People You Don't Want to Get on the Wrong Side Of No.1

FOLIA. a woman of Ariminium, famous for her knowlege of poisonous herbs and for her petulance.

Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.

William Railton's Churches

In case anyone is interested, I've listed here all of William Railton’s Church designs I could find. Of the twelve listed, three are completely lost, and two converted to residential use.


St Peter, Duddon, Cheshire.
Built as a chapel of ease to St Andrew, Tarvin. A plain boxy with brick structure with lancet windows, 51 feet long and built at a cost of £603, raised by subscription by the local nobility and gentry, with the addition of grant from the Society for Promoting the Building of Churches and Chapels. Pevsner quotes Goodhart-Rendel’s opinion “’Of all the mean box-like chapels this is nearly the meanest.'' Some contemporary opinion was more positive. The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review called it:

..on the whole an elegant structure, on the simple model we have been recommending. We will here notice one great advantage of having walls of dignified elevation - the windows may, without themselves being curtailed, be placed so high as to prevent any roofs, chimneys, trees or any such familiar objects, which may chance to be near the church, from obtruding themselves on the attention of the congregation.

The unfortunate congregation was not even allowed the sight of a chimney to distract them from the sermon. But the British Critic had reservations about what few architectural features Railton actually allows us:

..we do not like the double buttress at the corner, and nowhere else; and we prefer to see the triple lancet reserved as the peculiar right of the east end.

The Church and Monastery of Mount St Bernard

Railton designed the original buildings for this Trappist monastry in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, built on land donated by the catholic convert Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, for whom he also built the nearby mansion of Grace Dieu. Funds were clearly limited as Phillips de Lisle had to borrow the £4000 necessary to buy the land. The History Gazeteer and Directory of Leiestershire records:

The charitable gifts of their co-religionists enabled the monks to erect and make fit for habitation, though not complete, a small portion of an intended monastery, in the Elizabethan style, from designs by Mr. Railton. By the same architect, the chapel or church for the monastery was shortly afterwards finished, and opened for divine service, 11th October, 1837.

But a generous benefactor soon allowed the replacement of Railton's buildings by something grander. In October 1839, Phillipps de Lisle wrote to his father, dismissing Railton's work:

Lord Shrewsbury is going to build a new Monastery for the Monks at Mount St. Bernard under Pugin's direction. He has given three thousand pounds for this object, and will give more later. Their present monastery, which you remember an ugly unfinished building, is to be converted into farm buildings for their use, and their present church is to be made into a greatbarn.

The monks moved into their new accommodation in 1844.


St Paul, Woodhouse Eaves
St Peter, Copt Oak.
These two stone-built churches in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire were constructed to the same design and consecrated within two days of each other in September 1837. The Gentlemans magazine reported:

Two new Churches are being erected in Charnwood Forest, one at Woodhouse Eves, and another at Charley, [i.e. Copt Oak] near Whitwick, from a uniform design by Mr. Railton. The Act of Inclosure provided for the erection of two churches in the Forest, one of which was built about twenty years ago; but by the assistance of the neighbouring gentry, the Trustees are now enabled to erect two instead of one more, and thus more effectually to withstand the spirit of popery, diffused from the Roman Catholic establishment at Gracedieu, where Mr. Ambrose Phillipps has erected a large chapel, and has laid plans for establishing a monastery of Trappists.

Both the Catholic and Anglican buildings metioned were to Railton’s designs. He seems to have had good connections among the local gentry of all religious persuasions.

St Philip and St James. Groby, Leicestershire
Attributed to Railton by Pevsner and the English Heritage listings. A stone church, built out of the local granite. It has a west tower, with some rather oddly placed lancet windows in it's west wall. It was built in around 1840 as a chapel-of- ease for Ratby. Railton is also recorded as having done some work around this time for vicar of Ratby, Robert Martin, at his mansion Anstey Pastures.

