'In Choirs and Places Where They Sing': The English Church

Beyond the ancient gates of York and out into the hillsides of the North, the hills are greening with the first hints of spring.  Bells chime the muted songs of old; distant spires soar over sleepy towns blearily blinking back the rare sunny ray.  Snow bells frost the grave-tops and daffodils sprout gold - one here; one there; another bundle-full braving the cool shade of a wise oak.

Recently, my research into the art and theology Pre-Raphaelite Edward Burne-Jones has led me into a vast and dynamically complex history of the English Church - particularly, that of the architectural Gothic revival.  More and more I am taken to them; in my readings and, with the growth of pregnant spring, actually physically inside them!   There are churches everywhere here in England: an incredible church with portions dating from as far back as the ninth century is tucked on a square in the quiet village of Kirk Hammerton, a secret treasure box where paintings and stained glass windows pulsate in the slow, steady rhythms of inconceivably deep timelessness.  These monuments of faith, withstanding the physical and political abuse of ages past, are a considerable and oft-forgotten presence in the complex tapestry of English history nowadays; like the crumbling pillars of Athens, their towers might seem a testament to a distant, almost mythological, way of belief, of life, that might be hard to relate to today in the highly secularised discourse of politics and Academia.

As the daffodils bloom and pass on the graves; as the bells chime over their villages in a call to bells over other hillsides, over other villages; as homilies, weddings, funerals are given week after week after passing year, decade, century, I am moved by how profoundly they embody the human experience - its complications, its mysteries, and its soul-penetrating desire for spiritual understanding that our generation might flinch from or even seek to deny in today's rationalistic, Post-Enlightenment, 'Theory of Everything' and 'I-can-Google-it' mentality.

The Victorians were our precedents in this attitude.  The industrial revolution prioritised knowledge, efficiency, simplicity, and production over the 'mysteries' of faith, of love, of life.  Simply put, this led to an identity crisis, and in response, many people sought solutions in many different ways.  One of those ways to return to the days of old, represented architecturally and theologically by churches like the one at Kirk Hammerton.  So with the boom of industry, came the boom of religious controversy, came the boom of church renovation and construction.

Burne-Jones designed a (literally, not exaggerating) endless number of stained glass windows and tapestries for these churches that were being built and revived during the nineteenth century.  Many of these were in the Gothic style, reflecting the desire of the Christians in England to turn away from the brutal industry of their new world and instead return to a perceptively 'truer' form of faith founded in the past.  Ultimately, Burne-Jones participated in this movement, not simply as an artist supplying this public demand, but as someone who had initially had studied theology - and not art - in his youth with the original desire to become a minister of the High Church 'Tractarian' variety most often controversially associated with the ritualistic 'Romanism' of the Catholic Church.  For him, art became a particular and pertinent form of religious ministry in that it related to the distinct experience of worship that the mentors of his youth sought and encouraged in the theological, liturgical and physical atmosphere of the Gothic Church.  Burne-Jones later would profess his preference for public, religious works, declaring ‘I want big things to do and vast spaces, and for common people to see them and say Oh! – only Oh!'  He further lamented that ‘the chance of doing public work seldom comes to me, if I could I would work only in public buildings and in choirs and places where they sing.’

It is therefore necessary for my research not simply to consult the sketchbooks where he actually contemplated the compositional layouts of the designs, but to see those designs 'in action,' as it were, in the churches they were designed for.   Among the first churches I visited was rather a surprise, and although it did not possess any Burne-Jones designs, the specifically 'Tractarian' architecture of Hoar Cross Church put into direct practice many of the texts that Burne-Jones (and I) had read in the course of his intense theological study, first in Birmingham in his adolescence and then at the University of Oxford.

HOAR CROSS was built in the 19th century, commissioned by a widow who had just lost her husband.  She came from a very 'Tractarian' High Church background, and the church, as a highly personal creation, reflects these very particular set of beliefs.

Latin engravings covered both exterior and interior surfaces. This is a particularly pertinent reminder for High Anglican worshippers who revered the Latin words spoken in the rituals of the liturgy. 

The patroness saw examples of a series of wooden 'Stations of the Cross' during her travels in Northern Europe. She immediately commissioned the artists to make some for her own church.  All of them were gold-gilded and shining in the relative darkness of the desolate aisle where lower laymen would have worshipped. 

Classic Gothic arches, a golden cross, and a highly ornate, traditionally medieval screen very much in line with the decadence of Tractarian worship. 

Gilded, highly decorative Thuribles: These carry the incense to be used during the rituals of the Mass. 

The wall behind the altar.  This space, and the entirety of the church,was filled with an abundance of sculpted saints, popes and Biblical figures. 

The tomb of the patroness's husband, to whom she had wanted to build the church for in memoriam.  She originally had controversially wanted to place him directly in front of the altar, a space reserved for saints and relics.  The Church persuaded her to move it off to the side in this position. 

ST. COLUMBA'S was an ancient church restored in the nineteenth century by architect William Butterfield, associated with the High Church 'Ecclesiastical Society' for architecture in Cambridge. Here we get the first of our Burne-Jones stained glass: an Annunciation window that was itself one of his first designs in stained glass.

The interior exemplifies the English country church of this period: stripped, white washed and bare following the Protestant Reformation.  Nevertheless, Butterfield would have been hired to restore and exemplify the Gothic arches seen here that evidence that much-revered Gothic past the Tractarians sought in their rituals and environs of worship. 

Burne-Jones's early Annunciation window on the furthest left. The design, featuring the Virgin cradling the dove of the Holy Spirit, was considered controversially 'sacrilegious' by architect William Butterfield, who thereafter refused to hire Burne-Jones (This window and the controversy surrounding it - Burne-Jones considered it an 'innovation' himself - is the subject of the chapter I am currently researching).

NUN MONKTON contrasts St. Columba's in its intense emphasis on decadent detail.  Much like Hoar Cross, Nun Monkton reflects the interests of the patrons, who commissioned the restoration of this church in light of the fact that it had once been home to a sisterhood of nuns.  It's ancient Romanesque detail maintained on exterior (see the arch below) and interior of the church, Nun Monkton gives one the impression of a large and fabulous cathedral when it is actually about the same size as the churches above.  Here also are some wonderful examples of Burne-Jones window, dating from the mid-point in his career when he was the chief designer for Morris & Co.

The Burne-Jones window, featuring an extraordinary foliage Morris design that beautifully ties together Burne-Jones's scenes from the life of Mary and angel-musician figures.  These designs are in tune with the legacy of the church as a home to a sisterhood of nuns; rather than being 'sacrilegious,' Burne-Jones's focus on Mary at significantly intimate points of her life was extraordinarily pertinent for the patrons here.' 

St. Anne and the Virgin Reading; The Annunciation; and Virgin and Child were all positioned in a register below the central Nativity scene. 

Though not designed by Burne-Jones, this window gave me my new 'motto': TAKE THY PEN AND WRITE QUICKLY! 

These Churches, dynamic and different as they are, thus become an integral primary source of an essential primary experience of a history and a faith still living today.  They represent not only the ageless human desire for a relationship with eternity, but a specific way of life endlessly and inseparably informed by that desire.  To see them as such, as Burne-Jones and many of his Victorian peers did, is to start to recognise the central mysteries of our own existence we may try to forget in our attempts to make life, on academic and personal levels, easier... 

At Kirk Hammerton (Photo courtesy Simon Crouch)

I will be presenting a bit of my research on theological frameworks in Burne-Jones's work at the History of Art's PhD Conference on Framing, 17 March in the Berrick Saul Treehouse.  Please do come along!