Kelsale, Suffolk

Craft and harmony

In the Victorian era, church restorations were regular, bread-and-butter work for many architects. The ideas of the Oxford Movement and of influential architects like A. W. N. Pugin had encouraged a reaction against the plain and simple church buildings of the 18th century, with their boxy interiors and classical details, and a return to the ornate Gothic of the Middle Ages. Restorers often tidied up the Gothic of their medieval predecessors, too, so a row of ancient windows from different periods and in different shapes and sizes would be replaced by a set of matching Gothic windows. Other habits of Victorian restorers, such as scraping off the plaster from interior walls, replacing box pews with Gothic-looking ones, raising the floor level of the chancel, and so on, changed the character of many a church and removed layers of historic fabric. The great artist, writer, designer and polemicist, William Morris, argued against this approach, advocating repair rather than wholesale restoration, and founding the SPAB to promote this approach and monitor progress. Many of the most distinguished late-19th century architects followed Morris, or at least took up some of his ideas, and church repair of the 1880s and 1890s is often more tactful and historically sensitive than what went on before.

The architects who worked on the restoration of Kelsale church in Suffolk, Norman Shaw and his pupil E. S. Prior, were close to this tradition. There is a variety of window designs, the interior walls are still plastered, and the seating is 19th-century, but in a very plain and simple mode (Prior copying a design of his master Shaw). I felt, strolling around the church one day in November, that the additions, including the benches, were sympathetic to the building while also speaking of craft and skill. The same is true of the screen between the nave and chancel. Rather using wood, as was usual, the restorers chose wrought iron and brass. The makers were Pratt and Son, and their filigree ironwork does a good job of separating the two spaces while allowing the congregation to see the altar clearly from their seats. I show a detail of the spiralling forms, stylised leaves, and crosses on one of the gates in the screen.

If the screen is very obvious to the eye, along with details such as more ironwork (for example, light fittings) and stained glass (which includes some pieces by William Morris’s firm), there are more subtle pleasures too. One of my favourite things about this church is how Prior enhanced some of the windows without going to the expense of pictorial stained glass. A number of have coloured glass in pastel shades set within attractive patterns of glazing bars. It shows how even a modest window can look good, and a small window like the one in my second photograph can provide subtle visual pleasure, or form a pleasant background to a flower arrangement. Church flowers were themselves something that became widely popular in the Victorian period. Here’s a small arrangement in front of one of Prior’s windows. Art in harmony with nature.