Many years ago, I and Il Rettore attended a Deanery Chapter meeting at St Peter's Hersham, where the incumbent was very keen to show off the new altar. We gasped. 'It's got drawers', he said, 'where you can put extra wafers, cloths, that kind of thing. Like an extension to the vestry'. 'It looks', I whispered to Il Rettore unkindly, 'like an 18th-century French tart's dressing-table'.
The intervening years haven't really changed my opinion of that particular bit of kit - I can see it's well-made but I remain thoroughly shocked by it - but they have led me to appreciate the rest of the building better. It is, in fact, quite grand: a rare reja screens the chancel, which is decorated with elaborate tiles and wall-paintings (I met the incumbent, who asked me whether I knew who had done them!), stencilling that looks a bit like flock wallpaper, and on a marble reredos Christ is surrounded by sundry saints. What I imagine is the previous altar is now in the side chapel, and I think it's rather smart for what it is. Eucharistic elements in the decoration and the reserved Sacrament reflect the fact that St Peter's was once a Four-Star Church.
As was my next stop on that particular day, St Andrew's Cobham. Here there are more screens, two grand altars, an elaborate sanctuary lamp holder, and a pair of towering and unusual wooden sedilia. Cobham is an old church, but it's been tinkered with so often that it's hard to see anything other than various elements. A salmon-pink dais now runs across in front of the screen and a drum kit sits in the transept.
A churchwarden at Byfleet very kindly let me into that church - it never had much of a Catholic tradition, but there are some interesting facets. First you have to get your head round the fact that the south aisle is bigger than the nave. The sanctuary has a very pleasing painted ceiling, while, lurking behind a screen when I visited, it being Lent - I knew there was something there - is a gold and mosaic reredos.
It was a special treat to spot St Catherine in the west window at Hersham!
No comments:
Post a Comment