Reed church, Herts - a Saxon survival

When I wrote about Wyddial church recently I mentioned nearby Reed church, which seems reason enough to write about it now.

Pevsner deems Reed to be worthy of a mere ten lines, which is just about as short a description of a medieval church to be found anywhere in The Buildings of England. He begins brusquely: 'The sole importance of the church is the survival of Late Anglo-Saxon work in the nave.' This is no doubt true enough if you're concerned simply with importance, but anyone with a feel for unimportant atmospheric country churches will enjoy a trip to Reed.

It's also true that Reed is quite heavily restored and contains little of beauty - there's practically no sign of the artefacts I tend to focus on in these posts, stained glass and monuments - and yet its very unassumingness makes it attractive, to me at least.

Although the walls of the nave are ancient - a thousand years old - and entry is through a 14th century doorway and door,  the roofs, fittings and other details are undistinguished Victorian. But the interior is transformed by the light surging in through the clear glass, making the chancel seem spacious, and there is an atmosphere of unassailable stillness and calm. Many far more beautiful churches can't match Reed's benevolent aura.

The large east window is probably a Victorian reconstruction; how closely it follows the 14th century original I don't know - perhaps not at all. There's something rather clumsy in its design, with a small circle within a larger superimposed on a reticulated (i.e. net-like) pattern; the shapes of the three mutilated quatrefoils immediately beneath the larger circle are awkward. The mouchettes on either side of the larger circle fill in the space much more gracefully. Whoever designed this, in the 14th or 19th century, failed to find a fully successful compromise between the rigid reticulated tracery, typical of the early 14th century, and the more flowing style that developed towards the middle of the century.

The walls of the nave must date from c.1000, as is evident from the long and short work to be found on all four corners. However 'important' this might be, you've got to be pretty nerdy to enjoy it; I quite like it. If you really can't enough long and short work, you'll find more a few miles down the A10 at Westmill.

The blocked north door is, according to Pevsner, post-Conquest, but is still stylistically more Anglo-Saxon than Norman; unlike the long and short work, it's possible to enjoy it aesthetically as well as for its antiquity. The capitals have primitive-looking volute scrolls, probably never very deeply carved and now rather indistinct.

Anglo-Saxon architecture in Hertfordshire can also be found in St Albans (the cathedral, St Michael's and St Stephen's), and a small, damaged but powerful example of Anglo-Saxon sculpture is in Walkern church. Walkern church, however, is currently difficult to get into. (You can read my thoughts on locked churches here.) Let's be glad that Reed, 'unimportant' though it is, is open to all.

An Edward Bawden calendar 1930

This calendar comes from a 1930 book called CBC's Review of Revues and Other Matters. ('CBC' is Charles B. Cochrane, (1872-1951), the English theatrical impresario.) It's not a rare or valuable book (copies may be found on Abebooks for £5), and I can't imagine that the text could be of any interest to anyone except perhaps those with an unhealthily intense interest in English popular theatre of the late 20s. 

It earns its place on my overcrowded shelves (from whence many very much worthier books have been banished to seek their fortunes in Oxfam) because of the illustrations, and in particular the calendar by Edward Bawden.

Bawden (1903-1989) is one of my favourite artists. I won't say any more: the endearing and amusing pictures speak for themselves.

Quiz solution

'Patricia Preece', by Stanley Spencer, 1933

I asked: what is the connection between Stanley Spencer's painting 'Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill' and Gilbert and Sullivan.

In 1911 Ruby Preece, 17 years old, and Winifred Emery, her teacher despite being only 21, went for a swimming lesson with W.S. Gilbert in the lake in the grounds of his house, Grim's Dyke, Harrow Weald, then in Middlesex (north-west London). Gilbert, then 74, was a friend of the Emery family. 

Preece and Emery entered the water before Gilbert, and Preece, getting out of her depth too quickly, called out in alarm. Gilbert dived in to rescue her, but had a heart attack and died.

Some time after this Ruby changed her name to Patricia, and met the woman who was to be her lifelong companion and lover, Dorothy Hepworth, at the Slade School of Fine Art. In 1928 they moved to a cottage in Cookham, Berks, where Stanley and Hilda Spencer and their two daughters were living. Spencer became infatuated with Preece, lavishing her with expensive gifts and painting her many times (including 'Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill'), and eventually divorced his wife and married her in 1937. 

However, it seems that she never had any intention of being his wife in anything other than a financial sense. They never spent a single night together after the wedding, but she persuaded him to make over his house (in which Hilda and their daughters were still living) to her, and to put all his business affairs in her hands. This was, naturally enough, financially and emotionally ruinous for Spencer, not to mention his wife and children.

So you could say that Patricia Preece was the downfall of two important artists.

Financially and emotionally ruinous, but not, thankfully for posterity, artistically ruinous. Out of this disastrous relationship came masterpieces such as the famous nude portraits, and had Spencer's life not gone careering out of control then we wouldn't have such intensely meditative and troubled paintings like the Christ in the Wilderness series.

'Double Nude Portrait: The Artist and his Second Wife, (The Leg of Mutton Nude)', by Stanley Spencer, 1937

'Self-Portrait with Patricia Preese', by Stanley Spencer, 1936

'Consider the Lilies', from the Christ in the Wilderness series, by Stanley Spencer, 1939

The photo above is of the happy couple, standing in the centre, with Dorothy Hepworth on the left and Spencer's best man, Jas Wood, on the right, after the wedding in Maidenhead. A novel could be written about the emotional implications of this picture (and perhaps it already has). Spencer looks pleased with himself, but although he's obviously dressed himself up in a suit his lack of height, goggly glasses and, most of all, shapeless sunhat all conspire to make him look horribly, almost comically, out of place and out of his depth. Preece's left arm, and indeed her whole body, is doing its best to keep as far away from him as possible, and as for Hepworth, the phrase 'if looks could kill' might have been coined especially for this moment. Only Wood looks at ease. What on earth was going through his mind?

