Icknield Indagations
Church architecture in Hertfordshire and elsewhere, art, books, and whatever crosses my path
Icknield Indagations
Church architecture in Hertfordshire and elsewhere, art, books, and whatever crosses my path
Tuesday 25 June 2024
Tuesday 23 January 2024
Woolmer Green church, Herts
The mighty Great North Road: once the backbone of the nation, now humiliatingly reduced in rank to the B197 like a disgraced officer having his uniform's buttons sliced off on parade.
Between Welwyn and Knebworth lies Woolmer Green, which began as a rural hamlet much like thousands of others, but, encouraged by the arrival of the railway (which reached Welwyn in 1850), a straggly ribbon development strung itself along this road in the later 19th century. In 1896 the Rev Arthur Cayley Headlam became the vicar of Welwyn, and began a campaign for the residents of what was becoming a small village to have a church of their own. He must have been a man of some energy and forcefulness (he eventually became the Bishop of Gloucester) as in 1899 the foundation stone of what was initially a chapel of ease (ie, not strictly a parish church, which status it didn't attain until as late as 2000). He contributed £100 (about £10,600 today) of his own money to the project.
The architect was the Scottish Robert Weir Schultz (1860-1951), an important figure in the Arts and Crafts movement. This is the only surviving church in the country solely by him, though he did design numerous domestic buildings, and Khartoum Cathedral in Sudan (1906-12). In 1915 he started calling himself R (or Robert) W S Weir so as to hide his German sounding surname (Weir was his mother's maiden name).
Externally the building isn't particularly prepossessing. It's of brick with limestone dressings; the windows are lancets in the shallow polygonal apse but minimally Perpendicular elsewhere, except for the westernmost ones on the north and south of the nave, which are, unusually, mandorla-shaped. These and the 1913 relief sculpture (by Herbert William Palliser (1883-1963)) of St Michael killing a non-threatening-looking dragon (actually a wyvern as it has only two legs) over the north door are the only notable features. A tower over the organ loft (on the north side of the chancel) topped by gables and a Herts spike was planned, but funds ran out.
The interior is dominated by the excellent panelled wooden roof, with very plain and assertive tie beams. The origin of the word 'nave' is of course ultimately the Latin 'navis', meaning 'ship', after the (usually rather fanciful) resemblance between a long roof and an upturned boat, but here for once the similarity is unmistakeable. It almost looks as if it could be lifted off, inverted and lowered into water so you could float away in it.
Sunday 10 September 2023
Watford, St Mary, church, Herts
Watford seems to me (a very occasional visitor) to be largely unlovely. Bettley/Pevsner (in The Buildings of England: Hertfordshire) reveal that in 1950 there were 121 buildings of historic interest in the town centre, a number that had shrunk by two thirds by 1975, leaving only 40. That's bad enough, but in the last near half-century another thirteen have been demolished. Naturally, we shouldn't assume that old automatically equals 'good' or new 'bad' (of course there are plenty of excellent modern buildings), but, let's face it, in practice we won't often be wrong if we do.
Externally St Mary is virtually all new, or anyway newish compared to its 13th century origins. The knapped flint and Bath stone facing, tower battlements, stair turret and most windows are all the work of John T Christopher (about whom I can find no information) in 1870-1.
Screen by Scott, 1848 |
Doors made from 1848 bench ends. |
Disused Norman font |
Reredos, 1871 |
West window, The Marriage at Cana, by Heaton, Butler & Bayne, 1863 |
Pulpit, 1714 |
King David, by Lavers and Barraud, 1863 |