St Mary, Stafford Street Wolverhampton
Consecrated Oct 15, 1842, erected and endowed at the sole expense of Miss Hinckes, of Tettenhall Wood. The Gentleman’s Magazine described it as

…. a revival of the style prevailing during the 13th and 14th centuries. The form of the building is cruciform, surmounted at the intersection by a tower and steeple; the latter, which is of a shape common in Normandy and other parts of the continent, terminating with an encircled cross.

Architecturally it seems to have been rather plain; the Gentleman’s Magazine puts a positive spin on this:

… Mr. Railton, has added to his already high character by having produced so solemn and beautiful an effect by the mere power of proportion and moulding, without any architectural enrichment than the carved work in the pulpit, desk, and chancel.

It was furnished with old German and Flemish glass, a Norman Font, and an organ previously in a church at Stratford-upon-Avon

The church was closed in 1948 and demolished some years later.

St Mary, Bromley by Bow
This seems initially to have been conceived as a restoration of the ancient priory church of St Leonard. In the event, only some monuments were preserved from the old church, within a completely new brick structure of 1842-3. It was a simple building in a round-arched style, in tribute to the Norman features of it’s predecessor, with an aisle only on the South side, an open timber roof, and a tower in the south-west corner. The Illustrated London News reassured it’s readers that:

…with the exception of the chancel for which funds were furnished by the munificence of a highly respected parishioner, the restoration has been carried out with the most scrupulous attention to economy.

Railton must have been proud of his work there, because he exhibited a drawing of the church at the Royal Academy not only in 1844, and two more as late as 1851, then another at the Paris .Universal Exhibition of 1855.

The church was bombed in 1941 and later levelled; in 1968 the Blackwall Tunnel northern approach road was driven through the site.

St Bartholomew the Less Bethnal Green
Consecrated June 1844, at which time the tower was still unfinished for lack of funds. Built of brick with stone facings, in an Early English style with a south-west tower. It seated 1058.

The church closed in 1977 and was later converted into flats under the name "Steeple Court"

Holy Trinity, Hoxton.
Described by the Ecclesiologist in 1846, when the church was under construction, as “a huge pretending First-Pointed pile with stinted sacrarium, exaggerated windows and thin walls". The stone used was Kentish ragstone. It was constructed without galleries, and could accommodate around a thousand people . Consecrated on the 7th of March, 1848


Thorpe Acre, Leicestershire.
An Anglican church built in 1845 at a cost of £1000, on land given by Charles Phillipps, father of Railton’s catholic patron, Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. Stone-built with a slate roof, and a bellcote rather than a tower.


Chapel at the Bishops Palace, Ripon
The Palace of the Bishop of Ripon was built to Railton’s designs in 1838-41, and included a small chapel. However some years later, the Archbishop of York provided £3000 for the construction of a separate building, ostensibly to allow residents of a nearby hamlet to attend services. It is in a perpendicular style, with battlements. The foundation stone was laid in June 1846.

It has been converted for residential use.

Holy Trinity, Meanwood, Leeds.
Funded with a budget of £4300 by Miss Mary and Miss Elizabeth Beckett, and consecrated in 1849. A cruciform church with a crossing tower, in Railton’s favoured early English style. It is 110 feet long and 42 feet wide at the transepts. The Ecclesiologist reported that “the church presents a strange mixture of ornament and plainness” The magazine found much to complain about, but felt the tower and spire were the building’s best feature.

Raising a Toast

But reading the following in the Art Journal, it's hard not to feel a twinge of regret this other proposal for the Nelson memorial wasn't executed.

No. 1, a model, by Pistrucci, of the Mint, presents a colossal trident, eighty-nine feet high, rising from a segment of the globe, forty-five feet in diameter, on which three very graceful reclining figures of victories are engaged in sculpturing memorials of the hero. Praise is due to M. Pistrucci for an original conception, cleverly carried out, but the form of a trident is so common that no one could hope to impart to it either grace or dignity. Seen from any distance the memorial would be nothing more nor less than, a large toasting fork.

