-work on the body of the monument are as tasteful and delicate as can well be con- ceived by those who have examined ancient specimens of this kind of carving. The material is the fine white limestone of Boyborough xi, near Bath, and the architect Mr. Derrick [sic], of Oxford. It is well known that [in] the mausoleum attached to the church of Ilam, is Chantrey’s most celebrated work, representiog [sic] the late - Russell, Esq., [sic - i.e. David Pike Watts] on his death couch, giving the paternal benediction to his daughter, and three of her children - with this far famed and affecting work of art - itself the object of many pilgrimage to Ilam, will hence- forth be associated in the remembrance of the visitor, or the description of the Tourist - the village cross - the elegant, and it is to be hoped, long enduring monument of that same excellent woman, who forms, with one exception, the principal figure of Chantrey’s impressive group.7

The fact that the design could be commissioned, the sculpture ordered, the masonry and carving completed and the whole structure erected in just thir- The Stanton stone replacement finial. teen months, is a remarkable tribute to Jesse Watts-Russell’s decisiveness. The feat is even more remarkable when one takes into account the engineering of the water supply to the spring. The source of the water for the basins posed something of a problem. There are references to cholera in the village in 1834 but Jesse could not have known of the link between contaminated water and the disease, since this connection was not established until 1854. But he hardly needed to know that pure spring water from the limestone hills was more wholesome. There are springs in the village, but most are below the level of the houses and, therefore, at risk of contamination from outdoor privies. So Jesse decided to tap a source at the foot of Bunster Hill, half a mile from the village. Here there was a pure natural spring, but the outfall required improvement. A short tunnel was made, using explosives for which drilling holes can still be seen, to clear the mouth of the spring and to cut a small basin in the rock. The water was piped across Hainley field to the spur of Bunster just outside the village, where a cistern was installed to provide the header tank. From there the pipe led down to the Cross. It was obviously an important resource for the villagers and there is a later photograph of a farm-hand using a bucket to fill a horse-drawn water cart from one of the basins. It was left to the 1850 edition of Hobson’s guide to complete the account of the monument:-

Near the centre [of Ilam] is a gothic cross of stone erected by Mr.Watts-Russell, to perpetuate the memory of his first wife. It is in the style of the “Waltham Cross,” elaborately carved, and enriched with statues of exquisite beauty. At the foot of the cross flows a fountain, which supplies the villagers with water. An inscription tells her virtues to whom the cross is raised, and in allusion to the fountain, adds,

“The cross and Fountain, erected by her husband, perpetuate the memory of One who lives in the hearts of so many in this village and neighbourhood.

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MARY WATTS-RUSSELL.”

“Free for all these crystal waters flow, Her gentle eyes could weep for others’ woe; Dried is that fount; but long may this endure, To be a Well of Comfort to the Poor.”8

The historical background to the erection of Ilam Cross; its connection with the religious (and therefore political) controversies of its day; its symbolic connection to the Martyrs’ Memorial, implying Jesse Watts-Russell’s opposition to the Tractarian movement;9 its stylistic relation to Eleanor Crosses; the influence of George Gilbert Scott, Sir Francis Chantrey and Sir Richard Westmacott and his son;its progressive social hygiene and its elegant sentimental symbolism - make it a monument of far greater significance than a merely local memorial. Its preservation as a major work of art and an important symbol of a particular time and place is extremely important. Unfortunately,the deterioration of the ‘Boyborough’ and Caen stones has seriously affected Ilam Cross. It’s state can only be described as sorry.10 Apart from the near total loss of the inscription, originally in red and black letters, all the rest of the detail is sadly eroded. The statues, which are much more exposed than those on the Oxford Memorial, are in an advanced, even dangerous, state of decay.(Fig.8) One has lost its head completely.The basic structure seems to be reasonably sound, but the gradual, continuous erosion of the decoration bids fair to remove a great deal of its heritage value as a supreme example of the best of Gothic Revival architecture and the art of the middle of the nineteenth century. In addition a catastrophic fall of the top stage and finial cross in a violent storm in the early 1960s, savagely truncated the design. An attempt was made to raise funds to restore the damage but, at that time, funds for this type of restoration were not available. A Mr. Holmes, who was organising the repair of the monument, largely at his own expense, substituted a highly simplified, three-section sandstone shaft and cross, in the full hope and expectation that the work was a temporary expedient and that a full restoration would eventually become possible. The result is that the whole design is seriously disfigured and thrown out of architectural balance by this tragedy. There is also a need for some urgent protective work to be carried out. The temporary top stage now shows some movement at its base and if rocked by high winds over a period, the topmost section could be in danger of toppling, causing grievous damage on its way down. Another problem is that jackdaws nesting behind the figures are in danger of causing considerable damage, loosening and breaking the softened stone features. An ad hoc committee has been considering ways and means of rescuing Ilam Cross, but have come up against the legal difficulty of establishing, or taking over, ownership and long-term guardianship of the monument, which stands in the middle of a road junction in the village. The bodies which one might expect to assume ownership do not seem very keen to take on the com- mitment. We are determined that Ilam Cross will not be allowed to lose its decoration and figures to become the eroded stump which is its present apparent destiny. We are determined that these problems will be overcome even if we have to found our own trust fund to launch a major appeal in the near future.

