Muchelney, Somerset

A glimpse of the heavens

En route across Somerset, I decided to stop at Muchelney, where I’d not been for years. I planned to revisit the medieval abbey, but was also drawn to the adjacent but quite separate parish church of Saints Peter and Paul. The church is late-15th century, like so many in Somerset, but what I most wanted to see again was a later embellishment, the 17th-century ribbed and boarded ceiling of the nave, with its wonderful painted panels of angels looking down from the clouds.

I have not seen anything else quite like this ceiling (the angels in the church ceiling at Bromfield, Shropshire, come closest, but I’d say they are slightly later and in a different style). Each panel at Mucheleny is edged with clouds, which swirl like cotton wool or whipped cream, but are edged in darker shades. English clouds, of course, often combine the hopeful white with the threatening grey, but not quite in the stylized way of these ceiling paintings, and the stylization is part of their charm, which is easier to appreciate if you click on the image to enlarge it.

I find the angels charming too. They stand behind the clouds, and look down through the gaps between them; behind each figure is blue sky dotted with tiny stars, suggesting the angels are in a heavenly realm far above the clouds, farther still from us earthbound humans. They’re a far cry from medieval angels of any kind; neither are they like chaste Victorian angels. They have boldly painted faces, shoulder-length hair, and perky wings and they are are clothed in something like Elizabethan or Jacobean dresses, but in what Pevsner describes as ‘extreme décolletage’. The contours of their breasts vary – some look markedly rounded and suggest the human female form, some are less so. Those who feel compelled to explain such things suggest that their revealing costumes suggest their innocence, which sounds like a modern explainer trying very hard to justify what they see as inappropriate. Authorities such as Pevsner and the people who wrote the listing description for the church, avoid explanation altogether. I’d say anything that purports to be an explanation is at best informed guesswork.

The messages spoken by the angels, written on scrolls that they hold, are clear enough. ‘Good will towards men’, ‘Wee praise thee O God’, ‘All nations in the world…praise the Lords Name’, and so on. The sun, a golden roundel set at the intersection of four panels, looks on approvingly. From the floor below, I look up with similar approval at the whole ceiling – with more than approval indeed and with pleasure at another example of how the art of English churches can be colourful, unexpected, and full of joy.

Bishops Cleeve, Gloucestershire

The Madonna of the Butterflies with Saints Michael and Jerome

Something a little different for my Christmas picture this year. Fortunate is the church that has a piece of modern art that works as well as this altarpiece, painted in 2018 for the church of St Michael and All Angels, Bishops Cleeve by the local artist P J Crook. P J Crook’s works range widely and are exhibited in galleries all over the world. For this altarpiece, she worked within the traditional framework of the triptych, filling the work with symbols that are familiar to anyone who had looked at a lot of Christian art. Yet the imagery is also unmistakeably of its time and of its painter: the directness of the way the faces are painted and their deceptively simple range of skin tones, the teeming detail, and the way in which the imagery spills out on to the frame are all typical of the artist.

The triptych shows the Virgin and Child with Mary’s head surrounded by butterflies and angels; saints Michael and Jerome are portrayed in the side panels; the base bears an image of the Last Supper. The butterflies, with their metamorphic life cycle (there’s a caterpillar, by the way, at the bottom of the picture), stand for resurrection, renewal, and the release of the soul from the body. They are just one of an array of symbols: rosemary represents remembrance, the lily of the valley is also called Our Lady’s Tears, the poppy indicates that the altarpiece was painted at the time of the anniversary of the end of World War I. The dove to which the infant Jesus points is a symbol of peace, but also represents the Holy Spirit.

There are also local allusions. There are minute figures of the Magi on horseback (their mounts a reminder that Bishops Cleeve is a stone’s throw from Cheltenham Racecourse). St Michael (battler with the devil, weigher of souls in heaven) is there in part because of the church’s dedication – and that dedication gives the presence of angels in the altarpiece further relevance; there’s a small image of the church above the saint’s left shoulder. The female figure entering through the door beneath the dove is Margaret Whitehead, a local school nurse who was killed in a car accident. She is also seen in the background in her nurse’s uniform, with a group of children. A painting of the infant Christ can also look forward to his crucifixion and resurrection, and this triptych deals with mortality in several ways. The images of Margaret Whitehead represent one way; St Jerome’s contemplation of mortality (symbolised by the skull) is another; the presence of a fox, symbolising King Herod, who ordered the massacre of the innocents, is another; candles stand not only for the light of God but also for remembrance of the dead.

