St Mary wasn't one of them and, apart from the jam packed graveyard, there didn't seem to be much of interest here (reading the boys proved this wrong!). The exterior has, at some point, been unattractively rendered and the whole church has a general air of declining shabbiness.
Finishing off Essex over a year later, I visited three more churches, St Saviour, SS Barnabas & James and St Peter in the Forest, all lnk and all new build. The best of them was probably St Peter although I rather liked the slightly quirky SS Barnabas & James.
ST MARY. Hardly anything left of before the Reformation. W tower, aisles and chancel chapels built c. 1535. Altered and enlarged 1818 and again 1843. Present galleries and roof 1876. - FONT. Fluted bowl on baluster stem, white marble, 1714. - PLATE. Set of c. 1680; Beadle’s Staff 1779. - MONUMENTS. Sir George Monox d. 1543 and wife; brass with small kneeling figures. - Lady Stanley, c. 1630, standing wall monument with big kneeling figure. - Sir Thomas and Lady Merry 1633, by Nicholas Stone; she and her husband as demi-figures in oval niches, busts of four children in flat relief below, open pediment above; of very fine sculptural quality, especially the modelling of the hands. - Sigismund Trafford d. 1723 and wife and daughter, ambitious standing wall monument with husband in Roman costume and wife, both standing, and the child kneeling between them; the artistic quality not as high as e.g. at Wanstead. - Many more monuments (Bonnell Family d. 1690, with big sarcophagus and no effigies; Elizabeth Morley d. 1837 by Nicholl etc). - In the CHURCHYARD more monuments, closely placed to the W of the church, and mostly early C19.
ST BARNABAS, Stafford Street: 1902 by Caroe, relatively conventional for him. Red brick, exposed inside as well. Large, wide interior. Exterior with a NW turret, the only fanciful motif.
ST PETER, Woodford New Road, 1840. Much renewed recently. In the vaguely Early Christian Italian Rundbogenstil. The architect seems unrecorded, but alterations in 1854 were designed by Charles Ainslie.
ST SAVIOUR, Markhouse Road, 1874. By T. F. Dolman. Rock-faced, with polygonal apse and SW spire outside the S aisle. Rather dull.
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| St Saviour |
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| SS Barnabas & James |
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| St Peter in the Forest |
WALTHAMSTOW. With Epping Forest on the east, and on the west reservoirs and the River Lea with its marshlands, it is an attractively placed town, and has for its motto the inspiring words that Fellowship is Life. We found an old man on the bridge across the marshes of the Lea who has seen Walthamstow grow from a village into one of the forty biggest towns in England, with 100 miles of crowded streets and about 150,000 people.
If we come to it over the bridge across the marshes (here still called the Lammas Lands), we tread where its oldest inhabitants trod in the days before history, for in the excavations of the river banks have been found a pile dwelling of the Bronze Age and a British canoe of the 5th century, dug out from the trunk of an oak. The boat is in the British Museum. Here also has been found a Viking ship 45 feet long, lying keel upwards in the mud with a skeleton under it.
By the road across the marshes stands a quaint old inn which was once the haunt of Izaak Walton, and the road brings us to an old copper mill which struck copper coins to relieve the distress in the Napoleon wars.
Essex Hall, the old school with wooden pegs on which Disraeli would hang his coat (and Granville Sharp before him) has gone, but in Lloyd Park, which now belongs to the town, stands the Georgian house where William Morris lived as a boy, boating and fishing in a moat running round a little island there. It has attained a new dignity in our time, for it is to house a rare collection of pictures given by Arthur Mackmurdo and Frank Brangwyn, including many of Brangwyn’s own works. The house is the chief link the town now has with William Morris, his birthplace having disappeared.
At Walthamstow lived Sir William Penn, the father of the Quaker; he was sent out by Cromwell to start the Empire in Guiana, and succeeded only in the capture of Jamaica, so setting up the flag between the two Americas. Lady Penn lies in the churchyard. Salisbury Hall Farm, built about 1600, stands on the site of the house in which the old Countess of Salisbury was arrested before her butchery by Henry the Eighth; her death was probably the foulest stain on his name. Forest School has two old windows from Howden Church in Yorkshire, with 13th and 14th century glass, in which are eagles, acorns, and a priest. Woodford County High School for Girls is housed in a fine 18th century manor called Highams, and in the charming grounds is a great lake.
The pride of Walthamstow is the 200-year-old Vestry House, once the workhouse and now transformed into a museum. Over its doorway remains the old inscription, If any would not work, neither should he eat. It is one of a group of buildings gathered on a hill near the church in the middle of the town. As we walk through it the past history of Walthamstow is gradually revealed to us by a case of pre-historic objects found in the marshes, or by photographs, drawings, and plans of buildings, and people. Set up within this building is the old parish lock-up, with the ring to which refractory prisoners were fastened. Round one of the rooms runs a series of 40 painted brilliant coat-of-arms. There is some panelling and a doorway from Essex Hall and the bell which may have called Disraeli and Granville Sharp to their lessons. There is an original drawing by Burne-Jones, a portrait of William Morris by G. F. Watts, a parish chest with eight locks, a magnificent piece of 17th century smith’s work, and a motor car which claims to be the first ever made in England with an internal combustion engine.
