Hampton Lucy, Warwickshire

St Peter ad Vincula

This is quite simply an astonishing church for so small a village. It was built with money bequeathed in 1778 by The Lucy family of the nearby Charlecote Park. The money remined unused but gathering interest until the first quarter of the nineteenth century when he Rector Rev’d John Lucy rebuilt the whole church. Birmingham based architect Thomas Rickman was chosen to design the church with his young partner, Henry Hutchinson (later famous for the Bridge of Sighs at St John’s College, Cambridge).



Work started in 1822. The church was based on Rickman’s church in Chipping Camden, with a short chancel and west gallery for village musicians. Rickman is often best remembered for first using the terms Norman, Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular to describe the classes of church architecture before the Reformation. He was also responsible for the church in Ombersley and Holy Trinity Bristol.
One of the outstanding features of the church is the soaring nave which may have been the responsibility of Hutchinson. He was to die in 1831 and is buried in the graveyard.



By the mid 19thcentury the chancel and box pews in the church were beginning to seem out of date and Sir George Gilbert Scott was invited to make changes. He was responsible for the new chancel and apse which the guide book quite rightly describes as ‘arguably the grandest piece of 19th century church architecture in Warwickshire'. It is similar to his work at Exeter College, Oxford. Externally the skyline is an array of gothic pinnacles. He also added the two storey north porch (now closed and used as the choir vestry). The church was re-opened on Christmas Day 1863.



Internally the aspe windows are most impressive and depicts the life of St Peter. The original stained glass was described as ‘magnificent’ but an explosion, caused by an American Flying Fortress crashing in 1944, blew out the east window glass. It was reassembled (as far as was possible) in 1950.




The view back down the church to the west tower again shows the amazing proportions of the nave.



One of Scott’s changes was to remove the musicians gallery as village musicians had been replaced by the more fashionable organ. The gallery and arch above was filled in and replaced by a circular rose window filled with stained glass (unusual as this is not an outside wall).



The alabaster font dates from the time of Scott’s alterations.



The church is justifiably included as one of Simon Jenkins 1000 best churches and does not disappoint.

Worth a quick look (especially to any engineers) is the cast iron bridge over the River Avon, built in 1829 at the Horsley Ironworks in Shropshire.

Wellesbourne, Warwickshire

St Peter’s Church

The guide book says a church has been here for over 900 years and possibly 1100 although most of the building dates from a Victorian renovation in 1848 after the dilapidated old church had been largely pulled down in 1844.



At the west end of the south aisle can be found the three pillars which survive from the original church showing the Early English style (all other pillars are Victorian copies). Also in this corner of the church is the only window to survive from the old church with stonework c.1400 although the glass is Victorian.



The view down the nave towards the Chancel.



The east window above the altar.



The piscine on the north wall of the chancel



The sedilla on the south side of the Chancel



The Norman arch in the north wall of the chancel – this was most probably the chancel arch in the original church. Pevsner dates the capitals as late C11 and the arch as early C12.



The south aisle, porch and tower. He tower is typical of the towers of churches in Warwickshire from C14 or C15.



The church is hidden from the main road by a row of houses/shops but worth seeking out. It is essentially a Victorian church designed by J P Harrison, who, according to the church guide, was ‘a London architect of no great note in his profession, but an Oxford man and a gentleman and a scholar’. He was a follower of follower of the Gothic revivalist Pugin.

Harrow on the Hill

St Mary's Church

The medieval church of Saint Mary's was consecrated in 1094. It shows evidence of architecture from many different periods: Norman, early English and Perpendicular. There was then a major restoration during the Victorian era under Giles Gilbert Scott. St. Mary's wooden spire was completed in 1450 and is covered with twelve tons of lead.



There is a chamber over the south porch which is reached via a wooden staircase from inside the church. This was built in 1324 probably as a chantry chapel.



Little of the original Norman building remains apart from the lower section of the tower. The west doorway at the foot of the tower with its zig-zag pattern and distinctive capitals is thought to date from 1125.



The Chancel, with its fine arch and lancet windows, had been constructed by the end of the 12th century and this was followed by the rebuilding of the nave and the addition of the two transepts.




By 1450, the present clerestory windows and the nave had been constructed. The roofs of the nave and transepts are reckoned to be the finest in Middlesex with over 300 carvings, while the spire is covered with 12 tons of lead.



This chest is in the north transept and was probably used to store vestments. It is thought to have been in use for over eight hundred years.



The brass to John Lyon, founder of Harrow School, and his wife Joan, is on the walls of the nave near his grave by the lectern.



The font, of Purbeck marble,dates from 1200.



The lych gate which is the entrance on the harrow School side of the church.

Margaret Street, London W1

All Saints

In 1970 Sir John Betjeman, the poet, writer and enthusiastic advocate of heritage and architecture, visited All Saints Margaret Street as part of a television programme he was making about Victorian Architecture for the BBC. "It was here, in the 1850s, that the revolution in architecture began...It led the way, All Saints Margaret Street, in church building."

All Saints is hidden just to the north of Oxford Street. It was built in the High Victorian Gothic style by the architect William Butterfield and completed in 1859….and I have to say it is not really my cup of tea.

The following extract is from the church website which explains the background to the building of the church (http://www.allsaintsmargaretstreet.org.uk/history1.htm)

The church owes it origins to the Cambridge Camden Society (from 1845, the Ecclesiological Society) founded in 1839 with the aim of reviving historically authentic Anglican worship through architecture. Its monthly magazine, The Ecclesiologist, reviewed new churches and assessed their architectural and liturgical significance.

