CHURCH VISITS CATCHUP

More images of St Bartholomew's, Arborfield. I'm actually back in Dubai as I write this. Slowly coming round from jetlag and general exhaustion. It's always interesting to make that sudden transition between different climates and cultures.

In my last post I suggested that the chimney served a fireplace in the Vestry, but checking more carefully it could be from a boiler in the basement accessed by external steps. There is no evidence of pipework and radiators, but that could have been removed long ago. There are overhead radiant heaters now at the junction of wall and ceiling.

Mostly carpeted now, but the original floor tiling is still visible in the chancel. Typical geometric patterns and colours. We used to call these quarry tiles and they were commonly found in the kitchens of old terraced housing, laid directly on a bed of coarse sand or blast-furnace slag.

 

I like to find areas where the construction is revealed. Timber lathe providing kek for lime plaster. Like the floor tiles this is very familiar to me from my days as a jobbing builder in Sheffield in my twenties.

The north wall of the vestry is moving away at one corner. Could be the thrust of the rafters or maybe water-related settlement from the downpipe at that corner. A crack measuring device has been placed to record change over time. "Watchful waiting" as my oncologist might say.

 

 

Church no 3 from last Saturday in UK. All Saints Swallowfield. This one is medieval with a complex history of alterations & additions (par for the course.)  There is a Norman core, including a splendid North doorway, no longer in use and superseded by a timber-framed south porch. I take this to signify a change from the main entrance facing the lord of the Manor to one that faces the village.

 

The bell tower is also a later edition and timber framed with brick infill. Quite distinctive in its form and to my eye attractive in its idiosyncrasy. The rest of the church is flint faced with stone trim. Plain tile roof, typically Hampshire. Some delightful carved stone detail ranging from the chevrons around the old door, to modestly voluptuous window tracery, and a sun dial projecting out at an angle.  Attempting to come closer to a true south-facing orientation I guess. Not sure why the original church was almost 30 degrees off the traditional East-West alignment. Maybe a reason will emerge over time.  It’s almost at right angles to the river and to the road, but why would that matter?

 

There is a floor grille running down the central aisle (heating pipes, defunct?) which will please my friend David Wood. Not easy to spot on these images. One puzzle though. I didn’t spot a chimney, or any access down to a basement boiler. The grill is Victorian looking, so surely coal-fired.  Maybe the flue was capped off? Seems a bit odd.

Anyway another successful image-gathering session for an intriguing old church. One more to come from that day with my long-time friends from Reading.  A hearty thanks to them.

 

LIVERPOOL 1 - READING 2

St Mary Shinfield, the shining fields of the flooded river Loddon. First of four churches I visited with my good friends from Reading, to conclude this visit to my future Basingstoke home. Early start to catch a bus and a train, then zipping around by car. 

The church has a very dodgy-looking squat brick tower. The medieval tower was blown up by parliamentarians during the English civil war and the replacement seems to have been hastily and shabbily thrown together. All the same it’s full of character, wrinkled and scarred like the skin of an old pirate.

 

The rest of the church is a bit of a mish-mash also, several different materials and styles jumbled up in an ad-hoc manner. The effect is not unpleasant if you have a taste for the picturesque. Obviously do, although I'm up for a bit of Palladian, cool symmetry at times also. Takes all types, and it's part of the wonder of a deep historical perspective that you begin to see the value of multiple disparate viewpoints.

 

 

We couldn’t get inside, but pressing phone to glass was quite an effective substitute. It seems to be well loved, as do many of these village churches in my study area. Clearly it holds a different place in a different society compared to its medieval origins, but the continuity of use and meaning is no small thing. We all reinvent the world as we stumble through life, but it makes more sense, to me at least, if we are connected to a long thread that weaves itself into the fabric of human history.

 

The second of four churches from Saturday was Victorian Gothic Revival. Better in real life than photography suggests, I'm not sure why. The architect was from Liverpool where he designed mostly commercial buildings in classical/italianate modes.

What brought him down South to try his hand at church design? Strictly speaking the first three churches are in Berkshire, an archdeaconry under the bishop of Oxford, hence the codes. OB72A = St Bartholomew's Arborfield. As you can see, it's on the opposite side of the Loddon Valley as it winds North-East from its source in Basingstoke to meet up with the Thames, just to the East of Reading

 

The spire is all stone, the roof tiles polychrome. The window tracery subtly varied with hood mouldings terminating in crockets. As usual you can spot, the  vestry by it's chimney. Some comfort for the vicar while dressing in winter.

The architect's name was James Picton. He started in his father's business at 13, absorbing the world of a joiner and timber merchant before entering an architect's office, eventually taking over that business and entering the world of local politics, influential in the establishment of Liverpool Central Library by act of parliament in 1852. 

 

 

BUS TRIP KING

 

Did my bus trip today. I think there is only time for one this trip. Took the no 32 heading for Newbury and got off at Kingsclere. The church was wonderful, deserves a separate post. I wanted to walk around the village a bit but needed a sit down and a toilet break so I treated myself to a latte and a goats cheese toastie. Good to get a feel for the locals also. Couple of nice dogs.

