Painter and decorator
The Victorian architect G F Bodley had close links to the Herefordshire village of Kinnersley. His wife's family came from the village and Bodley is also buried in the churchyard here. The church (originally built in around 1300) was restored by Thomas Nicholson in 1867–69, and a couple of years later Bodley designed painted decoration for the chancel and nave. So this modest country church has a a scheme of decoration by one of the foremost (some would say the foremost) church architect of the time. There is a richly painted chancel ceiling with flowers, sun motifs, and inscriptions of the 'IHS' monogram and 'Alleluia'. The nave walls above the arcade are also painted and both parts of the church are emblazoned with quotations from St Thomas Aquinas and the Book of Common Prayer.
The painted decoration that Bodley designed was executed by the rector, the Rev Frederick Andrews, who must have been highly competent – an unusual, but by no means unique, collaboration between architect and rector. Andrews seems to have tried out the colours on a pillar near the west end of the nave (below) – the greens and reds are especially in evidence in the wall paintings in my photograph at the beginning of this post; the blues were used in combination with these colours in the chancel and on the chancel arch. These small marks are a tangible reminder of the presence of the person who applied the paint – someone we often overlook in our admiration of the architect. Both of them deserve due credit.
5 comments:
I should have thought that in the 1860s quotations from St. Thomas Aquinas would have brought to mind Newman, Manning, et al., and troubled the bishop. In fact, I'm not sure that St. Thomas's popularity in the Roman Catholic church was then what it became a few years later. Was the Rev. Frederick Andrews Anglo-Catholic in his sympathies? I have made a five-minute search for images of these quotations without luck; are they in English?
Is there a book on the sidelines of Victorian clergymen? If not, there ought to be. Frederick Andrews was clearly handy with a paintbrush. And how wonderful that those touches of paint survive.
George: Actually the words in the photograph are from the Book of Common Prayer. I am not sure which bits are Aquinas, but Aquinas certainly suggests a sympathy with Tractarianism, and this was a sympathy that G F Bodley also shared.
Joe: I'm not aware of such a book. There is a book by Thomas Hinde, A Field Guide to the English Country Parson, which throws interesting and sometimes amusing light on some of the 'other' talents of English vicars.
Oh wow, how lovely! I love the title of that book, Philip: A Field Guide to the English Country Parson. It immediately conjures up images of twitchers with their binoculars on the lookout for the rare English Country Parson as he struts in the meadows. ;)
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