Torbryan, Devon

Community of saints

There may be a few loyal readers of this blog who remember a post I did back in 2013 about the beautiful Devon church of Torbryan. On that occasion I reported the recent theft of two panels from the church’s late-15th century painted screen. This was a damaging crime in several ways. The screen is precious because few medieval screens have survived with their painted images intact, and even fewer have paintings of the quality of those at Torbryan. In addition, the thieves vandalised the screen not only by removing two of the panels but also by badly damaging another panel in the process of the removal. It was a cause for celebration, therefore, when the police recovered the stolen panels in 2015, enabling the Churches Conservation Trust, who care for the building, to have them reinstalled, and to restore the damaged panel too.

All this was very much in our minds when the Resident Wise Woman and I visited Torbryan a couple of weeks ago, so that I could introduce her to this wonderful church and have a close look at the restored paintings. The visit was one of the highlights of our recent short trip to Devon, given us the time and opportunity to marvel at each image. They’re an impressive collection. Not all the saints can be identified, but a number have attributes that help put names to the images. St Peter has his keys, St Luke his ox, St Matthew his angel, St Andrew his saltire cross. St James the Great, apostle and pilgrim, holds a staff; St Catherine of Siena, who bore the stigmata, wears a crown of thorns; St Dorothy carries the roses and apples that figure in the story of her execution; St Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, has pincers and a tooth. And so on. The stolen and retrieved panels, which are in the northernmost section of the screen, have images of St Margaret holding a cross and an unusual saint, Victor of Marseilles. Victor was an officer in the Roman army* and holds a windmill, which is both charming and nice reference for anyone who wants to know what a late-medieval post mill looks like.

It’s good to see them back in place, and they remind us of the may ways in which such paintings have value above their monetary worth. They're historical evidence (of how the saints were seen and what they symbolised and for such details as that windmill). They depict saints who were revered – and who should command at least respect for what they endured for their sake of their beliefs. They are vigorously drawn, appealing, and cherishable works of art.

And above all, they’re part of a whole. Painted panels of saints might be nice things to have on one's wall at home, but they work best when they are where they were meant to be. Here, they form part of a screen of which the design (beautiful tracery, elegant proportions) and carving is transparently effective and right. They are members of a whole community of saints, of which the thirty-odd in the screen are representative and shining examples. And they are part of a wider context, that of the whole church, which in the Middle Ages would have been further adorned with wall paintings and stained glass (gone now), to make a complete and glowing world – a cosmos even – in which the flesh and blood worshippers, the people of Torbryan, once formed the vital, animated part.

Of course, much of that decorative community – the frescoes, the stained glass, other three-dimensional images – was taken away after the Reformation. Even the screen has lost its upper part and its crowning Rood. The painted saints are yet more precious because they are still right there, still in their original setting. They are windows into this lost world.

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* St Victor, who served in the Roman army in Marseilles in the 3rd century, denounced the worship of idols, and was tortured and martyred for his beliefs. After Victor refused to make an offering to Jupiter, kicking over the god's statue, the emperor sentenced him to be put to death by being ground beneath a millstone, hence the windmill.

Top picture St Luke, St Matthew, St Andrew, possibly St Philip

Second picture St Victor of Marseilles

Bottom picture St James the Less, possibly St Thomas, St Simon the Zealot, possibly St Matthias  

Little Washbourne, Gloucestershire

A short diversion

I have posted about this church before, but wanted to show you another photograph of it because as I drove past the end of the no-through-road where it’s sited today, I noticed that the blossom was already out. A short diversion brought me back to the lane and the churchyard, to see that there are not only trees with blossom but also daffodils in bloom up the grass path to the church.

No through road, lane, grass path – it all makes the tiny church at Little Washbourne sound remote. However, it’s only a couple of hundred yards from the road between Tewkesbury and Stow-on-the-Wold – hardly a trunk road, but not remote either. Yet when you turn off, this spectacle of quiet greenery and blossom awaits you. Part of the joy of English buildings is their settings, whether smack in the middle of a town, like the factory in my previous post, or up a country lane and a grass path.

There’s no grand architecture here – just a medieval parish church modified by the Georgians and left much as it was since then. But where it is, the flowers on the approach to it, the clouds of white blossom to its left, and the still whiter clouds in the sky, all make it worth stopping and looking. And when the main road is quiet, the noisiest thing here is the buzzing of bees for the nearby hives.

Sapperton, Gloucestershire

350-up

Last week brought the news that the Churches Conservation Trust has taken on its 350th church. The Trust is an excellent charity that takes over and looks after church buildings that can no longer be maintained by their local parishes. The churches are all of outstanding architectural and/or historical interest and the Trust opens them to the public and sells guidebooks and provides other information about them – but the buildings are still churches and occasional services are still held in them. I’ve noticed, and praised, their work before on this blog and I am just one of a legion of enthusiasts and supporters.

The 350th church on the Trust’s list is St Kenelm’s, Sapperton, Gloucestershire.* It’s a beauty – for its exterior, with its lovely little spire (far from the norm in this county, where most churches have towers) and its lovely setting, and for its contents. It is a medieval church, but one much altered in the Georgian period with the addition of a number of large round-headed clear-glazed windows, which flood light into the nave.

Jacobean pew ends, Sapperton


Inside are two outstanding monuments – a 17th-century one to Sir Henry and Lady Poole and an 18th-century one to Sir Robert Atykyns, the first historian of the county of Gloucestershire. The place would be worth a visit for these two monuments alone, but what sets the church apart still more is the woodwork – the most extraordinary set of Jacobean pew-ends, together with a gallery front, a big wall of oak panelling, and other pieces. This rich 17th-century carpentry came from nearby Sapperton Manor and was given to the church by the 1st Earl Bathurst† when the house was demolished in 1730. It’s secular woodwork that has been repurposed, then, and the pew ends certainly look secular in origin – each one bears a vigorously carved supporter figure bearing on the head a capital: a sort of Jacobean version of a caryatid or Atlas figure. The males have satyric beards and the few females bare breasts and necklaces, so they might have been even more at home in the dinging room of the manor house. But these figures have plenty of character – the chiselled beards and almond eyes, the little locks of hair – so that, stylised as they are, they’re an asset to the place. The modest capitals don’t really conform to the standard classical orders: they could be Ionic with a bit of extra foliage, or cut-down Corinthian. But they’re fun too and the whole lot make the church very special. You’d have to go a long way to find any pew ends quite like these.

All credit to the CCT for taking on this memorable church. No doubt they have lifted a heavy financial burden from the small parish in so doing. As usual, we owe them our applause and whatever other support we can give.¶

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* Sapperton church’s page on the CCT website is here.

† The Bathurst who was the recipient of Pope’s famous poetical epistle, and who created the great park next to his house at Cirencester, a stone’s throw from Sapperton.

¶ I've posted about quite a few CCT churches over the years, but there are a couple of my particular favourites here and here.

Torbryan, Devon

Torbryan's stolen panels and an appeal

Readers of this blog, especially those who live in the United Kingdom, may have read about the recent theft of two painted panels from the 15th-century oak screen in Holy Trinity Church, Torbryan, Devon. These panels, depicting St Victor of Marseilles and St Margaret of Antioch,† are very rare. Very few medieval painted screens have survived in our churches – many disappeared during the iconoclasm of the 17th century and not all the other survivors are of such good quality as the Torbryan panels. To make matters worse, the neighbouring panel, portraying a female saint, was also badly damaged during the theft.