I always love an old oak-framed house with walls at crazy angles to the vertical. This one has the cantilevered upper floor also. What I know as "jettying" a term that spellcheck abhors.

By way of contrast a decidedly Georgian entrance porch. Well proportioned Tuscan columns and a shallow dentil course. Topped off with substantial lead flashings.

Finally, a house built in header bond with blue bricks. String course and quoins in soft red bricks and reverting to English Bond. The whole thing is unusual. You would expect the stronger brick on the corners and header bond is mostly found in curved walls. Nothing wrong here but it leaves me wondering if there was a rationale for these choices.

I couldn't see it.

 

St Mary's Kingsclere. I shared my first-pass massing model of this church a couple of weeks ago. It's still substantially Norman with a later chancel. I bumped into a a local guy while photographing the timber frame house posted yesterday. He suggested the church has been spoilt by later renovations.

I didn't quite understand this at first but having bought the relevant Pevsner guide on the way back, it starts to make sense. "The Flint-faced exterior is the result of ferocious restoration by Thomas Hellyer in 1848" Apparent old drawings show an ashlar exterior, similar to the interior finish.

The carved chevrons and crosses around the round entrance arches are original and typically Norman. The tower parapet is not. The Perpendicular window is from the South transept which has been arranged as a small chapel with modern seating. The stained glass is a nativity triptych.

So a very fruitful visit but many layers of this onion still await.

 

Interior views of St Mary, Kingsclere. The crossing is ashlar stone finish, but the nave walls are plastered. I'm guessing that the original finish in say 1150 was bare stone throughout.

The organ balcony must be fairly modern. The door up to this area was locked. Some might say that this whole wooden insertion is out of place but I quite enjoy the quirkyness of it in contrast to the cold, stark Norman geometry. Then there's the carpet, the heating system(s) and the electric lighting.

Imagine how many human beings have contributed to this building over the centuries, from monks and masons to 19th century architects and 20th century subbies. It's a complete hodge-podge in a way, but also quite magnificent as a living testament to English history and culture. Somehow a memory of the Norman era lives on here, and embellished at regular intervals en-route to modernity and beyond.

 

Wolverton was the last stop on my bus trip on Monday. It was a bit of a walk uphill from the bus stop, along a country lane and past a gate lodge to the high ground where the church is built. A very different location compared to Kingsclere. No sign of a village, no mower keeping the churchyard neatly cropped, no coffee shop across the street, no other humans in sight, no entry into the church interior.

It's an odd building. The tower is quite splendid but out of proportion to the rest of the church which has been very strangely altered by insensitive hands over the years. Once again Pevsner talks of the nave as a "re-casing" and implies this was done by a builder without architectural oversight. The tower is from 1717, so contemporary with Hawksmoor's London churches.

 

He talks of a medieval timber roof to the nave, so it seems this was a Gothic church. Perhaps there was no tower or maybe it collapsed. But I'm guessing this was the first element to acquire an English Baroque character, guided by a now forgotten architect. Then we are left to imagine the nave being recased some time later in matching brick, but without the architect's input and further modified in Victorian times.

From one corner of the graveyard you can glimpse the Georgian mansion through the trees, with rolling parkland all around in stark contrast to the neglected churchyard. I'm thinking of Mr and Mrs Pevsner towing their little caravan up the lane. She putting the kettle on while he roams the churchyard scribbling furiously in his notebook.

A far cry from my lone bus trip with Samsung Note in a shoulder bag. Or is it?

 

COMPARATIVE METHOD

 

The first 17 church models set up for comparison. This is where the decision to create these in the family environment comes into it's own. Lightweight and taggable, laid out in a grid, they will update as further refinements are made. They can be scheduled as data fields are added and populated.

 

 

So much still to be done, but you can start to see where this is going. Can I classify them in various ways. Type and position of bell tower /turret. Single cell/double cell /cruciform. Aisles or not. Porch, Vestry. Main material for roofing and walls.

 

 

They are already tagged by period /style and name of architect if applicable. But some of those groupings could be more precise, although this is tricky for the medieval work which is almost always phased over three or four centuries, with some early English remnants and a couple of perpendicular /Tudor windows elsewhere in the fabric.

For now I just need to crack on I think. But this was useful to get an overview of progress.

 

Entrances, old and new. I always enjoy catching the building process half-way through. I think it's taught me at least as much as reading books, even the ones crammed with section details. My advice to students when I used to teach was "keep your eyes open and ask probing questions. Why was it built like that? What is the sequence of trades? Can you hold it in your mind's eye and make a sketch when you get home?"

It's great to see a porch addition making the effort to match the house. Not the only way to approach the problem, but probably the right one in this case. I love the plinth bricks at the transition from brick and a half pier to sturdy timber post. Notice how the door has taken a bit of weathering over the years.

The stone capping over 3 brick pier in English Bond at the entrance to the War Memorial Park always catches my eye. Is this all one piece? Quite a mighty lump!

Finally the wooden fence and gate. Oak? Pretty chunky, classical in spirit and making a nod to masonry with the keystone motif. Is that fakery? Should we get all moralistic? I think not. For me it's just so much fun to come across all this variety and skilled craftsmanship on my daily exercise routines.