The
History of the Parish Church of St. Mary the Virgin, Nottingham
The Architects
William Stretton 1798-1818 extensive restoration | L.N. Cottingham 1842 emergency work | G.G. Scott & W.B. Moffatt major restorations works, 1845-48; Scott further work, 1865 | H.M. Wood 1848 Chancel restoration | G.F. Bodley 1884-85, Rood Screen and Reredos, 1890 new Vestry | Thomas Garner a partner with Bodley | C.E. Kempe stained glass | Burlison & Grylls 1880's stained glass | Farmer & Brindley | C Hodgson Fowler First definitive proposal for new Chapel | Others who may have been involved or influenced by St Mary's
William Stretton (1755-1828) was a major contributor to the well-being of the church for a period of some thirty years and probably among the great saviours of the building. For instance, in 1811-1812, he inserted the stucco vaulting into the tower of St. Mary's. Hood indicated that Stretton was responsible also for the rebuilding of the north transept end in 1799, and for a new front to the south transept in 1818 "where in the eighteenth century some flat-topped design had superseded the Gothic arch". Stretton certainly used stone of a very high quality and his restorations, now cleaned, are very little weathered. The villainy comes in when one realizes that he added decoration where none should have been found, changing the style from the original pure Perpendicular to something akin to the later Decorated Perpendicular. This misdirection later led to the even more exotic decorations of the Gilbert Scott design for the west front.
Among Stretton's other works were the main park gateway of Wollaton Hall (1790); the Milton's Head, ?, in 1782, for himself as landlord; Newdigate's House in Friar Lane (1790); the Navigation Inn (right, but now renamed) by the canal on Wilford Street (1787); and Lenton Priory, his own residence, now enveloped by Nazareth House, Lenton. He was a churchwarden at St. Mary's and Lenton Priory (next door to his home and where he did excavations of the original Priory site), and was buried in Old Lenton churchyard. His father, Samuel Stretton built Colwick Hall and the new Grandstand on the Forest racecourse in 1776, both under the direction of Mr. John Carr of York (architect). In the churchyard there are slate tombstones in the churchyard by Stretton's. William Stretton was a churchwarden of St. Mary's from Easter 1802 to Easter 1806 and, it is interesting that he was the builder being paid for work done while he was holding office. He left many architectural and archaeological notes which were reprinted in 1910 (G.C. Robertson. The Stretton Manuscripts) and these include notes on his works and findings at St. Mary's.
Lewis
Nockalls Cottingham (1787-1847) was born in
Laxfield, Suffolk, and apprenticed to a builder in Ipswich, subsequently
an architect's clerk in London until 1814. He set up on his own in 1825
and his works included the repair of Rochester Cathedral, including
rebuilding the central tower (since replaced in 1904). He remodelled the
east front of Elvaston Castle in the 1830's and refitted the chapel at
Magdalen college, Oxford in 1830-2, plus restoring many churches,
including Ashbourne in Derbyshire (1839-40) and the spire of Louth in
Lincs (1844). Colvin described Cottingham's restorations as "more
respectful of the surviving mediaeval fabric than the more doctrinaire
restorations of later Gothic Revivalists, such as Scott" and his
work was approved of by A.W.N. Pugin (in Ferrey, 1861).
In December 1842, the Tower piers in St. Mary's were seen to have developed cracks and the "Eminent Architect" Mr. L.N. Cottingham was consulted and declared the tower was in imminent danger of collapsing. Cottingham appears to have supervised the initial, saving work. Wylie, writing in 1851, recorded how Mr. Cottingham, of London, the architect, took casts of the encaustic tiles (as with the Norman Capitals these were broken up or reburied). On May 20, 1844,"A public meeting was held at the Exchange, to adopt measures for the restoration of St. Mary's Church. The Mayor presided. It was stated that, owing to the faulty construction of the piers and pillars supporting the tower, they began in December, 1842, to yield under the immense pressure, and the fall of the tower was only prevented by props and framework, whereby its was temporarily shored up. a public subscription was resolved upon, and in the course of a few months a sufficient sum was obtained to enable the committee to effect a general restoration of the entire structure, including the removal of the incongruous Doric western end and Grecian urn that had been suffered to disfigure it since 1726". Cole noted that Cottingham was "by now a sick and elderly man, but perhaps the most careful restoring architect of the first half of the century". Cottingham prepared designs for a more fundamental restoration (?) but was "dismissed". In his account, Gill rounded off the overall story by a description of the discovery of cracking in the tower piers in "1842", attributable to the cutting away of the foundation of the south-west pier, some 10 feet below ground for an interment, and above it high in the pier, the careless cutting out for insertion and later removal of a gallery over the transept. The foundations were discovered to be very sound and to go down to the living rock (presumably at the level now being the floor of the old room used in 1915 for the organ blower - and the adjacent boiler room of 1915 below the chapel). In their descriptions, these writers overlooked the occurrence of severe earthquakes in 1750, 1792 and, apparently really alarming, in 1795.
