Although I am posting here less these days, it's still the only place I have to disseminate images of the blessed Great-Martyr Catherine I happen to have found. My researches into Surrey Anglo-Catholicism are now taking me on return visits to some churches to check their kit as well as the buildings themselves, and last week I was rifling through the drawers at St Nicolas's in Guildford. One contained this stole embroidered with what seems to be St Catherine even if the wheel isn't all that clear - just a broken fragment emerging from behind the figure, and, oddly, in front of her sword. That must predate about 1930. I wonder why it was made; an awareness on someone's part of the medieval chapel just south of the town, perhaps?Happily at St Nic's they have just uprooted the slab-like nave altar installed in 1978 and moved it to a side chapel where it serves the Romanian Orthodox community who use the church on Sunday afternoons very nicely. The central axis of the building is now clear again all the way up to the high altar at the far end.
There is a very handsome brass by Comper to a former incumbent at St Nic's dated 1901. It is possible this was covered by the nave altar for some time. The right hand canopy shaft shows St Catherine with her wheel. So I suspect that awareness of the chapel has been a thing for a long time. Is that a blue stole I see on your photo? The liturgical history of the church has been somewhat schizophrenic!
ReplyDeleteSo it does, John, and the image of St Catherine there is the same as on this stole. Thank you for pointing that out, I wouldn't have noticed! There is a very full history of the church (written in about 1980 but still very helpful) which I have to go through. I don't think that *is* a stole, I suspect it may be an alms bag. On the right you can just see the new gold set commissioned by the present incumbent from Ars Sacra.
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