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.