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[The restoration committee would like to hear from any members with suggestions on how to solve the legal problem, or who can recommend sources of funding. An article on ‘The History of Ilam Cross’ was published in Staffordshire History vol 36 Autumn 2002. Copies of the paper (cost £2.50 inc. p&p) can be obtained from Phil Mottram, 99 Bethwin Road, London SE5 0YR 020 7701 0595 [email protected]]

Notes 1 Scott thought very highly of this stone and remarked that the particular quarry was thereafter known as ‘The Memorial Quarry’. The present good state of the body of the Oxford Cross (apart from the Caen stone figures) sup- ports his high opinion of the stone. 2 Chantrey was also a close friend of Buckland, standing as godfather to Buckland’s eldest son, Frank in 1826. 3 Shortly after the Oxford memorial, Scott designed his first Gothic church at Camberwell in London. He later wrote - ‘Our great mistake in the church was the use of the Caen Stone, an error fallen into by many at that time and later.’ (Sir George Gilbert Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections (1879), p.93) Geologist, Dr. Eric Robinson, the leading expert and writer on building stones has remarked that Caen stone imported for Victorian restorations, such as those at Canterbury cathedral, often seemed to suffer seriously from erosion, compared with the medieval material. 4 Samuel Lewis, A Topographical Dictionary of England (1849). As far back as 1816, when David Pike Watts died, Sir Richard Westmacott R.A. (1755-1856) wrote to John Constable, Mary Watts-Russell’s first cousin, to ask who David’s executors were. He was probably touting for business then, though it was Chantrey who got the commission for the memorial to David Pike Watts in Ilam Church. Sir Richard had also reported on the state of the figures of Queen Eleanor on the Waltham Cross, to a committee undertaking its restoration in 1834, and eventually undertook partial restoration of one of the figures. But by 1841, he was right at the end of his working career, which was said to have been second only to Chantrey’s. His son, also Richard (1799-1872), was then taking over his father’s practice and the fact that the reference is not to ‘Sir’ Richard, seems to indicate that the work on the figures is by the son. Since Chantrey had already passed the work on the figures for the Martyrs’ Memorial to his assistant,Weekes, he was not a candidate for the work at Ilam and Jesse turned to Westmacott. 5 Guide to Dovedale, Ilam and Scenes Adjacent (1841). 6 Accounts of Queen Eleanor’s executors. Roll 1. Michaelmas term 1291. ‘Cherrings. Item, Henrico Mauger, in partem solutionis pro xxxij. petris de Cam, pro imaginibus Reginae, ad Cruces de Charrynge et Wautham, x.li.’ [Translated -Charing. Item to Henry Mauger in part settlement for 32 stones of Caen, for images of the Queen, at Charing and Waltham. £10.] 7 In John Holland, Memorials of Sir Francis Chantrey,R.A. (1851), after recording a visit to view Chantrey’s masterpiece in Ilam Church, John Holland records:‘The interest of my visit to the mausoleum ... [No hint as to date] ... was con- siderably enhanced by ... stone cross to Mrs Watts-Russell ... one or two of whose children, with their father, the clergyman and Mr. Derrick [sic] of Oxford, the architect, were at the moment inspecting the newly-finished work.’ Holland was then the joint editor of The Sheffield Mercury, in which the report was published, indicating that the his visit was in September (2nd edition 1850). 8 Guide to Dovedale, Ilam and Scenes Adjacent (1841. 9 It was a great irony that one of Jesse’s sons, Michael, having taken Holy Orders in the Church of England and having been presented by Jesse to the Vicarage of Benefield,the parish church for the Biggin Estate, at Oundle, fell under the influence of the Oxford Movement, after the death of his wife, and went over to Rome, becoming a Catholic priest. Indeed his son, Julian, died in Italy in the battle of Mentana as a volunteer for the Pope, fighting with the French against the Risorgimento and unification of Italy.It was many years before a horrified Jesse made his peace with his rene- gade son. 10 In Rev.William Fyldes, Dovedale and Other Dales (1897), the cross is already described as ‘decayed’.

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BOOK REVIEWS

Michael Hall (ed): Gothic Architecture and Its Meanings 1550—1830 (Spire Books: Reading, 2002, 224 pp., 66 pls., 27 col. pls., £19.95, pbk ISBN 0 9543615 0 4)

Gavin Stamp: An Architect of Promise. George Gilbert Scott Junior (1839-1897) and the Late Gothic Revival (Shaun Tyas, Donnington, 2003, 427 pp., 51 pls, 19 col. pls., £49.95, hdbk, ISBN 1 900289 512)

SINCE THE 1960S at least there has been a tendency to think of the Gothic Revival as a quin- tessentially Victorian phenomenon, and it is easy to see why.The most conspicuous neo-Gothic buildings are, after all,Victorian: the Midland Grand Hotel in St. Pancras, the Law Courts in the Strand, Manchester Town Hall, Parliament itself. Many of these monuments were inventions of the nineteenth century, new building types. Then of course there was the great literary output to accompany the Gothic, architectural criticism raised to a pitch of excel- lence not since matched, but also a proper literary genre, the Gothic novel, a kind of precursor to full- blown architectural retrospection.The time before Victoria’s ascent has gen- erally not attracted the same scholarly interest. ‘Gothick’, as distinct from full-bodied ‘Gothic’, has tended to be considered in specialist studies that concern themselves specifically with the taste as expressed in gentry and aristocratic houses or even in garden architecture, implying a less than serious purpose. Over the last ten years there has been a great reappraisal of the Revival’s supposed infancy, and with one stroke the late Chris Brooks, in his masterful 1999 survey, Gothic Revival, showed how foolish we had been in our assumptions about the eighteenth-century’s, even the seventeenth-century’s, engagement with the Gothic bequest. Brooks’ contribution lies in demonstrating that the