It's said that Hepworth was too shy to try to sell her paintings under her own name, and that Preece often signed them and sold them as her own. There are nine oil paintings attributed to Preece in British public collections (see here), some of which are pretty good; I wonder though if they're actually by Hepworth. 

I used to play second alto in a big band, and we once had a gig at Grim's Dyke (now a hotel). I made a point of going to see the lake where Gilbert died, but it's disappointingly not much more than a muddy pond now.

Quiz question - Stanley Spencer and Gilbert and Sullivan

Here's a question to puzzle and amuse any readers this blog might have.

The picture above is by Stanley Spencer. It's called 'Patricia at Cockmarsh Hill', and dates from 1935.

What is the connection between this picture and Gilbert and Sullivan? Here's something to listen to while you ponder; it's 'The Sun, whose rays' from The Mikado. It doesn't have to be this specific piece (I just happen to like it); it could be anything by Gilbert and Sullivan. However, it couldn't be any picture by Spencer.

Wyddial church, Herts - Passion and puns: 16th century stained glass, 17th century monuments, part two

This is part two; you can read part one here.

At some time in the early 17th century the church was partly refurnished, and a new door was added on the north, squeezed uncomfortably between two windows, presumably to make access easier for the inhabitants of Wyddial Hall, which lies just to the north of the churchyard. 

The door, together with the two flanking windows, provides an interesting lesson in design from the late medieval period into the English Renaissance. (Well, I find it interesting, and if you don't, dear reader, you're reading the wrong blog.) The window to the right of the door is 15th century, and has been reused (presumably from the original north wall of the nave). The two arches are pointed (though not very) and cusped. The window to the left is of 1532, the arches are still pointed, though if anything even less so than that of the first window, and the cusps have disappeared, showing the beginnings of a classicising spirit. Brick was a relatively modern material. The door, on the other hand, is once again of stone (brick wouldn't have suited the dignity of the minor aristocrats who entered it) and austerely, assertively classical. The family who commissioned it would have been keen to advertise their keeping up to date with the latest styles. 

Round about the same time as the door was built, screens and box pews were installed in the north aisle, turning it more or less into a private family chapel. 

As you can see, the screens are a fantastically fecund display of Jacobean inventiveness. (The one under the tower is an extremely convincing late Victorian or Edwardian pastiche.) However, the box pews, which were definitely there in 1953 when Pevsner visited, and perhaps still there when Bridget Cherry revised the Herts Pevsner in 1977 (can we assume she visited every building? Probably not) were equally definitely gone by the time I first visited in 1992. 

Typically murky early Pevsner photo from the 2nd edition (1977)

How could this have been allowed to happen? As I understand it, the addition or removal of fittings in churches is subject to strict overview and regulations. The loss of the Wyddial box pews is a serious blemish on the record of the Diocese of St Albans.

By the later 17th century the family living in the Bury were the Goulestons (the exact spelling varied); I'm not sure exactly when they arrived and if they were responsible for the door, screen and pews. The similarity of their name to mine interests me (though in this case I'll entirely understand if it fails to interest anyone else). There are three wall monuments, and several brasses and ledger stones, commemorating them in the north chapel.

This is the grandest monument in the church, to Sir William Goulston, who died in 1687.

A pair of putti loll languidly at the top, looking as if they're on sun loungers by a pool. The busts are somewhat characterless, but the overall effect is impressive, as of course it's meant to be.

Easily overlooked details are the two armorial cartouches at the bottom, which morph into Mannerist grotesque faces. Everything else about the monument is standard for its date, but these faces are quite extraordinary.

The monument above is to Richard Goulston, (though his name is spelt Gouleston on the accompanying brass), who died in 1686. It's lost its surmounting heraldic device, but has a painted (now faded) additional background on the surrounding wall. I don't remember seeing something like this elsewhere, though I can't believe that this example is unique. The monument must have been very expensive, but presumably the painted background was an attempt to make it seem even grander at minimal cost. I like the cheek of these Goulestons.

This is the brass on the floor. The first four lines are a Latin poem; my Latin isn't up to much, I'm afraid, but I recognise the word 'lapis', stone, as in lapis lazuli (a blue semi-precious stone) and lapidary (noun: one who works in stone, adjective: carved in stone). With a little help from Google Translate it's possible to work out a rough and partial English version; the key bit is 'only the second syllable, stone, remains now', punning on Gouleston[e]'s name. Furthermore, the word 'lugeo', I mourn, which features in the poem and is repeated at the end of the inscription, is an anagram of Goule, the first syllable of his name. It seems that the Goulestons, as well as being partial to grandeur on the cheap, were early crossword puzzlers, a trait I can sympathise with as I enjoy a tussle with the Torygraph and Guardian setters myself.

Now the church is happily open to visitors after decades of inaccessibility, greetings cards are on sale, a pound for a pack of four: outstanding value. Of the four cards, one is a good picture of the (not very interesting) south side of the church, two are excellent pictures of the stained glass, and the last I reproduce above. When deciding what to portray on the fourth card, whoever made the choice ignored the claims of the other six windows, the north aisle, the screens and the monuments (including others I haven't mentioned) and plumped for this view instead. A decision almost as bizarre as the decision to throw out the Jacobean box pews.