The complexity of this altarpiece, then, reaches the depths, but the directness of the imagery is powerful too and the way in which its art enhances life is, in my eyes, a triumph. I hope that all my readers have an enjoyable and life-enhancing time over the coming days of celebration. Happy Christmas – and season’s greetings, whatever your beliefs.

Wenhaston, Suffolk

 

Thank you, rain

It’s pouring with rain today and I’m sitting indoors thinking of another rainy day long ago. In 1892, workers reconstructing the east end of Wenhaston church in Suffolk removed a whitewashed wooden panel that blocked the upper part of the chancel arch. They took the panel apart into its constituent oak planks and moved them into the churchyard ready for recycling or a bonfire. That night it rained and the whitewash on the planks began to dissolve. By the morning, parts of several painted figures were revealed.¶ 

The boards were quickly moved indoors for safety and expert restorers cleaned away the remainder of the whitewash to reveal most of a late-medieval Doom painting – the image of the Last Judgement, when the dead rise up from their graves and are sent either to heaven or to hell. This was a poplar subject in church art in the Middle Ages, and numerous Doom paintings survive, in whole or in part, usually on the wall above and around the chancel arch.* Very few panel paintings designed to fill the upper part of the arch now exist, and the one discovered with the help of restoration, good fortune and the weather at Wenhaston is the most clear and complete of these. What’s more, the rebuilt chancel arch was no longer the correct size for the painting, so it has since been displayed elsewhere in the building. It’s now in the north aisle and this position makes it one of the most visible of all medieval Doom paintings.

At the top of the painting Christ, sitting on a rainbow, presides. Facing him are two kneeling figures, the Virgin Mary and John the Baptist, the two most prominent saints who were said to intercede with God on behalf of human souls. To the right and slightly lower down are two souls of the dead rising from their graves as the Last Trumpet sounds.

The lower level of the Wenhaston Doom contains four main groups of figures, separated by blank spaces in front of which statues of the Virgin Mary, Christ crucified, and John the Evangelist once stood. The left-hand group (the least well preserved) shows figures in front of the heavenly mansions. Next comes St Peter, key in hand, with a group of souls who bore high rank on earth – their headgear reveals them to be a king, bishop, cardinal and queen. Next comes St Michael weighing souls, his work disrupted by a large devil. Finally, on the far right, devils push the souls of the damned into the monstrous mouth of hell. Beneath the imagery run verses from Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, chapter 13, beginning, ‘Let every soul submit to the authority of the higher powers for there is no power but of God’.† 

The low position of the painting on the aisle wall enables visitors to see details that would have been hard to make out when it was in its original elevated position – the faces of the devils with their bent noses and boggle-eyes, their chains and flesh-hooks, the teeth of hell’s mouth, the care with which St Peter’s robe and the hats of the souls meeting him are painted, the shroud of the rising figure on the far right, and so on. It’s astonishing to be able to see all this close-to. Even though the painting fails to show terror on the faces of the damned, as we’d perhaps expect, the power of the image is still palpable. For once, back in 1892, the rain was something to be pleased about. 

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¶ Please click on the photograph to enlarge it.

* I have previous blogged about such a painting in Salisbury.

† These words seem to have been painted over an earlier, now illegible, inscription.

Worcester

Surprise, surprise!

Walking along Friar Street in Worcester, we were drawn to a timber-framed building opposite Greyfriars by a sign advertising second hand books. Greyfriars is an impressive timber-framed medieval merchant’s house on a site close to a medieval Franciscan friary and is now owned by the National Trust. Into the building opposite we went, to discover that the National Trust has installed a shop here, convenient for visitors to its property across the street.

Although on this occasion there seemed to be nothing for me in the stock of books on display, I was pleased I entered the building because of the chance to see two panels of painted wall in an upstairs room – I had no idea they were there. These roughly square patches of scrolling stems have probably faded a good deal, but they still give the lie to a common assumption – that houses a few centuries ago had rather dull interiors with just a few sticks of furniture to enliven the living space. Of course, there would have been huge variation in the quality and quantity of decoration. This is building, now number 14 Friar Street, was once part of a larger house, its other half now comprising the neighbouring number 16. It was the substantial residence of someone with some disposable income – an artisan, or merchant, perhaps.