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Revival was in essence a semiotic.The historicity of Gothic, its clear associations with nation-form- ing events and the history of religion, invited readings and counter-readings almost from the moment it first began to be studied seriously,making Gothic the most polysemous of styles, a style in fact that was primarily about meaning, a plastic language that could be moulded to express specific ideas about present, past and future. Classicism was dry stuff by comparison, a truly dead language ruled by taste, or whose semantic potential was available to a very much more socially restricted audience. The recently published volume of essays, edited by Michael Hall, explores the rich semantic background to the Victorian Revival, or, rather, makes the point that the two centuries before Victoria came to the throne should not even be considered ‘background’ at all.This book will set new directions in scholarly research for younger scholars in the area, opening up as it does whole fields of inquiry.This could be described as a reinvention of the subject matter; it is too easy to for- get that a very large part of the first scholarly account of the Revival, Charles Eastlake’s 1872 History of the Gothic Revival, devoted many pages to this time before (a point well made by Hall in his introduction). The idea for the book grew out of a Georgian Group conference on this subject, which the reviewer attended.The authors have in many cases developed their essays far beyond their talks and to a high scholarly standard.This is where, I suspect, the editor shows his hand. In the opening essay Alex Buchanan, whose knowledge of the Revival literature is exhaustive and I suspect unsurpassed, explores how writers in various genres interpreted medieval architecture, categorising their responses in a way that neatly demonstrates the larger continuities over several centuries. Maurice Howard’s chapter on attitudes to Elizabethan architecture elaborates on some of these themes.This reviewer found Tim Mowl’s analysis of seventeenth-century Gothic parish churches particularly stimulating. Mowl argued – and most persuasively in my view – that by the seventeenth century there was some kind of consensus view as to what constituted to the typical English parish church: Perpendicular, essentially, with aisles and a tower.This fundamentally conservative view of church architecture was understandable in relation to the time’s religious politics, but had an entirely neg- ative effect, stifling architectural creativity. Outside of London (where we can boast about churches by Wren and the Wren school) English architects produced nothing to rival the churches of Italy or Vienna,a great missed opportunity.Giles Worsley explores a different avenue, arguing the reverse in connection with the country houses of Vanbrugh, which, he observes, harken back to some of the great late Elizabethan and early Jacobean houses.The imagery of this first golden age appealed in the aftermath of British victory at Blenheim, enabling an architecture that reflected the increasing self-confidence of the nation. Rosemary Hill examines the early career of A.W.N. Pugin, and in particular the specific associations between Catholicism and the Gothic, mingled with Romanticism.This, like other pieces of writing by Hill, makes one long for her biography of Pugin. Terry Friedman’s detailed piece on Henry Keene and St. Mary Hartwell appears the odd-one out at first, as it is a very tightly defined building study. Even here, though, there is an ulterior motive, for Friedman shows the degree of cooperation between designer and craftsmen. The second volume under review considers what happened after the High Victorian phase of the Gothic Revival through minute, careful examination of the work of a single architect, George

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Gilbert Scott Jr (1839-1897) whose working life spanned the enormous shift in sensibilities that took place in English architecture in the 1870s, with the emer- gence of the so-called Queen Anne. In this decade the certainties of Victorian architecture, not least the blind adher- ence to the ‘Middle Pointed’ or Decorated Style, were challenged. Stamp’s argument is much more subtle than this, though. He is not just interested in Scott as a vehicle for telling the story of how the Revival came to an end. Stamp has devoted a great deal of his professional life to an appreciation of Scott’s work as a designer (the book began life as the author’s dissertation many years ago) in order to put right a common misinterpretation of the last generation of Revivalists – represented by Scott, Bodley, Garner and Sedding. These are said to have retreated into insularity, with a consequent decline in vigour and imagination, a loss of High Victorian, manly ‘Go’. By immersing himself in the criticism of the time, and by close visual analysis, Dr Stamp brings the buildings back to life for his readers, enabling us to understand the enormous refinement and sheer artistry in these compositions, and above all to appreciate their designers’ aspirations to create beautiful buildings that epitomised, as he puts it, ‘the ascendancy and vigour of the Anglo- Catholic Movement within the Established Church of England’ (page 7).There was at the heart of this quest a potential conflict, an appreciation of which goes a long way towards explaining the perfect equilibrium and poise of so many works to come from this cohort of architects.There was in their minds a quite self-conscious desire to create forms that were both historical and timeless. Stamp’s wealth of knowledge about late nineteenth-century architecture lends depth to every part of his study, which explores the wider architectural scene, in particular the return to English classical precedents and the younger Scott’s innovative work on church restoration. Scott’s own life and work were in a sense defined by irony. He was after all the son of a most revered – and at times reviled – Goth, and yet in his own practice decisively broke from his father’s. Neither must it be forgotten that the younger Scott died, mad, in his father’s most conspicuous masterpiece, the Midland Grand Hotel in St. Pancras, London. Stamp avoids making too much of this, and rightly; it might make good journalistic copy, but this coda tends to perpetuate an image

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of the Revival’s last phase as being nothing more than obscure, schizophrenic muttering, a point- less, futile gesture. Stamp, for his part, sees the Revival not as style but as architecture, which he interprets in it on its own terms, as a work of art, this really is the book’s great triumph. I cannot conclude this review without calling attention to the publishers of these volumes, Spire Books of Reading and Shaun Tyas of Stamford. Both are committed to promoting subject matter of great interest to Ecclesiologists, but that sadly has not found favour amongst conventional academic publishers.With their encouragement, the study of the Revival is entering what appears to be a new phase.

Chris Miele

Michael J. Lewis: The Gothic Revival (Thames and Hudson, London, 2002, 208 pp., 181 pls, £8.95, pbk ISBN 0 500 20359 8)

THE GOTHIC REVIVAL is in Thames and Hudson’s esteemed ‘World of Art’ series. As might be expected, it is beautiful- ly produced, well-illustrated, and a pleasure to handle. Despite its title, it deals almost exclusively with architecture rather than the whole of the artistic output of the revival and its background in thought and senti- ment. And despite its pedigree, it is unsatisfactory. There are three principal reasons. First is that the author thinks, for example, that All Saints Margaret Street is a ‘basil- ica’ that a font in a church should be speci- fied as ‘baptismal’; that the Episcopal and the Anglican churches in the USA are bound together, that a rood screen is to be found between the chancel and the Lady Chapel, that the galleries at St Peter’s Vauxhall are the sort of thing that might be found in a preaching house (the description of the west façade of that church is also fac- tually incorrect); that J. M. Neale became an ‘Anglican minister’; that early nineteenth- century tourists visited cathedrals with Britton ‘in hand’; that New York was the

