Art for Lent (36): two portraits of Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram

Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram (1840-1904) by Francis Grant (ca 1867)

Patrick Comerford

My choice of works of art to meditate on this Lenten morning [9 April 2014] is two portraits of the Hon Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram (1840-1904), one by Francis Grant, and a second portrait by Sir William Blake Richmond.

The portrait painted by Francis Grant. It was painted ca 1867 in oil on canvas, and measures 77 x 63.5 cm. In 1993, it was bought from Lord Halifax, with the assistance of the National Heritage Memorial Fund and the National Art Collections Fund. It is now held by the Leeds Museums and Galleries and can be seen Temple Newsam, Leeds.

The Scottish artist Francis Grant (1803-1878) was born in Edinburgh, but worked mainly in England. He was one of the most successful fashionable portraitists of his day and he produced sporting pictures and fox-hunting scenes. He was a president of the Royal Academy, and died in Melton Mowbray, Leicestershire, on 5 October 1878.

Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram (née Wood) of Hoar Cross Hall is best remembered for building the Church the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross, 11 km west of Burton on Trent and about 12 km north of Lichfield.

This church which she built in 1872-1876 as a memorial to her husband Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram, has been described as “probably the most perfect of the new parish churches of England.” For the architectural historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the church shows “what perfection was obtainable within the rubrics of English late medieval decoration and architecture.”

Hoar Cross Hall had once been the home of the Talbot family, Earls of Shrewsbury, and the historian John Ashdown-Hill suggests Lady Barbara Talbot of Hoar Cross Hall was the owner of the Bosworth Crucifix before it eventually passed through the Brown and Carter families to the Comerford family. In 1780, she married Francis Fortescue-Turville of Husbands Bosworth; she was a sister of Charles Talbot (1753-1827), 15th Earl of Shrewsbury (1787-1827), and aunt of John Talbot (1791–1852), 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1827-1852) and patron of the Gothic revival architect AWM Pugin.

In 1794, Hoar Cross Hall was bought from Barbara’s brother, the 15th Earl of Shrewsbury, by Hugo Meynell (1759-1800), who wanted the 8,800 acre estate for its hunting and shooting amenities. With his marriage to Elizabeth Ingram Shepheard, the Meynell family inherited the Ingram estates in Lincolnshire. His son, Hugo Charles Meynell Ingram (1783-1869), took the Ingram name in 1841 when he inherited Temple Newsam near Leeds, and began rebuilding Hoar Cross Hall in 1862.

His son, Hugo Francis Meynell Ingram (1822-1871), was Conservative MP for Staffordshire West (1868-1871), and inherited and Hoar Cross Hall and Temple Newsam in 1869. On 11 August 1863, Hugo married Emily Charlotte Wood, daughter of Charles Wood, 1st Viscount Halifax.

The Revd Michael Fisher, in Staffordshire and the Gothic Revival (Ashbourne, 2006), describes this as “a love match” … but “a strange one.” Hugo was 20 years older than Emily; he was a Tory, and she was a Liberal; his interesting were mainly in hunting, shooting and fishing, while Emily was a talented water-colour artist with a deep and pious Anglican faith expressed in her Anglo-Catholicism.

Emily shared many of the religious and theological values and outlooks of her brother the Anglo-Catholic Charles Wood (1839-1934), 2nd Viscount Halifax. He was President of the English Church Union, and played a prominent role in the early attempts to bring about dialogue between Anglicans and the Roman Catholic Church. Later, he was one of the initiators of the Malines conversations (1921-1927), involving Cardinal Mercier, Bishop Charles Gore, and others. One of his last achievements was the union of the English Church Union with the Anglo-Catholic Congress in 1933.

Hoar Cross, once owned by the Talbot family, was rebuilt by Hugo Meynell Ingram in the 1860s

Hugo continued rebuilding Hoar Cross, which was redesigned in the Jacobean style of Temple Newsam by Henry Clutton (1819-1895). Today the features of Hoar Hall include a symmetrical garden front with three canted bays, three gables, and large mullioned and transomed windows.

Hugo was in charge of the Meynell Hunt. As the Sudbury Hunt, it can be traced back to 1793. When the Meynell family took over the hounds in 1813, the name was changed from the Sudbury Hunt to the Hoar Cross Hunt.

