Southrey's charming little church

click photo to enlarge
The church of St John the Divine at Southrey is unusual among Lincolnshire village churches in a number of interesting ways. Firstly it was built in 1898, a late date not only for one of the county's Victorian churches but also because most villages have a medieval building. Then there is the fact that at this late date no architect was involved in its construction. It was built by Richard Turner, the village carpenter, with the help of villagers, the Rev C. Laing and his curate, Mr Knox. This must account for the fact that the church is made of wood, a further unusual characteristic. This material gives the building something of a colonial appearance. The foundations are probably the oldest feature of the church. It is said that the stone slabs that form the plinth were grave covers from the dissolved Bardney Abbey.

The overall design is quite simple - a rectangular nave and chancel in one, a west porch with a large window above, and a small bell turret surmounted by a large weathercock (with cartoon-like painting). What look like four  supporting buttress/poles on each side appear to be later additions holding up the building, perhaps due to movement of some sort. They are, in fact, part of the original design, perhaps a case of "belt and braces" applied by the builders to ensure the structure's integrity.

The exterior timber has been replace by uPVC with little detriment to the overall appearance of the building which is charming. The congregation and clergy clearly look after the building very well and on our recent visit, as on a previous one a few years ago, the church was beautifully presented both without and within. Until recently here was only one piece of original stained glass - a small roundel at the east end above the altar. However, in 2014 the four-light west window above the porch received a remembrance window. The "Southrey Soldiers Windows" by Derek Commander depicts the church in its setting and the military personnel who came from the village and died on active service, the earliest during WW1, the most recent in 2011.

photograph and text © Tony Boughen

Photo Title: St John the Divine, Southrey, Lincolnshire
Camera: Sony RX10
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 12.9mm (35mm - 35mm equiv.) crop
F No: f5
Shutter Speed: 1/640 sec
ISO:125
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Old sheds

click photo to enlarge
On a walk taken after June rain had begun to clear we came upon these old sheds that were once an essential part of a small holding. The last time we saw them there was a "For Sale" notice on the site. Now it had the word "Sold" fixed over it. It seemed the right time to photograph these dilapidated wood and corrugated iron buildings: who knows how much longer they will be there?

© Tony Boughen

Camera: Nikon D5300
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 18mm (27mm - 35mm equiv.)
F No: f6.3 Shutter Speed: 1/500 sec
ISO:100
Exposure Compensation: -0.33 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Crude but effective

click photo to enlarge

In my very first paid job I worked with a man who often described makeshift engineering work as "crude but effective". It's his phrase that always comes to mind when I gaze upon the nave roof timbers of the church of St Mary at Swineshead, Lincolnshire. The roofs of English medieval churches are well known for their structural timbers. Often these are ingenious, functional, elaborate, inventive and ornate. The angel roofs of St Wendreda at March, Cambridgeshire, and All Hallows, Dean in Bedfordshire, both exemplify the latter quality in particular. Victorian timber roofs are often well made too, and the work that the restorers of the nineteenth century did on older roofs is frequently very sensitive, retaining the essentials of the medieval carpenter's craft whilst replacing wood that has succumbed to death watch beetle and rot, and adding metal bracing as required.

However, sometimes I gaze upon a medieval timber roof that is severely functional and think that it has many of the qualities that might be seen in a great barn of the same age. Ornate has been eschewed in favour of utility giving a rustic feel to the whole enterprise. The roof of Swineshead church has some of those qualities. It perhaps comes from the use of timbers that retain something of the shape of the original tree trunk or limb. These irregularly shaped pieces catch the eye and suggest that either thrift or a "good enough" spirit underpinned the making of the roof. The roof was restored by Wilfred Bond in 1925.

At Swineshead the roof retains its original, steeply pitched, form (see photograph in yesterday's post). So many English church roofs were lowered to a very shallow pitch in the fifteenth century, to be hidden behind parapets, often invisible from ground level. This was done to stop the downward creep of the lead covering that became the favoured roof finish; unsurprising really in the country that was Europe's premier producer of lead. All of which makes me wonder just what is the age of the main timbers in the nave roof? Pevsner notes that the north aisle has a fifteenth century roof: are parts of the main roof earlier still?

photographs and text (c) T. Boughen

Photo 1
Camera: Canon
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 17mm
F No: f8
Shutter Speed: 1/20
ISO: 1600
Exposure Compensation:  -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

All Saints, Crowfield, Suffolk

click photo to enlarge

As I've travelled about England I've periodically come across a medieval church with walls that are wholly or partly constructed of wood. Usually this has been in the west midlands, southern and south east England. Churches such as Greensted (Essex), Pembridge (Herefordshire), Melverley (Shropshire), Brookland (Kent), and Besford (Worcestershire), reflect a local tradition and skills in timber construction as well as an absence or paucity of good building stone. The furthest north I've found such construction is the church of Lower Peover in Cheshire, where a sixteenth century stone tower rises above a building that is entirely "black and white". There was a time when most churches displayed regional characteristics - Suffolk flushwork, Norfolk flint, Yorkshire gritstone, Lincolnshire oolitic limestone, etc. But, it has always been the case that materials and styles have been copied from areas where they didn't originate, ever since the Normans began importing Caen stone. As late as 1902-4 the architects Bucknall & Comper decided that half-timbering would be right for their church at Gosberton Clough, Lincolnshire, and Victorians examples of this method of construction are not too hard to find.

