Betjeman’s Best British Churches. Richard Surman

effect of three slow centuries command?

      Thou may’st thy various greens and greys contrive

      They are not lichens nor light aught alive.

      But yet proceed and when thy tints are lost,

      Fled in the shower, or crumbled in the frost

      When all thy work is done away as clean

      As if thou never spread’st thy grey and green,

      Then may’st thou see how Nature’s work is done,

      How slowly true she lays her colours on . . .

      With the precision of the botanist, Crabbe describes the process of decay which is part of the beauty of the outside of an unrestored church:

      Seeds, to our eye invisible, will find

      On the rude rock the bed that fits their kind:

      There, in the rugged soil, they safely dwell,

      Till showers and snows the subtle atoms swell,

      And spread th’ enduring foliage; then, we trace

      The freckled flower upon the flinty base;

      These all increase, till in unnoticed years

      The stony tower as grey with age appears;

      With coats of vegetation thinly spread,

      Coat above coat, the living on the dead:

      These then dissolve to dust, and make a way

      For bolder foliage, nurs’d by their decay:

      The long-enduring ferns in time will all

      Die and despose their dust upon the wall

      Where the wing’d seed may rest, till many a flower

      Show Flora’s triumph o’er the falling tower.

      WILLEN: ST MARY – a Classical church of the 1670s by Robert Hooke, it points the way to the Georgian interiors of the following century

      © Michael Ellis

      Yet the artists whom Crabbe admonishes have left us better records than there are in literature of our churches before the Victorians restored them. The engravings of Hogarth, the water-colours and etchings of John Sell Cotman and of Thomas Rowlandson, the careful and less inspired records of John Buckler, re-create these places for us. They were drawn with affection for the building as it was and not ‘as it ought to be’; they bring out the beauty of what Mr Piper has called ‘pleasing decay’; they also shew the many churches which were considered ‘neat and elegant’.

      It is still possible to find an unrestored church. Almost every county has one or two.

      The Georgian Church Inside

      There is a whole amusing literature of satire on church interiors. As early as 1825, an unknown wit and champion of Gothic published a book of coloured aquatints with accompanying satirical text to each plate, entitled Hints to Some Churchwardens. And as we are about to enter the church, let me quote this writer’s description of a Georgian pulpit: ‘How to substitute a new, grand, and commodious pulpit in place of an ancient, mean, and inconvenient one. Raze the old Pulpit and build one on small wooden Corinthian pillars, with a handsome balustrade or flight of steps like a staircase, supported also by wooden pillars of the Corinthian order; let the dimensions of the Pulpit be at least double that of the old one, and covered with crimson velvet, and a deep gold fringe, with a good-sized cushion, with large gold tassels, gilt branches on each side, over which imposing structure let a large sounding-board be suspended by a sky-blue chain with a gilt rose at the top, and small gilt lamps on the side, with a flame painted, issuing from them, such Pulpits as these must please all parties; and as the energy and eloquence of the preacher must be the chief attraction from the ancient Pulpit, in the modern one, such labour is not required, as a moderate congregation will be satisfied with a few short sentences pronounced on each side of the gilt branches, and sometimes from the front of the cushion, when the sense of vision is so amply cared for in the construction of so splendid and appropriate a place from which to teach the duties of Christianity.’

      And certainly the pulpit and the high pews crowd the church. The nave is a forest of woodwork. The pews have doors to them. The panelling inside the pews is lined with baize, blue in one pew, red in another, green in another, and the baize is attached to the wood by brass studs such as one may see on the velvet-covered coffins in family vaults. Some very big pews will have fire-places. When one sits down, only the pulpit is visible from the pew, and the tops of the arches of the nave whose stonework will be washed with ochre, while the walls will be white or pale pink, green or blue. A satire on this sort of seating was published by John Noake in 1851 in his book already quoted:

      O my own darling pue, which might serve for a bed,

      With its cushions so soft and its curtains of red;

      Of my half waking visions that pue is the theme,

      And when sleep seals my eyes, of my pue still I dream.

      Foul fall the despoiler, whose ruthless award

      Has condemned me to squat, like the poor, on a board,

      To be crowded and shov’d, as I sit at my prayers,

      As though my devotions could mingle with theirs.

      I have no vulgar pride, oh dear me, not I,

      But still I must say I could never see why

      We give them room to sit, to stand or to kneel,

      As if they, like ourselves, were expected to feel;

      ’Tis a part, I’m afraid, of a deeply laid plan

      To bring back the abuses of Rome if they can.

      And when SHE is triumphant, you’ll bitterly rue

      That you gave up that Protestant bulwark – your pew.

      The clear glass windows, of uneven crown glass with bottle-glass here and there in the upper lights, will shew the churchyard yews and elms and the flying clouds outside. Shafts of sunlight will fall on hatchments, those triangular-framed canvases hung on the aisle walls and bearing the Arms of noble families of the place. Over the chancel arch hang the Royal Arms, painted by some talented inn-sign artist, with a lively lion and unicorn supporting the shield in which we may see quartered the white horse of Hanover. The roofs of the church will be ceiled within for warmth, and our boxed-in pew will save us from draught. Look behind you; blocking the tower arch you will see a wooden gallery in which the choir is tuning its instruments, fiddle, base viol, serpent. And on your left in the north aisle there is a gallery crowded under the roof. On the tiers of wooden benches here sit the charity children in their blue uniforms, within reach of the parish beadle who, in the corner of the west gallery, can admonish them with his painted stave.

      The altar is out of sight. This is because the old screen survives across the chancel arch and its doors are locked. If you can look through its carved woodwork, you will see that the chancel is bare except for the memorial floor slabs and brasses of previous incumbents, and the elaborate marble monument upon the wall, by a noted London sculptor, in memory of some lay-rector of the 18th century. Probably this is the only real ‘work of art’ judged by European standards in the church. The work of 18th-century sculptors has turned many of our old churches into sculpture galleries of great interest, though too often the Victorians huddled the sculptures away in the tower or blocked them up with organs. No choir stalls are in the chancel, no extra rich flooring. The Lord’s Table or altar is against the east wall and enclosed on three sides by finely-turned rails such as one sees as stair balusters in a country house. The Table itself is completely covered with a carpet of plum-covered velvet, embroidered on its western face with IHS in golden rays. Only on those rare occasions, once a quarter and at Easter and Christmas and Whit Sunday when there is to be a Communion service, is the Table