One diary entry from 12 March 1870 shows the hunt following an 11-mile trail for 1 hour 43 minutes, with the fox leading his pursuers from Derbyshire through south-east Staffordshire into Warwickshire, from Catton, on to Walton Wood, the towards Catton, then turned in the direction of Lullington, but on to Edingale, between Harlaston and Haselour, crossing the Midland Railway, to Elford and the wood between Elford Lowe and the river Tame, through the wood and crossing the meadows in the direction of Comberford, then for Wigginton Fields, recrossing the railway, passing Syerscote Manor and the Tamworth and Ashby turnpike road, the shrubberies at Amington Hall, turning south towards Tamworth, and crossing the railway again before the fox was killed in the open two or three fields from Tamworth station.

A year later, Hugo was seriously injured in a hunting accident in February, and died tragically on 25 May 1871. Following her husband’s death, Emily was reputed to be the richest heiress in England, but Hugo and Emily had no children.

The Church of the Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, Staffordshire (Photograph: Stephen Richards/Wikipedia)

At first, Hugo was buried in Saint Peter’s Church, Yoxall. But Emily wanted a stately mausoleum for her husband, and set about building and rebuilding churches in his memory. Her first church was the Church of Holy Angels in Hoar Cross, a new building designed by the fashionable Gothic revival architects George Frederick Bodley (1827-1907) and Thomas Garner (1839-1906).

She spared no money in building this memorial to her husband and virtually handed a blank cheque to Bodley. He was a pupil of George Gilbert Scott and his other churches include All Saints’ Church, Jesus Lane, Cambridge (1863-1870), Saint Michael’s Church, Brighton (1860-1861), and Saint Augustine’s Church, Pendlebury, near Manchester (1870). He had also completed the restoration of the chapel of Jesus College, Cambridge, which Pugin had left unfinished in the 1840s.

Building work on the Church of Holy Angels began on 3 May 1872, and it was completed in 1876, at a final cost of £37,474. Earlier, the Eucharist was celebrated in the new church for first time by the Bishop of Lichfield, George Selwyn, on 25 January 1874, when the first Vicar, the Revd William Dunkerley, was instituted.

Bishop Selwyn returned to dedicate the church at Choral Evensong on 22 April 1876. A few days later, Hugo’s body was removed from Saint Peter’s Church, Yoxall, and placed in the splendid tomb Emily had erected in the Chantry Chapel on the south side of the chancel.

The building’s detail is remarkable and includes marble floors and intricately carved walls. The whole interior is sumptuous. The rib-vaulted chancel soars to a much greater height than the nave. Light flows in through large windows illuminating the stone carvings and statues, with angels and archangels, apostles, martyrs and bishops. The rood screen, with figures carven in Oberammergau, is as rich as Pugin’s in Cheadle. In the nave, the font has a towering wooden canopy.

The reredos includes a crucifix that could easily have been inspired in its design and detail by the Bosworth Crucifix.

The Stations of the Cross, considered by many as the outstanding decoration, were carved by two old woodworkers in Antwerp, DeWint and Boeck, and then coloured by Messrs. Powell using a technique Emily had admired in the Marienkirche at Danzig.

The embroidery and vestments in the church include a chasuble said to have once belonged to Pope Gregory XI, who died in 1378.

Looking at Bodley’s churches in Pendelbury and Hoar Hall, Sir Nikolaus Pevsner writes that “both are masterly, but there could be no greater contrast. Pendlebury is austere, Hoar Cross is luxuriant; Pendlebury is blunt, Hoar Cross exceedingly refined; Pendlebury high original, Hoar Cross essentially derivative. At Pendlebury, Bodley meant to create something new, at Hoar Cross he intended to show what perfection was obtainable within the rubrics of English late mediaeval decoration and architecture.”

Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram (1840-1904) by Sir William Blake Richmond (1884)

The second portrait, by Sir William Blake Richmond (1842-1921), was painted in 1884 when Emily was a widow and six years after she had completed the Church of the Holy Angels in Hoar Cross. It is in oil on canvas and measures 75.5 x 63.3 cm. It was a gift from Lord Halifax in 1948. It is also held by the Leeds Museums and Galleries and can be seen at Temple Newsam, Leeds.

