Witney, Oxfordshire

 

Local speciality

Stoke pots, Nottingham lace, Luton hats. In years gone by, many English towns became specialist centres of manufacturing. Whatever else they might produce, even big cities like Birmingham (famous for its small metal goods, from jewellery to boxes) or Sheffield (steel and cutlery), became widely known for particular industries. Witney in Oxfordshire looks at first glance like a typical small rural town with its Corn Exchange. But what made Witney well known all over the country was its woollen blankets. In the winter, Witney kept you warm at night. A short walk from the town centre the buildings of Early’s blanket mill still exist, and nearer still to the heart of the town is the Blanket Hall, built in 1720 as the headquarters of the Company of Witney Blanket Weavers. Inside was a room where the weavers came to have their products weighed and measured, to ensure that their work was up to standard; there was also a room for meetings and facilities for catering for blanket makers’ feasts.

The architecture of the Blanket Hall is early Georgian with a baroque flavour. This is not the full-blown baroque that we see at Vanbrugh buildings such as Blenheim Palace (not far away), but a small-town version with curved (segmental) window heads, pronounced but plain window surrounds, a pediment that is broken at the bottom to accommodate the clock, and a skyline punctuated with ball finials. The frontage is built of good ashlar but the side just visible in my photograph is of rougher stone, because most people won’t notice.

The architect is said to have been William Townsend (or Townesend) of Oxford. Townsend was a member of a family of master masons and builders who worked in Oxford in the late-17th and 18th centuries, working on numerous colleges and other buildings. They formed a locally important building dynasty comparable to the Smiths of Warwick, the Patys of Bristol and the Bastards of Blandford Forum. William Townsend was primarily a mason, and probably worked in tandem with an architect on his larger buildings, but here he may have taken sole responsibility. The baroque front that he created in Witney is in a style I’ve seen a number of times in small Oxfordshire towns – Chipping Norton, for example, has some examples. It makes a grand enough impression to stand out next to the rural-looking buildings on either side, but is not so ornate as to be showy. The blanket-makers, one feels, were happy to display substantial wealth, but not in a way that’s too grandiloquent or boastful. Fit for purpose, reassuring, does the job well: like the blankets, in fact.

Great Malvern, Worcestershire

An enduring tradition

To Malvern, to browse in the secondhand bookshops, to look around, and to pay a visit to the Priory. It’s a terrific building with a tower resembling the one at Gloucester cathedral, some outstanding stained glass (both medieval and recent), and a superb collection of medieval tiles. The examples in my photograph began life as floor tiles in the 15th century, but during restoration work in the 19th century they were taken off the floor and mounted on the wall that separates the sanctuary from the ambulatory. This has protected them from further wear and makes them very easy to see and admire.

The selection in the photograph shows the delicacy of the designs that the makers (who apparently were based on site and also supplied tiles to other churches, including Gloucester cathedral) could achieve by combining red and buff clay. Many of the patterns contain flower or leaf motifs arranged in quatrefoil frames or in circles subdivided with designs that are similar to medieval window tracery. Yet more like tracery is an abstract design (the second tile in the top row, and another in the third row) that is reminiscent of a rose window. Other tiles bear inscriptions or heraldry. These were in a sense humble objects, designed to be walked on every day, but their sophisticated decoration marks them out as high-status items, of the sort you’d seen mainly in large churches and the houses of the royal family or aristocracy. Monasteries, according to tile expert Hans van Lemmen,* were some of the best customers of the medieval tile-makers.

The influence of these craftsmen lived on for centuries. When Malvern Priory was being restored in the 19th century, the tile manufacturer Maw & Co were commissioned to make copies of some of the church’s ancient tiles, so that part of the building could be paved as it had been 400 years before. Contemporary tile companies, such as Craven Dunhill use the same technique of combining colours to make tiles today.

