13 June 2010

A day in the Heart of England

Uttoxeter in the heart of England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Patrick Comerford

My search for Pugin churches in mid-Staffordshire yesterday took me through some beautiful countryside. Lichfield is about as far in-land as you can get in England, so my bus journeys through the heart of England made for a day that was very different day from my usual weekend beach walks in Dublin.

It’s only about 30 km from Lichfield to Uttoxeter and another 12 km from there to Cheadle. But the buses passed through the villages and communities of Elmhurst, Armitage, Handsacre, over the Trent and Mersey Canal, through Hill Ridware, Blithbury, and Abbots Bromley, by the shores of Blithfield Reservoir, Bagot’s Bromley, Newton Hurst, Dapple Heath, Upper Booth and Lower Booth, over the River Blithe to the Blythe, and on past beautiful views down onto Kingstone Wood and Bagot Forrest, through Kingstone and Blount’s Green into Uttoxeter. And from there it was on to Cheadle through Beamhurst, Fole, Checkley, Lower Tean, Upper Tean, Teanford and Mobberley.

Many of these villages have thatched cottages, timber-framed houses, village greens, and historic churches. There was little traffic on the narrow, tree-lined side roads, apart from the adults on horses, children on ponies and the occasional pair of cyclists. The rolling countryside has large dairy farms and fields full of grazing cattle, as well as horses and sheep.

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance Day is a colourful event that has been taking place at the end of August or beginning of September each year since 1262. The interesting buildings in the village include the half-timbered Church House, the Goat’s Head Inn, which local people say is the original town hall, and the Butter Cross, in the middle of the triangular village green, which some say dates back to the 13th or 14th centuries, although others say it is a 17th century building. One house in the village is actually called Toad Hall.

Abbots Bromley has a history that dates back to 942, when the manor of “Bromleage” was given to Wulfsige the Black, and Abbas Bromley is recorded in the Domesday Book in 1086-1087 as Brunlege.

For many Irish people, Uttoxeter is merely a name on racing card or in the sports pages of newspapers, or it is a place to pass through on the way to Alton Towers. Most people pronounce the name as “you-tox-eat-er,” but local people call it “ut-cheat-er.”

But then Uttoxeter has had 79 spellings since it was first mentioned in the Domesday Book as “Wotocheshede.”

As I strolled through the town on Saturday afternoon, the High Street was closed because of the market. Two years ago, Uttoxeter celebrated the 700th anniversary of the 1308 Market Charter, which sets out the terms of the markets on Saturdays, Wednesdays and festivals.

The Johnson Memorial in the Market Place in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

The most famous event in the history of Uttoxeter was the penance of Samuel Johnson. The Lichfield writer’s father ran a bookstall in Uttoxeter market, and young Samuel once refused to help out on the stall. When he was older, Dr Johnson repented and stood in the rain without a hat as a penance for failing to help his father. This sad but moving event is commemorated by the Johnson Memorial in the Market Place.

Another writer, Mary Howitt, the Quaker author of the poem The Spider and the Fly, lived in Uttoxeter for much of her life. Howitt Crescent, off Johnson Road, is named after her, and other writers commemorated in street names here include George Eliot.

Saint Mary’s Church in Balance Street was Pugin’s first church design. A number of windows in Saint Mary’s Church recall the Bamford family. One member of this family, Joseph Cyril Bamford (JCB), gave his name to the JCB Empire, but started out with a small business in a small garage in the town. JCB is still the main employer in the town, alongside Fox’s Biscuits.

Cheadle too is a market, town with Anglo-Saxon roots, and the High Street was closed on Saturday for a market. When I arrived in the afternoon to photograph Saint Giles’s Church, Pugin’s most famous building, it was joyfully full for a First Communion.

Ye Olde Talbot on a sunny day in Uttoxeter (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

In all these towns and villages, Pugin’s patrons, the Talbot family, the Earls of Shrewsbury, have left their mark, in pub names and signs, street names, and even the Talbot First School in Kingstone.