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nerve centre of the ecclesiological movement. Some of these errors are subtle: but that does not excuse them. A popular summary is little use without real expertise. Secondly,the language is often contorted: many words are used in strange ways and epithets are by turns meaningless, incomprehensible, or just wrong. Pugin is ‘jolly’, pinnacles ‘bewildered’; a buttress is a ‘vignette’;the chancel of a two-cell church ‘detached’. In 1839, Lewis writes,‘the architectural theory of Pugin recoiled against the theology of the Tractarian Movement to produce that invincible alloy of architecture and moralism, ecclesiology’. Thirdly, there are copious contradic- tions not only on factual matters (Hungary has ‘the only Gothic Revival house of Parliament to be built outside of England’ but Ottawa has been discussed and illustrated in the previous chapter) but also between the manifold (often questionable) views expressed. One example must suffice. If Repton ‘made his fame’ with the Red Books, how can it be the case that his ‘reassuring’ landscapes ‘hinted at permanence’? In the result, when Lewis expresses something surprising, such as that there was a period of fifty years (perhaps wisely unspecified) in which nobody used an ogee arch, or that ecclesiologists considered the bellcote the ‘most useful’ feature of the church of Lonstanton St Michael, one simply does not believe him. A further consequence is that one is disinclined to trust his judgments – whether brief and facile (Scott’s church work ‘often quite good’) or wordy and debatable (Ruskin’s prose ‘fell naturally into thumping iambic pentameter’ and ‘he was scarcely able to admire a building without making it a pivot of world history.’) Nevertheless, as a physical object this book is very reasonably priced; it gives at least a passing mention to an impressive range of buildings from much of Northern Europe, North America and Australia, and it offers the intelligent reader hours of harmless fun in working out what on earth its author is trying to say.

Mark Ockelton

Peter C. Jupp and Hilary J. Grainger (eds) Golders Green Crematorium 1902-2002: a London Centenary in Context (The London Cremation Company, London, 2002, 119pp., 77 illus.; £9.99, ISBN 0 9543529 0 4) Copies are available from The London Cremation Company,62 Hoop Lane, London NW11 7NL.The price includes p & p.

THE BOOK WAS PRODUCED to mark the centenary of Golders Green Crematorium, one of the country’s first such buildings and perhaps the most influential in promoting cremation as an acceptable alternative to burial. Despite the appearance over the past 30 years of works such as J. S. Curl’s The Victorian Celebration of Death and Howard Colvin’s Architecture and the After Life, the design of crematoria has been addressed only tangentially, and a monograph on the subject is long over- due. This volume forms a useful prelude and contains much interesting contextual information, some of which is likely to prove fascinating for those unfamiliar with the issues surrounding this means of disposal. Early chapters tell the story of the formation of the Cremation Society and The

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London Cremation Company, and provide a clear account of the views of both promoters and opponents of cremation. Elsewhere we are told about the rules and practices of cremation, the design and development of furnaces and the ways in which funeral directors have responded to the growing acceptance of cremation. There is an absorbing chapter on ‘Ritual and Cremation’ and numerous references elsewhere to the issues surrounding the relationship between cremation and religious belief. On Golders Green itself, the design of the buildings, monuments and gardens are discussed with exem- plary clarity. Especially important is the account of the complex’s contribution to the question of what constituted an appropriate style for this new building type where the spiritual comfort and reassurance of mourners is paramount Despite its modest size, the range and detail of the information contained is impressive; the editors are to be congratulated for moulding the work of the eleven contributors into a coherent and highly readable volume.

Christopher Webster

Jan De Maeyer and Luc Verpoest (eds): Gothic Revival: Religion,Architecture and Style in Western Europe 1815-1914 (KADOC, Leuven, Belgium, 2000, 303 pp., numerous illus., 57 Euros, hdbk, ISBN 90 5867 036 8) Available by email: [email protected]

GIVEN THE SCOPE of the available literature in Britain and our natural tendency to chauvin- ism, we are inclined to overlook the fact that the Gothic Revival was an international movement, touching the whole of the western world, very much as Neo-classicism had done somewhat earli-

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er.This volume, which presents material that has not hitherto been easily accessible dealing with Continental and cross- national developments is therefore to be welcomed.The publi- cation is the result of a conference held at Leuven in 1997 and the list of international contributors is impressive, including several of our eminent scholars. Of the twenty-five chapters, fifteen – plus the invaluable bio- graphical dictionary listing around five hundred individuals who occupy a central place in the story of the European revival – are in English, although not all are by scholars with British nationality; the remainder are in French, Dutch or German. There are some chapters that address essentially English topics, although all deal with new material, but the over- whelming value of the book lies in the chapters that consider aspects of the Gothic Revival in France or Belgium, and especially those that deal with the relationships that linked religious and architectural movements across national and linguistic boundaries, a ‘Gothic Revival sans frontiers’. Here we learn of Pugin’s correspondence with the Belgian J B Bethune and Beresford Hope’s meeting with the important German archaeologist August Reichensperger, to quote just two examples of many given. Fascinating are the different meanings which Gothic acquired in different locations; it could be associated with nationalism, Romanticism, nostalgia, religion or art, all of which reflected the paradoxes of the nineteenth century, as well as the period’s monumental cultural and social changes. This is a book that makes a major contribution to the scholarship on this important subject and one that will cause many of us on this side of the Channel to re-evaluate aspects of our understanding of the Gothic Revival.

Christopher Webster

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ODDS & ENDS

Churches on the Web The following churches now have web sites which were established using the unique Church Web Design Package which does not need any IT programming knowledge to maintain it or update it.