George Gilbert
Scott (1811-1878) and
William Borython Moffatt (1812-87)
Although the name of George Gilbert Scott is emphasised, indeed trumpeted, in all the histories and guides to St Mary's, William Borython Moffatt is unmentioned and yet he may well have been by far the more important character in the structural reconstructions of 1845-48. Similarly, see below, the name of H M Wood is ignored but he was the architect who restored the Chancel.
Scott's father was Rector of Gawcott, near Buckingham. George was taught drawing by a Mr. Jones from Buckingham, a protégé of the Scott family at Stowe. Next, he was articled to James Edmeston, an architect of office buildings in London, then worked for a firm of big builders, Grissell & Peto. Although impressed by the Camden Society and a reader of The Ecclesiologist, he was a moderate Churchman, unlike the others in our list, who were at least High Anglican, if not converting to Roman Catholicism. During his career he was responsible for over a thousand new buildings and restorations. His particular inspiration (from his Recollections, Scott, 1879) were Hillesden Church, two miles from Gawcott, with a Tower in "rather early and simple 'perpendicular' work". The church itself was begun in 1493 and is a "very exquisite specimen of this latest phase of Gothic architecture" of which he considered the best examples to be the royal chapels at Westminster and Windsor. In 1831, Scott went to Hull, sketching en route (presumably the old Great North Road) as he noted making sketches at Grantham, Newark and Lincoln. He was also inspired by the writings of A.W.N. Pugin, whose "articles in Ecclesiologist excited me almost to fury". He set himself up in 1835, together with William Borython Moffatt, a builder, and usually the "site architect".
Moffatt usually seems to be given scant attention when "Scott's" work is described. He was the son of a builder, who undertook contracts for Edmeston, and, so, became a pupil of Edmeston. Scott described him as a very fine builder and mechanic but the partnership was dissolved by Scott in 1845, because of concerns held by Scott and his wife over Moffatt's tendency to speculate. That tendency led Moffatt into debt, including imprisonment.
It was 1838 before Scott designed his first church, then his first outstanding commission, the Martyrs' Memorial in Oxford (completed in 1841), followed by the Martyrs' Aisle in St. Mary Magdalene, Oxford. In 1840 he went to Mansfield Woodhouse to seek out stone for the Martyrs' Memorial. A glance at the photographs of the latter in Pevsner (1972), shows extensive use of Middle Pointed (Pevsner described it as "Perpendicular" but I see it as a transitionary state between the classical Decorated English and Perpendicular, where slenderness enforced shallow carvings). In 1842-4 they built St. Giles', Camberwell, in Decorated Gothic style. Simultaneously, Scott & Moffatt built the new church of St. John the Baptist, Nottingham, which was sited almost directly below St. Mary's, in the area known as Leenside. St John's was demolished after being severely damaged by bombing in 1943. Scott wrote of "the great revival of Gothic architecture at this period (viz. about 1844".
The Scott & Moffatt partnership was appointed to do the vital restoration work at St. Mary's after the dismissal of Cottingham, who had already prepared designs. Their tender was selected at a price of £2,800. The work started at the end of 1845, went on until 1848, and eventually cost about £7,000. In Scott's own words - "The most important works to be noted since 1845 are the following:- Bradfield Church; Worsley Church, which was begun when I was in partnership with Mr. Moffatt; St. Mary's, Nottingham, which was finished by him". On May 19, 1848, the church was formally re-opened "for Divine service" by the Bishop of Lincoln. Curiously, the (Nottingham) Date Book records also on June 4, 1850, "Re-opening of St. Mary's church after its restoration".
