The first round of my Surrey church-visiting, at least, is coming to an end - there are some buildings I will have to revisit, but I've seen enough on my initial sweep to be going on with and am now concentrating on the documentary side of my researches, mainly scanning service registers, which I can tell you is a mind-numbing exercise even if it has to be done. But there are still some photos to put here.
St Mary's, Shackleford, is hardly a bastion of high-churchery. The former incumbent of the parish used to come to us to borrow a chasuble for Christmas Day, because it was the only time they used one at Shackleford and the church had none of their own. It shouldn't even exist: it sits at what feels like a strangely isolated crossroads in the woods, built not because there was any pressing need for a church here, but basically to provide a living for a well-connected local curate. But it is a Scott building of grand proportions, and a surprise in the form of a very sumptuous reredos made by Mowbray in memory of a parishioner, Lady Caroline Grenville. It's younger than it looks, because Lady Caroline died in 1946.
Just down a lane we find St Nicholas, Peper Harow, a building which, neighboured by a big house split into flats and a farm, now seems almost as superfluous as Shackleford's, but which is much older. However it doesn't look it, because it was badly fire-damaged in 2011 and then lovingly rebuilt, so that the building you see now has a very strange quality: it's like reminder of what a medieval church would have looked when it was built. It's light and lovely, but there's nothing all that Catholic in its accoutrements apart from the icons, and of course everyone has icons these days.
That reredos at Shackleford is incredibly old fashioned for its date: I bet it no longer has its riddel curtains! Peper Harrow had some early Comper glass which I suspect was lost in the fire. In his earlier period he tended just to work in Anglo-Catholic parishes though this changed as his prices went up. So it is conceivable that the church was rather more Catholic around 1900.
ReplyDeleteThank you as ever, John. Yes, I was amazed at the Shackleford reredos, too.
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