Droitwich, Worcestershire

Peacock and Pippet

I hope this blog has brought some interest and pleasure to my readers this year and that some at least of the pleasure has come from unexpected sources. I like to think that quite a lot of what I bring you is out-of-the-way stuff, buildings that are little known outside their immediate neighbourhood and passed over by the standard architectural histories. My subjects interest me for all sorts of reasons but the ones I like best are notable aesthetically while also throwing some light on the past – on social, industrial, or commercial history.

So this year we’ve had, among other things, village lockups, in which quirky architectural form embodies past notions of crime and punishment; factories, in which low-cost, utilitarian architecture survives (sometimes by the skin of its teeth) to tell the stories of past industries; and shop fronts, in which former fashions in display reveal something about the ways in which retailers liked to catch the attention of customers. All very revealing and often surprising too.

Christmas, though, is a time when surprises come in traditional packaging. This fact came into my mind when I was looking at a building that combines tradition with surprise: a 20th-century Byzantine-style church…in Droitwich. The Catholic Church of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria, designed by Barry Peacock, is based on the form of early Christian basilicas. The long nave, with its rows of seven arches, its small apse housing the high altar, its carved capitals, and, above all, its mosaic decoration, shows the influence of the great early churches of Constantinople and, especially, Ravenna.

Most of the mosaics were designed by Gabriel Pippet and executed by mosaicist Maurice Josey. Their subjects are various – one group tells the story of St Richard de Wyche, Droitwich’s saint; another depicts scenes from the life of the Virgin, including the Annunciation, the Nativity, and the Flight into Egypt. There are also portraits of saints and fathers of the Church – St Catherine’s mosaic in the apse of her little chapel is especially good. The details in these mosaics are beautiful. Interweaving plants and little groups of birds fill the gaps between the figures and narrative panels. Gold tesserae glitter. Even on a dull day in Droitwich, this lovely work of the 1920s catches the light like the mosaics of Ravenna in the Italian sunshine.

Season's Greetings to all my readers.


St Catherine, Church of the Sacred Heart and St Catherine of Alexandria, Droitwich

St Mary Aldermary, London

Wren the Goth

Sir Christopher Wren is probably Britain’s most famous architect. Most people know him as the designer of St Paul’s Cathedral and of the churches that replaced those destroyed during London’s great fire of 1666. Because of this glorious legacy, we think of Wren mainly as a classical architect, a man at home with domes and Corinthian capitals. But Wren was a versatile architect – the rich variety of his London steeples shows that – and he could turn his hand to Gothic too.

St Mary Aldermary (the curious repetitious name is probably an indication that this was originally the oldest of London’s churches dedicated to the Virgin) is Wren’s great essay in the Gothic style – Pevsner thinks that it and St Mary’s Warwick are the two best Gothic churches of the period. It’s not quite the kind of Gothic a medieval master mason would recognize: that’s a plaster vault, not stonework. But with its fan vaulting, flattened arches, and tracery, it’s still a beautiful take on the late Gothic that became fashionable in the 15th century.

This church is also an example of the architect’s ability to adapt to his sites. Nearly all Wren’s city churches are hemmed in by the surrounding building plots, so they often have irregular or unconventional plans. In the case of St Mary Aldermary, the east wall with its big window is not at 90 degrees to the flank walls. The effect is rather odd, but it’s also another example of the endless adaptability of Sir Christopher Wren.