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*See Hans van Lemmen, Medieval Tiles (Shire, 2004)

Sudeley, Gloucestershire

Forty years on

Exactly forty years ago today, the Resident Wise Woman and I were married in St Mary's, Sudeley. I have written about my memories of the wedding and this building before, so here is what I wrote when we frevisited Sudeley about two years ago:

The small church of St Mary, Sudeley is unusual in that it is both a parish church and the chapel of nearby Sudeley Castle. It’s an easy walk from where we live and from where the Resident Wise Woman grew up, and partly as a result of that, we hardly ever visit the historic castle, let alone its little church. In fact until the other day, the last time I set foot inside the church was in September 1985 when the Resident Wise Woman and I were married. It was wonderful to tie the knot in such beautiful and historic surroundings, pleasant for guests to be able to take a look at the gardens on the way in and out, and delightful to have the wedding reception in the castle afterwards.*

The beauty of the place is obvious enough, I hope, from my photograph, and the architecture – standard late-medieval-style window tracery with the added touch of a delightful bell turret corbelled out so that it overhangs the west front slightly – clear too. The history is that the shaping force behind the church was Ralph Boteler†, (c. 1394–1473), 1st Baron Sudeley and Lord High Treasurer of England under Henry VI. He rebuilt the castle and the nearby church, both of which owe much of their architectural character to him, although both were severely damaged during the English Civil Wars. After a period of neglect and dereliction, both castle and church were restored for the Dent family, who bought the castle in the 19th century and employed Sir George Gilbert Scott and his master perspectivist (later an independent architect) John Drayton Wyatt to undertake the restoration.¶

It’s thought that Scott and Wyatt took the church back to very close to its 15th-century appearance externally, renewing the tracery of the windows, preserving or recarving the gargoyles and other carvings, and restoring the bell turret. The church was refitted inside, with new woodwork and stained glass, and Wyatt designed a new tomb to house the remains of Katherine Parr, the last queen of Henry VIII – she lived at the castle after she married its then owner, Thomas Seymour, after Henry’s death. The result is a delightful little church which could not have been better for our small wedding.

Another of Scott and Wyatt’s additions was what I assume to be an underfloor heating system, with warm air emerging through grilles in the floor. As we left the building the other day, one of us stepped on the grille by the door and it made a loud clanking noise. Straight away, I was back in 1985, waiting for the bride to arrive. Suddenly, the silence was broken by a clank, and she and her father made their way up the nave towards where I and my best man waited. Vows, music (Thomas Arne, Henry Purcell), speeches, cake, and the chance to talk to our closest friends and relatives ensued: much of this is all a blur now. But I do remember smiling a lot. I’ve smiled a lot since.

Four decades. Say it like that and it seems a long time. But time’s winged chariot has moved swiftly through more than a decade together in London and nearly three decades in the Cotswolds (with, for an extended period, a parallel life in the Czech Republic). For much of this blog, my wife has been referred to as the ‘Resident Wise Woman’ – a joke, a truth and a ploy for anonymity. In this post I'll give her her real name: Zoë. I’ve edited and, latterly, written, lots of books. Zoë has moved through careers in arts management and urban regeneration, bringing transformative changes to people’s lives in London’s Vauxhall area and East Oxford; more recently she has published two volumes of her poetry, with a third on the way.§ Together we explore many of the buildings that end up on this blog and Zoë’s eye wonderfully stimulates, provokes and supplements my own wherever we are. While I have always been interested in architecture, I am lucky that she has encouraged me in my belief that the small adjuncts to architecture (such as signs, odd bits of carving, unexpected fittings and fixtures), the seemingly random associations that buildings can evoke, and the interest of the most modest of structures (privies, henhouses, so-called ‘shacks’) can be as rewarding as the facade of a great cathedral or the drawing room of a country house. On we go, ceaselessly into the past, but with at least part of us determined to remain hopeful for the future.

