St George, Stamford I

      Before I moved west one of the minor projects of this blog was to visit and document all the Medieval parish churches in Stamford. At the time only one remained 'unblogged': St George (if you exclude the remains of St Paul's church which now forms part of the chapel of Stamford School).  Whereas the other medieval churches in Stamford are open daily, St George's rarely seems to be open outside service time.  I'm tempted to ascribe this to the parish's evangelicalism I'm not sure that would be an entirely fair assumption.

     St George's is small, and low - in both senses of the word.  It barely makes any impression on that wonderful Stamford skyline as seen from the Meadows.  There are probably those totally unaware of the church's existence, its presence being so unassuming.  It stands, the shy focal point of an irregular urban space called St George's Square that is lined with some really delicious houses.  The churches of St Mary, and All Saints stand in similar urban contexts and form some of the best architectural ensembles in Stamford.
      The exterior of St George's is the work of four building campaigns (there is older work inside).  Sometime in the midst of the 15th century church was rebuilt under the patronage of the first Gatrer King of Arms William de Bruges. The curious tower a mixture of the Medieval and the late 17th century, and in the nineteenth century there were two restorations.  The first under Edward Browning rebuilt the chancel and added the w porch and in the second J C Traylen enlarged the structure (those transept-like outer aisles).  Thankfully both architects working with the Perpendicular style of medieval church.

St Mary, Stamford

     The fourth in my occasional series on the medieval churches of Stamford, and I ought, immediately, to lay my cards on the table.  This is my favourite church in Stamford; not so much for the architecture - I think the best over all church is St Michael's - but because it belongs to the Anglican tradition I find the most comfortable; Anglo-Catholicism.

     Not that the architecture of St Mary's is in any way substandard.  The tower (EE) and spire (Dec) are quite superb, helped by its position rising abruptly from the street at the crest of St Mary's Hill.  They look wonderful from any angle but the view from below, say standing on the Town Bridge, is imposing. Perhaps St Mary's is the most urban of all the churches in Stamford for it has no graveyard on its n side, and the one it has is small and surrounded by tall and architecturally significant buildings. A delightful spot, St Mary's Place.

     The interior also possesses that less tangible, not so easy to achieve quality of the numinous - something my photographs singularly fail to capture. (Alas!) Clutter is, thankfully, down to a minimum, but is always something to be on one's guard against. The fittings contribute enormously to this sense of the sacred for they are mainly the design of a great Arts and Crafts master, the now largely forgotten, John Dando Sedding. The rood screen, alas unfinished, the parclose screens and choir stalls and the High Altar are all by him, as is the decoration of the chancel roof.  The quality of the work is excellent.  The church had already by then undergone a series of 19th century restorations including one by Edward Browning, 'restoring' the chancel in 1860 and installing the present e window and ceiling.  To the n of the chancel is the 'Golden Chapel' with a wooden barrel vault given by William Hikham and his wife in the early 1480s, at the time when the church was undergoing an extensive rebuild in the Perp style. The chapel, I think, may have belonged to the Guild of the Corpus Christi, though the Guild of St Mary was based in the church too and Hikman was a member of the Guild of St Katherine.  The font is sadly rather tucked away in a corner near the s door, but I presume its position would make perfect sense if the main entrance was still the s porch and not the north door.

Addendum 31.08.23 I didn't know when writing this post that the dossal curtain behind the High Altar was designed by the great 20th century church architect Sir John Ninian Comper.

All Saints, Stamford

     Across Red Lion Square from St John's church stands All Saints.  It's appearance, like St John's is of Perpendicular gothic; the nave appears low and spreading, even a little workmanlike as sometimes Perp can be, next to the spectacular, assertive, tower and spire.  There is a element of fantasy too about both porches: the S spiky with buttresses and a huge ogee hoodmould, the N like a miniature castle from an illuminated manuscript has suddenly sprung into 3D. Charming.  Uniquely the base of the E, S & W walls is arcaded - EE along the E &S, Perp on the W.  The culminative effect is of something a little beyond the ordinary.
     Inside is spacious but oddly cave like as though it is partly hollowed out of the sloping ground, but perhaps we shouldn't be too surprised as All Saints was restored by Edward Browning in 1857, though the reredos and the septum (exotically made of Mexican onyx) are by T Treadway Hansom and date from the 1870s, and as at Uffington and Clipsham Browning was good at producing richly decorated cave like spaces.  Church as schatzkammer.  All Saints in comparison to those two smaller churches is not so successful.  It lacks the numinous. Perhaps the budget was not large enough or the scale of the building too big for his talents to come fully into play. For whatever reason in all a bit worldly, and I think it would be fair to say that the interior of All Saints has been ill-served by conventional Anglican taste. Sometimes Protestant use sits ill in a medieval catholic shell. Still there are things to look out for: the fine EE arcade in the nave and the capitals in the chancel; the Late Gothic ceiling of the south chapel; the  brasses to the Browne family, very rich from the wool trade, who paid for the Perp rebuilding of the church as well as founding Browne's Hospital in Broad St, and, I think, Stamford School.

     William Stukeley, the antiquarian, was the parish priest here in the 18th century.

St John the Baptist, Stamford

      When a child I was told Stamford was remarkable, not only because it was beautiful, a bit posh, but because it straddled 3/4 counties (depending on what county the Soke of Peterborough was then annexed to) and had six churches.  Walking round Stamford its quite easy to be taken up with the town's Georgian aspect, however those six churches take us right back to the Middle Ages in a way that is often difficult in towns of equal antiquity with the exception perhaps of York and Norwich. Medieval urbanism, to me at least has a sort of intensity of vision, an element of the fantastical that is deeply satisfying.

      St John's church is quite small, but has a quiet, workman-like grandeur - it was all rebuilt sometime in the Late Middle Ages and is hence all one consistent style - Perp.  It is tucked away at one corner of Red Lion Square, diagonally opposite the grander All Saints church, and mostly hidden behind the buildings in the High St. The design of the tower is very good, and I like the solidity of the west front with its layering and the way that the west door is hewn from the mass of masonry reminding me of the west front of St Martin's across the Welland. In fact by comparing the images on my blogpost on St Martin's I will make so bold as to suggest both churches are by the same master mason. There is a pretty little south porch that looks like an addition to the original design, that gives access to a small, secluded graveyard. The plan is very simple - a basilica with a chancel projecting one bay east.  The tower is tucked into the NW corner, and somehow that saves the interior of St John's from being too rational an experience, the tower base serving as a sort of halfway, or indeed liminal space, between the outside and the sacred interior.  The piers, I think, follow an East Anglian pattern - they certainly put me in mind of the simpler piers at South Creake in Norfolk.  The nave roof is populated with angels, but as to Medieval furnishings there is some glass left in three of the windows (N aisle), and there are wooden parclose screens remaining in both aisles, but everything else has been lost. There are a lot of wall memorials, mostly Georgian and early Victorian and classical.  The church was restored in 1856 by Edward Browning, who we have encountered many times on this blog.

      St John's is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.