St Laurence, Bradford on Avon

    St Laurence's church is a remarkable and special survival, a virtually intact late Anglo-Saxon church. The first sight of which was, for me at least, deeply moving, partly because it is, for the first time visitor, just a little unexpected.

     It was thought for a long time that St Laurence was a survival from the monastery founded by St Aldhelm of Malmesbury c700. The Medieval chronicler William of Malmesbury certainly thought so. However, on stylistic grounds, this is now thought to be unlikely. Instead is is suggested that the building dates from about 1000, and may have been built to house, temporarily, the remains of King Edward the Martyr. It is known that in 1001 King Athelred granted the monastery to the nuns of Shaftesbury, refugees from the Vikings; which suggests that St Aldhelm's original foundation had fallen into abeyance. So perhaps I wasn't indulging in wishful thinking in my post about Holy Trinity church after all; perhaps both churches did indeed once share the same sacred enclosure.

    It is likely that St Laurence's continued in use into the Middle Ages for William of Malmesbury noted in his Gesta Pontificium 'Et est ad hunc diem eo loci (sc Bradeford) Ecclesiola quam ad nomen beatissimi Laurentii fecisse predicatur Aldemus'. It eventually became an ossuary before its location was lost. And then, as I have said in my post on the parish church it was discovered by the then vicar (and antiquary), William Henry Jones, leading to its restoration in the 1870s. A remarkable story all told. You can read his account here.

     Whatever the actual reason for the construction of this church it does indeed, it has to be said, look like a medieval reliquary with its pitched roof and decorative band of arches. Finely executed in ooltic limestone ashlar it is not the sort of thing that one necessarily associates (however erroneously) with the 'Dark Ages'; the quality of the design and execution, suggest royal patronage. Helen Gitos in 'Liturgy, Architecture, and Sacred Places in Anglo-Saxon England' suggests that the arcading may have originally decorated with the martyr's passio. An attractive idea. The building bears its scars; the west wall is a Victorian reconstruction and it's possible to trace the positions of former windows etc inserted into the fabric when it was converted to secular use.  The plan, which is very close to that of Bishopstone in Sussex, is roughly cruciform: a tall nave with projecting chancel to the E and two porch/chapels to N & S. The south one was demolished at some point. Such a chapel/porch is called a 'porticus', and appears to have had a variety of functions in the Anglo-Saxon church - in some instances they served as burial places. I am particularly intrigued by the 'broken off' decoration in the end gable of the N porticus. Was there more, something lost? The interior is numinous and holy. Church as cave.  As you can see from my photographs there is a great sense of verticality; the doors for instance are narrow and tall. Above the chancel arch is the remains of a great Rood of which only the attendant angels remain.

      It is so very tempting to speculate about the decoration and the liturgy originally employed in this church. The building seems to encourage it. It's easy to get carried away, to imagine, say, the Gospel book and Holy Communion being brought out in procession to the faithful through the chancel arch as 'epiphanies', as projections of the divine into the secular as represented by the nave; to envisage the use of liturgical fans and byzantine textiles. Both of which are known to have been in use in Anglo-Saxon England. (08.04.2022 I've recently found out that some Anglo-Saxon vestments, eg stoles, were fringed with tiny bells, adding another layer of auditory richness and complexity to services) As for the liturgy - which form of Roman Rite? And what chant? 'Old Roman' or that new-fangled 'Gregorian'? Whatever happened this church feels a long, long way from a Modern church, as represented by the contemporary ordering of the parish church across the street, let alone a Medieval one. It feels closer to Orthodoxy.

Holy Trinity, Bradford on Avon

     The churches of St Laurence and Holy Trinity sit low down by the river Avon and are separated from each other by the seriously attractive Church St. The churches could almost hold hands they are so close. That first visit in all an intense experience. The beauty almost too good to be true. I'd like to think that in the deep past when the church of St Laurence formed part of an Anglo-Saxon monastic complex founded by St Aldhelm it shared space with the predecessor of Holy Trinity; and that at the ending of the monastery the umbilical link between both churches was severed, St Laurence was secularised and Holy Trinity, being the parish church was rebuilt and enlarged so that now it is by far the larger of the two buildings. Alas, that may be wishful thinking, things being a little more complicated than they first appear.

    Holy Trinity stands on the north side of a long, thin lens of churchyard separating the church from the river; to the north it stands hard against Church St. There is a business-like west tower with blunt spire, a north aisle which is rather fine, but there is no corresponding aisle on the south (not matter what Pevsner implies in the Wiltshire edition of 'The Buildings of England'). The contrast between north and south sides couldn't be more telling or more interesting, for the north is in all a piece, competent Late Gothic, and south, though obviously rebuilt, is a palimpsest of styles, with projecting porch and transeptal chapel. In origin that S nave wall must be Norman (see the windows).