Richmond was a portrait painter and a designer of stained glass and mosaic. His works include mosaic decorations below the dome and in the apse of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, London. He was born in London and was named after William Blake, the poet and artist, who was a close friend of his father, George Richmond (1809-1896), also an artist.

Richmond received some training from John Ruskin, and at the age of 14 he entered the Royal Academy schools in 1857. In 1878, he succeeded Ruskin as Slade Professor at Oxford University, and later became professor of painting at the Royal Academy.

After completing Hoar Cross, Emily decided to restore Laughton Church in Lincolnshire and once again she turned to Bodley and Garner. The nave of the church was thoroughly restored and a new chancel was built in the Decorated style. The work of restoration was once again a memorial to Hugo and his effigy in white marble at the east end of the nave is a copy of his monument in the church at Hoar Cross. Her nephew and heir, Lord Halifax, later completed her restoration work at Laughton.

Emily continued to make modifications to the church in Hoar Cross until she died at Temple Newsam on 21 December 1904. When she died, she was one of the richest women of independent means in England, with an income from investments alone that came to almost £168,000.

Emily and Hugo Meynell Ingram are side-by-side in the chantry chapel in the Church of the Holy Angels in Hoar Cross

However, no wealth or possessions ever compensated Emily for the loss of her husband. She and Hugo are buried side-by-side under marble figures in the Chantry Chapel on the south side of the Chancel in the Church of the Holy Angels in Hoar Cross.

Hugo’s tomb is a recumbent figure in white alabaster in the uniform of the Staffordshire Yeomanry of which he was Commanding Officer. Over the tomb is a richly-carved stone canopy with figures of angels above it.

To his right is the tomb of Emily, with her faithful pet dog at her feet. At the foot are the figures of the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child with angels on either side and underneath the words: “Make them to be numbered with thy saints in glory everlasting.” At the base, the words say: “Pray for the soul of Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram who built this church to the greater glory of God and in pious memory of her husband.”

The last Meynell to live at Hoar Cross Hall was Colonel Hugo Meynell. He moved to Newborough in 1952 and the hall stood empty for many years. In 1970, the hall was acquired by the Bickerton Jones family who restored much of the building and added several collections of armour. For a time, the hall was as a venue for mediaeval banquets and antiques fairs before it became a Health Spa Resort in 1991.

After visiting Emily’s church in Hoar Cross, Sir John Betjeman wrote: “The church of the Holy Angels is the masterpiece of its late Victorian architect, George F. Bodley. The stalwart pink sandstone tower dominates the leafy hilltop. The tall nave, choir and transepts, so chaste and regular outside, make the stately interior all the more imposing because of its rich contrast with the exterior. It is, as David Peace described it ‘a perfect association of splendour and intimacy architecturally expressed.’ This is because the green, blue and gold stained glass by Kempe, the carved oak benches and screens, paved floors and sandstone walls blend into a perfect church interior of late Victorian vigour and hope.”

Some questions for reflection

Should the Church recover its role as a patron of the arts?

Is your parish church a place of beauty and a place apart for the whole community?

Is there someone you love so much that you would be inconsolable when they die?

How do you expect to be remembered after your death ... and for how long?

Does human love survive human death? And how?

How do we express the hope that those we love and are dead are caught up in God’s eternal love?

Do the Crucifixion and the Resurrection teach us something about the death of those we love?

How are the sorrow of death and the hope of new life in Christ caught up in the celebration of the Eucharist?

How can Lent be lived as a time of absence and preparation for new life in Christ?

If we only hold what we possess by grace and not by right, and hold it only in custody, how can we use it for the greater love of God, yet provide for those in need and those we love?

Tomorrow: ‘40 days’ (2014) by Angela Wright, Southwark Cathedral.

Art for Lent (34): ‘The Bosworth Crucifix’ (15th century)

The Bosworth Crucifix, now in the collection of the Society of Antiquarians, was once the most notable antiquarian item in James Comerford’s private collection

Patrick Comerford

The skeletal remains found in 2012 beneath a car park in Leicester within the grounds of the former Greyfriars Friary Church were identified as those of King Richard III, who was killed at the Battle of Bosworth in 1485. The battle brought an end to the War of Roses, and the discovery has led to many new books, journal papers and television documentaries on Richard III and the Plantagenets, although a legal battle continues over the procedures that led to the excavation and the decision to rebury the bones in Leicester Cathedral.