Cole wrote how "The west end of 1762 (citing Hiorns of Warwick, from Stretton, thus, having the date wrong, it was 1726) was rebuilt in Perpendicular, despite the finding of Norman capitals, the clerestory was renewed and the central tower had its piers rebuilt." (On the style of the west front, it seems that Cole was unaware of the 1677 portrayal, of which the 1845-8 rebuilding is a close facsimile). Scott's design for St. George, Doncaster (1854-8) shows much that closely resembles St. Mary's, interestingly with the west end aisle frontages having the single windows of the 1677 St. Mary's, although by then Scott had started to embroider windows with rose sections. Such windows were a style of the late twelfth century and Scott seems first to have used it at Oxford Cathedral. This was a curious action as he himself had advocated the true object of restoration as being to repel what "modern mutilation" had lost. As his career proceeded what some termed excesses crept in with over-elaboration and over-restoration and by the time of Scott's death (1878), Morris (famous now for his wallpaper and other interior designs, and a colleague of G.F. Bodley, see below) was leading a movement against such over-enthusiastic restoration. In Scott's own Recollections we find a defence and summary - "what should be done in churches where eighteenth-century box pews hide the medieval piers or where plaster and glass partitions shut off the chancel or transept?".
At St Mary's, Scott was re-engaged in 1865 to carry out further restoration. On November 14, 1865 (DB, 535) "At a highly influential public meeting held at the Exchange Hall, Lord Belper in the chair, for the purpose of taking steps for the restoration of St. Mary's church, Nottingham, it was stated that for the complete restoration of the edifice £7,500 would be required; and as the chief beauty of St. Mary's of old was in its windows, it was considered that it was almost necessary to have at least the principal ones of stained glass, as no restoration could be complete without them, for which £5,000 would be required; making with £500 for the restoration and improvement of the organ, a total of £13,000. The following resolution was carried:- 'That considering the vast importance, the original beauty, the great capability, and the present condition of St. Mary's church in Nottingham, it is desirable to undertake the restoration, under the direction of George Gilbert Scott, Esq.'. A committee was formed for carrying out the work, and at the close of the meeting £3,581 15s. 6d. was subscribed". On July 6, 1866 (DB, 539), a meeting was held at St. Mary's vicarage to receive tenders for the restoration. "Mr. Hall's tender of £11,055 was accepted, and it was agreed to proceed with the works as far as the subscription would go. £4,120 had up to that time been promised". Presumably, much of the work was completed by October 22, 1867 (DB, 545), as then "Opening services" in connection with the restoration were held, with a sermon preached by the Archbishop of York, a collection raised £334. Cole (1980) wrote how "Scott returned in 1865, and spent over £5,000 restoring roofs, recasing internal walls, reflooring and refitting. The result is a pleasant church in which it is difficult to detect Victorian interference."
In 1848, The Patron, Earl Manvers, met the cost of restoring, including re-roofing the Chancel. Mr. H.M. Wood supervised the work. The original furnishings of the chancel were cast aside. The mediaeval choir stalls being replaced by pews, and a roof of "an entirely new pattern" was erected. Henry Moses Wood , was Corporation Surveyor of Nottingham, he died on 29 September 1867, aged 78. Pigot's directory of 1842 has his address as Park Street. In 1810, he was the architect for the new church of St. Peter at Radford, completed in 1812 at a cost of about £2,000. On January 1, 1836, he was Sheriff of Nottingham, and he became an Alderman, on March 17. He was appointed surveyor to the Corporation on May 1, 1837 (on the death of Mr. Edward Staveley), after which he resigned as Alderman.
George Frederick
Bodley (1827-1907)
"After Pugin and Butterfield comes Bodley" (Comper, mss, cited by Verey). One of the "masters of the Gothic church" according to Roderick Gradige (also writing in Seven Victorian Architects). Born in Hull, son of a doctor, at the age of 18, Bodley went to live with George Gilbert Scott and his wife in Avenue Road , Regent's Park, London, and served a five-year apprenticeship there. He found much of it a dreary time and "subsequently reacted against Scott's brand of Gothic". Critically, perhaps, that period (1845-1850) was when Scott & Moffatt were rebuilding St. Mary's.
In 1850, he went on a tour of France and then to Italy in 1953. His independent career as an architect began around 1854, with churches in Brighton (St. Michael and All Angels) and Selsey (All Saints). The Ecclesiologist approved of his work from the beginning. He was the first architect to employ William Morris to make ecclesiastical stained glass. It was not until the late 1860's that he started to use the English forms of Gothic, notably in All Saints, Jesus Lane, Cambridge. There, in addition to Morris glass, he used Kempe and Hughes, plus himself, for interior painted surfaces. His partnership with Thomas Garner began in 1869.
