I'd seen a photograph of the interior of St Paul's, Addlestone, but wasn't prepared for the reality until I managed to get inside during the summer. The building is undistinguished to put it at its kindest, but the east end, while not perhaps what one might describe as beautiful, is at least striking. It's another example of the way World War One advanced liturgical practice and church fittings, as it was reordered in 1919, a fact made very clear by the details of the rood screen. Old photos of the church show a curtained altar in the apse before the triptych of saints flanking the Virgin and Child was installed. There's a 'big six' set of candlesticks secreted below the altar to be brought out when required, and still a curtained aumbry, but it's not clear anything is kept in it any more: certainly there's no lamp burning in that candle-holder.
Not far away from Addlestone is St Peter's, Chertsey, a church now housing what is technically a joint Anglican-Methodist congregation. Some years ago, before I started at Lamford, I and Dr Bones attended a service there and were presented with a massive ring-bound booklet containing a host of liturgical variations covering all the various services. Up at the old high altar are the remains of a mid-Victorian tile frieze apparently showing the Wedding at Cana and now obscured by a later reredos, but more interesting is the side chapel. Yet again this was built as a World War One memorial, this time in memory of a specific person, Nathaniel Cook of Chertsey Abbey House. There's an aumbry built into the wall and a mysterious wooden thing which could be the remains of a hanging lamp which nobody has got around to throwing away. It's now a bit disorganised and doesn't look as though it's used for communion services.
Finally a clergy meeting at St Stephen's, Shottermill, gave me the chance to examine some of the fittings which I'd spotted on a previous visit. This is a fairly mainstream Evangelical church now, with a baptismal pool beneath the nave floor ('As far as I can tell it hasn't been used in ten years', the vicar told me) ...
... but while the building's interior has, like a number of Evangelical churches, been reorientated so that it faces south rather than east, the old chancel remains as a side chapel, still distinguished by yet another post-WWI screen. This one was not a war memorial - it was dedicated to a lady by a grieving husband - but it is dated 1919 and in fact an inscription records its dedication on All Souls' Day that year. In the chancel are signs of former hanging lamps and another aumbry - apparently empty.
Might the fact that these churches were in Winchester diocese at the time the work was installed have any bearing on this?
ReplyDeleteI think given that Edward Talbot was bishop, very probably. He wasn't going to put any obstacle in the way of Catholic innovations in the diocese.
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