S.Andrew's, High Road, London NW10 with S. Francis of Assisi, Fleetwood Road, London NW10 - http://www.willesdengreenparish.org.uk. IS. John the Evangelist, Newbury, Berks - http://www.saintjohn.co.uk> Peter's Church, London Docks,Wapping Lane, London E1 - http://www.stpeterslondondocks.org.uk

A special feature of this latter site are the Sections dealing with the stained glass which was designed by Margaret Rope and is probably some of her best work in the London area. Particularly important are her seven Sacrament Windows. The other sections with her work are Sanctuary Windows, and Priest Windows. Other websites using this package are:- www.saintsilas.org.uk www.saintmarymagdalene.org.uk www.saintaugustine.org.uk www.willesdengreenparish.org.uk www.saintjohn.co.uk www.stpeterslondondocks.org.uk

English Heritage Conference There will be ann English Heritage Conference on 26-27 June, 2003 titled Looking Back, Going Forward:20th Century Attitudes towardsReligious Buildings. It will take place in the Kenneth Clark Lecture Theatre at the Courtauld Institute in the Strand, London The conference will explore the cultural context of 20th-century attitudes towards religious buildings, both ancient and modern and the fee is £65 with a special rate of £35 for a single day.. Lunch and refreshments will be provided and a limited number of student bursaries are available. For further information about bursaries, and for booking, please contact Dr Carol Davidson Cragoe English Heritage 23 Savile Row London W1S 2ET tel 020 7973 3636 fax 020 7973 3287 [email protected]

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The contributors include Professor Callum Brown (University of Strathclyde), Sarah Brown (English Heritage), Dr Thomas Cocke (NADFAS), Andrew Derrick (English Heritage), Professor Eric Fernie (Courtauld Institute), Richard Halsey (English Heritage), The Rev. Paul Jenkins (St Columba’s,Woking), Dr Sharman Kadish (Survey of the Jewish Built Heritage), Dr Chris Miele (Alan Baxter & Associates), Richard Morris (York University), Dr Rory O’Donnell (English Heritage), Professor Gavin Stamp (Glasgow School of Art), Dr Chris Wakeling (Keele University), Professor Nigel Whiteley (Lancaster University).

Self-Interpreting Bible John B Weller has a copy of this Bible which was published in 1837, though he believes it was a reissue of the Revd John Brown’s Bible of 1778 but with the addition of notes and a biography. He is anxious to know more and to then link the Bible with his own family history and origins in Alnwick. Mr Weller is also related to John Weller (1830-1905), and architect of Wolverhampton, who was responsible for a number of church designs. He was articles to Edward Banks of Wolverhampton between 1846-8 and by 1855 was a junior partner in Griffin & Weller, though by 1859 he appears to have been in business on his own in Darlington Street,Wolverhampton. If you know more about the Self Interpreting Bible or about the activities of the architect John Weller, or can help in any other way, please contact John B Weller, 152 High Street, Bildeston, Ipswich IP7 7EF

Historic Chapels Trust The Penrose Methodist Church near St Ervan, Cornwall is about to be repaired and upgraded by the Historic Chapels Trust who have won a £50,000 grant. The chapel dates from 1861 and is an exceptional survivor among the small rural Cornish Methodist chapels. In the midlands the HCT has also acquired the Bethesda Methodist Chapel in Hanley,Stoke on Trent and the Umberslade Baptist Church at Tanworth-on-Arden,Warwickshire. The former dates from 1819, the latter is from 1877 by George Ingall. More details in the next edition.

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The British Society of Master Glass Painters The latest journal published by this society - The Journal of Stained Glass Volume XXV - contains an article by Dr Michael Kerney, who is a member of the Ecclesiological Society,on the stained glass windows of All Saints, Margaret Street. Michael Kerney is a retired academic and an expert on stained glass. He recently authored the book the Society published on The Stained Glass of Frederick Preedy. All Saints, Margaret Street was erected in 1850-9 as the model church of the Ecclesiological Society. It was designed by William Butterfield and paid for by Alexander James Beresford Hope and Henry Tritton. The early parisioners included Gladstone and John Duke Coleridge. The history of the building is interesting and that of the stained glass particularly so. Michael Kerney weaves the story well while also providing a critical analysis of the glass panels. The issue has 216 pages with 120 beau- tifly illustrations, most in colour. It is a really spectacular production which is available to members of this Society at a special price - £17 for UK orders and £21 for overseas (incl. p&p). Cheques

should be made payable to BSMGP and All Saints’, Margaret Street, London sent to the Journal of Stained Glass, 6 Baptistery window by O’Connor c.1857. Queen Square, London WC1N 3AR. (Michael Kerney)

St Andrew’s Church, Jevington, Sussex Parts of this Grade I flint church are Anglo-Saxon though it was substantially restored in 1872-3. It is now in need of further repair and the bill is likely to come to £160,000. A lot of work needs to be done to the tower and roofs, with more minor repairs required to the windows, gutters and churchyard walls. To raise funds they have published a short history on the earlier restoration and copies are available at £2.50 (including p&p) from 116a Broad Road,Willingdon, Eastbourne BN20 9RD.

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LETTERS

From T Burgess

Butterfield’s cathedral in Perth [Ecclesiology Today January 2003] is in Scotland not Australia.

34 Sandilands Croydon Surrey CR0 5DB ______

From David W Lloyd

I can endorse Christopher Webster’s favourable comments on Essex Churches and Chapels, among the five books on country churches he reviewed in Issue 29. The book is worth obtaining for its superb illustrations alone - showing how rich ecclesiologically is this sometimes maligned county despite its paucity of building materials, other than timber and clay for brick. No county has a more impressive series of wooden belfries, whether rising from the ground as at Blackmore (shown on the cover, reproduced for reveiew) or within the church as at Laindon (it is not surprising that Cecil Hewitt, the parish’s most distinguished native, became so devoted to, and authorative about, old timberwork). The book covers all ancient Essex and shows how many of the old parish churches in what is now eastern London, as at Walthamstow, Barking,West Ham, Leyton and Wanstead, have 17th to early 19th century monuments, which together form a collection unsurpassed in the metropolis except in Westminster (and possibly north-west Middlesex) - and yet are almost unknown. The book is on the whole weak on Victorian architecture, but good, in a selective way, for the 20th century, especially for stained glass - sometimes in places as unpromising as Grays Thurrock and Clacton-on-Sea.

