St Margaret, Leiston, Suffolk
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If you are wanting for grand 19th Century churches, you should not come to Suffolk. Outdoors the 4 large towns, there are barely any. The big exception to this in any other case h2o-tight rule is Suffolk’s most major 19th Century church, Edward Buckton Lamb’s St Margaret, Leiston, and there are unusual good reasons for it being what it is – uncommon in Suffolk, anyway. In the 1780s, the population of Leiston was about 400, generating it a reasonably standard center-sized East Anglian village local community of the time. But then, Richard Garrett expanded his Woodbridge blacksmith’s shop by opening an engineering works in Leiston, and folks flooded into Leiston from all around the region. The Garretts and the Ropes are two people whose names forged a lengthy shadow around this town, and are vividly remembered here in this church, as we will see.
The Garretts built agricultural machinery, rivals to their similarly dynamic neighbours the Ransomes of Ipswich. Many of the ploughs and harrows that tamed the British Empire were forged in Leiston and Ipswich. By the 1850s, the populace of the village had attained 2,000. And by the early 20th century, it was above 4,000, a more than ten-fold maximize in a small above a hundred a long time, unparalleled in a county the place, by and large, the Industrial Revolution was a thing that occurred to other people.
It turned clear in that amazing age of faith, the 1850s, that the medieval predecessor of St Margaret was simply just not huge enough any a lot more. We know that it was a lengthy, thin church. A modern report describes it as ‘like to remaining in a tunnel’, not unusual in east Suffolk, whilst St Margaret was for a longer period than most at 128 toes. Lamb’s short was to establish a large, squarish, cruciform church, on the web site of its predecessor, retaining the noble 14th century tower. The church was to be fitting for protestant, evangelical worship, simply because the Vicar of St Margaret was a firebrand preacher, the Reverend J.C. Blathwayt, really substantially in opposition to the new sacramentalist grain.
The rest of the Church of England at this time was chaotic rediscovering its Catholic roots, and had turned to the Camden Society and the Oxford Motion for approved architects, who were being creating in the suitable English medieval method. Lamb was by no means one of these, which is likely why he was decided on below. He was a maverick, who ploughed a lonely furrow, mixing and matching and generally reinventing in the Large Gothic way. His only other function in Suffolk is at Braiseworth, now redundant. His design and style for St Margaret was groundbreaking – or, at minimum, his execution of it, for he adjusted the strategies as he went together, and totally overlooked the limited spending plan he experienced been saddled with. The new church was aligned in the similar path as the old a single, and was of roughly the same duration, but in a most strange condition with a huge central crossing and short transepts every wider than the nave by itself.
If you experienced come here in the very last ten years of the 20th Century as, for the initially time, I did, you would have uncovered the developing crammed with somewhat sombre mid-Victorian pews, the weakest aspect of the complete church, and no ponder, for Lamb had them designed of the least expensive stained deal, so that he could use the revenue for furnishings on other fixtures. But these have now absent, and Lamb’s gloom has been dispersed to an extent by the important reordering of the initially decade of the 21st Century. The flooring has been carpeted, the pews changed with modern day chairs. The nave and transept seating faces in direction of the central altar.
The new church was opened on August 31st 1854, by Bishop Blomfield of London, who had been born in Suffolk, and was, coincidentally, the father of that most popular in Suffolk of all main 19th Century architects, Sir Arthur Blomfield. But the greatest and most amazing characteristics of the church are soon after Blathwayt’s time. In 1874, he was succeeded by Father Berney Wodehouse Raven, who cleverly and carefully launched significant Anglo-catholic apply here. For the duration of the training course of his ministry, and that of his successor Father Roe, and then in the decades afterwards, the features of this church that make it so singular observed their dwelling in this article.
Lamb had foreshortened the chancel dramatically, the great east window drawn ahead to impose by itself. In the 1890s this was crammed with glass remembering Mary Ann Garrett, the saints depicted staying common in the late 19th Century Large Church custom. Mary Ann is depicted in her outdated age as as St Felicity, the closing figure, the total piece the perform of Kempe & Co, not a workshop I’m a wonderful fan of, but this is actually very very good. Six candles sat on the retable driving the high altar, which ought to have experienced the Reverend Blathwayt spinning nicely in his grave, for this parish embraced wholeheartedly the Anglo-catholic movement in the early years of the 20th Century. The partitions had been embellished, vine stencilling climbs the inside of of the chancel arch, the area higher than the crossing disappearing into a mystical gloom. This was improved by Lamb’s most outstanding attribute, a roof that seems to be like a mathematical puzzle, and was both influenced by, or a joke at the expense of, the famed medieval roofs of Suffolk.
