St Denis, Aswarby

     A brief trip out on the Friday back in November while the the bf was staying, a cold blustery day of intermittent showers.  We had intended to drive up to Lincoln for the day but all sorts of stuff was going viz the sale of the house. How deeply stressful these things really are....

     Anyway we headed a little way north up the A15 to Aswarby in the heart of Lincolnshire and a sort of deflated landscape that is neither fen nor hill-country and empty in feeling. I've been past the place for decades intrigued by the park, which is bounded on its western side by the great curve of the A15, the enigmatic two columns (that actually mark the site of original house, home of the Whichcotes, demolished in the 1950s) standing among the lank grass and the trees, and the church situated picturesquely on the lane into the village.  It was here in his youth that M R James came to stay with a school friend; a long laborious journey one would have thought from Eton. Eventually Aswarby was used, in a vague sort of way, as a location for one of James's more famous ghost stories - 'Lost hearts'. One of those ghost stories that were so evocatively adapted by the BBC in the early 70s and broadcast at Christmas. You can view it here. It was filmed in the county but Aswarby was not used, all the locations being in the north-east of the county eg South Ormsby and Brocklesby. And I suppose Aswarby is a lost sort of place itself, even with the noise of traffic on the main road from the across the wide and level parkland.  The village, which really is small, and quite dispersed, consists of Picturesque Tudor style estate cottages built of the local limestone.

     Architecturally the church is rather good - sophisticated stuff in such a rural location; mainly a mixture of flowing Dec and rectilinear Perp, of good ashlar and a noble tower and spire. There is a splendid Transitional south door - not so sure about the colour of the door though!

      The interior is atmospheric - a fine north arcade - and could be more so, being largely untouched since its nineteenth century restoration by Blore.  There is a large family pew and vault and a full compliment of box pews with unusual undulating ends - think of a child's drawing of a roller coaster.  A good example of what things could look like before the Oxford movement took hold, with everything neat and orderly.  It would be nice to see all that restored and enhanced.  I really didn't like to see the family vault used as a informal prayer space, but lovely to see the clipped yews in the churchyard.

Cathays Park, Cardiff I: The Welsh National War Memorial.

REMEMBER IN PEACE THOSE WHO IN THE TUMULT OF WAR

 BY SEA, ON LAND OR IN AIR

FOR US AND OUR VICTORY

ENDURETH UNTO

DEATH

     To Cardiff the other week.  It was my first visit - and I was rather impressed.  There is some particularly fine architecture - the castle (obviously) and atmospheric, pragmatic Victorian architecture on display in the Market and in the arcades that thread through the City centre. Much therefore to delight in.

     And there is Cathays Park with its collection of governmental buildings. The urbanism is, it has to be admitted, very dull, if almost non-existent.  The Park is simply laid out as an orthogonal grid with the buildings placed around a large, rectangular central park, rarely do the buildings address one another but seem rather self-contained entities. It is also monofunctional, so that to walk around there even on a weekday is a slightly unreal experience. However the earlier buildings are really top-notch, and that saves it from banality. I've always loved Late Victorian and Edwardian Baroque and Cathays Park has two fine examples. It is an incredibly flexible, if not pragmatic style undertaken with a an excellent eye for detail and wonderful craftsmanship.  I'm only sad that Portland stone - not my favourite - was used instead of something more local to Cardiff, or even Bath Stone which is often used in South Wales for mouldings etc.

     The collection of buildings as whole reflecting too the change in taste in British 20th century architecture from ebullience to sobriety. Possibly, too, it is one of those moments in British architecture that comes closest to embodying, being commensurate with, the economic and military power the Empire, then at its zenith. Perhaps the only moment that happens again is the creation of the Imperial War Graves post WWI.
     Alas it was not the finest of days and there was only opportunity to photograph two buildings well; the Beaux Arts Glamorgan County Council Building (1912, Vincent Harris and Thomas Anderson Moodie) and the Welsh National War Memorial, by Sir Ninian Comper, 1928. More of the Glamorgan building in a future post

     I'm a great fan of the work of Comper (1864-1960), as regular readers may have realised. Trained under G F Bodley he was an architecture of great sensitivity and refinement. Unsurprisingly his work was overwhelmingly ecclesiastical. This is one of his few 'secular' works, and his most classical, and it is very successful. Monumental but not overpowering, rather humane in fact. It stands in the middle of the Cathays Park, and thankfully makes no attempt to deal with the scale of it.  That would have been folly. 

   The concept is simple: a circular colonnade of 15 Corinthian columns plus a further 3 pairs, each pair marking an entrance (Comper was very impressed by the Hadrianic architecture of the Roman cities of North Africa) contains a fountain in a sunken court.  It is a simplicity however that allows for sophisticated complexity and interplay of forms as the viewer moves around the outside. (The entrances have later bronze gates of most likely mid-century date. They are, in themselves, charming)  There are inscriptions in Welsh (outside) and English (inside, by Comper himself see above) carved into the deeper than usual frieze of the entablature.  The central pylon has bronze statuary sculpted by Henry Alfred Pegram - both the sculpture and architecture being in a more Italian Renaissance mood.