17 Fore Street Old Harlow Essex CM17 0AB TYNTESFIELD MR YOUNG of Marlborough has written after visiting Tyntesfield. He recommends that members visit this wonderful Victorian house and make sure they see the chapel which A.W.Blomfield added in 1872-5. He also spotted three bookcases inside the house. One contained books by Pugin, another works about the Oxford Movement and a third on the leaders of that movement. [Tyntesfield was the home of the Gibbs familyand was enlarged and remodelled by John Norton in 1863-6. In addition to adding the chapel, the house was partly reordered again in 1888-9 by Henry Wodyer when the staircase was remodelled to create a spectacular focus.

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CHURCH VANDALISM

Peter Blacklock

THE QUESTION OF SECURITY has again gone to the top of the agenda in many parishes after three attacks on churches in the South of England. Should churches be locked when not in use for services, should they be open only when parishioners keep watch, or should they continue to be open for prayer and meditation during daylight hours? The three churches that were the scenes of the latest attacks – at Waltham Abbey, Essex, Winchester and Salisbury - have opted for the last. They will stay open. The attack at the city-centre St Peter’s Roman Catholic Church,Winchester, was the least severe in damage but illustrates the fallacy that there will be no attacks if someone is in the building. Two women were praying and the attacker asked one of them if he could touch a statue of the Virgin Mary, before he picked up a plant stand and belaboured that statue and one of the Sacred Heart. The latter was smashed and the former damaged. The women, who must have been terrified and may be regarded by many as the real victims of the incident, called help as the man ran off.

Waltham Abbey reredos

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The most severe attack was at Waltham Abbey,a mighty fragment of a mighty Norman abbey – one of the greatest in medieval times and burial place of King Harold, known by some as the last English king.The original church was founded in about 670 and the present building dates from 1140. Here, the heads of most of the male figures in the five scenes on William Burges’ superb alabaster reredos of the 1870s were chopped off. The scenes are the Annunciation, the angels’ appearance to the shepherds, the Nativity, the visit of the Wise Men and the flight into Egypt. Each figure has a gilded halo. The carving was by Burges’ favourite sculptor,Thomas Nicholls. One wonders how far Burne-Jones’ windows above the reredos were in danger. Simon Jenkins calls them the glory of the east end, his earliest and finest, and designed for Powell & Sons in 1861, before the artist joined William Morris. A marble bust, probably carved in Grinling Gibbons’ workshop, had its nose cut off. The bust, of Francis Wollaston,was intended to stand on a memorial now in the porch, beside the west window, where, according to Dinah Dean, the parish clerk, it would be safe but not easily seen. In both these cases, there was astonishing luck. The pieces from the reredos landed on the tile floor in the Sanctuary, where the tiles form a grid. The restorers could, therefore, record exactly where each fell and so from which scene it came. As alabaster does not shatter, early indications are that it should be possible to put each back in its place and cover the joins by repainting. Francis Wollaston’s nose landed on a cushion, which broke its fall. As a result, it should be possible to replace it. However, the damage elsewhere in the church is not so easily repaired. The 1819 organ console in the Choir was badly smashed. An expert inspected it the next day and, as Mrs. Dean put it, by means of patience, skill and superglue, was able to make it useable for services though the console must be rebuilt. Fortunately, the pipes were out of harm’s way in a gallery designed for them by Burges at the west end. A Lady Chapel window by the A K Nicholls Glass Studio in the 1930s, depicting the Nativity, was smashed. It was known for an Old English Sheep dog among the worshipping animals, the pet of the man it commemorates. An early 19th century monument, consisting of a short column, topped by a funerary urn, was knocked off its low pedestal, smashing the urn. A replica urn will have to be made. This monument commemorated two children of the Chinnery family, original owners of Gilwell Park, now the Scout movement’s international headquarters. Some of the carved panels of the oak pulpit, originally a three-decker of 1658, were smashed in and will be replaced by copies. This pulpit replaced one in marble designed by Bruges in 1871 shortly after his 1860s restoration of the church.The damaged pulpit was put back in the 1960s, made up from what remained of the 1658 pulpit. Burges’ pulpit was given to a local museum. In the Sanctuary,the worst affected area, some furniture, including the altar cross and candlesticks, was gashed. In history, the building has been vandalized more than once, starting, of course, at the Reformation, in 1540. Only the nave, aisles and south chapel remain from that destruction though the tower was added in Mary Tudor’s reign. The nave pillars have spiral and chevron ornaments, which Laurence King, in Collins Guide to English Parish Churches, thinks make the nave compa-