Unlike poor Dr Johnson, I found it was still a sunny afternoon when I got back to Uttoxeter. Opposite the Johnson Memorial stands Ye Olde Talbot, one of the few timber-framed buildings to survive a 17th century fire in the town. It is a charming old timber-framed building, and I sat in the sunshine, sipping a glass of wine in the warm sunshine before catching the bus back to Lichfield.

After such a beautiful day in the countryside and in the small towns of rural Staffordshire, it was a joy at Choral Evensong in Lichfield Cathedral to find the appointed Psalms of the day were Psalms 65, 66 and 67, including these lines:

Thou visitest the earth and blesses it: then makes it very plenteous
the river of God is full of water: thou preparest their corn, for so thou providest the earth.
(Psalm 65: 9-10)

say unto God, o how wonderful art thou in thy works ...
For all the world shall worship thee.

(Psalm 66: 2-3)

I was back in the cathedral this morning for the Sung Eucharist, when the Dean, the Very Revd Adrian Dorber, presided, the Chancellor, Canon Pete Wilcox, preached, and the setting was the Missa Brevis by Kodaly.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin

Travels in ‘Pugin-Land’

Lichfield Cathedral in the sun before Choral Evensong today ... Pugin declared the fabric had been mutilated by “this monster of architectural depravity, this pest of Cathedral architecture” (Photograph: Patrick Comerford,2010)

Patrick Comerford

I am staying in Lichfield this weekend, and decided today to catch local buses to Uttoxeter and Cheadle and to go in search of some of Pugin’s architectural legacy in this part of England.

My great-grandfather and grandfather both worked as stuccordores on the churches built by the great English Gothic architect, AWN Pugin, and buildings designed by successors. Having lived and worked in both Lichfield and Co Wexford, I am amused that Pugin’s legacy is to be found mainly in Staffordshire and in Co Wexford.

Saint Giles’s Church and its 200 ft spire dominate the Staffordshire market town of Chealde (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Britain’s distinguished architectural historian, the late Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, once described Staffordshire as “Pugin-land” after visiting Cheadle, the market town dominated by Saint Giles’s Church and its 200 ft spire. He wrote: “Nowhere can one study and understand Pugin better than in Staffordshire – not only his forms and features but his mind, and not only his churches but his secular architecture as well.”

Pugin-Land is a description that inspired the title of the Revd Michael Fisher’s book on Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury and the Gothic revival in Staffordshire. But in many ways Co Wexford could be described easily as Ireland’s own “Pugin-Land,” for nowhere else in Ireland can one study and understand Pugin better than in Co Wexford, where the landscape is speckled with some of the finest examples of his imagination and creativity, each an effort to recreate in Ireland the ideal English Gothic parish churches or cathedrals.

It is as though Saint Aidan’s Cathedral in Enniscorthy stands proudly at the centre of this wonderland, and radiating from it are some of Pugin’s most delightful creations – the Chapel of Saint Peter’s College, Wexford and seven or eight other churches, chapels or convents: the Church of the Assumption in Bree; Saint James’s Church, Ramsgrange; the Church of Saint Michael the Archangel in Gorey and the neighbouring Loreto Convent; Saint Mary’s Church, Tagoat; Saint Alphonsus’s Church, Barntown; and the Power chapel in Edermine and the Cliffe chapel at Bellevue, which may have been built after according to plans drawn by the Gothic master himself.

Saint Mary’s , Uttoxeter ... Pugin followed a similar design in his Gothic revival churches in Co Wexford (Photograph: Patrick Comerford (2010)

These churches were so influential on church building and design that they set a remarkable standard for ecclesiastical architecture, decoration and style. The architectural influence that is shared by Co Wexford and Staffordshire is interesting, so that Saint James’s, Ramsgrange, for example, is like several contemporary but much smaller churches designed by Pugin, such as Saint Mary’s, Uttoxeter, and Saint Augustine’s, Solihull, both of which he also designed in 1838.

