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Saturday, 14 February 2015

Totteridge

St Andrew is essentially a Victorian/Edwardian refurbished Georgian church and is, despite a collection of somewhat dire glass, rather pleasing. An austere interior is alleviated somewhat by its location - Totteridge is a very upmarket north London burb - and the whole is probably greater than its parts.

ST ANDREW, 1790. Aisleless nave of brick with arched window in Gibbs surrounds and heavy W pediment. Pretty weatherboarded bell-turret of 1706. W porch 1845. Chancel and window tracery 1869. - PAINTINGS. Virgin and Saints, demi-figures, by Lorenzo Lozzo; an early work, presented by Lord Rothermere. St John on Patmos and the Woman of the Apocalypse, both sketches, by Benjamin West, uncommonly dramatic, almost in a Tinteretto way. - PULPIT. Jacobean, from Hatfield church. - STAINED GLASS. Chancel by Clayton & Bell, nave S and N, one window each, by Kempe, 1896 and 1903. - PLATE. Cup, inscribed 1614. - PROCESSIONAL cross. Italian, late C13. - MONUMENTS. John Puget d. 1805, by John Bacon, jnr, epitaph with urn. - Second World War Memorial, by T.J. Rushton.

St Andrew (2)

S chapel Crucifix

NN1 Clayton & Bell 3 Maries at the sepulchre (9)

Totteridge. If we return to Chipping Barnet and make our way towards London, the road follows for some distance the course of the Dollis Brook. On either side of the stream the fields, in which there are plenty of wild flowers, are preserved as an open space. At Whetstone, Totteridge Lane runs away to the west and along it are many fine houses, several of them such as Garden Hill and Southernhay dating from the 18th century when Totteridge provided a pretty country retreat for well-to-do men who still needed to be within easy reach of London. The largest house of all, Copped Hall, where Lord Lytton lived and Cardinal Manning was born, has, however, been demolished.

The parish church, dedicated to St Andrew, stands at a sharp bend in the road - a bend caused by the boundary of the mediaeval manor house which stood very much where Southernhay stands today. The church which existed in the 16th century, was rebuilt in 1790 and is of plain brick with a weatherboarded bell-turret of 1706 which was retained from the old church. Inside, there is a simple aisleless nave; the apse has an unusual and attractive domed wooden-ribbed roof. The pulpit is a 17th-century one from Hatfield. The church possesses four paintings, two by Benjamin West, the American who became President of the Royal Academy - they are St John on Patmos and The Woman of the Apocalypse - another by the parson-painter, the Reverend Matthew Peters, R.A., and a lovely group of the Madonna and Child with Peter and Paul by Lorenzo Lotto. This was given by Lord Rothermere in 1925 in memory of his mother, Mary Geraldine Harmsworth, who often worshipped at Totteridge though she is buried in St Marylebone Cemetery, Finchley, beside another of her sons, Lord Northcliffe. In the churchyard, where a 19th century Lord Chancellor, the 1st earl of Cottenham, and Sir Lucas Pepys, physician to the unfortunate George III, lie buried, are great elm trees that flank the road, and a huge yew tree, 27 feet in girth. Just beyond the church, the pound for strayed animals is still standing.

The most famous person associated with Totteridge is Henry Edward Manning who was born there in 1808, the son of a West India merchant who was also a governor of the Bank of England. Educated at Harrow and Balliol, he entered the ministry of the Church of England and became first Rector of Woollavington in Sussex, where his wife died, and then Archdeacon of Chichester. Manning’s heart gradually turned from the Church of England and he became a Roman Catholic. His promotion in that Church was rapid. After three years study in Rome, in intimate contact with the Pope, he returned to high office in London. On the death of Cardinal Wiseman he was made Archbishop of Westminster and 10 years later a Cardinal.

He was a man of severely ascetic temperament with rigid theological views, yet he had a passionate sympathy with the poor and oppressed. He campaigned against drink and sat on the Royal Commissions for the housing of the poor and for education. He was a great preacher and a good writer and died in 1892 at the age of 73.

Flickr.

Sunday, 28 September 2014

Cockfosters

Christ Church, LNK, dire.

COCKFOSTERS: CHRIST CHURCH, 1839, by H. E. Kendall. Still the London stock brick and the lancet windows of the Commissioners’ churches, but no longer symmetrical. The tower stands on the S side just E of the W gable. N aisle added by Sir A. Blomfield, 1898.

 Christ Church (2)  

Mee missed it.

East Barnet

St Mary the Virgin, LNK, should be a stonker but is sadly the ugliest church in Herts. A Norman nave has been subsumed by a ghastly Victorian east chapel and chancel, as for the west tower it can only be described as a water tower and that's being polite.

I was looking forward to this, having, unusually, done some research and was seriously disappointed although the churchyard was interesting.