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rable to Durham Cathedral. Simon Jenkins thinks it is only a ghost of Durham and Peterborough. Sir Thomas Fairfax’s troops smashed the medieval windows. The vandalism at Salisbury was on one of two Roman Catholic churches in the area on suc- cessive days. First, was the Winchester attack; next, the Salisbury attack.. Early police thinking was that the assailant might be the same person Damage is put at thousands of pounds at S t Osmund’s, Salisbury,built by A W N Pugin and dedicated on September 6, 1848. Fortunately,the few Pugin artifacts remaining in the church escaped undamaged. But his font was used as an anvil to break statues, and a window by John Hardman Powell (1827-95) was smashed.As a result, dark red paint from one statue, of the Sacred Heart, was embedded in the font, which was moved from the entrance to the east end of the north aisle in the 1970s.This statue was thrown through the Powell window, made by Hardman & Co. It commemorates the Lambert family. Sir John Lambert, a wealthy Salisbury solicitor who rose to be a privy councillor, became a friend of Pugin when the architect lived at nearby Alderbury. He commissioned Pugin to build the church and paid £3,367 of the £4,039 bill. Salisbury must have been important to Pugin since he was received into the Roman Catholic Church when he lived there. But he visited the church only once while it was being built – on October 14, 1847 when he was working on the Houses of Parliament. He is thought to have designed three types of tile for the church and used that visit to show how they should be used. It was fitting that Powell, Pugin’s assistant who took over Pugin’s role after his death, designed Lambert’s memorial.The window depicts St John the Evangelist and St Veronica, whose handker- chief bearing Christ’s image was smashed to smithereens. In all, five statues were smashed. They are thought to date from the 1920s or 30s, though two used an earlier production technique, in which plaster is built up on Hessian.The Salisbury Journal report of the church’s opening mentions only two statues and neither was damaged. One is above the tower entrance, the other above a modern pulpit replacing Pugin’s pulpit. Three Pugin windows were at risk when the attacker was at work in the south aisle Lady Chapel, where the decoration behind the altar, in standard azure with fleur de lys and English roses, may have escaped the whitewash that covered the rest of the building in the 1960s.A copy of one of the windows was included in the V & A exhibition in 1994. The church has seen a great deal of change. In 1894, E Doran Webb (1864-1931) added a north aisle to Pugin’s nave, chancel and south aisle. He replaced two plain Pugin columns with more elaborate ones matching his own. The chancel and Lady Chapel screens by George Myers were removed and in the 1960s the chancel walls were whitewashed. In the late 1980s, a Salisbury artist spent nine months chipping off the whitewash, making stencils of Pugin’s decorations and repainting the lot. One unusual aspect of the church is that, according to the Salisbury Journal, a local builder, and not Myers, was used to do the building work. The vandalism has brought out the best in church people. Mrs. Dean, the Waltham parish clerk, writes: “After each calamity (in history), the people of Waltham patched up their church and got on with their worship and their lives and they are doing the same thing now. . .We were already committed to raising £19,000 to repair the church roof before this happened and now we shall just need to add another £200,000 to that.”

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The parish priest at St Osmund’s, Canon Thomas Atthill, is considering using the remainder of the window as a memorial of the incident if it cannot be repaired. He intends to leave the image of Christ’s face blank, with a view of the flint wall of E Pugin’s schoolroom, now church hall. This, he said, would symbolically reveal Christ in the mundane, outside world. Pugin built his church to cock a snook at the Established Church. It could almost be seen as a continuation of Salisbury Cathedral and his east window includes St Osmund, the local saint whose shrine was in the cathedral until the Reformation, and Sts Martin and Thomas Becket, patrons of the two neighbouring Anglican churches. By contrast, the Bishop of Salisbury sent his sympathy after the attack and the cathedral glaziers are examining the window.

CHURCH CRAWLER REPORTS Phil Draper

The Retable returns The small thatched Suffolk church at Thornham Parva was celebrating in February 2003 the return of its celebrated C14 painted altarpiece after over 15 years of restoration work which cost some £240,000, most paid by English Heritage, the National Heritage Memorial fund and the PCC locally which received a sizeable donation from the late Queen Mother. It depicts the Crucifixion and eight painted panels of saints, and is thought to have come from the Priory church in Thetford, Norfolk. It survived the Dissolution, being bought by a local catholic family.It was then put up for auction in the late 1700s but no-one wanted it, and it lay in a woodpile at Thornham Hall for some 200 years before being rediscovered in 1927 by the then 6th Lord Henniker who gave it to the church. At approx 4x1metres it is said to be the largest surviving medieval altarpiece in the country. It is now protected by a glass case, with a self-contained climate control system.

Eastwood St Laurence v Southend Airport. Astonishingly Southend Airport Authority has made application to demolish a Grade I-listed medieval church on the edge of its runway as part of a development plan that could see the airport becoming a sixth airport for London over time. Eastwood’s PCC is unsurprisingly fighting this proposal. An option to dismantle the church and re-erect it on a new site some 110 metres away but minus its spire also exists but seems to have lost favour. The current proposal suggests reducing the height of the walls to one metre and building a new church for the village which in turn would have to be a low structure. St Laurence stands in a sizeable churchyard, and villagers have received no assurance that access to graves throughout the churchyard would continue either, although the application states no graves would be disturbed. Southend councillors have the unenviable task in deciding whether to agree to demolish the church or risk seeing the airport close down due to its inability to comply with new CAA legislation that requires a 450metre safety perimeter around the runway. Further developments on the EccleSoc website www.ecclsoc.org/eastwood.html . Picture taken with permission from John Whitworth’s develop- ing Essex churches website at www.essexchurches.co.uk.

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Swansea Church on the move - again! A grade-II listed church is to be moved as part of a £200M regeneration project of the Port Tawe / Prince of Wales Dock area.The whitewashed Norwegian church with its unmistakably leaning spire and bulging south wall stands at the edge to the Port Tawe site in a somewhat dilapidated condition. It will be dismantled piece by piece, then each piece restored by Davies Sutton Architecture to its original condition and then reassembled on a new site overlooking the Prince of Wales Dock. This is adjacent to the historic J-shed and close to the Ice factory, the only two other remaining Port Tawe buildings from Swansea’s maritime past, which also will be restored by the Welsh Development Agency. However this is not the first move for the church which was brought here from Newport, Gwent in 1910.Work should be completed and the building rebuilt on its new site late summer.

