St James, Lode

     A few days, last week, with the bf. Tuesday we rolled up in Lode, a village poised between the fen and the chalklands in east Cambridgeshire.  Quite attractive too, but perhaps lacking an identifiable centre.  The parish church is small and Victorian, by an architect that even I haven't heard of before (and I do know some pretty obscure ones) called Major Rohde Hawkins (1821-1884).  Be confused by his name - 'Major' is actually his Christian name, he never served in the British Army. Or any other.

     Anyway the church he built in Lode is a simple affair of aisles nave and chancel.  It is built of clunch, that chalk that can be used as a building stone - quite common in east Cambridgeshire - but is really too variable for exterior work.  Quite a run-of-the-mill building really, the best parts being the timber porch and, inside, the organ case. We weren't, however, there to look at a dim church by relatively obscure Victorian architect. We were there to look the additions made to the church in the 1960s by Sir Albert Richardson for Lord Fairhaven of Anglesey Abbey. The most important is the Lady Chapel.  The outside is box-y, almost devoid of mouldings apart from the Late Gothic windows, and gaunt, like an electricity sub-station.  The masonry is snecked and semi-boasted like that on Richardson's extension at Anglesey Abbey.  Perhaps, I have to say, a little disappointing - though it looks better in my photographs than I remember it.  The inside is, however lucid and calm, somewhat spiritual, with some beautifully detailed fittings, i.e. the pews and the altar rails. It's all spoiled however by a great pile of junk in the back corner - indeed spoiled like the rest of the church by needless clutter. The usual Anglican shamefulness. 

     The other addition is the vestry on the other side of the chancel.  The windows are a particularly beautiful design.  The other things to look for are the inscriptions both inside and outside the church to the Fairheavens, we thought they both were by David Kindersley.

Burwell

   The week before last and our annual trip to Suffolk and lunch at 'The Great House' in Lavenham.  It seems an age ago now. Lunch, by the way, was delicious: Ox cheek and Lentils, Skate, Chocolate Marquise. And that evening our host prepared a scrumptious dinner of fried chicken and a sort of stir fried rice. We were truly spoilt, with a day of good food, good wine and good company.

   On our return journey we stopped off briefly in Lavenham - (apologies for posting, again, images of the Little Hall Museum. I couldn't resist it) - before braving the busy A14.  We had two ports-of-call in east Cambridgeshire before getting home:  Anglesey Abbey and Burwell church. The former was heaving with visitors as it was snowdrop time and also half-term.  It was rather like being in the middle of Cambridge on a Saturday.

   Burwell church was an altogether quieter affair.  A large church, St Mary was rebuilt in the 15th century in a very sophisticated Perpendicular Gothic. There are earlier bits at the west end. The mason is thought to have been Reginald of Ely - some of the motifs in the window tracery match those dating from the first construction period at King's College down the road in Cambridge where Reginald is known to have worked.  The outside is built of flint, although there are a number of flint built churches in east Cambridgeshire very few display flushwork.  I wonder why that is? Anyway inside it's a rather grand affair, perhaps the grandest parochial nave in Cambridgeshire, rather than homely; the nave soaring overhead supported on slim piers of dressed clunch, and light pouring in from every direction through the vast windows.  No expense was spared by the look of it; the walls above the arcades are fully panelled (no inert wall surface at all), and the walls between the immense chancel windows are decorated with oversized image niches. There is a sort of reasonableness to it all, but not much mystery. A delicacy too, an almost brittle quality to the architecture; and the architecture is all, for there are few if any fittings of worth.  A contrast one suspects to the Middle Ages, when colour and fittings would have added, I would hope, that missing sense of mystery.  The church was restored thrice in the 19th century by John Edlin and Blomfield (x2).  I think it must be to Blomfield that the dubious credit goes for the slightly weird green light in the chancel.