Painted screen, Torbryan, showing the panels in situ before the theft, photograph by Diana Neale

The church at Torbryan is one of 341 in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust (CCT), a charity that cares for and conserves churches that have been made redundant by the Church of England, and are of historical and architectural significance.* The CCT maintains the churches so that they meet community needs (all remain consecrated so that occasional services can be held in them) and encourages people to visit them. They do terrific work, conserving and looking after these fragile buildings and the artefacts inside them, and keeping the buildings open so that people can enjoy and appreciate them, and they deserve our support. Several of the churches I've posted about in the past – for example Billesley (Warwickshire), Little Washbourne (Gloucestershire), and Inglesham (Wiltshire) – are cared for the CCT, and I hope my enthusiasm for these buildings comes through from my posts.

One way in which the CCT is furthering its work is with a project called History for the Future. This involves an appeal for funds towards work to conserve important and historic fixtures and fittings in various CCT churches – items from a Norman door in Hertfordshire to a stunning collection of monuments in Derbyshire. There will be the added benefit of match-funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund. For four years, HLF will match every pound raised by the CCT History for the Future appeal. Churches that stand to benefit are several of my personal favourites – St Mary the Virgin, Shrewsbury, with its glittering 14th-century Jesse window, All Saints' Cooling, Kent, with its Dickensian associations, and St John the Baptist, Inglesham, with its extraordinary multi-layered wall paintings. There's information about the appeal here, and I'd encourage all who can to contribute.

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† St Victor of Marseilles was one of the Christians persecuted under the Roman emperor Maximian. Victor denounced the worship of idols and refused to offer incense to Jupiter and was subsequently tortured before being crushed under a millstone. He is therefore often shown with a windmill and sometimes also, having been a soldier, with a sword.
St Margaret of Antioch was a probably legendary figure, said to have been the daughter of a pagan priest at Antioch. A noted preacher who converted many to Christianity, she was said to have suffered various tortures, including being swallowed by a dragon, which later burst asunder so that she might escape. She was a very popular saint in the Middle Ages, having promised divine protection to those who study her history, burn lights in her honour, or dedicate churches to her.

* The photograph at the top of this post, showing the damaged screen after the theft, is courtesy the CCT and used with their permission.The photograph of the screen prior to the theft is by Diana Neale.

Billesley, Warwickshire

On the path through life

All Saints’ church, Billelsey is between the towns of Alcester and Stratford upon Avon. It’s a tiny church with an atmosphere that you could best describe as ‘country Georgian’ – round-headed windows, box pews, plain white walls. There’s a tradition that Shakespeare married Anne Hathaway here, and in their day the church would probably still have had its some of its medieval fittings and atmosphere – it would have been darker, with smaller windows and maybe this wonderful carving, now on display inside the church, was over the door.

A carved relief like this is a real surprise in rural Warwickshire. Its style (the vigorous interlacing foliage, the linear design on the figure’s kilt-like costume, the bird, the serpent) is like the work of the Herefordshire sculptors of the 12th century – I’ve posted previously about their wonderful carvings at Kilpeck, Shobdon, and Castle Frome. But their work wasn’t confined to Herefordshire – there are a few examples in nearby counties such as Gloucestershire, Worcestershire, and Warwickshire too.

The Billesley carving seems to show a man, pursued by sinister forces (a serpent and a dragon) trying to escape towards a dove, symbol of peace, purity, and the Holy Spirit. The whole carving of this figure on his path through life is bursting with vigour and the surprise of finding it among the plain white walls of this quiet church is part of the pleasure it gives. There would no doubt have been more carvings here by the same 12th-century master, but all except this one and a fragment of a stone cross have vanished in later rebuildings of the church. We can only be grateful for the burgeoning vigour of what survives.

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Note This church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.