The most placing factors of this church’s 20th Century elaboration are virtually entirely the work of 1 household, the Ropes, whose home windows and reliefs are found in several church buildings in Suffolk, as very well as churches and cathedrals all above the earth. They lived in this parish, and in the north transept, we find the greatest hour of Margaret Edith Aldrich Rope (‘Tor’ to her spouse and children – you can see her tortoise symbol on the appropriate hand aspect). Set up in 1959, the home windows remember Tor’s parents and a regional medical doctor. The still left hand window exhibits scenes from the Gospel of St Luke. The suitable hand window, with the theme of St Matthew, is a memorial to her dad and mom, who died in the 1940s. Remarkably, the get the job done that is below currently was only 50 % of that which was prepared, for the two windows in the reverse window are complete of distinct glass, but would have been meant for home windows themed for St Mark and St John.
The transept is made up of a bronze artwork nouveau memorial to the younger Arthur Rope, designed by Dorothy Rope, his sister. She was also responsible for the war memorial exterior. A different Rope cousin, Ellen Rope, built the charming, sentimental relief of the Adoration of the Shepherds, but this has now been hidden absent in the vestry which changed the kid’s corner in the 2006 reordering. The transept also contains memorials to the Garretts, which include the mural monument to Richard Garrett, who is buried exterior the south doorway beneath one of the forged iron memorials his foundry developed. The triptych of the Blessed Virgin and youngster with Leiston Abbey in the history was by the Marquis d’Oisy, whose perform can be found in other places in East Anglia at Thaxted in Essex. On the south side, the transept includes the very long rood beam installed ill-advisedly in the late 19th Century, the removal of which can only have been a relief.
On the north facet of the chancel is a sweet tiny blessed sacrament chapel, its 1930s woodwork the perform of Henry Munro Cautley, diocesan architect at the time and designer of many these kinds of pieces in Suffolk of a feature he was wholly in sympathy with. An intriguing detail is the stained glass in the smaller window higher than his altar. It depicts St Edward the Confessor and St Anne. It was set up in this article in the 1930s, and at 1st sight looks as if it could be the work of anyone like FC Eden, and then you recognize the diligently drawn sad faces, the chequerboard floors, the very low-walled backgrounds, so standard of East Anglian figures of the late 15th Century. They are, in small, remarkably articulate figures, and I couldn’t assistance wondering if they could have been designed by Cautley himself. The only recorded glass by Cautley was at the initial 1920s church of All Hallows in Ipswich, now the church corridor to its much larger 1930s replacement. The topics of the glass there ended up not famous, and it has since disappeared. Is it outside of chance that this is the glass from the primary All Hallows, reframed and reset listed here by Cautley when he was making the new church there, and this very little chapel listed here?
It would not be genuine to say that the early 20th Century embellishment, and the early 21st Century reordering, have completely dispelled Lamb’s gloom, for that would be hard in this kind of a wide house. But the church appears lighter and warmer than when I to start with frequented it 20 several years back, and I couldn’t enable pondering how great it would be if the south transept home windows could be done to match those in the north transept, maybe by one more superior quality East Anglian female artist? Pippa Blackhall springs to head, if the PCC has any dollars.
Potentially it is proper that Lamb, a maverick architect, designed this maverick church here, simply because Leiston is a most curious location. You arrive from what is probably the wildest element of Suffolk, whichever way you enter it, to find your self briefly surrounded by crimson brick terraces, council estates and flyovers. And then, you are out in the countryside once more.
The main shopping avenue is, certainly, all 19th and 20th century, and has the come to feel of a miners’ city in the north about it. The trouble with cities that only have one employer, of course, is what takes place when that solitary employer closes, which is precisely what occurred to Garretts in the 1970s. Then, Leiston seriously did become like a miners city. The fantastic salvation to the locals was the Sizewell nuclear electrical power station, which stands a mile or so to the east of Leiston, and employs just about all people in it.
A excellent curiosity is the way that Leiston lives in symbiosis with Aldeburgh, a town of just about accurately the exact same inhabitants just 3 miles away. Aldeburgh, as you may know, is one of Suffolk’s poshest, classiest cities. Leiston, and enable us be frank right here, is not. It is as if a normal city experienced been split in two, a single element maintaining the huge residences, wine bars and designer clothes shops, the other holding the blue collar estates, doing the job men’s clubs and business. And nonetheless it is Leiston which has one of the country’s most exceptional testimonies to Substantial Victorian Gothic, and to the Arts and Crafts movement.
Posted by Simon Knott on 2019-04-11 19:23:25
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