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* Back in the 1980s, weddings in country houses and castles were not the big business they are now. The church was not licensed for weddings when we got married and I had to go to a Church of England office next to Westminster Abbey and swear oaths to the effect that I was who I said I was, which allowed me to obtain an elaborate ‘special licence’ for the occasion. Today, people get married in the castle often, although I’m not sure that, even now, church weddings take place here. ‘I think it’s mostly blessings,’ a guide said, when we looked around the castle.

† Usually pronounced ‘Rafe Butler’. He was ‘one of a line of rather distinguished butlers,’ as my school history teacher said, even longer ago than the events I’m recalling here.

¶ Wyatt and Scott also designed a school and almshouses in nearby Winchcombe, which were funded by Emma Dent, then owner of the castle.

§ Zoë’s poetry books are Owl Unbound and Fool's Paradise.

Princes Risborough, Buckinghamshire

Out of the window, on to the track

As my Oxford to London Marylebone train approached Princes Risborough, I admired the impressive signal box, labelled ‘Princes Risbobo North’, and reflected that I never seem to take photographs of signal boxes, in spite of the fact that they can be interesting and useful buildings. I resolved to take another look on my return journey and as I did so I raised my mobile phone to the window and pressed the shutter as the train pulled out. There are a few reflections off the glass of the window, but on the whole it’s not a bad image, showing the box’s wood and brick construction and its large size. I couldn’t recall seeing a larger box on the train lines I travel on most frequently between the Cotswolds and London.

When I looked it up, I discovered that Princes Risborough North is indeed the largest surviving box on the lines of the old Great Western Railway. Why such a big box, which must have contained many signal levers, for a station serving a small town with, as far as I knew, a single line running through it? A look at an old railway map put me right. It showed lines from five different directions converging at Princes Risborough – to London (via High Wycombe), to Oxford, to Watlington, to Aylesbury, and towards Ashendon, another junction with lines leading hither and yon. The size of the building began to make sense.

Apart from its relative length, the Risborough box follows a standard traditional signal box design. On the upper floor is the row of levers that control the railway signals and move the points to ensure that each train joins the correct bit of line for its onward journey. This upper storey is timber-framed with windows all round, giving the signal operators a good view of the nearby signals and lines. The floor below (here built of brick though many smaller boxes are wholly timber-framed) houses the locking room, which contains mechanisms which ensure that signals and points interlock so that points cannot be moved without the appropriate signal being given to the train driver.

The signal box at Princes Risborough was built in 1904 and continued in use until 1991, when signalling on the line was handled from Marylebone station in London. After this the signal box began to fall into disrepair. However, the line in the direction of Chinnor is now used by a heritage railway called the Chinnor and Princes Risborough Railway, who are at work restoring and preserving the box, ensuring that this important bit of railway history has a future. 

Dunster, Somerset

 

A web of wood

Having posted about Dunster’s charming and well preserved dovecote the other week, I thought it might be interesting to take a look at the most prominent building in the centre of the village, the striking octagonal Yarn Market. This is, probably, everyone’s favourite building in Dunster. Thousands who have paused here for a moment have taken a photograph of this structure and, with a passing thought that it’s not like any other building* and very much unlike most of the old market buildings that survive (rectangular structures open below and with rooms above) have moved on.

Some will know that it’s a 17th-century building, showing that the wool trade hereabouts continued well beyond the Middle Ages. In fact, it’s an indication of a change in trading conditions. Dunster had been a port with a hinterland stretching across Exmoor, but the sea retreated and a new trading base was established here in the middle of the village. The Yarn Market’s presence is an indication of a significant amount of business and merchants’ need for shelter and security. Its striking shape shows that those 17th-century traders liked the idea of creating a building that could be easily identified and could form something of a landmark.