In 1841, the society announced a plan to build a 'Model Church on a large and splendid scale' which would embody important tenets of the Society:

The project was supervised, and largely sponsored on behalf of the society, by Alexander Beresford-Hope, who chose the architect William Butterfield (1814-1900) to undertake the project. Butterfield designed nearly 100 churches and related buildings during his long career, including the chapels of Balliol College and Keble College, Oxford, and built in a highly personal form of gothic revival. All Saints Margaret Street remains his masterpiece.


Butterfield's style is what has become known as "structural polychromy" – ie using coloured materials (especially stone, bricks and tiles), to create a building where colour and pattern are inherent in the structure. Thus All Saints was faced externally in pink and black brick. Its spire (at 227' or 69m, the second highest in London) is hung with slates but banded in cream ashlar.




The chancel occupies almost one-third of the length of the church. The reredos was completed by William Dyce in 1853-9, but suffering the effects of London air, was copied by Comper in 1909 on wooden panels in front of the original.



The tiled panels on the north wall were erected in 1873, at a cost of £1,100 in memory of Upton Richards, the first vicar. The tiles were designed by Butterfield, painted by Alexander Gibbs and manufactured by Henry Poole and Sons. The poor picture below shows one of the panels which depicts the nativity




The glass in the west window dates from 1877 and was designed by Alexander Gibbs. It is based on the Tree of Jesse window in Wells Cathedral.



The pulpit, by Butterfield, c1858, is adorned by brilliantly coloured geometrical mosaics which adorn it, comprising Derbyshire fossil grey, red Languedoc, yellow Sienna and Irish green marbles.



The font is also by Butterfield from a similar date to the pulpit. It stands on eight coloured marble columns with an elaborate bowl, and carved angels on the broaches.

Holborn

St Andrew’s Church
A medieval stone church was built in the 15th Century in Holborn, of which only the tower now remains. The church survived the Great Fire of 1666 but as it was already in a bad state of repair Christopher Wren rebuilt it.

He rebuilt from the foundations, making the crypt that still exists beneath the church today, and clad the tower in marble adding an upper storey in a more classical style, all completed in 1704. It is his largest parish church.



St Andrew’s engaged the Victorian Gothic architect Samuel Teulon to build a new vicarage and Court House on the South side of St Andrews. He also substantially remodelled the interior of the church. However, his alterations were destroyed when on the night of the 16th April 1941 the church was bombed and gutted. All that remained of the original building was the exterior walls and tower. After much delay, it was decided that it would be restored “stone for stone and brick for brick” to the original Wren designs.



The present building was opened in 1961 with its new status as a Guild Church, a church without a parish designed to serve the local working community.

The nave is broad, with a high barrel-vaulted roof carried on slender Corinithian columns, with gilded plasterwork everywhere. The aisles and west end all have galleries.



In January 2005 a new large icon cross was installed, made for the site by the Monastic Family Fraternity of Jesus in Vallechiara.



The main entrance is from Holborn Viaduct, but a second way in is through the west door: above and either side of this are the statues of two children (1696) from a local poor-house school.



The church was designated a Grade I listed building on 4 January 1950.

Despite it being fifty years since the post war restoration, it all looks too new - it is light, spacious but somehow seemed a little sterile.

http://www.standrewholborn.org.uk/ & http://www.qype.co.uk/place/96321-St-Andrews-Church-Holborn--London

Tardebigge, Worcestershire

St Bartholomew’s Church

According to the guide book, there has been a church on this site since 1138, however, the current church of St Bartholomew's was built in 1776 in sandstone from designs by the architect Francis Hiorne of Warwick, following the final collapse of the tower of the old church on September 3rd 1775.

The old church was partly in Worcestershire and partly in Warwickshire, but the new church was built slightly to the north, thus being entirely in Worcestershire.

The slender spire, 135 feet high, was restored in 1902, when the topmost stone, dated 1777, was removed and now rests beside the altar.



It was difficult to photograph the whole church but a model inside the church shows what the building looks like.



The church building remained substantially unaltered until 1877 when a new chancel was erected. The chancel has internal dimensions of 18 ft. by 33 ft. with an apsidal east end. It was designed by Henry Rowe and Sons of Worcester. It was completed in 1879. The east window depicts The Ascension and was dedicated on Christmas Day 1922.



The Nave viewed from the chancel. The gallery was reduced to its present size during the Victorian 'restoration' in 1877-9.



The oak parish chest bears the names Thomas Cookes and William Dunn, church wardens in 1687 but is thought to be of 16th century origin.



The stone font was given by Anne Maria Benton in 1860 in memory of her sisters Mary and Margaret Bartleet.



The west doorway under the tower is arched and is flanked by columns carrying an entablature and pediment.



The name Tardebigge means 'tower on the hill'. The church is on the top of a hill and a short walk from the church leads to a wonderful view down to Tardebigge Wharf on the Worcester Birmingham Canal. The wharf later became a BW yard which, during the Second World War, was the mooring of the narrowboat "Cressy", the floating home of the author L T C Rolt. Rolt's account of his travels on the inland waterway network, the book "Narrow Boat", was read by Robert Aikman, and the two arranged to meet aboard "Cressy".

Near here there is a plaque that commemorates their meeting in 1945 and their subsequent founding of the Inland Waterways Association. Years of work by the IWA changed the attitude to canals from "stinking ditches that should be filled in" to "national assets that should be preserved and restored". http://wikimapia.org/4111043/Tardebigge-Wharf

Headington, Oxford

St Andrew’s Church

Some parts of the church date from the twelfth century, and it is thought to have been established by Hugh de Pluggenait, who was Lord of the Manor of Headingon from1142 to 1201; but there was probably already a small Saxon building on this site.

The chancel arch and part of the chancel are the oldest remaining parts, dating from Norman times but as I was there early in the morning, the church was locked so I couldn’t see them!



The present tower was not completed until c.1500, and the south porch was added in 1598.



There is a much restored 15th century cross in the graveyard.