At St. Mary's, he was responsible for the reredos and screen (1884-5) and the additional vestry (Hood, 1910). Among Bodley's other commissions in the Nottingham area were:- restoration and chancel for All Saints, Coddington (1865); (with Garner) - restoration of St. Mary, Plumtree (1873-4); St. Stephen, Sneinton (1885-7); St. Alban, Sneinton (1886-7); St. Mary, Clumber (1886-9); (Garner left the partnership) St. George, Kirk White Street West, Nottingham, chancel (1897); St. Alban, Sneinton, Lady Chapel (1898). Perhaps the greatest of these was the Chapel at Clumber, built for the Duke of Newcastle in 1886-89. Considered by Bodley himself to be one of his two best works, it has much resemblance to a simplified St. Mary's, especially if one ignores the Clumber spire and sees the blank arcades at Clumber as St. Mary's without the side aisles. The screen at Clumber is remarkably similar, although on a smaller scale and lacking the rood elements, than that built at St. Mary's only just before. Verey wrote - "The quintessence of ecclesiastical perfection is so persuasive that most visitors think in some miraculous way they have stepped right back into the Middle Ages". Clumber has the rich decorations long lost at St. Mary's.
Bodley addressed the Church Congress held in 1881, pleading for the Gothic. A major influence on Bodley was A.C. Pugin, whose work Examples and Specimens was always at hand when Bodley was drawing. Bodley himself delivered a paper to the Royal Academy in 1886, "English Architecture in the Middle Ages" declaiming his view that the golden age in England was the fourteenth century - "Its style is especially an English style. It is not too much to say of it that, at its best, it is quite unsurpassed by any other Gothic work in the world. Tired of the geometry of the earlier manner, the architects of this time invented the grace of the ogee line in their traceries. It was, I make no doubt, the culminating point in the history of Gothic Art".
Among the many young architects who started their careers in Bodley's office was Walter Tapper, later knighted, - among whose work was the surviving Lodge houses and linking wall on the hill in Shipley (Country Park), just outside Heanor. Another was Frederick Simpson.
Born 1839, son of a Warwickshire farmer, Garner entered George Gilbert Scott's office in 1856, and worked with him on various churches and houses in the Midlands. He commenced an informal partnership (never confirmed by any legal deed) with Bodley in 1869, but they continued to work on separate commissions. Garner was "an exceptionally good and rapid draughtsman", unlike Bodley whose drawings were never very brilliant or polished. The partnership ended in 1897, when Garner became a Roman Catholic, an action which he perceived would harm Bodley's practice. Garner's activities, however, lay more in domestic buildings. (Source: Verey's article on Bodley)
Charles Eamer
Kempe (1837-1907)
A great stained glass artist given many commissions by Bodley. He was trained by Clayton & Bell, and given his first commissions by Bodley (notably St. John the Baptist's, Tue Brook, Liverpool, 1868-70). He was an ardent Anglo-Catholic. Locally, a dozen Kempe windows can be seen at St. Mary's Hucknall.
A firm founded in about 1870 by Bodley and Garner (Source: Verey's article on Bodley) , together with Giles Gilbert Scott. Employed extensively by Bodley & Garner, memorably for the great rose window in the south transept of Westminster Abbey. The same triumvirate, who were neighbours in Church row, Hampstead, also founded the firm of church furnishers, Watts & Co. (Source: Verey's article on Bodley)
(Source: Verey's article on Bodley) Reredos carvers for Bodley. Farmer & Brindley furnished the enrichments within the spandrels of the new Trent Bridge, opened on July 25, 1871 (DB, 561-3). Brindley & Foster, of Sheffield, erected an organ at the newly refurbished St. James's church in July, 1879 (DB, 601).
A newspaper cutting, for November 2nd, 1907, in Nottingham University Library, Local Studies collection, is headed "St. Mary's Nottingham. The plans for the new aisle". The article shows the plans drawn up by Hodgson Fowler "the architect consulted by the parish authorities of St. Mary's". These are very similar to the plan adopted in 1912 (see below) but have five windows in the south wall, with the eastern end being flush with the main east wall of the chancel. The width would have been as built but the door into the south transept was more southerly and there was no undercroft (i.e. the present boiler-room). Interestingly, the concept of a new side chapel for the organ was the subject of an earlier drawing by T.C. Hine, a prominent local architect (see Hine , 1876). The plan of the church prepared by Harry Gill in 1916 shows the 1890 vestry as "Chapter House", and that the present doors into the turrets on both aisles were blocked (in the text, he writes how the "north turret has recently been used as a chimney"). He also showed a "Store" opening west from the old chantry-house, with the north porch and an exterior door (now presumably the massive single door between the kitchen corridor and the chantry-house) from the west end of the store.
