A friend has shared with me an excellent online portrait and description of the great church of the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross in Staffordshire. It is one of the greatest works of G. F. Bodley, together with Thomas Garner. At the time Bodley was the architect of choice for Anglo-Catholic patrons like Mrs Meynell-Ingram who was the sister of Viscount Halifax, the leading layman of the movement. Mrs Meynell-Ingram commissioned the church as a memorial to her husband who had died in 1871. The church was built between 1872 and 1876, and substantially extended during the years 1891 to 1906.
At the end are links to two other splendidly illustrated posts by the author. The first is about the Victorian churches of All Saints Leek and All Saints Denstone. The second is about one of A.W.Pugin’s undoubted, and best preserved, masterpieces, the Catholic Church of St Giles Cheadle, commissioned by the Earl of Shrewsbury.
2 comments:
What are those strange objects adorning the arch above Hugo Meynell Ingram's tomb? Balloons on strings? Jellyfish? Or, although I hesitate to mention it, sperm cells?!
It makes a pleasant change to see a splendid Victorian church whose architects hadn't taken it upon themselves to rip out medieval interiors and features to attain their aims! I gather most old churches in Devon, for example, were wrecked like that by Victorian hooligans, which is why I rarely bother entering them
Regards, John Ramsden (jrq@gmx.com)
The seaweed like vegetation was a popular motif in fourteenth century, sculpture - one suspects the masons, liked showing off.
You rightly point out that whilst many Victorian architects saved medieval churches and cathedrals from falling down, they also had an alarming tendency to ‘improve’ upon what they were given to work on, or to reconstruct what they found or thought had once been features of the building. Sometimes this worked but more often than not it is to be regretted or deplored.
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