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 I Tyntesfield

    The bf and I have been off on our summer holiday.   Last week we took a cottage on the Tyntesfield estate just outside Bristol.  Tyntesfield is a small estate owned by The National Trust.  In the 1843 it had been acquired by William Gibbs, a member of a long established Tory family of bankers and merchants in the south west of England.  Perhaps the view, which is gorgeous, persuaded him. Gibbs had made his money importing guano from South America.

    In the 1860s the existing house was thoroughly Gothicised by the Bristolian architect John Norton (1823-1904).  The result, for me, is not unlovable, but not immediately attractive.  It is not helped by the sharp Neo-classical masonry, or the plate glass in the windows.  The architecture is at times incredibly wilful, if not perverse, though the details are amazing.  Indeed, no expense was spared: capitals and corbels burst forth with fruit and flowers and all sorts of beasts.  Seen from the west the house looks more like a village with each part of the house, almost each room, expressed by a separate roof.  All of this extravagance came a price and the twentieth century was a period of retrenchment as sections of the house were demolished or curtailed, e.g.  greenhouse (1919) and the tower, (1935).
    The Gibbs family were also High Anglican ('High Church, High Tory') and it was that faith, 'fanned to a golden blaze', that was one of the forces behind the creation of the house, and in the 1870s the building of the chapel just to the north, and which is connected to the house by a bridge at first floor level.  In fact the best thing about the house is the chapel which is not by Norton, but Arthur Blomfield, who we have encountered before on this blog (Oundle).  It has a clarity of design and monumentality which is lacking in the house.  Blomfield was also better at handling his wall surfaces.  Mark Girouard and other critics have seen the influence of the Sainte Chapelle, but I'm not so sure.  The Tyntesfield chapel is much more stocky, and standing on the drive above the chapel in the evening sun I was put in mind of the Lady Chapel at the former Benedictine monastery at St Germer de Fly; but after looking again at the photographs in 'The Art of Gothic' (pub: Konemann)  I'm not sure about that either, so all I can say is that whatever the specific influence was, the chapel is definitely French in inspiration and leave it at that.

    Both exterior and interior shows the High Victorian Gothic love of structural polychromy and some of the exterior details are particularly muscular, such as the side door which leads to the undercroft.  I think also that the interior shows the influence of F L Pearson.
    The cottage we stayed in probably dated from before 1860 by the details and was home for the chaplains who served the household. I loved it, and I'd like to go back. The house next door, also now a holiday let, is much more sinewy design, spiky, and must be later in date.  One wishes the main house was a bit more like that, and a bit less 'Sleeping Beauty'.

Oundle

   A fortnight ago I went to Oundle, a particularly attractive small market town in Northamptonshire, about 10 miles or so west of Peterborough, in the valley of the Nene.  What makes it attractive is the visual unity.  There isn't necessarily unity of style - the streetscape is pretty varied, but there's nothing too extreme as all of the architecture - Victorian and after architecture - is well-mannered and polite. There is however unity of scale, and lastly and most importantly there is unity of materials.  Everything, well almost everything, is built of stone.  Limestone.  Including the roofs, which are of Collyweston Slate - a limestone that is very fissile and can be cleaved like slate. There are a few grand houses, but again like so many small places in England there is nothing really extraordinary about the architecture.  There is nothing as consistently 'architectural' about Oundle as there is about Stamford.  Judging by the architecture, I would guess that Oundle's heyday was probably in the 17th century.  The rather imposing Talbot Inn in New Street, for instance, dates from 1626.
   One of things, however, that does help give Oundle character and individuality is the presence of a large 19th century public school, and whereas at Oakham, Uppingham or Stamford the schools are quite nucleated, here in Oundle the school is more diffuse in the urban structure.  In certain parts of the town school buildings tend to predominate, but visually they are good neighbours being well mannered Gothic Revival.  The parish Church, St Peter, has a beautiful tower and spire - a very suave piece of Decorated Gothic.  The Roman Catholic church a the far end of West Street, which is by Arthur Blomfield, 1878-9, started off belonging to another denomination ('The Buildings of England' does mention which one), and like the school buildings is a well-mannered piece of Gothic Revival.  A satisfying design, in fact, from a less than front-rank Gothic designer.

The Talbot Inn, the elegant War Memorial to the left looks, to me, as though it's by Sir Reginald Blomfield.