Kinnersley, Herefordshire

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.

Bredon, Worcestershire

Added extra

Bredon is in South Worcestershire. The low-lying apple-growing country of Evesham is not far away, but neither are the Cotswold uplands – Bredon Hill is a Cotswold outlier, and shares the limestone geology of the main Cotswold range. It’s not surprising, then, that the Reed Almshouses in Bredon combine the brick of the vale (seen in the walls round the back and the chimneys) with a Cotswold stone front to the courtyard. This stone front, with its mullioned windows, dormers, and shallow arched doorways could be on the Cotswolds – and, with those arches could date from the Tudor period, although in fact it’s a building of the 1690s.

But what’s that small freestanding building with the big brick chimney and the interesting little louvre at the top? It had me scratching my head: it doesn’t look like extra flats or houses, it’s too elaborate for a shed, and has too many windows for a dovecote. It turns out to be a laundry, built in 1871, by Bodley and Garner, no less, when they restored the almshouses. George Frederick Bodley was one of the greatest Victorian architects, known especially for fine Gothic Revival churches. He had a long working life, a lot of it in partnership with Thomas Garner. They designed churches, buildings in Oxford and Cambridge, and country houses. but clearly did not spurn smaller jobs.

I don’t know if the laundry is still used for its original function, but it’s an attractive and practical addition, a tribute to the almshouse authorities, who seem to have wanted to provide the residents with convenient facilities as well as a pleasing environment. A nice example of a small structure acting as a memorable focus – both to the building it serves and to the street as a whole.