 

Holiday VII: St Benet's Abbey and the Ranworth Rood Screen

   On the final full day of our holiday we went west into the Broads.  We parked up at the rather suburban looking South Walsham Broad and walked along the Fleet Dike to see the ruins of St Benet's Abbey.  The remains of abbey were a favourite with Romantic artists such as Cotman, and were included in John Betjeman's 1974 documentary, 'A Passion For Churches', which was as much about Norfolk as it was the diocese of Norwich. (Produced and directed by Edward Mirzoeff, who was also responsible for Betjeman's 'Metro-land' of 1973.) Quite good reasons then for a long, cold muddy trek into the marshes!

     "I hear a deep sad undertow in bells which calls the Middle Ages back to me. From Prime to Compline the monastic hours echo in bells along the windy marsh and fade away. They leave me to the ghosts which seem to look from this enormous sky upon the ruins of a grandeur gone. St Benet's Abbey by the river Bure, now but an arch way and a Georgian mill. A lone memorial of the cloistered life."

   We then stopped off at the 'Fairhaven Woodland and Water Gardens', the creation of Major Henry Boughton.  Major Boughton was the younger brother of the 1st Lord Fairhaven, who lived at Anglesey Abbey in Cambridgeshire mentioned elsewhere in this blog and where the bf works.

   Our final visit of the day was to Ranworth and one of the great pieces of English late Medieval art, the Ranworth Rood Screen.  I'm tempted to call it a prime example, along with the Despencer Retable, of the 1st Norwich School; certainly it was painted locally.  The importance lies not only in its design but that so many of the painted panels survived the Reformation in such good nick.  A marvel.

Wednesday III Anglesey Abbey cont'd

   Finally got back to blogging.

   I had hoped to write all I wanted about Anglesey Abbey in one post, but I thought it would make it over long.
   First some history.  Anglesey Abbey, like Swaffham Prior sits of the edge of the fens, in a rather unregarded if not forgotten piece of Cambridgeshire.  There was not an abbey at Anglesey, but there was an Augustinian priory, and the house contains some pieces of the conventual buildings in its fabric.  More of that anon.  Although founded in the later Middle Ages, it does follow an more ancient Anglo-Saxon tradition of monastic settlements in, or on the edge of, the fens in an avowed attempt to emulate the Egyptian Desert Fathers.

   There seems a little confusion in the sources with the early history of the Priory: Buildings of England stating it was on the go in 1212, the RCHMS saying it was founded in 1236.  You choose. Anyway it must have been a quiet unremarkable place.  Nothing seems to have happened there, and it was dissolved in the 1530s.  Around 1600 the site was acquired by Thomas Hobson, and the Elizabethan wing constructed from the remains of a medieval building.

   And so it continued its uneventful life until it became the residence of Lord Fairhaven between the World Wars.  He was immensely rich, single, and spent his time and money filling the house and park with good things - as though the long process of generations of a landed family had to crammed into one hectic lifetime.  There is a huge collection of paintings.  A lot of these are arranged according to theme:  one bedroom has moonlit landscapes, another seascapes, a third room is full of views of Windsor Castle.  These themes even influence the choice of object in each room: the seascape room even has a doorstop in the form of a 'Jolly Jack Tar'.  He liked religious art too, and had a taste for plants made from semi-precious stone and metal.  Of the paintings I was particularly struck by the oil sketches/studies by William Etty (all nudes).  Although there are a female nudes on display I was inclined to say that Lord Fairhaven's appreciation was more inclined to the male.  As I said before there was a definite Hollywood feel to the house, a lavishness (there are plenty of en suite bathrooms) that belies the smallness and intimacy of most of the house and gives it the air of a schatzkammer.  A secret, precious box of a house.

   Apologies for the photography.  I couldn't use a flash so my camera refused to co-operate!  Here is what I managed.

 This corridor, and its counterpart below, fill the 'gap' between the medieval wing (L) and the Elizabethan (R).

   The Library. Patrician, aloof Neo-Georgian.  An almost Baroque surprise after the over-bearing intimacy of the earlier house. A place to breathe.

   This is the dining room in the medieval wing of the house.  It is thought that this formed the undercroft of the Prior's hall on the floor above.  All the stone work looks reworked.

   Outside I noticed, and liked, these sculptures: