26 October 2021

Three sculptures in Coventry Cathedral:
2, ‘Statue of Christ’ by Alain John

‘Statue of Christ’ by Alain John in the ruins of the Old Coventry Cathedral (Photograph: Patrick Comerford, 2021)

Patrick Comerford

During my visit to Coventry Cathedral earlier this month, Jacob Epstein’s triumphant bronze figures of the Archangel Michael vanquishing the Devil were covered for repair work and was not visible.

However – apart from the effigy of Bishop Huyshe Wolcott Yeatman-Biggs by Sir William Hamo Thornycroft – three sculptures in particular drew my attention in the ruins of the Old Cathedral: Jacob Epstein’s statue Ecce Homo; a Statue of Christ by Alain John when he was an 18-year-old pupil at Blundell’s School; and the ‘Choir of Survivors’ by Helmut Heinze, a gift from Dresden.

The Statue of Christ is a second casting, in concrete, of a statue at Blundell’s School in Devon. It was created by an 18-year-old pupil, Alain John, and represents Christ blessing the multitude.

Alain John (1920-1943) was an aspiring sculptor of Armenian descent. His family were Armenian merchants who had migrated from New Julfa, Persia, to settle in Calcutta, India, where he was born in 1920.

He was educated at Blundell’s School in Tiverton and had passed the entrance to King’s College, Cambridge, in 1938 and was told he could travel abroad until term started. Instead, he chose to return to Blundell’s School for a term to model a statue for an empty niche in the school tower.

As his theme, he finally chose Christ in Blessing. Eric Gill, then a master at the school, said of the clay model, ‘No finer piece of work has been done by anyone in this country this year.’ The original statue remains in place.

At the outbreak of World War II, Alain John enlisted in the Royal Air Force. He preferred to fly with friends as a navigator sergeant rather than seeking a commission. He undertook a long series of night flights over Germany and died on 23 December 1943 at the age of 23 from injuries sustained on a mission.

The headmaster of Blundell’s School, Neville Gorton, became Bishop of Coventry shortly before Alain John died in 1943. Bishop Gorton wrote to The Times on 29 December 1943 to propose that John’s statue be recast as an Air Force Memorial. Commenting on the statue, he said, ‘It is a moving work of faith and tenderness, and of the quality in its faith and its art Eric Gill’s judgement stands.’

The statue was recast n Bishop Gorton’s commission and now stands in the ruins of the old Coventry Cathedral as a memorial to all who lost their lives in the war.

Neville Vincent Gorton (1888-1955) was the fourth Bishop of Coventry. He was born on 1 March 1888, the son of Canon CV Gorton, and was educated at Marlborough College and Balliol College, Oxford.

Gorton was a career schoolmaster who after ordination he spent 20 years at Sedbergh School. He was a housemaster of Sedbergh when he was appointed head of Blundell’s School, where he was to remain until the call to face the challenges of a severely bombed diocese.

A passionate advocate of Christian Unity, Gorton’s vision was for a ‘People’s Cathedral’ in Coventry. He died in office on 30 November 1955 aged 67, and is buried in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral.

Yesterday: ‘Ecce Homo’ by Jacob Epstein

Tomorrow:Choir of Survivors’ by Helmut Heinze

Praying in Ordinary Time 2021:
150, Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield

Saint Michael’s Church, Greenhill … stands on an earlier burial site (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Patrick Comerford

Before the day begins, I am taking a little time this morning for prayer, reflection and reading. Each morning in the time in the Church Calendar known as Ordinary Time, I am reflecting in these ways:

1, photographs of a church or place of worship;

2, the day’s Gospel reading;

3, a prayer from the USPG prayer diary.

My theme for this week is churches in Lichfield, where I spent part of the week before last in a retreat of sorts, following the daily cycle of prayer in Lichfield and visiting the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital and other churches.

In this series, I have already visited Lichfield Cathedral (15 March), Holy Cross Church (26 March), the chapel in Saint John’s Hospital (14 March), the Church of Saint Mary and Saint George, Comberford (11 April), Saint Bartholomew’s Church, Farewell (2 September) and the former Franciscan Friary in Lichfield (12 October). The theme of Lichfield churches, which I began with Saint Chad’s Church on Sunday and Saint Mary’s Church yesterday, continues this morning (26 October 2021) with photographs from Saint Michael’s Church on Greenhill.

Inside Saint Michael’s Church … the interior has been altered radically in the last two centuries (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Saint Michael’s Church on Greenhill stands on a sandstone ridge on the east side of Lichfield. Although the church dates from rebuilding projects in the 1840s, there has been a church on this high ground since at least 1190, and Saint Michael’s is surrounded by one of the oldest and one of the largest burial grounds in England.

The nine-acre site surrounding the parish church is the site of one of the earliest settlements in Lichfield, and was a significant burial ground from an early date.

There is a legend that this was the burial place of 999 early Christian martyrs who were the followers of the legendry Saint Amphibalus, who had converted Saint Alban to Christianity in the third or fourth century. There is no evidence to support the legend of those martyrs in the year 300 during the reign of the Emperor Diocletian. But the legend became so popular that it was often said that the name Lichfield actually means ‘field of the dead.’

This tradition develops a mediaeval story created by Geoffrey of Monmouth, and was exaggerated from the 12th century on after Lichfield became an important stopping place on pilgrim routes.

The legend was largely forgotten by the 1500s, but it was revived later in the mid-15th century when Lichfield was incorporated as a borough in 1548. The new civic council needed an image for its seal but wanted to break with the pre-Reformation image of Saint Chad. The corporation decided to use the story of the 999 martyrs on its seal, and so gave new life to a dead and unfounded story.

It may be that this legend led to George Fox, the founding Quaker, to declare: ‘Woe unto the bloody City of Lichfield.’

After his release from prison in Derby, Fox walked to Lichfield. When he was about a mile outside Lichfield, he felt a command from God to take off his shoes and to walk into the city. There in the Market Square, he stood barefoot in the snow as he cried out again and again: ‘Woe unto the bloody City of Lichfield.’

Fox later said he a vision of a channel of blood running through the streets of Lichfield and that the market place was a pool of blood, and explained later that God wanted him to preserve the memory of the thousand Christians martyrs from the reign of Diocletian.

A few decades later, the Staffordshire historian Robert Plot declared that the nearby area now known as Christian Fields was the site of their martyrdom and it has borne the name ever since. Of course, no archaeological evidence was ever found to support these stories from Geoffrey of Monmouth and Robert Plot. Today Christian Fields is a nature reserve south of Eastern Avenue, between Dimbles Lane and Curborough Road.

Despite the false foundations for this legend and the religious impulses it has inspired, there may have been a church on this site at Greenhill from an early date. Once again, local legend says the first church on the site was consecrated by Saint Augustine. Other accounts say it was because the site was so well known that Saint Chad was attracted to Lichfield, making it the centre of his new diocese in Mercia.

There is evidence on the site of crouched burials from before the Norman Conquest. However, the first church at Saint Michael’s is not recorded until 1190.

The oldest remaining parts of the present church date from the 13th century. In a recess in the north wall of the chancel under the pointed arch is the tomb of William de Walton, who in 1344 was the first recorded benefactor of Saint Michael’s. At his feet is a friendly looking dog, indicating he died in peace in his sleep rather violently or at war.

The church register dates from 1574. The font dates from 1669 and is octagonal with stylised fleur-de-lis and Tudor roses.

From the late 17th century, Saint Michael’s was associated with the family of Lichfield’s most famous writer, Samuel Johnson (1709-1784).

Johnson visited Lichfield for the last time in the autumn of 1784. He returned to London on 16 November, and composed an inscription for a floor slab in the centre of the nave to commemorate his immediate family.

On 2 December, he wrote two letters to Lichfield giving explicit directions for epitaphs to be placed over the middle aisle of Saint Michael’s Church where his father Michael Johnson (died 1731), his mother Sarah Johnson (died 1759), and his brother Nathaniel Johnson (died 1737), were buried.

He wrote to his cousin, the apothecary Richard Greene (1716-1793), who was the Senior Bailiff of Lichfield and lived in Market Street, saying:

‘I have enclosed the epitaph for my Father, Mother, and Brother, to be all engraved on the large size, and laid in the middle aisle in St. Michael’s church, which I request the clergyman and church-wardens to facilitate.

‘The first care must be taken to find the exact place of interment, that the stone might protect the bodies. Then let the stone be deep, massy and hard; and do not let the difference of ten pounds, or more, defeat your purpose.

