St Pancras New Church

      St Pancras New Church stands at the busy junction of Upper Woburn Place and the Euston Rd.  Very chaotic and noisy.  The west front now faces a large Neo-Georgian office block* (not bad in itself), but when built, the church overlooked the southern half of Euston Square.  (Sadly, that whole s half of the square was built over between the Wars.)  To the s, where the Bartlett School of Planning and the Memoir Club (a Hotel) stand, there was originally a small group of stucco villas. Not what one expect to see south of the Euston Rd

     I should at this point, I suppose, address the name of the church.  The church was built to serve the spiritual needs of the newly urbanised southern part of the vast and ancient parish of St Pancras.  St Pancras Old Church, which is some 3/4 mile north north east of the new, is the original parish church, around which a number of traditions have accrued, such as a Roman origin.  None of these claims, however, are supported by any evidence.  After consecration by the Bishop of London in 1822 it became the parish church and the Old Church reduced to the status of Chapel of Ease. Since then the original parish has been split up.  The Old church is the centre of the Parish of Old St Pancras and St Matthew and the New church the Parish of St Pancras and Euston.

    The church, and Woburn Lodge, the northernmost of that group of demolished villas, are the work of father and son William and Henry Inwood.  The church is in a monumental Greek Revival style with crisp ashlar masonry.  The order is Ionic, based on that of the Erechthion on the Athenian Acropolis.  The plan follows what was by then a long established Anglican form 'The Basilica after the Ancients', particularly as developed by James Gibbs at St Martin in the Fields, that is a with both a temple front and a west tower.  A bit weak that tower.  The east end is more complex and stranger still.  Where to begin?  Perhaps with the central apse.  I hardly need to say that Ancient Greek architecture did not use the apse.  This one has attached Ionic columns.  And then there are vestries, copies of the famous caryatid porch of the Erecththion.   Because the porches also contain entrances to the crypt, the sculptor of the caryatids, Charles Rossi, departed from the design of the originals to carry inverted torches and water jugs to symbolise mourning and death, while behind, lurking, silent and remote in the shadows, are sarcophagi.  It is all very sculptural, the east end, so that the overall effect is not so far from the English Baroque of Hawksmoor and Vanbrugh.         Unsurprisingly the church has been the subject to much criticism and ridicule over the years.  For me the main criticism is that it just doesn't rise to the occasion.  The detailing is very good, but the location just demands something bolder.

     The interior too disappoints, but in a different manner.  There is a towering octagonal narthex under the tower, but the nave is just one enormous room, daunting, cold, and lacking the numinous.  The ceiling is anti-climactic; again something bolder is required. Where is the 'mysterium tremendum et fascinans'?
      No furnishings of note either, certainly nothing to match the scale of the interior, some fine monuments though.  The most interesting feature are the columns (cast iron?) that support the gallery.  I think Charles Holden added the current columns in the apse, when he designed a new High Altar in 1914, but I may be wrong.

* 'Nettlefold House', 1928, by George Vernon (1870-1942).  As office and showroom for the architectural ironmongers Nettlefold & Son.

St Paul, Plasmarl & St Peter, Newton: Part I

This post, both text and photos, was created just before the second lockdown.  The plan was write a single post on both the churches.  Plans have changed.  I hope to write a post on St Peter's soon.

     A study in contrast this, and two churches by that prolific Late Victorian Welsh architecture Edward Bruce Vaughan (1856-1919), who until moving to Wales I had not heard of. Bruce Vaughan was based in Cardiff and specialised in ecclesiastical work, designing some 45 churches in Glamorgan alone.  According 'The Buildings of Wales' he built eight churches in Swansea.  All, I suspect. of quarry faced masonry.
     Every time I head into town I pass this sad sight, St Paul, Plasmarl.  It stands at the southern end of the main street in Plasmarl, Neath Rd, hard by a busy roundabout. I rather love this church, which is all rather Bodley-esque with some interesting 'free-style' detailing.  The placing of the octagonal bell tower is masterly. Alas as you can see the whole thing is beginning to give way to ruin.  The people of Plasmarl deserve better.  Since I wrote those words three years ago now, the deterioration has continued.  The top stage of the tower has begun to tilt to the north and large cracks have opened up in the masonry.  All is Ichabod.

St Peter & St Paul, Weobley

     Last Monday, on our return from Worcestershire, we stopped briefly in Weobley - a large, remarkable village rich in half-timbered buildings even by the standards of Herefordshire.  our destination was, however, the parish church, St Peter & Paul.  