The paintwork was discovered when the building was restored in 1956, and a proud if somewhat intrusive inscription records this fact. However, knowledge of painted decoration has built up since the 1950s and authorities now think the date is more likely to be 16th century; for another example of 16th-century wall painting (still more elaborate than this), see a post I did about a room in Ledbury, here. Apparently, the Worcester building was home in the early part of that century to one John Watters, ‘paynter’, and may have been built for him in c. 1526. The owner’s trade opens up the interesting possibility that he may have done the decoration himself. Back then it would have been admired but hardly exceptional. He’d probably be surprised to know how much it is cherished now. 

Stocklinch, Somerset

The lion and the unicorn, 2

Here’s my second royal arms, this time the version relating to the first three Georges, a form of the arms in use between 1714 and 1801. It is painted on boards and displayed in the church at Stocklinch, Somerset. George I and his two successors included the heraldic symbols of their family, the house of Hanover, in the fourth quarter (i.e. the bottom right part) of the shield. Although this example is not in pristine condition and is anyway the work of a no doubt local artist somewhere in the Ilminster area of Somerset, the painting of the lion and unicorn has a charm that gives at least one viewer pleasure.

This Hanoverian version of the coat of arms is now the most common form to be seen in English churches, although later rulers’ coats of arms are still found too. By the twentieth century, displaying the latest arms in church was less widespread, and there are few from the last hundred years. I know of only a couple of examples of Elizabeth II’s arms in churches – an indication that the practice of their display in an ecclesiastical context had fallen out of fashion, in spite of this monarch’s long-term commitment to the church.

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  

Cheltenham, Gloucetsershire

Spooks, revisited: A question of attribution

A brief addendum to an earlier post.

Regular readers might be interested to know that the artist known as Banksy has confirmed that he did indeed paint the graffito in Cheltenham, about which I blogged in a post during April when the attribution was still unconfirmed. This piece of wall art, on either side of a telephone box in Cheltenham's Fairview Road, alludes to the town's role as the home of GCHQ, the British government's 'listening post'. It has created a stir locally, and more widely, and it provoked both specific comments and personal memories in my earlier post. Bansky's confirmation of the attribution is noted in a question-and-answer session on his own website and in the local media.

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.

Royal College of Organists, London

Pulling out all the stops

I probably first went to a concert in the Royal Albert Hall about 30 years ago, and when I came out I was amazed and slightly stunned by the building just to the west of the hall. I must have passed it dozens of times since then, but it still makes me look. How could such an extraordinary building have materialized among the terracotta and brick of South Kensington?

It was part of the succession of educational and artistic endeavours that took place in the area in the wake of the Great Exhibition of 1851. From the Natural History Museum and the V & A northwards to the Albert Hall, a swathe of culture and learning was cut through West London, turning the area into what became known as Albertoplis. With the great elliptical Albert Hall completed, a proposal was launched for a National Training School for Music, and this was the building that emerged to fill the role.

It was designed by Lt H. H. Cole, one of a number of military engineers associated with the buildings of Albertopolis and the son of Sir Henry Cole (mastermind of the Great Exhibition, prime mover of the V & A, designer of the first postage stamp, and creator of the first Christmas card). A hard act to follow for his son, who’d been a Superintendent of the Archaeological Survey in the North-West Province in India. Cole Junior was not an experienced architect, and he worked with his father and a committee of the great and the good developing the design over a period of months after the committee was formed in 1873. Its light rooms and convenient position served the Training College well until it was closed after the formation of the Royal College of Music. The Royal College of Organists moved in during 1904 and stayed until 1990.


The college would be a pleasant but unremarkable structure without the reliefs and sgraffito decoration designed by F W Moody and carried out by the artist’s students. Musical personifications, instruments of all sorts, portraits of composers, musical putti, the building has the lot. It’s a façade as noisy as the studios and practice rooms it no doubt contained. A writer in Country Life said that the effect was as if the building had strayed here from Istanbul, and it is just as lively as any building in that noisy and vibrant city. A bit of a fish out of water, then. But not a cold fish, nor one that need be ashamed of its scales.