More on Church Thefts In March this year the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) warned that churches and historic houses are targets like never before for thefts to feed the craze for interior design sweeping the country.Last year there were 3,600 thefts from churches alone, with statues, fonts and even whole altars vanishing. Just before Christmas Wells Cathedral lost a priceless alabaster relief of the Ascension and Prinknash Abbey (Glos) a statue of the Madonna, both dating from from the 15th century. They use the same guidebooks as us, e.g. Pevsner and Simon Jenkins’ popular “England’s Thousand Best Churches”, the latter particularly poignant given the cover illustration features a C12 brass knocker at Adel church near Leeds which has since been stolen. Nick Tolson of Churchwatch (the insurance-backed security adviser) said a gang had been tar- geting 15th- and 16th-century artworks in the south-west, taking the sculptures mentioned above and tomb brasses (as mentioned in the last edition of ET).Also taken, a panel from a medieval rood screen (Sept02, North Petherton, Somerset) and a medieval altar cloth (Dec02, Chedzoy,Somerset). Meanwhile a theft with a twist took place in Kirkby, Liverpool.The rebuilding of St Andrew’s church in Tower Hill following a devastating fire in October 2001 was complete and a man return- ing sacred furniture for the church’s rededication on March 2nd was attacked and his van stolen as he waited outside the church in mid-February.The van was dumped and the font, lectern, altar and processional cross were found inside, enabling their return and the service to proceed as planned. Another prominent news story featured Christopher Coulthard who went on a nation-wide crime spree breaking into churches to steal cash. He was jailed for four years at Swansea Crown Court after admitting raiding some 500+ churches in the previous four years. He rarely got more than £10, and sometimes as little as 80p or nothing at all, but the repair bills to locks and wall-safes meant a hefty repair bills for the churches concerned. Strangely he kept records of his victims, planned trips like a military campaign, and rated them on a map as “rich pickings”,“open door”, “good takings” etc. He had a set of lock picks and always wore a camera for disguise (and I always thought that made me look a genuine churchcrawler!!).

And then there is Vandalism…. Probably the most high-profile act of ecclesiological vandalism hit the headlines on January 3rd

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2003 when a man went berserk inside the historic Waltham Abbey in Essex with an axe, damaging windows, memorials and the pulpit amongst other things. Also in the news in early February was St Alban’s Church in Lakenham (1932-8 by Cecil Upcher), Norwich, where vandals attacked the church almost every day for two weeks, smashing some 16 windows. The happenings at Pugin’s Salisbury church and the Waltham incident are dealt with elsewhere.

… .but also Restoration! Among the many stories of restoration that I have found, I have chosen to mention three in this column. In December 2002 G.H.Fellowes-Prynne’s 1901-3 church of All Saints in Elland, West Yorkshire celebrated (perhaps!) the completion of a £320,000 restoration which was forced upon them by a local judge. His ruling overturned the decision of parishioners who had voted to remove the 100-year-old flèche. English Heritage stumped up £189,000, the parish had to find the rest. Anthony Sully was a man on a mission when he was house-hunting for a new home for his family in Monmouth when he spotted the empty 1844 Glendower Street Congregational Chapel. Last used for services in 1953, and empty since, the church was Grade II -listed but in a sorry condition. Now,as one citizen has stated, he has brought some civic pride back to the town as his project neared completion at the end of 2002. His home was chosen for inclusion in a Channel 4 TV programme “Best Homes in Britain” which you may have seen recently as it was due to air in April 2003. His work also has been shortlisted for the RICS Conservation Award. The main historic and architectural features have been preserved and apart from the insertion of two circular windows at the rear the main exterior appearance has been little altered and many would say improved! Inside the bedrooms are unusually on the ground floor (poorer light) and the main living accommodation is on the upper floor. A feature is made inside of the whole height of the building inside the former galleries where the fine ceiling can be admired and as well as being a home the building also includes design studios for Mr & Mrs Sully and a gallery for exhibitions, the latter in this central space.This building acts as the best possible advertisement for the Sullys’ interior design company and should you have a spare redundant church you might want to live him you should give him a call! (www.perfect-pitch.biz/sullyweb/chapel_history_001.htm) The third restoration concerns the Churches Conservation Trust and the church at Strensham in Worcestershire.This building stands almost alone, apart from its village, and is a landmark on the hill east of the M5 motorway services of the same name. Currently (APR 12th 2003) the tower is swathed in scaffolding and plastic as workmen weatherproof the exterior with a sand-coloured treatment which apparently includes chinese horsehair (or the workmen were kidding me!).The exterior of the church is already treated thus, and scaffolding removed. I am not sure if I like it. I am certain it is necessary and follows sound advice but prior to this the tower seemed a powerful structure of rugged stone blocks, as witnessed on the cover of its guidebook and I fear will not exude the same emotion once restoration is complete. However the interior remains as delightful and unexpected as ever, and reminds me of why I continue to support this organisation by volun- tary donations!

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Snippets The future of E.W.Pugin’s Victorian masterpiece of Mount St Mary in Leeds is looking increasingly bleak with demolition threatened. Closed in 1989, and in an increasingly dangerous state, it is undergoing a structural survey by its owners Sanctuary Housing, provoking fears from the Mount St Mary’s Trust members that demolition is considered. This preservation group already are custo- dians of several statues looted from the building and subsequently recovered, who hope to see the church restored and in community use. The 1896 the Nottingham church of St Catherine (by R C Clarke) is currently on the market, with informal tenders invited by 4 April.The last service was planned for Easter Sunday 20th April 2003. Among churches listed for sale on the Church of England website (I kid you not - see http://www.cofe.anglican.org/rcsale/rclist.asp) are St Werburgh in Derby (Blomfield’s extension, the rest vested in Churches Conservation Trust), Keddington St Margaret and Maltby le Marsh All Saints, both in Lincolnshire and both listed Grade II*.The large prominently situated church of St Peter in Stanley, Co Durham is also available.This astonishing church with twin west towers was built in 1821, largely destroyed by fire in 1911 and rebuilt 1911-2 to the designs of W.D.Caroë incorporating what remained.The parish have moved into a former infant school across the road which now has a multi-purpose role.

Closing Words Please remember that this column is largely down to you the members to keep me informed of what is happening in your area.The views expressed are often my own or those of contributers, not the EcclSoc. Many thanks to those members who wrote about a local restoration appeal, in one case sending me the latest guidebook too which was kind. However to single out individual appeals in this column seems a little unfair, given that there is hardly a building in the country that is not in need of cash! What is newsworthy is when a church suddenly closes due to structural problems, fire or the like. I am sorry if this decision causes offence but I could end up with a page of appeals for cash which is not the intention of this column. I can be contacted on Email at [email protected] or by conventional means at 10, Lambley Road, St George, Bristol BS5 8JQ. Articles, newspaper clippings, with photographs too preferred, together with a SAE for return if required.

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