PUTTING HIGHCLERE ON THE MAP

 

Further refinement of my massing models of Hampshire churches. Two churches here. On the right is my second pass at St Michael, Highclere.  A snapshot from the map shows that this was built just outside the Highclere estate, on the road leading to the village. You can also see that the village has doubled in size since 1900.  Highclere Castle is located in the middle of the park, facing North (which is downhill) with woodland and lakes along the northern edge and the entrance road meandering down the hill towards the entrance gates to the North-West.

There are ruins of an earlier church close to the Castle (known to many as the location for the Downton Abbey TV series)  The present church dates from 1870, a classic example of High Victorian Gothic Revival by the celebrated architect George Gilbert Scott who ran a large successful office and founded a family dynasty. He is well known for the wonderful curved frontage of St Pancras Station in London which was my point of arrival in London when travelling from Sheffield in my twenties and a favourite place just a short walk from University College when I as a student.

 

 

As the work progressed I start to realise that I was using too may voids as shown on the top-left image. This is St Mary & St John the Baptist, Newtown, at first glance very similar to Highclere. But here the dominant tower with Broach Spire is placed at the West end, doubling as an entrance porch, whereas Scott places his similar tower at the junction of chancel and nave. Both churches have a triplet of lancet openings at the belfry level of the tower, louvred to reject rain while allowing the sound of the bells to ring out towards the village.

The second image shows my folder of source material for Highclere. I have more than 400 hundred folders like this, arranged in  a Hierarchical structure by deanery and benefice.  A lot of work, but it’s starting to come together now as I see churches in context of village and manor house with the ability to compare and contrast the basic design elements.

 

 

 

Second pass of St James the Less, Litchfield and third pass at GG Scott’s church and Highclere.  Rather different in scale and grandeur, but both built with flint walling and plain clay tile roofs.  These are the vernacular materials of the Hampshire downs although thatch was once the main roofing material. I suppose that clay was comparatively rare in the chalk downlands and thatching reeds common in an era of small village settlements.

I think these massing models are probably at about the right level of development now.  I will be able to classify the major elements and make comparisons across larger groups of churches.  I created a family to represent buttresses. Fairly crude, but they do the job.

 

 

A slightly larger snapshot of the Revit map reveals some interesting points. Two iron age hillforts on the high ground that runs across the middle of this image. These are very common in my chosen study area, much more than I had expected.  So the map records history from pre-Roman times to the present day. The Sandham Memorial Chapel at top centre dates to 1926 and was built expressly to house a series of large paintings by Stanley Spencer a controversial artist who painted religious scenes as if they took place in the rural countryside in the top right corner of this image.  The paintings at Sandham are like renaissance frescoes and reference the devastating impact of the First World War on Spencer’s generation.

There are 4 victorian churches here and one each of medieval, Georgian and modern.  This surely represents the impact of the industrial revolution: population and wealth rising together across England.  This is not to suggest that the ordinary people has a fair share in the wealth but landowners and industrialists did feel the need to invest in public goods including churches and often improved housing for workers.  Very different times.

 

Finally I will note the existence of common land, often with shared grazing rights, a hangover from the feudal period before enclosures, dissolution of monasteries and the privatisation of farming land. I remember all this from my schooldays and am trying to update my understanding of the history as I continue the work. Common land could be heath, moorland or marsh. In this case with have rolling hills including Watership Down which inspired the fantasy novel of 1972 later adapted into an animated film.  Looking this up on my phone now it seems that it is both a very effective children’s story with environmental themes and an allegory of the Second World War.

So there we go. Working away in Revit, taking technical decisions, overcoming difficulties, reflecting on the history and geography of an area with centuries of cultural development, millennia in fact when the hillforts are factored in.