My choice of a work of Art for Lent this morning [7 April 2014] is the ‘Bosworth Crucifix’ which once belonged to the Victorian book collector, antiquarian and notary, James Comerford (1807-1881). It now belongs to the Society of Antiquaries in London, and featured prominently in the exhibition ‘Making History’ (2008-2009).

The Bosworth Crucifix, dating from the 15th century, is said to have been discovered around 1778 at or near the site of Battle of Bosworth.

The Battle of Bosworth was fought on fields several miles south of Market Bosworth, Leicestershire, on the morning of 22 August 1485, by two armies led by King Richard III and the Lancastrian pretender, Henry Tudor, who became Henry VII. It was the last significant battle in the War of the Roses, and the last battle in which an English king died on the battlefield. It has since become one of the most legendary battles in English history.

The Canadian journalist and author Thomas B Costain, in The Last Plantagenets (1962), argued that that Richard III was a great monarch who has been tarred by conspiracies, after his death, with the murder of the princes in the tower. Costain, who supported his theories with documentation, suggested that the real murderer was the victorious Henry VII.

This 15th-century bronze processional crucifix measures 58.5 cm x 28 cm (23 in x 11 in). It is made of bronze alloy and would have been originally overlaid with gold. It has an outer frame forming a foliated border, damaged at each extremity of the transverse limb of the cross. At its centre is the figure of the Crucified Christ, crudely cast in a bronze alloy.

A mark at the crown of the head indicates that a nimbus was once attached to Christ’s head.

Each arm of the crucifix ends with a roundel, decorated on the front with the symbols of the four evangelists, and probably covered with idl. From the viewer’s perspective, these symbols are arranged as follows: at the top, an eagle (Saint John); at the bottom, a winged man (Saint Matthew); to the left, a winged lion (Saint Mark); and to the right, a winged bull (Saint Luke).

On the back, the roundels are decorated with what appear to be suns or stars, with rays streaming from them, and the familiar sunburst emblem of Edward IV and the House of York.

Additional branches may have carried figures of the Virgin Mary and Saint John. Attachments for these additional branches can be seen at the base of the cross, although the branches themselves are now missing.

Philip Schwyzer suggests in Shakespeare and the remains of Richard III (Oxford University Press, 2013) that the cross belonged to a travelling chapel royal, and that it was lost and abandoned in the chaos after the battle.

Chris Skidmore in Bosworth: the Birth of the Tudors (Hachette, 2013) suggests the crucifix was used during a private Mass for King Richard III before the Battle of Bosworth. After that Mass, the cross would have been taken off its base, mounted upon a wooden stave, and fastened into place by a hinged ring of iron to be led into the field of battle.

The crucifix was discovered around 1778 near the supposed site of the battlefield, but perhaps at Husbands Bosworth in south Leicestershire, about 18 miles south-east of the battlefield and east of Coventry. Soon after its discovery, it came into the possession of a woman who has been named as Lady Fortescue.

In his paper on ‘The Bosworth Crucifix’ in the Transactions of the Leicestershire Archaeological and Historical Society (no 78, 2004), John Ashdown-Hill, who specialises in the life of Richard III, wonders whether this Lady Fortescue may have been Lady Barbara Talbot who in 1780 married Francis Fortescue-Turville of the Manor of Husbands Bosworth. She was a sister of Charles Talbot (1753-1827), 15th Earl of Shrewsbury (1787-1827), and aunt of John Talbot (1791–1852), 16th Earl of Shrewsbury (1827-1852) and patron of the Gothic revival architect AWM Pugin.

Lady Fortescue, or Lady Barbara Fortescue-Turville, was originally from Hoar Cross, Yoxall, about 12 km north of Lichfield and 30 km north of the Bosworth battlefield. She is said to have given the crucifix to one of her workers, John Brown, who owned the crucifix when he died in 1791 ... perhaps the same John Brown of Kenilworth whose will was proved in the Consistory Court of Lichfield in 1793, although the will does not mention the crucifix.