     The setting is quite perfect, standing slightly removed on the northern edge of the village and reached by a narrow lane - no footpaths but grass verges rich in foxgloves and cow parsley.  Ahead is the remarkable steeple.  A landmark, visible for miles, an exclamation mark in the border country, prominent rather in the manner of a tower in East Anglia.  The success lies not only in its height - when all the neighbouring churches are rather lowly affairs, but in the contrast of elegant spire, with, in the Herefordshire manner, lucarnes at its base, and large spiky pinnacles, and the austere, windowless tower.  The combined effect is very monumental, even aloof, and quite extraordinary.  I can't think of anything that comes close.

     The church itself is large and complex.  Rather impressive. Somewhat picturesque.  Impressive w front with Geometric Decorated w window w door.  The latter enriched with ball flower.  All very Herefordshire.  Quite a bit of Victorian work too.  The interior is also complex, but to be honest, a disappointment.  Whatever the merits of the architecture, all I can now recall is the way the building is being treated.  Like the City of Rome after the fall of the Western Empire.  Clutter everywhere.  Sadly none of the liturgical furnishings, whether Victorian or contemporary, are commensurate with the architecture.  The monuments, happily, are better, the best being the worldly Baroque monument to Colonel John Birch. 

Own work: San Pietro della Immagini

     Have sort of finished this, the façade of the Sardinian Romanesque church of San Pietro della Immagini - St Peter of the Images.  The images being a Deposition group of polychromatic sculptures that was once housed in the church.  St Peter's is situated in the small town of Bulzi. Not really that happy with it, but I can't honestly see a way forward.  

City of London II

       From St Mary Woolnoth I walked down Lombard St hoping to get into St Edmund.  It was sadly closed, so I thought I'd shuffle over to Leadenhall Market.  The photograph below is of the main entrance of 24-28 Lombard St of 1910, by Gunton & Gunton (?) opposite to St Edmund's.  The other two photos are of the side elevation of The Royal Exchange, by Sir William Tite.

     From Cornhill and for the first time in decades I took a London bus. intending to get off at Chancery Lane, but instead got off at Holborn Circus - one those half-hearted English attempts - like Corporation St in Birmingham - at some Parisian urbanism.  One of those non-places that now haunt the cities and larger towns of Britain.  A desultory and unforgiveable piece of work by the planners.  

     Just by the viaduct is another Wren church, St Andrew's Holborn.  It was not destroyed in the Great Fire, but is a rebuilding of the Medieval church some twenty years later (the tower is partially Late Gothic).  A large church - Wren's largest (?) - basilican in plan with short projecting chancel.  Fine plasterwork in the spandrels above the gallery arcade, somewhere between Mannerism and the Baroque. In the 18th century stained glass depicting the Last Supper and the Resurrection, by Joshua Price, was inserted into the e window and the panels on either side were painted with saints.  Restoration in the 1870s by Teulon, of all people, removed the organ case.  After the War it was restored by Seely and Paget.  Recent work by DaeWhaKang won award a RIBA award, not entirely sure why. Baptistry left feeling abandoned and unloved (and very cold).

     In all rather worldly.  Lacking perhaps the (mild) mystery of both St Mary-le-Bow and St Mary Woolnoth.

     The High Tory Henry Sacheverell was rector here in the 18th century.

     A walk up Holborn followed.  A rather work-a-day bit of London, but with some interesting architecture: the half-timbered Staple Inn, and almost opposite Alfred Waterhouse's blood red Holborn Bars (aka Prudential Assurance Building).  Extraordinary Gothic Revival building 1876-1901.  Very Northern - would not be out of place in Hamburg or Lübeck.

 Diversion up Brooke St to St Albans Holborn.  And - delight - the church was open.  It was my first visit. Originally built by William Butterfield.  Slum parish with extreme liturgical experimentation. Eventually one of the most richly furnished Victorian churches in London, filled with work by the likes of Bodley and Comper.  It must have been very atmospheric and quite overwhelming.  All that survives of that are Butterfield's immense w tower, and fragments of Comper's Stanton Chantry.  The church, as rebuilt by Adrian Gilbert Scott, is a variation of George Frederick Bodley's church of St Augustine in Pendlebury, Greater Manchester.  It's not at all bad, but the design bears no relationship to what Butterfield built.  Still, shadowy and mysterious.  And that's half the battle.

    The vast mural on the e wall of the chancel is the work of the artist and sculptor Hans Feibusch (1898-1988).