‘I have enclosed ten pounds, and Mrs Porter will pay you ten more, which I gave her for the same purpose. What more is wanted shall be sent; and I beg that all possible haste be made, for I wish to have it done while I am yet alive. Let me know, dear Sir, that you receive this. I am, Sir, your most humble servant, Sam Johnson.’

On the same day, he wrote to Lucy Porter: ‘I am very ill, and desire your prayers. I have sent Mr Green the epitaph and a power to call on you for ten pounds.’

Within a fortnight, Johnson died on 13 December 1784. He was buried in Westminster Abbey on 20 December.

The original stone Johnson commissioned was removed when Saint Michael’s was repaved in the late 1790s, and much of the mediaeval fabric of the church was lost when the church was restored in the 1840s by a local architect Thomas Johnson and the London-born architect Sydney Smirke.

Johnson’s stone, with the same inscription, was replaced in 1884 to mark the centenary of Samuel Johnson’s death. The church we see today includes further architectural renovations designed in the 1890s by John Oldrid Scott.

A family mausoleum was erected in the church the late 18th century in the angle of the chancel and the south aisle by the Earl of Donegall (later the Marquess of Donegall). He lived at Fisherwick and also owned Comberford Hall, and gave his name to Donegal House on Bore Street, Lichfield. The mausoleum was destroyed during rebuilding and restoration works in 1842-1843.

The graves in the churchyard include an unusual ‘saddle-back’ tomb and the graves of members of the family of the poet Philip Larkin. John Brown, who sounded the trumpet for the 17th Lancers at the Charge of the Light Brigade, is also buried here.

Here too is the gravestone of the last victims of a public hanging in Lichfield. John Neve, William Wightman and James Jackson men were found guilty of forgery and were hanged at the gallows at the junction of Tamworth Road and London Road on 1 June 1810. Their gravestone, which was restored recently, only gives the initials of the three men and the date of their execution.

The mausoleum of Canon James Thomas Law (1790-1876) is a Grade II Listed Building on the northern edge of the churchyard. Law was a prebendary of Lichfield Cathedral and chancellor of the Diocese of Lichfield, a key figure in the foundation of Lichfield Theological College, and Master of Saint John’s Hospital, Lichfield (1821-1836).

Law had the mausoleum designed like a canopied mediaeval tomb as a memorial to his wife who died in 1864. Originally, it was surmounted by a clock with two dials that were illuminated at night by gas. Built on the side of the Trent Valley Road it was a reminder of the time to travellers on their way to the railway station. But the clock is now missing and the mausoleum is overgrown.

Two months before he wrote his poem ‘Church Going’ in 1954, Philip Larkin spent a week in the Midlands, mainly with his mother, when he visited ‘family graves’ in Lichfield around February or March 1954, including the grave of his father, Sydney Larkin, who was buried there in 1948.

In a letter written that March, Larkin says this visit to Saint Michael’s churchyard was followed by a ‘queer mixture of hell and rest cure’ – by this he meant a poorly attended service in Lichfield Cathedral.

A statue of Saint Michael on the wall of Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Luke 13: 18-21 (NRSVA):

18 He said therefore, ‘What is the kingdom of God like? And to what should I compare it? 19 It is like a mustard seed that someone took and sowed in the garden; it grew and became a tree, and the birds of the air made nests in its branches.’

20 And again he said, ‘To what should I compare the kingdom of God? 21 It is like yeast that a woman took and mixed in with three measures of flour until all of it was leavened.’

Saint Michael’s Churchyard is one of the largest and one of the oldest burial grounds in England (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

The Prayer in the USPG Prayer Diary today (26 October 2021) invites us to pray:

Let us pray for the women who suffer violence from those they do not know, and from those they do.

The Johnson family memorial, with the inscription commissioned by Samuel Johnson commemorating his father, mother and brother (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Yesterday’s reflection

Continued tomorrow

The Resurrection … a stained glass window in Saint Michael’s Church, Lichfield (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)

Scripture quotations are from the New Revised Standard Version Bible: Anglicised Edition copyright © 1989, 1995, National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide. http://nrsvbibles.org

I ‘run my hand around the font’ (Philip Larkin) … the font in Saint Michael's Church, where generations of the Larkin family were baptised (Photograph: Patrick Comerford)