St Michael, Tenbury Wells I

     We had a further three stops on the way to Bewdley; Monkland Cheese Dairy (we really do recommend a visit), Leominster, and our third, which concerns us here, St Michael Tenbury Wells. From the burgeoning Late Gothic Revival at Kinnersley back to High Victorian Gothic.

     This, it has to be said, is a quite extraordinary building, best Camden Society approved middle-pointed, built both as parish church and school chapel, for it is part of a complex of buildings, such as All Saints, Margaret St or All saints, Boyne Hill, Maidenhead. Fruits all of the Tractarian movement intended to develop and nurture the spiritual and intellectual lives of the surrounding people and that have their origins in the work of Pugin, particularly in his polemical book 'Contrasts'. Here church and school are parallel to one another linked, umbilically as it were, by a cloister so as to form a quadrangle open to the west. From a distance the church looks like a gigantic scale model of a French High Gothic cathedral that had been dropped into the unsuspecting Worcestershire countryside, and to some extent it is a building out of time and place, for although it partakes to a degree of local materials and local styles it isn't vernacular like St James back in Kinnersley. Something is different, and that is, I suppose, that it is a product of an industrialising society, of Modernity. It is to a certain point self-conscious design, while Kinnersley organic. A building that at one time in the mid 20th century would provoke hatred among many architects and critics, but love in others such as Sir John Betjeman. Perhaps a building constructed out of antinomies. Changeable. Mannered - it is no mere copy of a medieval building, but an imaginative, thoughtful, if not wilful, set of variations on a theme. The details are ever inventive, and seem occasionally to move into unknown territory. Restless even, certainly it has that relentlessness and intensity common to that stage of the Gothic Revival. Earnestness, and muscularity are terms often used in this context. That context being a forceful reaction to the good manners of most 18th and early 19th century architecture. The architect was Henry Woodyer (1816-1896) one time pupil of William Butterfield. It was built for that remarkable man Sir Frederick Ouseley - professor of music, priest, composer and Baronet - with the intention of not only satisfying the spiritual requirements of the local population but playing a national role in the revival of English church music, a role it played until the closure of the school in 1985. Since then the church has continued parochial, and until June this year the school occupied by another educational establishment. The building is now empty and apparently up for sale. I wish I had known this at the time as I would have taken some photos of the school buildings.

     Alas, due to the current events we couldn't gain entrance, so here are the photos I managed to take of the exterior of the chapel.  

The Pump Room, Tenbury Wells

     The object of our foray into England was a family birthday. On our return journey I insisted we stop at Tenbury Wells, a small and attractive, work-a-day market town in the extreme north-west corner of Worcestershire. I wanted to see the spa. And as you can see from the photographs what an extraordinary little structure it is. Pevsner said, perhaps a little harshly: 'much like Gothicky or Chinesey fair stuff without seriousness or taste'. I prefer to see it as an example of British eccentricity.

     As you can well imagine it is Victorian in date, by an architect who even I've never heard of James Cranston. A local, I think, though the local tourist information says he was a Brummie. Apparently the whole thing, apart from the porch, is prefabricated. The roof is clad in 'bespoke' iron sheets. The tower looks like it has strayed from a Hollywood production set in medieval Russia. Pevsner was right, it is rebarbative; but I think that misses the point.

     The Pump Room isn't the only building by Cranston in the town which is mainly red-brick Georgian with a handful of the Medieval thrown into the mix. It's well worth a stroll about.

     Below is the only slightly less extraordinary Market House dating to 1858. Not that many buildings I know are oval in plan. Pevsner rather liked it but I feel somewhat less sympathetic. It isn't bad in itself, quite whimsical really, even charming, though from some angles it looks like a grossly inflated cabbies' shelter.  The problem lies for me, however, in the execution which is rather harsh, better suited to a Victorian city than a Georgian and Medieval market town. That is partly down to the use of machine made bricks and tiles. Perhaps it will have to stand around for another 150 years for it to have bedded in properly, quietly maturing like a cheese or fine wine. Perhaps it never will, but be doomed to be forever an architectural outsider. In the meantime a change of colour scheme re paint may help. Both buildings are High Victorian in style, and one suspects Cranston was under the influence of 'Rogue' architects such as Lamb and Teulon. Drunk and disorderly on Muscular Gothic and the possibilities of mass production in the new Industrial Age.