Anyone who goes inside can see that the octagonal roof required a network of rafters, braces and struts (photograph below); together with the posts that hold up the whole building and the lantern on trhe top, most of the structure is made of wood. The central stone column is a key support, and the whole structure is made more complicated by the generous roof overhang and the dormer windows, necessary to let more light into the space below. This wonderful building gives us an uncommon chance to look inside a roof structure of its period – most roof frameworks are hidden from the public by ceilings, after all. The pleasure I get from it is akin to the pleasure I’ve got from occasional views up into the interiors of church spires. These webs of woodwork required skill, ingenuity and a surprising amount of timber. Hats off to the carpenters who built them, and built them to last.

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*Although there is at least one later homage to the Yarn Market, at the Cadbury’s model suburb of Bournville.

Dunster, Yarn Market, central column and roof timbers

Fretherne, Gloucestershire

A class act

Visiting Arlingham the other say (see my recent post here) reminded me of an occasion maybe eight or ten years ago when the Resident Wise Woman, our son and I celebrated my birthday with an excellent lunch at The Old Passage, an outstanding fish restaurant (it closed after covid, alas!) by the River Severn not far from the village. On the way home we stopped at the church of St Mary, Fretherne, which was on our route. My memory of the visit comes back to me through a haze of good food and wine, but we were all mightily impressed by this glorious building, packed with stunning craftsmanship – stone sculpture, woodcarving, painting, tiling, metalwork. To me, there’s something hard and cold about many Victorian churches – the architecture may be very correct Gothic, but the result lacks the irregularities, winning oddities and rough surfaces that make many older churches so delightful. Now and again, however, I find a church that turns these ideas inside out. Such a building is St Mary’s, Fretherne.

From the outside it’s dominated by a wonderful crocketed spire, upward-pointing pinnacles, and steeply pitched roofs. The two-tone stonework is a mixture of toffee-coloured Stinchcombe sandstone and Bath stone dressings, the latter lending itself well to window tracery, carved detail, crockets and other ornaments. Most of these details are exuberant imitations of the architecture of the 14th-century as reimagined by the local architect Francis Niblett in 1846–47. Niblett is not well known outside Gloucestershire. He was the younger son of the owner of Haresfield Court, a few miles to the east of Fretherne, and did quite a lot of church and other work in the county. Fretherne, where he had a sympathetic patron in the upper-class clergyman the Rev. Sir William Lionel Darell, is his masterpiece. Niblett was a dedicated follower of the work of A. W. N. Pugin, who advocated ornate 14th-century Gothic as the style in which to embody ‘the beauty of holiness’. These were also the ideas that the influential clergy of Oxford and Cambridge were behind: out with Classicism (the style of paganism) and in with Gothic (the style of catholic Christianity*); out with the old spartan preaching churches of the 18th century, in with beautiful buildings that were fit for the sacraments and could move you to prayer.

Inside St Mary’s there is beauty everywhere you look. The intricately carved pulpit and font cover; the painted organ case and pipes; corbels and brackets carved with foliage or with angels playing musical instruments; colourful Minton floor tiles; a reredos dripping with miniature arches and shafts and framing a pyrographic picture of the Supper at Emmaus done by a local clergyman; a painstakingly painted and stencilled roof; elaborate hinged metal grilles that allow doors to be left open for ventilation; innumerable details meaning that there’s always something to see that you’ve missed before. This is a very special building.

For all this high-Victorian glory, the place certainly does not feel stuffy. The parish has embraced the eco-church movement. There is community planting in the churchyard – cherry tomatoes were on offer when I was there and parts of God’s acre are kept wild. And amongst the wildness the crocketed lines of Niblett’s beautiful spire rise above the yew trees, thrown into relief by the sunshine and leading the eye upwards to the clouds and the patches of deep blue in the summer sky.

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*By ‘catholic’, the Anglican campaigners of the 1830s onwards meant true to the doctrines of the ancient, undivided Christian church. They believed the Church of England to be a truly ‘catholic’ church.

Angel mural, Fretherne church, Gloucestershire