Inglesham, Wiltshire

More layers

I recently did a couple of posts called ‘Layers of history’ about places constructed on prehistoric sites. As more than one reader said, this whole blog is really about layers of history – and they could have gone further and said that virtually every building that’s not spick and span new is an example of historical layering, so great is our passion for altering and adapting buildings, furnishing them and leaving our stamp on them. The tiny church at Inglesham in Wiltshire is one of the most layered of them all. A largely 13th-century structure, based probably on a late-Saxon original, it contains a Saxon carving of the Madonna and Child, windows from the 14th and 15th centuries, timber screens of the 15th and 16th centuries, 17th-century pews and pulpit, and a range of wall paintings representing every century from the 13th to the 19th.

Nave and aisle: 13th-century pier, 15th-century screen, Jacobean pews

But that prosaic list tells not half the story. This isolated church – it has just a couple of houses for company down a lane that leads nowhere else – has an atmosphere of quiet and calm like few others, testimony to the care that has been lavished on its fragile fabric and furnishings, especially over the last century or so. That it has survived is largely due to William Morris, who lived at Kelmscott not far away, loved this place, and knew the Victorian rector, Oswald Birchall. Birchall wrote to Morris saying that he had no money to carry out the necessary repairs to the church, and neither had the parishioners. Morris put Birchall in touch with the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, who both supervised the restoration in the 1880s and 1890s and, in an unusual move, also raised money for it. Morris too contributed money, anonymously, to keep the work going. And so the repairs were carried out with the greatest care and respect for the building, under SPAB principles – nothing old was destroyed if it could be repaired, new work was not disguised, new additions were made to fit the old fabric (not the other way round), and so on.

As a result of Morris’s commitment, this wonderful church survives, with both its historical layers and its ancient peace. On my last visit to Inglesham I was enjoying the building in solitude when the door opened and a party of half a dozen visitors came in. Frankly, my heart sank. No more contemplative silence, I thought. How wrong could I be? Each of the visitors approached the chancel, bowed towards the altar, and made the sign of the cross, before inspecting the building in awed reverence. After a while, one of them came up to me. ‘They are from Warsaw,’ he explained, in good but accented English. ‘They have been to the Tower of London and Windsor, so I had to bring them here. To show them this unbroken link with the Middle Ages, even with the Saxons.’ An unbroken link with the layers of history. And one of the best. How true.

Chancel: Fragment of 13th-century reredos, painting of various dates

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Note A commenter has pointed out that conservation work is now (20 August 2010) underway on some of the wall paintings at Inglesham. This means that there is a lot of scaffolding in the church and the opening times are restricted.

This church is in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust, which looks after churches of historical and architectural interest that are no longer needed for worship. They deserve our support.

Little Washbourne, Gloucestershire

Hidden among fruit trees in the low-lying country between the Cotswold escarpment and Tewkesbury, Little Washbourne is easy to miss. There’s not much here: a farm, a house, a roadside inn, and this tiny church, approached along a grass path through an orchard. But there’s more to this building than the passing motorist, speeding between Stow and Tewkesbury, might imagine.

Some details of masonry and a small window around the back shows us that this is a Norman church, but the big window to the right of the doorway tells a different story. It’s Georgian, and the 18th-century has left a lasting and wonderful imprint on this building, as we see immediately on opening the door.

Filling the nave is a complete set of 18th-century box pews, including four big family pews at the front and smaller ones behind, plus a two-decker pulpit (a piece of furniture fashionable in the 18th century, combining a pulpit for preaching and a desk for reading the lessons). Beyond, in the chancel, are matching altar rails and communion table. Candles provide the only artificial light. As Pevsner says, the whole lot doesn’t look as if it’s been touched since 1800.

These are not, let me make clear, the kind of furnishings I’d remove from a church to make it suitable for dance classes or village bean-feasts, although, as I’ve said in another post, I’m sometimes in favour of removing pews. No, the furnishings at Little Washbourne are in a special class and, as there’s no longer a congregation to use them regularly in this scattered community, the building is now vested in the Churches Conservation Trust. Thanks to their care, we can now visit this place and appreciate how a Norman building and Georgian interior can come together to create a unique atmosphere, taking us back to the time of Jane Austen and her predecessors.