Patrick Comerford
There was an open day with cream teas last weekend, at Saint Guthlac’s Church, the parish church in the tiny Northamptonshire hamlet of Passenham, across the Great Ouse River from Stony Stratford.
Charlotte and I walked across the river and through the fields on Bank Holiday Monday to Saint Guthlac’s Church, which is lovingly maintained by local parishioners. It’s a short walk, yet Passenham is in the Diocese of Peterborough while Stony Stratford is in the Diocese of Oxford.
After Holy Trinity Church, a new and larger church, was built in neighbouring Deanshanger in 1853, Saint Guthlac’s was left in slow decline, falling into disuse and dilapidation and facing imminent closure. But the church in Passenham was saved fortuitously by the discovery in the 1950s of the wall paintings in the chancel that date back to the 1620s and that had been covered in a layer of whitewash in the 18th century.
These wall paintings were restored by Ann Ballantyne and E Clive Rouse, and over a ten-year programme of restoration an entire scheme of church decoration, furniture, paining and carving emerged. This was all of such exceptionally quality that the church was given a Grade I listing.
The elaborate decorations in Saint Guthlac’s Church 400 years has puzzled church historians ever sense they came to light in the middle of the last century. The panels on the east wall on each side of the High Altar depict the death, anointing and burial of Christ, with separate images of Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus.
Other wall paintings in the chancel depict four Biblical figures – Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and David – on the north wall, and the four evangelists on the south side, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – although Saint Mark was hidden at an early date by a memorial erected to Robert Banastre after he died in 1649.
As well as these elaborate paintings, Saint Guthlac’s has choir stalls that date from 1628, with contemporary misericords in the form of a mask, arms upheld by angels, an ox, a male head with ass’s ears, a goat, head, a winged cherub’s head, a lion, a cat’s head, a lamb, a female head and a griffin. Each stall has the name of one of the 12 apostles, and above them is decoration reflecting the classical style of Inigo Jones, with painted shallow niches, fluted pilasters and a strapwork frieze.
The gallery at the west end of the church is supported by a carved frieze that may once have been part a chancel screen that was moved to the other end of the church in the 18th century.
These works combine to create an example of early 17th century High Church decoration in line with the High Church principles of William Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury (1633-1645).
Sir Robert Banastre was a city man and a rising star in the court of James I and his son Charles I. He was comptroller to James l and became Clerk Victualler to Charles l, responsible for food and drink at the royal court. He was also member of the Court of the Green Cloth and was responsible for the collection of Ship Money in the county.
He accumulated lands in Passenham from the early 17th century, and leased land in the adjacent royal forest. He bought Passenham Manor in 1624, reflecting his growing status at court. By 1640, Banastre was wealthy enough to pay for the new chancel roof of Towcester Church. In Passenham, his coat of arms appears on his tomb and also on the exterior wall of the church behind his tomb.
Since the wall paintings were restored by Ann Ballantyne and E Clive Rouse, and the church decorations were refurbished, many church historians have discussed the significance of this elaborate scheme at a time when the Puritans were about the take power in England in the years immediately before the execution of Charles I.
There is no evidence that Banastre ever went on the ‘Grand Tour’ of Europe, still less that he ever saw the work of Palladio in Italy. But there are suggestions that his interior scheme at Passenham was influenced by the refurbishment of the Chapel Royal in Greenwich by Inigo Jones in 1623-1625, at a time when Banastre was a courtier. But hints of other influences have been identified in the chapel of Lincoln College Oxford and Lincoln’s Inn Chapel in London.
In his study of Saint Guthlac’s, Robin Goodfellow says the Italianate characteristics of the scheme of decoration and the portrayal of Christ himself, with strong connotations of the Pieta, suggest Catholic influence.
While popular Elizabethan portrayed Joseph of Arimathea as the person who first brought Christianity to England, Goodfellow suggests the presence of Nicodemus beside the Altar is a representation of faith concealed, and it has given rise to suspicions that Banastre was a secret recusant or had Catholic sympathies. Indeed, local traditions suggests that he ‘held the faith his father loved.’
Banastre came from a traditional Catholic family, and his father, Lawrence Banastre, had been committed to the Tower of London in 1572 following the arrest and execution of his patron, Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, for his part in a plot to replace Queen Elizabeth with Mary Queen of Scots.
Despite Lawrence Banastre’s subsequent release, his family remained under suspicion, at least until his death in 1588.
During Robert Banastre’s decoration of Saint Guthlac’s Church, 22-year-old John Hall as rector in 1632. Hall was a recent graduate of Magdalen Hall, Oxford, when William Laud was the Chancellor of Oxford University, and remained at Passenham for over 20 years.
Saint Guthlac’s Church was part of Banastre’s church-building in the Diocese of Peterborough, and of a wider construction programme in Passenham that included a rectory, a large barn and a manor house.
Banastre began this work in Passenham at the time of his wedding in 1620, and he completed it after Charles I ascended the throne 400 years ago in 1625. He died in 1649, and his monument in Saint Guthlac’s usurps the place of Saint Mark among the four evangelists on the south wall of the chancel. But the wall paintings survived both the iconoclasm of the Puritans during the Cromwellian era and the Protestant reordering of the church in the 18th century, albeit under layers of whitewash that had the effect of protecting and preserving the paintings for the next 180 years.
There is no surviving evidence of Sir Robert Banastre’s personal piety or artistic sophistication; perhaps he was motivated merely by a desire to impress the king; perhaps he was inspired by both the Catholic faith of father’s family and the religious and strongly royalist sympathies of his wife Margaret Hopton.
Whatever his motivation and inspiration were, Robin Goodfellow sees the decoration of Saint Guthlac’s as an example of the survival of ‘the beauty of holiness’ in action, and in it a unique record of and monument to English Christianity before, during and after the civil wars in the mid-17th century.
Further Reading:
Robin Goodfellow, ‘Robert Banastre and the Beautification of Passenham Church’, Ecclesiology Today (issue 63, December 2024).
Robin Goodfellow, Robert Banastre and the Beautification of Passenham Church (privately published 2024, 24 pp).
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