     The interior is surprisingly spacious but, rather like the tower, it's business-like. Not a place for the numinous. Sad to say. I'd  even go so far as to say it is somewhat forgettable. What I do remember are the large number of memorials in the church, the grandest being in the chancel - some in need of a clean. And there is the n aisle  arcade. It is is mainly Victorian - those scrolls! Originally the aisle was divided into chapels by solid walls, so the effect now is very different from that intended. According to Pevsner the arcade is the work of [John Elkington] Gill (never heard of him) and dates from 1864. Previously in 1858 the great Sir George Gilbert Scott himself had been called in an advisory role. The Vicar  of Bradford at the time was William Henry Jones, 1817-1885. He was also an antiquary and it was he who discovered the church of St Lawrence hidden in plain sight as it were among later buildings. His brother was Samuel Flood Jones who was a member of the Chapter of Westminster Abbey.

     In writing this post I began to suspect that the church had undergone a Tractarian restoration at that time, influenced by such restorations undertaken in the weaving communities of the Cotswolds particularly by Tom Keble, vicar of Bisley and brother of John Keble. However the current re-ordering has been so radical that it was hard to tell from my photographs what had happened way back in the midst of the nineteenth century. It was only via an internet search that I found evidence of what was done and what was lost in the process. Judging by what I found that  restoration was a pretty thorough-going process, just as radical in its way as what has recently occurred, with the destruction of a west gallery and organ and the removal of two interesting looking post-Reformation plaster ceilings. Both nave and chancel now have attractive wooden barrel vaults that deserve to be coloured and gilded. So perhaps no great loss.  About the aesthetic and spiritual qualities of the current thorough-going re-ordering the least said the better, but what the hell. My heart lies with with the previous states of the church. It could be argued that the current re-ordering is just another example of a series of discontinuities that the church has suffered. And that is true but it cannot be used as a justification for such far reaching changes; neither is it an excuse for something quite so banal. 

 

Bradford on Avon

     On the second full day of our trip to Bath we headed off to the station and caught the next train to Bradford on Avon. A mere fifteen minutes away. Trains are every half hour and it is a journey I would recommend if you're holidaying in Bath. (I'd also recommend 'Pablo's Tapas' where we had lunch!)

     In the late seventies and early eighties the English architectural historian Alec Clifton Taylor presented three series (each of six episodes) on the architecture of English towns for the BBC. A different town in each episode. They were excellent. Just the sort of thing that the BBC was then very good at. Alas, I don't think the same can be said today. These half-hour documentaries can be occasionally found on YouTube, but usually disappear again; I think for copyright reasons. I suspect the BBC is very assiduous in that. However these programmes are really worth looking out for. Anyway Bradford on Avon appeared in series 2 which was broadcast in the Autumn of 1981. And I suppose it was seeing that particular episode on YouTube a year or so ago that put the idea in head when we decided to visit Bath.

     Bradford is not large, (pop 9,000+); the centre in particular is very small - a tight knot of narrow streets that suffers a lot from through traffic. An important river crossing that was once over looked by a hill-fort, high on the hill to the N above the town. In Late Saxon times Bradford was the site of a monastery. So a place of some considerable history. There isn't much town on the southern bank of the Avon but on the north it creeps up that steep hillside to the Budbury plateau in a series of long parallel lines of old stone houses that once housed weavers. This was once a manufacturing town, and down on the valley floor were a series of great woollen mills. The architecture in all is very like what I was used to living in south Lincolnshire - ooltic limestone, ranging from pale grey to warm ochre, and stone slate roofs. Both Kesteven and Bradford are at either end of the Limestone Belt that weaves its way through England roughly SW to NE. What interested me in Bradford were the remarkable group of Baroque houses, somewhat similar to the ones on Bath, and the two medieval churches. One of which, St Lawrence, really is something special, of national importance.

     You know, as I upload these pictures I feel I haven't really done Bradford on Avon justice. Alas we didn't see Bradford Hall, which is the second building in the town of national importance, or the the tithe barn. Or the long terraces of of weavers houses that climb the hillside and that bear such evocative names as 'Top Rank Tory'. In places the narrowness of the streets and lack of pavement meant it was next to impossible, on a normal week day, to take photographs. Perhaps another time.

        English Baroque of the local type at Westbury House 

        The Old Church House, now Wallington Hall. Late Medieval church hall. 

     Houses in Church St. Particularly admire the combination of stone walls and yew hedging