ST MARY, Church Hill. Nave walls and three small windows in the N wall, Norman. The rest C19. Tower of  yellow brick in a Neo-Norman style, aisle 1868, chancel 1880. - PLATE. Cup of 1636. - Fine graveyard, with old cedar tree S of the church tower. In the graveyard MONUMENT to John Sharpe d. 1756, large urn on big base under a heavy arched baldacchino.

St Mary the Virgin (7)

Eastwards of the London road are East Barnet and Friern Barnet; in both places the chief building of interest is the church. East Barnet is dedicated to Our Lady and is the mother church to which St John’s at Chipping Barnet was once a chapel of ease. The nave walls and three small windows in the north wall are all that remains of the Norman church  - the rest is late 19th century and the most remarkable thing about the church is its, commanding position, for it looks out from the top of Church Hill across Pymmes Brook. A number of famous men are buried at East Barnet. Sir George Prevost was Governor General of Canada in 1812 during the last war between America and England. Of Swiss descent, he had opposed France on England’s behalf in the West Indies and had been rewarded with governorships there, but his appointment in Canada did not go well, for he intervened in military operations and was summoned to London for court martial but died, broken with anxiety, before the trial could be held. His father, General George Prevost, is buried beside him.

Another father and son are here too - Daniel Beaufort who helped to found the Royal Irish Academy and who prepared a map of Ireland, and Admiral Sir Francis Beaufort, who drew up the table of winds still in use today and still known as the Beaufort Scale. Another benefactor of seamen lies here - John Hadley (1682-1744), son of a wealthy Londoner who was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society at the age of 35 and who produced the first reflecting telescope powerful enough to study the stars, and the reflecting quadrant which is still called by his name.

Near to the church in Park Road is the Abbey Arts Centre and Museum, where a collection of far eastern and primitive art is housed in a rebuilt 13th century tithe-barn which stands in an attractive garden with a well. The collection is open to the public on Saturday afternoons or by appointment. A visitor to the neighbourhood might well go on to admire Monkfrith Avenue Infants School, an outstandingly good example of modern architecture.

Lyonsdown

Holy Trinity, LNK, isn't mentioned by Mee or Pevsner but is a dreary pseudo Norman Victorian build entirely lacking merit - frankly it's the zit you wake up to on the morning of your wedding.

Since there's no Pevsner I am going to replace him with a rant about extreme, nay cultish, far right evangelical Christians.

Having taken, almost impossible, exteriors I tried the porch door and found it open but the church door was locked, which I was expecting. As I started to leave, however, the internal door was opened a fraction by a young man, and I mean a fraction - all I could see was his head leaning round the door - and the following conversation occurred:

Youth - "What do you want?"

Me - "Would it be possible to have a look around the church and take some photographs?"

Youth pauses for about a second (probably not even that long)and fires back in a tone that is antagonistic, hostile and defensive all at the same time - "No".

Which is fine and I leave. Except it's not. I came across this sort of Nazi Christianity in Plaistow last year and, whilst I'm fully open to the notion that he was a satanist who had broken in to the church and was sacrificing a virgin on the altar beneath an inverted crucifix, I think he was a fully fledged member of the evangelical church (I Googled Lyonsdown when I got home and they're plainly nutters); probably.

Why are the evangelic evangelicals so hostile and defensive whilst spouting their mission? I think that a simple open church policy would serve them far better rather than their simplistic literal interpretation of biblical learning.

Holy Trinity (2)


Saturday, 27 September 2014

Barnet Vale

St Mark, keyholder listed, is a rather nice 1898 unfinished building with a not totally successful 2006 east end 'extension'.

ST MARK, Potter’s Road, 1898, by J. L. Pearson, but not a spectacular example of that excellent architect’s work. Nave only, the E end a temporary structure. Exterior flint with stone dressings, large Perp aisle windows with four-centred heads. The aisle arcades with tall piers; no clerestory.

St Mark (2)

The absence of Mee is explained by my having a 1965 edition of Hertfordshire by which time Barnet had been constituted and a new volume was published, London North of the Thames, which I've bought and will update the relevant pages when it arrives.

Having got the relevant volume Mee doesn't mention Barnet Vale.

Flickr.

Friday, 26 September 2014

Barnet - Christ Church

I wasn't expecting much from this visit to sweep up the remaining north London churches that were once in Herts but two exceeded those expectations.

Christ Church was open - and this seems to be the normal state of affair since they appear to be a thriving low church with numerous community events, clubs and activities along with concerts, a thriving food bank and is a key part of the local community.

I know all this because when I entered the body of the church I encountered the verger and lay verger who, initially, rather suspiciously asked me if they could help (bear in mind I'm a 50 year old conservative church crawler lacking a hoodie). When I asked if I could look around and take photos - I failed to mention interiors rather than people - the verger, after asking why I wanted to, said he'd have to go and check with Management.

The lay verger then explained that because of the toddlers, baby and pre-school clubs everyone needed to be CRB'd, then gave me a detailed history of the church followed up with a mild, but fervent, critique of Anglican Catholicism - all bells and smells etc.

