On my way to the Bath House I made a rainy detour to two cathedrals I've never visited before, at Birmingham and Coventry. St Philip's Church in Birmingham was bumped up to cathedral status in 1905 and, while grand - arguably the grandest Baroque church in England aside from London's St Paul's - it's still a modest-sized building compared to its more venerable sisters. Outside the great statue of Bishop Gore dominates, but I was interested in the memorial inside to Bishop Wilson, 'Confessor for the Faith'. In what way, I asked a guide, and was told how, as Bishop of Singapore in World War Two, he conducted services in the prison camp at Changi and was tortured; he was a leading figure in the post-War reconciliation movement.
Coventry's cathedral is of course very different, the overgrown-parish-church cathedral replaced after wartime bombing by the building of the 1950s and '60s. It was the darkness of the interior that surprised me, helping to generate that sense of reverent mystery which lends the fixtures and fittings a sumptuousness quite apart from their intrinsic quality. There are points of light, small chapels opening off the main axis, but they too are sometimes seen through darker passages and add to the mystery by contrast.
Several of the other churches I saw on my Warwickshire trip rivalled the cathedrals in pretention and occasionally in size. First, Holy Trinity, Stratford. Here's the chancel, a late-15th-century lightbox:
Here I caused some consternation to the guides by expressing no great interest in William Shakespeare, which they must assume is the only reason why anyone would come in. Not far away is Warwick, whose parish church was inconveniently being set up for a graduation ceremony when I wandered in, hence the unusual light effects you can see of this photo of the east end. But it, too, is grand:
Stratford and Warwick's churches are both medieval, but the greatest surprises came at places where humble churches were rebuilt in the 19th-century and replaced by cathedral-model Gothic fantasy buildings. All Saints, Leamington Spa, is simply jaw-dropping in its size and grandeur, its Flamboyant-Decorated exterior and gigantic interior spaces surely more than even a growing spa town actually required in a place of worship:
But it was the tiny village of Hampton Lucy which had the greatest shock in store. Here, again, the tumbledown old parish church was replaced in the 1840s by the Lord of the Manor, the Vicar, and the Gothic Revivalist architect Thomas Rickman. Rickman at least knew what 'proper' Gothic looked like, and at Hampton Lucy provided something with the proportions of a French cathedral. As I walked around its chilly magnificence I couldn't help wondering what the villagers must have made of something so alien. It could seat hundreds. Could it ever have been even near-full on an ordinary Sunday?
There were different notes, however. Although you wouldn't call it 'humble', Stratford's Guild Chapel is very neat and tidy, in a different way from how the leading burghers of the town who built it would have experienced it.
Finally, I didn't get to see St John's Well, Honiley, which is on overgrown private land, but I did pop into the church nearby which also afforded a surprise. 'The church the Victorians forgot', as it describes itself, has a perfect little Georgian interior unaltered until the storm of the 19th century had passed and it could be appreciated for its own qualities. The glass is more modern, the deep colour contrasting with the gentle white of the walls. There is also a freestanding font, but below the tower is a strange marble niche built into the wall - it can't be a holy-water stoup so it must have been intended as a font. As even Pevsner commented, 'how very Georgian!'
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