Render unto God …

A simmering row has erupted once again in the Wesleydale village of Askrigg following the revelation of the newly rendered fifteenth century tower of the mediaeval parish church. The result of the work is that the tower now gleams in the sunlight in a shade which projectors refer to as white and the church says is honey toned. The story first broke almost a year ago when the work was proposed as was reported by the Daily Telegraph in All Creatures Great and Small church in renovation row

Now, with the work completed, to the dissatisfaction of many, the story has been covered again by the paper in Unholy row after 15th-century church tower given brilliant white makeover

I have not visited the church as Askrigg, which looks to be a classic example of a Yorkshire Pennine church of the fifteenth or sixteenth century - a style often associated with the area of Craven but actually found both north and south of Craven itself. The rebuilding of so many of these churches in the period points to prosperity from sheep rearing and the cloth trade as well as cattle rearing. The churches are a rather austere equivalent of the wool and cloth churches of East Anglia and Somerset.

Parishioners and visitors are used to the grey stone of these buildings. However, it is not as good a building stone as is found in other parts of Yorkshire and the rather rough masonry probably needs an extra layer of protection through rendering. According to the Vicar the tower at Askrigg was rendered until the Victorian restoration. At that time external rendering was often enthusiastically removed, as so very often, was internal plaster. The results, both internally and externally, continue to leave the churches with a scraped look. It is perhaps very likely that the newly rebuilt church at Askrigg in the fifteenth century gleamed  in the sunlight rather as its tower does once again. 

Medieval buildings using rough stone that did not cut into ashlar blocks often used rendering to make them weatherproof and to enhance their appearance. Thus it was that the White Tower in the Tower of London was limewashed, and its distinctive appearance stands out in the well-known fifteenth century depiction of the Tower in Charles of Orleans’ collected poems. Castles like Totnes in the twelfth century or King Edward I’s Conwy and Harlech at the end of the thirteenth century stood out in the landscape with their limewashed white walls, and still show traces of it today. A later example in Conwy is the relatively recently restored rendering of the great Elizabethan town house of Plas Mawr,

In Oxford a very familiar landmark is the tower of St Michael at the Northgate. Built about.1040 it now stands displaying its rough  Anglo-Saxon masonry and quoins to the viewer. However before the enthusiastic Victorian restorers got to work it was crowned with battlements, and not the plain low parapet they created, and it seems clear from drawings and paintings the tower was rendered. Once I took this on board I never looked at the tower in the same way. It cries out to have its exposed stonework rendered, its quoins and windows emphasised and its battlements restored. Frankly it is a grand old lady left standing half-dressed before the common gaze.

Archaeological work has revealed that the abbey and cathedral built at Hexham by St Wilfrid in the seventh century was rendered with a pink covering - anticipating perhaps the ‘Suffolk Pink’ of later centuries. Such a church would certainly have stood out in the agrarian landscape of the Tyne valley.

So whilst I can appreciate that for the people of Askrigg the change to their church is dramatic it appears that it is in fact a restoration to what it would once have been.