The Four Elements

I was struck by these sculptures that appeared recently on a wall next to the new Willis Building in Lime Street in the City of London. A little research revealed that they aren't new, but were taken from the previous building on the site, built for Lloyds in the 1950s, but placed so high as to be virtually invisible.

They are by the Nottingham-born sculptor James Woodford (1893-1976). The name wasn't familiar to me, but I had come across some of his works before. He was a member of the Royal Academy, and received commisions for work for at Norwich City Hall and the Headquarters of the Royal Institute of British Architects in Portland Place and made the "Queen's Beasts" in plaster for the coronation in 1953, which he later replicated in stone for Kew Gardens.

Some Useful Beauty

Details from an unused Edwardian account book found in a charity shop. Beautifully bound, all three edges of the paper marbled, hinges strengthened with linen, index letters individually stamped in alternating red and black. Manufactured just outside the City, sold near the Stock Exchange. Perfectly useless but I had to have it. You never see anything like this at Rymans.

Shelley and the Photographer

St Lawrence's Church, Lechlade, Gloucestershire, originally uploaded by whatsthatpicture.

A Summer Evening Churchyard, Lechlade, Gloucestershire

THE wind has swept from the wide atmosphere
Each vapour that obscured the sunset's ray,
And pallid Evening twines its beaming hair
In duskier braids around the languid eyes of Day:
Silence and Twilight, unbeloved of men,
Creep hand in hand from yon obscurest glen.

They breathe their spells towards the departing day,
Encompassing the earth, air, stars, and sea;
Light, sound, and motion, own the potent sway,
Responding to the charm with its own mystery.
The winds are still, or the dry church-tower grass
Knows not their gentle motions as they pass.

Thou too, aerial pile, whose pinnacles
Point from one shrine like pyramids of fire,
Obey'st I in silence their sweet solemn spells,
Clothing in hues of heaven thy dim and distant spire,
Around whose lessening and invisible height
Gather among the stars the clouds of night.

The dead are sleeping in their sepulchres:
And, mouldering as they sleep, a thrilling sound,
Half sense half thought, among the darkness stirs,
Breathed from their wormy beds all living things around,
And, mingling with the still night and mute sky,
Its awful hush is felt inaudibly.

Thus solemnized and softened, death is mild
And terrorless as this serenest night.
Here could I hope, like some enquiring child
Sporting on graves, that death did hide from human sight
Sweet secrets, or beside its breathless sleep
That loveliest dreams perpetual watch did keep.

Percy Bysshe Shelley

This photo from about a hundred years ago is from whatsthatpicture's flickr account, which along with his associated website of mystery photos can provide hours of innocent bafflement and frustration.

The Mystery of the Vanishing Horse Skulls

A while ago I was struck by this passage in the note on Southwold in H Munro Cautley’s Suffolk Churches

In the chancel are a series of stalls with misericordes having fronts with fully traceried panels and standing on a pierced curb of stone. Extending beneath the whole area of these stalls is a chamber 54” deep and 39” wide and this was no doubt provided by the mediaeval builders for some acoustical purpose., as at Norwich in two churches where there are similar chambers, one was filled with acoustical jars and one with horses skulls.

This is an extraordinary image: the hidden heads of dead horses singing along in harmony with the choir. I had to find out which these two churches were. An answer comes earlier in the book, in the section about Choir stalls. Monro Cautley discuss the raising of choir stalls on hollow platforms. He says of the chamber at Southwold:

Unfortunately it has been completely cleared out and no records remain of what was found. There really can be no doubt as to the purposes of these chambers, for in similar ones at the Norwich churches of S.Peter’s Mancroft and S.Peter’s Mountergate, acoustical jars were found built into the walls of the chambers with mouths of the jars facing outward. Specimens of these are in the Norwich Museum.