     I suppose that some would think that the Corinthian order too elaborate to be associated with such a solemn undertaking.  However if we look at the theory of order we see that the Corinthian is very suitable for this use; Vitruvius in his 'De Architectura' - the only architectural thesis/manual to have come down to us from Antiquity - gives a mythological origin for the order. He relates that is the invention of the Greek architect and sculptor Callimachus, moved by the sight of a funerary or votive basket, containing the possessions of the deceased, placed upon the grave of a young girl. The basket had a tile for a lid and there was an acanthus growing from under the basket and enshrouding it with leaves.  Francois Blondel (1618-1686) in his 'Cours d'Architecture' notes the funerary nature of the basket and suggests the Ancients reared votive columns topped with urns to hold the ashes of the dead. For him architecture's origins are to be found in the commemoration of the dead. For him, also, is the idea that in some way the classical temple is representative of the sacred grove. Perhaps it is not too fanciful to see in the National War Memorial a sort of Scared Grove - even a stone circle, a sacred space that contains within it the Christological symbol of the Fountain of Life, the whole rather like a set piece encountered in a Medieval or Renaissance romance. In all a worthy tribute, I think, to the Fallen.

St Botolph, Helpston

     

     The bf stayed with me for a week just before I moved.  In fact the final full day of his stay was dominated by the house sale.  However earlier in the week, when things were a little less hectic, I took him to the village of Helpston in the Soke of Peterborough and John Clare Cottage.  It was my second visit and his first. For those who don't know the cottage in question was the birthplace and sometime residence of the 'peasant poet' John Clare (1793-1846) It is a delight; there is the cottage itself (an atmospheric museum), charming garden and contemporary, but being built like a barn in no way intrusive, visitor centre.  It really is worth a visit.

     On the other side of the village High St, and near the John Clare memorial designed by Michael Drury of Lincoln, is the small parish church dedicated to St Botolph, with, in the graveyard, the burial place of the John Clare.  I love the archway into the graveyard! The most distinctive part of the church is the octagonal west tower and spire.  The interior is, to be honest, a little dull.  However its setting is all very picturesque: the former vicarage to the south and a number of beautiful houses clustered around all built of the local oolitic limestone.  In all a rather lovely village on the edge of the Limestone Belt, spoilt alas by the all too intrusive 20th century.  Apologies for the low number of photos - more will follow - but we're kinda chaotic here for the time being!

Own work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio XXV

     Another arch complete!  Somewhat dark and brooding this one. With only more five to go the end is in sight!!

Own work: The Rustiche of Sebastiano Serlio XXIII

     Well, it really has been a while since I posted anything. To be truthful it's been just over two months.  A lot has happened since then:  I have moved across the country to Wales and set up home with the bf and I have an exhibition, my first, on at Gallery Stamford running until Jan 15th.  Painting, as well as blogging, has taken a backseat.  However I am slowly getting back into the swing of things.  My latest work is from my continuing series of arches from Sebastiano Serlio's 'Extraordinario Libro'. I  have reached Arch XXIII. The format remains the same; mixed media on cold pressed 300 gsm watercolour paper, 34.5 24.5 cms.

     As it's only the 5th Day of Christmas I can still wish you a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

St Mary, Stamford

     The fourth in my occasional series on the medieval churches of Stamford, and I ought, immediately, to lay my cards on the table.  This is my favourite church in Stamford; not so much for the architecture - I think the best over all church is St Michael's - but because it belongs to the Anglican tradition I find the most comfortable; Anglo-Catholicism.

     Not that the architecture of St Mary's is in any way substandard.  The tower (EE) and spire (Dec) are quite superb, helped by its position rising abruptly from the street at the crest of St Mary's Hill.  They look wonderful from any angle but the view from below, say standing on the Town Bridge, is imposing. Perhaps St Mary's is the most urban of all the churches in Stamford for it has no graveyard on its n side, and the one it has is small and surrounded by tall and architecturally significant buildings. A delightful spot, St Mary's Place.

     The interior also possesses that less tangible, not so easy to achieve quality of the numinous - something my photographs singularly fail to capture. (Alas!) Clutter is, thankfully, down to a minimum, but is always something to be on one's guard against. The fittings contribute enormously to this sense of the sacred for they are mainly the design of a great Arts and Crafts master, the now largely forgotten, John Dando Sedding. The rood screen, alas unfinished, the parclose screens and choir stalls and the High Altar are all by him, as is the decoration of the chancel roof.  The quality of the work is excellent.  The church had already by then undergone a series of 19th century restorations including one by Edward Browning, 'restoring' the chancel in 1860 and installing the present e window and ceiling.  To the n of the chancel is the 'Golden Chapel' with a wooden barrel vault given by William Hikham and his wife in the early 1480s, at the time when the church was undergoing an extensive rebuild in the Perp style. The chapel, I think, may have belonged to the Guild of the Corpus Christi, though the Guild of St Mary was based in the church too and Hikman was a member of the Guild of St Katherine.  The font is sadly rather tucked away in a corner near the s door, but I presume its position would make perfect sense if the main entrance was still the s porch and not the north door.

Addendum 31.08.23 I didn't know when writing this post that the dossal curtain behind the High Altar was designed by the great 20th century church architect Sir John Ninian Comper.

Own work: Life Drawing LV

      This time last week I was busy getting ready to go on pilgrimage to Walsingham.  Now, surrounded by the confusion of selling my house and preparing to move to Wales, it seems all together a different life.  I did, however, take time on Thursday to head back to the life drawing studio.  A welcome distraction it proved. Anyhow this is what I managed to come up with in the way of drawing.  Not too bad under the circumstances (I am a proper fully fledged 'stress-monkey' and am finding the whole process somewhat difficult so if the posts get even more sparse and erratic, forgive me).