Here in Lichfield it is interesting to discover that Pugin’s first visit to Staffordshire was in the autumn of 1834, when he stayed in Lichfield during an extensive architectural tour of the Midlands and the West Country “in search of the picturesque and the beautiful.”

Pugin’s stay in Lichfield was memorable for two reasons. First of all, he arrived late at night, and in the dark he crept unwittingly into the wrong bedroom. Aware of something soft and warm in the bed, he found it to be “the thigh of a female occupant already turned in.”

There were loud screams and shouts. Chambermaids came rushing in with lighted candles. Pugin had some difficulty in convincing everyone that he had made a genuine mistake.

But Pugin was in for another unpleasant shock when he visited Lichfield Cathedral the next day. Taken aback by James Wyatt’s the refurbishment of the cathedral thirty years earlier by James Wyatt (1746-1813), he declared: “Yes – this monster of architectural depravity, this pest of Cathedral architecture, has been here. need I say more.” And then, referring to the Lichfield architect, Joseph Potter (1756-1842), he said: “The man I am sorry to say – who executes the repairs of the building was a pupil of the Wretch himself and has imbibed all the vicious propensities of his accursed tutor without one spark of even practical ability to atone for his misdeeds.”

He found the fabric of the cathedral had been mutilated by “the Wretch” – and he also described Lichfield as “a dull place – without anything remarkable.” Interestingly, Potter preceded Pugin as the architect of Oscott College.

The interior of the Church of the Holy Cross, Upper John Street, Lichfield, today ... the screen and furnishings designed by Pugin in 1841 are no longer here (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Pugin revisited Lichfield in 1837. After staying briefly at Wolseley Park with Sir Charles Wolseley, a recent convert to Roman Catholicism, Pugin returned to Lichfield. There Joseph Potter had built the Roman Catholic Church of the Holy Cross, and Pugin would add a screen and other furnishings in 1841 ... although they have long disappeared.

Later, the West Doors of Lichfield Cathedral would inspire Pugin’s design for the doors of Saint Chad’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham.

The Great West Doors of Lichfield Cathedral ... they inspired Pugin’s design for the doors of Saint Chad’s Roman Catholic Cathedral in Birmingham (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

But it is interesting that it was only after this second visit to Lichfield that Pugin arrived for the first time at Alton Towers, the home of the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, on 31 August 1837, staying there for the next four days.

Lord Shrewsbury’s Irish titles included Earl of Wexford; Lady Shrewsbury was Maria Theresa Talbot, was the daughter of William Talbot of Castle Talbot, Co Wexford, and the favourite niece of John Hyacinth Talbot MP, of Ballytrent, Co Wexford.

The visit changed Pugin’s career for ever, and transformed the ecclesiastical landscape of both Staffordshire and Co Wexford. Lord Shrewsbury’s influence led to Pugin rebuilding Alton Towers and designing great works of architecture including Saint Giles’s, Cheadle, and Saint Mary’s, Uttoxeter. The patronage of Lady Shrewsbury’s uncle brought Pugin to Wexford the following year.

Pugin’s interior, including his rood screen, remain largely intact in Saint Giles’s Church, Cheadle (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2010)

Pugin died when he was only 40 in 1852; Lord Shrewsbury died later that year. But church architecture and church decoration would never be the same again – in England or in Ireland.

As I sat in the choir stalls of Lichfield Cathedral at Choral Evensong this evening, I realised that had Pugin lived long enough to return to Lichfield, he would have appreciated the results of the restoration work carried out from 1857 onwards by George Gilbert Scott (1811-1878). Indeed, he would have been delighted to see the undoing of Wyatt’s misdeeds, the restoration of the Lady Chapel, the High Altar replaced and correctly furnished, the stonework and statuary of the cathedral restored in true Gothic style,” and the Minton tiles in the choir, designed according to the principles he had once laid down.

Canon Patrick Comerford is Director of Spiritual Formation, the Church of Ireland Theological Institute, and a canon of Christ Church Cathedral, Dublin