Own work: Foliate Head

     I completed a new collage on Saturday; a Foliate Head, breaking new ground for me with use of coloured ink in the background.

St Mary, Essendine

     Not long back from a visit to St Mary, Essendine, just a short hop over the border in Rutland.  Another church I have been past innumerable times and not entered.  A small, charming country church. Simple plan - just nave and smaller chancel, both aisle-less. No tower, but a bellcote such as can be found all over Rutland. Nothing really to write home about architecturally except the south door which is very beautiful.  Norman, and not that grand having only two colonettes framing the door. However what sets it apart is the amount of carving which is unusually lavish: each of the colonettes is spirally fluted; the tympanum is carved with angels and Christ, as Pantocrator, blessing visitors; in addition the door jambs are decorated with carved scenes both outside and inside. All told quite a rare thing, though there is a something similar at Castor, not so many miles away to the south. A little bit of Byzantium deep in the East Midlands countryside.

     The church itself sits inside a group of massive ditches - the remains of a castle. It is said that the church formed the castle chapel.  Inside is cool and white, there are few memorials or any other features of note, but it is none the worse for that, or for what must have been a thoroughgoing restoration in the middle of the 19th century by a unknown architect.

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.

Another Announcement!

     Yes, another announcement.
     I'm really pleased to say that you can now buy from a selection of my artwork on-line at Gallery Stamford www.gallerystamford.co.uk 

Own work: the Methodist Chapel, Bourne

     I finished this an hour ago.  It's taken two weeks and three attempts to produce something I'm vaguely satisfied with; mainly I think caused by the evenness of the building and texture.  I more readily respond to the picturesque, the textured, bricolage. The usual mixed media, and, like my Baptist Chapel of a month ago, a rather Piper-esque painting.  The chapel itself is the work of the nineteenth century Bourne architect Thomas Pilkington, who was responsible for the Town Hall in Market Deeping which this blog visited in Jan 2017. Here  A cold, grey looking day it was too, when the sky and stone of the buildings around me were almost the same colour.

Holy Cross, Burley-on-the-hill

When, thou shall visit, in the Moneth of May

A costly garden, in her best array;

And, view the well-grown trees, the wel-trimm'd Bowers,

The beds of Herbs, the knots of pleasant flowers,

With all fine deckings, and the fine devices,

Perteyning to those earlthy Paradises,

Thou canst not well suppose, one day, or two,

Did finish all, which had beene, there, to doe.

     One of the delights of the British Summer is visiting gardens, especially if it involves afternoon tea.  Last weekend A paid his monthly visit and we headed off into Rutland, to Burley-on-the-Hill and The Old Vicarage, open as part of the National Garden Scheme. The garden is most impressive - a series of garden rooms surround the house at all different levels.  The influence of Lutyens is evident in the formal structure of paths, walls, rills and hedges.  The use of colour was very interesting: blue and purple predominate, there is little white and next to nothing in the way of yellow and red. Interesting too the use of contrasting shapes and colour of foliage, eg very green lavender contrasting with silver blades of iris, and use of wisteria as standards as though they were roses. The cake was very good too.

     The Old Vicarage sits on the edge of the purlieus of Burley House built by 2nd earl of Nottingham in the late 1600s.  It is vast complex of buildings, now divided up into apartments; the cour d'honeur is 500 x 650 ft. and quite beyond my competence as a photographer using a smart phone.

     More within my technical capabilities was the small parish church of the Holy Cross, redundant now but under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust.  It stands sequestered in one corner of the complex of house and service buildings.  The churchyard is enclosed with a high wall, and is overlooked by the house giving it an oddly urban feel.  House and church are connected with a Gothic Revival corridor - not a cloister as there are far too few windows for that.  I think it must date from J L Pearson's restoration in the mid nineteenth century.(1869-70, almost twenty years after his restoration of neighbouring Exton church) A pretty thorough job he did of it too; apart from the lean west tower the exterior is completely his. Not that bad of itself but somehow not quite right either. Perhaps it is too polished, too sophisticated work for a country church even one in so grand a setting. I'm tempted to say that even after 150 years after completion it may too soon to make a judgment as to its merit and only after another 150 years of wind, rain and frost can such a judgement be made. 

     Inside however it is more atmospheric.  The arcades are Medieval. The furnishings are by Pearson and rather subdued, except for the High Altar reredos and accompanying east window by Clayton and Bell. Oddly for an estate church there are few monuments of any standing.  There is however Sir Francis Chantrey's superb monument to Lady Charlotte Finch of 1820.  A kneeling figure of chaste white marble of great pathos and sensitivity. Chantrey has breathed life and warmth into Neo-classical froideur.

    Beautiful panoramic views of the Vale Of Catmose on the way to the church.