The crucifix and many other Catholic relics passed from John Brown to Joseph Carter, the sexton of Saint Michael’s Church, Coventry (later Coventry Cathedral) by 1793. Joseph Carter had married Elizabeth Brown in Saint Michael’s Church, Coventry, in 1778, and she may have been related to John Brown. He died in June 1808, and his will was granted administration in the Consistory Court of the Diocese of Lichfield on 7 October 1808.

The crucifix then passed to his widow Elizabeth Carter and remained with the Carter family of Saint Michael’s Parish, Coventry, and presumably it was she who sold it to the Comerford family – probably James Comerford’s father – ca 1808-1810. However, it is still unclear how the crucifix passed from the Brown family to the Carter family and from the Carter family to the Comerford family.

The Bosworth Crucifix was owned by the family of the antiquarian and book collector James Comerford from around 1810. James Comerford was born in Holborn in 1807, probably the son of James Comerford, a Notary Public of Change Alley in Cornhill, London, who died on 11 August 1833. He appears to have been of Irish descent, although Ashworth-Hill, in his paper on the Bosworth Crucifix, wonders whether James was related to the Comerford family who lived in Saint Michael’s Parish in Coventry in the first half of the 19th century.

A Latin and French prayer book once owned by James Comerford, who had it bound shortly before his death in 1881

James Comerford first practised as a notary public in partnership with TS Girdler as Comerford and Company at 27 Change Alley, Cornhill, London, from December 1827. Later, he practised from 7 Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury, London. He was also a magistrate or Justice of the Peace (JP).

In 1833, James Comerford was secretary to the Society of Public Notaries of London. In December 1840, he was elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquarians (FSA).

Between 1841 and 1851, James Comerford and his family were living at No 7 Saint Andrew’s Place, Regent’s Park, London. By 1872, he was living in Framfield, Sussex. He died on 8 March 1881. He had a daughter, and a son, James W. Comerford, who shared many of his antiquarian interests.

James Comerford is best remembered as a book collector and antiquarian. He amassed a library that included a large collection of county histories, local topographies and books of Catholic religious piety. His heraldic bookplates, with the motto So Ho Ho Dea Ne, are much sought-after collectors’ items. After his death, Sotheby’s sold his library at auction on 16-20 November 1881, realising a sale total of £8,372 13 s. His books occasionally come back on the market, but more often they are valued for his heraldic bookplates than as antique books.

The ‘Bosworth Crucifix’ was the most notable object of antiquarian interest in his private collection. In December 1881, James Comerford’s son, James W. Comerford, exhibited and presented the Bosworth Crucifix to the Society of Antiquaries “in the name of his late father, James Comerford, Esq., FSA.”

James Comerford’s bookplates have become collectors’ items … they perpetuated the claims of the Comerford family in Ireland to descent from the Comberford family of Staffordshire

In his bookplates, James Comerford of London also continued the tradition within the Comerford family of Ireland of claiming the Combeford arms. These claims were also advanced by my great-grandfather James Comerford (1817-1902), who visited Comberford, Tamworth and Wednesbury ca 1900-1902, and described himself as a descendant of the Comberford family. He adapted the same bookplate when he privately published his personal account of the Comerford family and that visit the ancestral homes of the Comberford family of Staffordshire shortly before his death.

Shortly after the account of his visit was printed and bound, James Comerford added his bookplate and additional handwritten notes to the slim volume. The surviving copy of this small book is in the local history collection at Tamworth Library, Corporation Street, Tamworth (open shelves, T/COM), with a pencilled page of notes recording the details of his visit.

The Processional Cross and the Cross on the High Altar in Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin, were veiled for the Cathedral Eucharist yesterday morning [6 April 2014]. It is the custom in many places is to veil the cross from the Fifth Sunday of Lent. They are then unveiled after the Good Friday ceremonies.

The Bosworth Crucifix is an important historical English artefact, and may have been one of the inspirations for the Crucifix on the reredos in the Church of the Holy Angels in Hoar Cross, built in the 1870s by the Hon Emily Charlotte Meynell Ingram, who, like Lady Barbara Fortescue-Turville, had lived at Hoar Cross Hall. But as well as being an important historical English artefact, the Bosworth Crucifix is also a stark reminder of the meaning as the Cross as we move in these next few days through Passiontide towards Good Friday.

Tomorrow: ‘The Great Chalice of Antioch’ (sixth century).