From Norman to Victorian Gothic

Waltham Abbey Church, Essex in the 19th Century

Preface

This major study charts a little over a century of the nine hundred years that this magnificent church has stood at Waltham Abbey. It is at once a tale of neglect and care, mismanagement and diligence, faulty construction and craftsmanship, ugliness and supreme artistry, discord and consensus, lack of funds and bounteous generosity, the sacred and the profane. 

Grenville Weltch begins his story at the end of the eighteenth century, painting a vivid picture of a much-abused, dark, mouldering building whose Lady Chapel was used as a timber yard. He describes a hapless repair of the upper tower that deprived the church of its Tudor embattlement and replaced decorative flintwork facings with soft clunch that was bound to erode at such a height. Blocked windows and the introduction of galleries had made the interior a place of gloom, a gloom made worse by the stale, beefy aroma of candle tallow. Social structures of the time did not help. The living of the Church of St Laurence and the Holy Cross, as the Abbey church is formally known, was in the gift of patrons who frequently bestowed their favour on absentee rectors with little interest in the building. These absentees had curates perform holy office on their behalf. Paid a pittance and powerless, the curates, had no capacity, even had they so wished, to improve the building.

Grenville then leads us through church works under four architects. The first two Edward Lapidge and Ambrose Poynter had to contend with the ennui and inertia of absenteeism. William Burges was more fortunate. Appointed architect under Reverend James Francis, he met a man of fantastic energy, who had been raised in the area and remained priest in charge for 38 years. Under their guidance the building transformed from a ravaged, noble work of antiquity into a beautiful reordered church suitable for the use of the growing Victorian community of Waltham Abbey that conserved the best of the ancient fabric. Alas Burges was not to see the works complete and was succeeded by J Arthur Reeve, whose tribulations with the reinstatement of the tower battlement make another fine tale. I felt for him as he presented a succession of schemes to a multi-headed client, divided in opinion and short of funds.

It all seems so current, as does Burges’ approach, which was that of a conservation architect avant la lettre. It is noteworthy that his projects began around 1860, seventeen years before the founding of the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB). His concerns for conservation rather than restoration and for evidence within the building fabric are those of a conservation architect today. The clear differentiation of his repairs from ancient fabric would make him a worthy member of the SPAB. However his justification of one of his major interventions, the east wall reconfiguration, made me smile. It could so easily be that of any modern architect wanting to impose their creative flair on an existing building. It sounds morally good to avoid deception, to recognise the building as a fragment which must by its nature remain incomplete and therefore not to seek to match the Norman architecture but to employ “the most beautiful architecture known to us” which, of course, for Burges, had to be 13th century Gothic. Many disagreed at the time but his work has proved the test of time and is now celebrated in its own right. It is just as well he was a good architect.

This book shares other delights for specialists including intriguing suggestions of patent heating systems, of hidden paintwork and descriptions of high-risk structural repairs and the effects of decaying interments adjacent to column foundations. It is a work of patient scholarship which will be of interest to anyone with a curiosity for the history of the environment in which they live and of special interest to scholars who will find leads for further research or material to fill gaps in their own. It is an invaluable source for buildings archaeologists, heritage consultants, surveyors and church architects like myself.