This is curious. Firstly because our delightfully pagan horse heads go unmentioned, and secondly because it’s not clear why Munro Cautley thinks the chamber at Southwold has been “cleared out“, when the Norwich chambers are described not as having been filled with jars, but rather having them built into their walls. In fact he gives the impression of not having read his own book.

I turn to the only other book on mediaeval church architecture in my limited if somewhat eccentric library: The Principles of Gothic Ecclesiastical Architecture by Matthew Holbeche Bloxham In the second volume of the 1887 edition he has a section headed Earthen Jars:

Church walls have been found sometimes to contain empty earthenware jars It is supposed they were placed thus for acoustic purposes.

In or about the year 1864 in repairing the chancel of Denford Church Northamptonshire some singular orifices were discovered on the north side over the arcading which lines the chancel, and beneath a discharging arch. These orifices had all originally contained or been lined by earthenware pots, the bottoms of which had been removed. In one of them the pot still remained. Some years ago some earthen vessels were found immured in the walls of a church in Oxfordshire. In 1852, during restorations carried out in St Peter’s Mancroft, Norwich, the remains of passages were found under the chancel floor, having earthen jars embedded in their side walls. The vessels of red ware with a slight glaze on the uper part wee laid horizontally , about 4 feet apart, their mouths being flush with the face of the wall; they measured 8 inches in height, and the diameter was about 6 inches.

This seems pretty definitive. Bloxam was writing much nearer the time of the restoration and his description is clear and precise. And anyway, some of the jars remain in the collection of the Norfolk Museums service.

But what of St Peter Mountergate ? (There are several variations on the name.) An internet search turns this up in the Proceedings of the Society of Antiquaries for 1873 :

James Fowler, Esq. FSA exhibited a plan, three views and a section of one of the so-called Acoustic Pots, discovered at fountains Abbey in 1854, and described by Mr Walbran in his guide. The arrangement is similar to, but much less complete than that discovered about the same time in the churches of S.Peter Mancroft and S.Peter-per-Mountergate Norwich, described by Mr Minns*

No horse skulls here either. I downloaded a couple of books with chapters on the subject of acoustic jars. In his contribution to Antiques and Curiosities of the Church , edited by William Andrews FRSA , published in 1897, George C. Yates FSA gives further details. The find at St Peter Mountergate is described as being of a similar nature to that of St Peter Mancroft, but the jars having ears and handles. At the very end of the article Yates says

Occaisionally the skulls of horses have been found in sacred buildings, the popular idea being that, like earthenware jars, they were built in for acoustic purposes.

We’re back on the trail. Usefully, TF Thiselton Dyer, in Church Lore Gleanings, published a little earlier, in 1892, covers the same subject in more detail. He explains:

Occaisionally the skulls of horses have been found in sacred buildings; the popular idea being that, like earthenware jars, they were built in for acoustic purposes.

Just a minute, haven’t we been here before? In fact no less than four of the ten pages of Yates’s article (on finds at East Harling, Leeds (Kent), Fountains Abbey and Youghal, (though not incidentally, those at Norwich) are taken verbatim from the one chapter of Thiselton Dyer’s book. It seems even fellows of Royal Societies aren’t above a little cut -and- paste. Thiselton Dyer goes on:

…although it has been suggested that the remains of sheep and horses found under the floors of churches indicate the traces of heathen sacrifice on the spot in earlier times. Some years ago “ a horses head was placed under the organ of a parish church in Munster,to give increade effect to the music, “A superstition” writes a correspondent of Notes and Queries (4thS. Iii.564), “very prevalent in the county Clare…” In the bell turret of Elsdon Church Northumberland, there were found built in the masonry three skulls of horses. Horse’s skulls. too, have frequently been put into the sounding board of Presbyterian ministers in Scotland:and when an old meeting house in Bristo Street, Edinburgh was taken downin the early part of the present century, to make way for the church, the old sounding board above the pulpit was found filled with horses skulls.

Fascinating stuff.But no mention of them being used in chambers under choir stalls, or why H. Munro Cautley should have made this peculiar suggestion