Why then was I surprised to come across the half-timbered chancel of All Saints at Crowfield in Suffolk? Perhaps because all the other medieval Suffolk churches that I've come across are stone-built (this is the only Suffolk example of this building style in a church). In this county stone is usually imported and mixed with the local flint, "clunch", "crag", or with the small amount of freestone that can be dug locally. There was probably a time (pre-Norman) when timber was much more widespread in Suffolk church construction, but then that is true for much of central and southern England.

The chancel at Crowfield is a fifteenth century addition to the fourteenth century nave. It looks quite "domestic", probably by association with the much more common half-timbered houses and farms: only the tracery of the wooden window frames hint at the religious nature of the building. The graveyard of the church has been rationalised with an eye to ease of grass cutting, an "avenue" of gravestones being arranged as a pathway to the priest's door in the chancel, and others largely re-positioned around the periphery of the site. This gives the building a neat, park-like setting that isn't altogether to my taste.

photograph and text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 13mm (26mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f4.5
Shutter Speed: 1/320 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -0.3 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

Brant Broughton's angel roof

click photo to enlarge




















When Canon Frederick Heathcote Sutton was appointed to the church of St Helen, Brant Broughton, Lincolnshire, in 1873, he became rector of one of the county's finest medieval churches. Its elegant 198 feet tall tower and spire date from the fourteenth century and is a landmark for many miles around, a perfectly proportioned testament to the aesthetic sensibilities of the medieval masons. Elsewhere the church is richly and thoughtfully constructed with vaulted porches to the north and south, fine carvings including green men and very individual gargoyles, elaborate window tracery, and ball-flower ornament decorating edges and surfaces across the building.

Many newly appointed churchmen of the last quarter of the nineteenth century would have set about making essential repairs to the building, concentrating on conserving the beauty of what was there. Others would have seen it as an opportunity to impose a Victorian aesthetic on the structure. Canon Sutton, being of the Anglo-Catholic persuasion, took it upon himself to do both! And, in general, he did a very good job too. He was helped in this by having the good sense to appoint Bodley & Garner as architects to help formulate and execute his vision. To that end they took down the Georgian chancel and rebuilt it in a Victorian Gothic that fits well with the original medieval work. The church furnishings were replaced and renovated, and stained glass designed by the Rector himself was made for the windows. Bodley was busy with one of his masterpieces, Hoar Cross, at the same time as he worked on Brant Broughton, and something of the opulence of the Staffordshire building is seen in St Helen's.

Today's photograph shows the fifteenth century angel roof at Brant Broughton. Bodley restored it and then had it repainted using the colour scheme that was still detectable through fragments of paint in the wood. To our modern eyes the rich colours go well with the stone of the window tracery and walls. However, there are those who regret that some of the older limewash and render was removed from the walls by Bodley and Sutton to give the walls the scraped, more austere, "natural" feel that was felt to be suitable at the time. I have two methods of taking photographs of church roofs from directly below. One is to lie on my back with the camera pressed tightly to my face; the other is to use a tripod. This image was secured using the second approach!

See another of my images of an angel roof, with a quite different architectural treatment, here.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/44mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/50 seconds
ISO: 100
Exposure Compensation: -1.0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On

An angel roof

click photo to enlarge
The Gothic style of architecture that prevailed from the twelfth century until the fifteenth century was an international style in much the same way that the styles of the twentieth and twenty first century have been. It's true that it was largely confined to Europe rather than the world in general, but across England, France, Germany, Italy and many other nations the same construction methods, building forms and decorative devices were used. There were regional differences, but these were within the overall style, and made one nation's Gothic different in detail rather than substance.

English Gothic developed two main differences that made it stand out from that produced by other nations. In the fifteenth century the style turned towards what was later called "Perpendicular", a period when the ogee curves and naturalistic carving of earlier years was abandoned and replaced by repeated, flat "panel" tracery. The whole appearance of buildings was lighter due to bigger windows and larger spaces, and the refined decoration gave it a more austere look. This change was not seen in continental Europe. The other difference in English Gothic was the preference for wooden ceilings and roofs over stone vaulting. The great cathedrals and monasteries did have stone vaulting that became more intricate over time, as happened elsewhere in Europe. However, parish churches rarely used it, preferring quite sophisticated timber roofs of varying constructional types. The high-point in elaboration was undoubtedly the double hammer-beam design, a form that spanned a wide space without the need for a long tie-beam to bridge the gap from wall to wall. Other variations include the trussed rafter roof, the tie-beam design, the collar braced design, the barrel roof and the single hammer beam roof.

Today's photograph shows an example of this fine woodwork - a tie-beam nave "angel roof" with brackets resembling arch-braces - at All Hallows church (sometimes called All Saints) at Dean in Bedfordshire. The structure has been restored: some of the rafters, purlins and boarding have been replaced, but the principal members remain from the 1400s when it was first erected. Beautification was as important as utility to the people who created this roof. The decoration includes large angels that hold the Instruments of the Passion and musical instruments, infill of stylised foliage, dentil-like carving, bosses with birds, angels, rope and other devices and wall-plate friezes of leaves and angels. Such roofs were usually brightly painted and offered a glimpse of heaven to those in the congregation who turned their eyes upward. Today they continue to offer a marvellous sight to the interested visitor and photographer.

photograph & text (c) T. Boughen

Camera: Olympus E510
Mode: Aperture Priority
Focal Length: 11mm (22mm/35mm equiv.)
F No: f2.8
Shutter Speed: 1/8
ISO: 200
Exposure Compensation: 0 EV
Image Stabilisation: On