Ilmington, Warwickshire

Old school ties

On the day of my recent visit to Ilmington the sun was quite strong and while this brought out the wonderful colour of the church’s stone walls, other buildings were plunged into shadow. I had to work quite hard to get a clear picture of this building, Old School House. The house immediately struck me, with its geometric pattern of white glazing bars making diamonds and hexagons in the pointed Gothic windows. Then there’s the trefoil-arched entrance porch, another characterful touch in this house of the 1840s.

At first, the light being less clear than it looks in the photograph, I hardly noticed the masonry except to note that it’s the local butterscotch-coloured marlstone. The walls are mostly coursed and squared blocks, but not as finely finished as ashlar, except for the window surrounds, which are altogether neater. But look at the corner. Some of the quoin stones are whoppers, giving an impression of great if discreet solidity, even though the walls are strengthened these days by some X-ended tie-rods.

The Ordnance Survey map of 1885 shows a school to the northwest of the church, next to this house. So presumably this was the school-master’s house, and if it was built in the 1840s, that was well before compulsory state-funded elementary education – whoever paid for it did the teacher proud.

Ilmington, Warwickshire

Looking ahead

I’d not got far up the churchyard path to St Mary’s, Ilmington, before I saw the extraordinary monument near the church’s south doorway. Once I was a little nearer I began to take it in, and to see what it was: an 18th-century tomb (the date is 1750, it turns out) that aspires to be a miniature building, with a lower section parapeted with castle-like battlements, and the whole thing topped with a lantern-tower and spire.

The masonry of the lower part looks plain at first sight, but close-to one can distinguish some pilasters at the corners topped with tiny cusped blank arches, while the battlements are decorated with quatrefoils that have partly weathered away. The tower is quite elaborate – there are cusped openings all the way around and the spire also has (tiny) windows and a carved finial at the top. It all looks more like the mid-18th-century Gothic that it is, and yet the highly fancy Gothic that Horace Walpole promoted had really only just going – Walpole had begun to remodel his famous house at Strawberry Hill in 1749. 

So who created this forward-looking bit of design? It was built for Ann and Samuel Sansom. Pevsner compares their tomb to the Despenser monuments in Tewkesbury Abbey, and it’s true that some of the Tewkesbury chantry chapels do have similar, if much more ornate, tops. He also directs us to the researches of Howard Colvin, who points out that the Chipping Campden mason-architect Edward Woodward had proposed a similar design of tower and spire, at full scale, for the church at Preston-on-Stour.* It could well be Woodward, experienced in building plainer Gothic structures not far away from here, trying his had at something more adventurous.

If he did, it was admirable, although as I attempted to photograph the miniature building I had to try several angles so as not to get the spire clashing with window mullions and tracery behind. And then it occurred to me that the tomb was sited rather invasively near the church and its entrance. I wondered what the parishioners thought when they had to pass it every Sunday? I like it, but it must have been a bit of a shock, and an enforced reminder of the deceased couple. Let’s hope they were remembered with affection.

- - - - -

* The Woodwards – Thomas and his son Edward – were certainly on the ball: they were doing very rococo Gothic work at Ascot Park, Warwickshire, in the 1750s. Their proposal for the Preston-on-Stour tower showed a crown-like top like St Nicholas, Newcastle, with the finial designed in the manner of the tomb at Ilmington: amazing. For a reproduction of the drawing, see the recent revised edition of the Warwickshire Pevsner.