BACK TO THE BATTLE
A FRESH LOOKAT THE HIGHS AND LOWS OF A CENTURY OF CONSERVATION CAMPAIGNING
up were the churches at Cherry Hinton, Ormskirk and Halifax, where proposals for “restoration”, or destruction, were in the air. Cherry Hinton, on the outskirts of
A
Cambridge, had largely escaped the brutal restorations that so many other medieval churches had already suffered. Between 1840 and 1870 it is estimated than more than 7,000 such churches had been “restored”, often in the most heavy-handed and needless way. One of the Society’s earliest acts was to conduct a survey of those churches that had managed to escape the dead hand of the restorers. William Morris’s bête noire was Sir Gilbert
Scott, who had been responsible for the restoration of so many ancient buildings (though not always as insensitively as one might think). So it was hardly surprising that the news that Gilbert Scott Junior was about to start work on Cherry Hinton sent up a warning signal. Sir Gilbert had been commissioned three
years earlier to reinstate the lost clerestory of the 13th-century church. Though the SPAB had identified it as a priority case in April 1877, nothing seems to have happened until a visit in October by the architect Eustace Balfour. In a letter to William Morris he reported that some years previously the nave pillars had been scraped, as a result of which the delicacy of their mouldings had been considerably marred, but otherwise the church had escaped the restorers. During the late 18th century the roof had
fallen in and destroyed the clerestory. “A new roof was put on which is not at all unpleasant to the eye,” he said. The proposed restoration by Scott Junior, who had taken over after the death of his father, would reinstate the clerestory as it might have been, possibly involving the taking down and rebuilding of every nave pillar. Even if they could be replaced stone by stone it was doubtful if they could bear the weight of the new clerestory. At that time Balfour was working for the
architect Basil Champneys, whom he quotes as saying that “if nothing but the necessary small
32 Cornerstone, Vol 32, No 3 2011
Cherry Hinton church – one of the the very first cases which the SPAB took on, following its founding in 1877. It had largely escaped the ‘restorers’, and was thus of special interest to the Society. However, some wallpaintings were lost during ‘scraping’. Repairs to the church fell into the hands of Gilbert Scott Junior – to the horror of SPAB adherents of the day – and the nave and the chancel were all but rebuilt
repairs are made there is no reason why the church should not remain safely standing as long in the future as it has done in the past.” However, some damaging work had already started, with a later wallpainting “broken through” to get at an earlier one. It is possible that Morris himself went to see
Scott Junior privately about the case, though the record is ambiguous. But it is certain that JJ Stevenson, a friend of Scott Junior, did so. He reported back that Scott “seemed very anxious to preserve as much as possible of what
threat to Tewkesbury Abbey led to the founding of the SPAB on 22nd March 1877. So much is well known. But in fact the very first cases that the Society chose to take
1877-1958, St Andrew’s, Cherry Hinton Philip Venning
PHILIP VENNING
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