Others
who may have been influenced by St. Mary's, or may have
influenced those who were involved with St. Mary's
Thomas Rickman (1776-1841)
A man with a curiously polyglot early career, working in his father's chemist/grocers shop, then qualifying and practising in medicine, then entering commerce until 1813. While living in Liverpool (1808-13) he went round drawing churches, in the North and eastwards into Lincolnshire. This presumably led him into practice as an architect, which he commenced in 1812. His lasting fame, and where we are interested, stems from an article, published in a collected works in 1815, and later, in 1817, published in its own right. This was An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture from the Conquest to the Reformation. Pulling together slightly earlier views and adding ideas of his own, Rickman established the terms Early English, Decorated and Perpendicular for the three phases of the Gothic style in England. The start of the English Gothic he gave as the change from the massive (rubble-filled) columns to piers (i.e. the introduction of solid but narrow shafts). For us, it is noteworthy that he gave a detailed description of the spire of Newark church. That starts with Early English and moving upwards changes into Decorated with elaborate ogees, panels and niches. Later, in 1832, he had travelled much more widely and was led to conclude that the best point of the Gothic era was the late fourteenth century. That was the period of English Perpendicular and, of course, where St. Mary's largely fits the definitions. The Samon tomb canopy in the south transept is more classically Decorated, which fits with the dates of the death of John Samon (around 1416).
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852)
The son of an architect, A.C. Pugin (d 1832/3), Augustus tried to start out on his own doing Gothic decorations in 1812. A convert to Roman Catholicism in 1832, in part due, in his own words to "the study of ancient architecture". Among others commissions, the creator of St. Barnabas' Church, now the Cathedral, Nottingham, in 1842 ff. His early buildings are Perpendicular Gothic, for instance the Houses of Parliament and St. Mary, Derby, but later this became more elaborate. Pugin Jr. had a particular influence which arose from his book Contrasts, published in 1836, in which he particularly attacked the early nineteenth century practice of imitating Gothic and the fashion for neo-classical structures. This theme he later developed and a telling description is how churches should be "as good, as spacious, as rich and beautiful, as the means and numbers of those who are erecting them will permit" contrasting the then current practice in which "a room full of seats at the least possible cost is the ... idea of a church". He argued passionately for a return to English medieval Catholicism - including plain chant, long choirs , screen and rood, elaborate vestments, no pews and strict orientation. Although he was much admired by John Henry Newman, a founder of the Oxford movement who also converted to Roman Catholicism and went on to become a cardinal, the latter wrote how Pugin was "a bigot" too rigid in his opinions and unable to see that architecture had to be living. Sadly Pugin died young and insane. Evidence, such as it is for St. Mary's perhaps influencing Pugin, can be seen in Pevsner's photograph of St. Mary's, Derby (1837-9). That has a west end that could be a narrow version of our St. Mary's, with the west end topped by a tower - our tower much narrower and atop our west window! Gilbert Scott wrote how Pugin's builder (and also for Scott at Loughborough) was "a strange rough mason from Hull, named Myers".
The Cambridge Camden Society , The Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture and The Ecclesiologist
Both Societies were founded in 1839, and The Ecclesiologist was first published in 1841. Today, it is common for the whole to be referred to as "The Oxford Movement" (a term originating around 1856?). Again, echoing Pugin, the pressure was for a re-introduction of long chancels for surpliced choirs, no galleries, no organs, no pews, but screens because "a distinction must exist between the Clergy and their flocks", a proper altar preferably of stone, and a priest doorway (simply because "it is invariably found in ancient churches"). The promoters believed that everything in a church should be "after some approved ancient model" and, moreover, "in pointed architecture Christian symbolism has found its most adequate exponent". There, of course, were other arguments and proponents of other styles but, by 1847, the day had been won and the Ecclesiologists could claim "the recognition of Middle-Pointed as the style to be studied and developed" had been achieved. The removal of galleries, erection of screens in medieval cathedrals and installation of stained glass, were among their victories in the 1850s and 1860s. Curiously, perhaps, they argued unsuccessfully for the removal of clerestories "so that the steep pitch of earlier roofs could be restored". Source: Pevsner (1972).
The Architects - Compiled by Brian Taylor, published September 2000