The verger returned with the verdict...no, I couldn't but if I emailed so and so I could arrange a time to do so, internal mutterings ensued but I was stupid in not pointing out that in the body of the church I wasn't in any danger of broaching decency.

Having been taken under the lay verger's wing I was shown, and told about, all parts of the complex but not around the church.

Will I bother to email for an appointment - I think not; although it looked like it had some good glass which is a shame to miss.

CHRIST CHURCH, New Road. Flint with stone dressings, 1845-52, by G. G. Scott. N aisle 1855.

Christ Church (2)

Flickr.

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Monken Hadley

St Mary the Virgin, open, is one of the darkest churches I've visited surrounded as it is by trees on all but the west side. It also contains more, for a church this size (fairly modest), monuments than I think I've come across in other comparable buildings. As you'd expect it's received a heavy handed makeover but despite that this was my church of the day.

ST MARY. Built probably in 1494, the date appearing in an inscription on the W tower. Flint and iron-stone with white stone dressings. W tower with diagonal buttresses, battlements and higher SW turret. C18 copper BEACON on top, a great rarity. Nave and aisles of two bays; the tower opens in a further bay into the aisles. In addition chancel aisles of one bay. Their arches have the simplest mouldings (concave double-chamfers). The nave piers have capitals only towards the arches, not towards the nave. The arches are four-centred. Squints from both chancel chapels to the chancel. - STAINED GLASS. E window by Warrington, 1846 (signed); S transept E window by Wailes; other contemporary glass. - PLATE. An unusually fine collection. Cup, 1562; Standing Cup and Cover, 1586; Flagon, 1609, of coffee-pot shape; Cup and Obelisk Cover, 1610; another, 1615, especially handsomely decorated; Paten, 1618. - MONUMENTS. Unusual number of small brasses: Lady, C15 (in front of the altar); two ladies (S transept E wall); man and woman, C16 (chancel S wall); woman in demi-profile, c. 1504 (S transept W wall); William Turnour d. 1500 and wife and children (S aisle). - In addition the following later monuments: Sir Roger Wilbraham d. 1616, by Nicholas Stone, epitaph with two busts of outstanding quality in oval niches, the attitudes of exquisite Mannerism. - Alice Stamford and her son, 1626, epitaph with painted portrait of the son, and painted decoration. - Elizabeth Davies d. 1678, epitaph without figures, signed by William Stanton. - Richmond Moore d. 1796, epitaph with female in mournful attitude by a broken column; unsigned.

Roger Wilbraham 1616 (3)

Thomas Goodere 1518 (1)

PUSH self closing door (1)

Today Hadley Green is one of the prettiest pieces of Georgian development to be found near London. Among the 17th and 18th century houses that border it, are the Wilbraham Almshouses, red-brick cottages built in 1612, and a white house, now marked by a blue plaque, where the missionary and traveller David Livingstone stayed in 1857 and wrote his Missionary Travels and Researches in South Africa before returning there in 1858.

On the corner of the Green, screened by trees, is the parish church of St Mary the Virgin. A church existed in the 12th century, but the present building was erected in 1494 - the date is over the west door, a curious half-eight being used to represent a four -of flint and ironstone with white stone dressings. On top of the tower is a copper beacon or cresset, set up not as an Armada warning but during the 18th century, possibly to celebrate the recovery of George III from his illness, and last lit in rejoicing at the Coronation of Queen Elizabeth II (1953).

Inside are a nave, two aisles, a chancel, and two side chapels, dedicated to St Anne and St Catherine. Squints pierce the buttresses between the chancel and the chapels so that mass could be celebrated simultaneously at all three altars. On the capitals of the pillars is the crest of the Goodyere family - a partridge with an ear of wheat in its beak. It was John Goodyere, the lord of the manor, who, dying in 1504, left money “to the making of [the] first floure of the stepull in the said church of hadlegh as moch as it will cost the making of carpentry”. His memorial, a brass, has disappeared, but his wife can still be seen in her long robe and elaborate headdress.

Hadley Church contains one of the finest collections of small brasses to be seen in the county. There is William Turnour (d. 1500) with his wife and four children and, lacking their inscriptions so that they cannot be identified, are two 15th century ladies and a 16th century man and his wife. In addition to the brasses there is a fine monument by the sculptor Nicholas Stone to Sir Roger and Lady Wilbraham who endowed the almshouses on the Green. Sir Roger died in 1616, having been Solicitor General of Ireland. His monument, which cost £50, shows busts of himself and Lady Wilbraham while underneath kneel three pretty daughters with long hair. In the corner of the chancel is another monument to Henry Carew (d. 1620) and his mother, Lady Alice Stamford (d. 1573); his family became lords of the manor after the Abbot of Walden in Essex had been forced to surrender the ownership at the Reformation.

St Mary’s also possesses an exceptionally fine collection of 16th and early 17th century communion plate - a silver gilt flagon, patten and cups - so valuable and so large that a good part of it is on loan to the British Museum.

Beyond the church are 200 acres of Hadley Common which was originally a part of Enfield Chase, the King’s own hunting ground.