In the group of buildings about the Vestry House stands the old armoury, gaol, and Volunteer Centre. Like the Vestry House, it was built about 1700 by a master carpenter, Thomas Turner, who lies in a plain tomb with a yew at each corner. There is here a tomb (that of Jesse Russell) carved by Chantrey and in a plain tomb near it lies Ann Pearce who died in the home of Sir Robert Wigram, and was the faithful nurse of his 23 children for nearly half a century.
The tower of the church, with the porch, aisles, and chapels, are all from the reign of Henry the Eighth; the chancel is modern. On the walls is a fine brass of Sir George Monoux wearing his chain as lord mayor, and by him is his wife in her 15th century dress; Sir George was the founder of the delightful group of red brick almshouses (with the original grammar school) seen in the churchyard. There is a palimpsest brass of 400 years ago, one side with an Elizabethan in a fur coat, the other with a civilian. Lady Lucy Stanley kneels in a cloak and coronet under a kind of triumphal arch, with four daughters dressed as in Stuart days; there is magnificent heraldry on her tomb. A monument by the famous Nicholas Stone has busts of Sir Thomas Merry and his wife, with richly detailed portraits of their four children. A Jacobean wall-monument with fine ironwork in front of it shows Sigismund Trafford in Roman dress with his wife and their little one.
One of the odd things we found here was a beadle’s stick carved with a crown and mitre over 250 years ago, and on the wall is a memory of the Maynards who were for 300 years lords of the manor.
The Craftsman Who Transformed the English House
WILLIAM MORRIS came into the world on a spring day in 1834, and for nearly fifty years he was fighting for the causes he had at heart. As artist, poet, reformer, printer, and manufacturer, he stands among the giants. His father was a bill-broker in the City, his mother a member of a musical family. It was a lucky parentage for William, for he inherited his mother’s gifts, his father’s business instincts, and he had immeasurable gifts of his own. He had a happy childhood, running wild in Epping Forest and grounding himself in that passionate love for trees and flowers which never left him. He went to Marlborough and then to Oxford. At that time he was determined to become a clergyman, but at Oxford he fell in with a group of undergraduates who formed a friendship that was only broken by death, young men full of ideals reaching out toward a wider inheritance and development of culture than Morris had dreamed of.
He developed a great love for art and history, particularly that of the Middle Ages. He read everything of Ruskin and Carlyle that he could lay his hand on, and he travelled. He took up architecture, becoming the articled pupil of G. E. Street, and soon another influence came into his life, that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who persuaded Morris that he would be much better as a painter than as an architect. His giant intellect had already grasped the principle and history of architecture, and in his spare time he was writing poetry. Well it was for Morris that he had a father with a purse behind him while he battled between professions, developing his gifts, enriching his genius. A poor man could not have taken such a course. It was Morris’s peculiar destiny to be a Jack-of-all-Arts and master of all. His poetry, in particular his Earthly Paradise and Death of Jason, placed him high among the English poets. He also wrote a great deal of prose. When he was 25 and about to marry beautiful Jane Burden, he wanted a home, and set to work to build a palace of art of his own at Bexley in Kent. He designed the house himself, and a nice time the builders had getting their foundations in, for Morris would allow no trees to be felled! Then, when the Red House was built, he set about the finishing and furnishing, and found that there was no ironmongery, no carpets, curtains, or furniture to be bought in the shops that he considered fit to be put into a palace of art. The search for his own home-fittings made him realise in horror to what a depth the applied arts had sunk in England. He could find nothing that did not offend an artist’s eye. “I will make them,” said he; and it was good for the country that he did, for now the giant Morris began to get into his stride. With the cooperation of a group of friends, chief among them Burne-Jones, he started a business at Merton Abbey in Surrey to produce painted windows, furniture, metal and glass work, artistic tiles, hangings, tapestries, printed material, jewellery, embroideries - a vast workshop wherein the ideals and the pure beauty of medieval art came to life again.
William Morris built up in English home life and in our art schools an influence which has never died. It was largely through him that people came to see the horrible little meannesses of design and colour which were carried out by manufacturers and seen everywhere in ordinary houses. He spent his life sweeping such rubbish out of our lives. He mixed up politics and art and ideals in a delightful way, and became a convinced Socialist. He felt that art should be the great and purifying power in all men’s lives, as it was in his; and how could that be if man lived in squalor and poverty?
As time went on he concentrated his energies on weaving, dyeing, and printing. He considered that, like all the applied arts, the trade of printing was in a bad way. He had left his small palace of art and bought a lovely 17th-century Manor House at Kelmscott, a small village on the Thames, where he set up the Kelmscott Press and printed books from type cut by himself, illustrated with woodcuts by Burne-Jones and other artists of the day. He also found time to write and illumine manuscripts in the manner of the Middle Ages.
It is impossible to estimate the purifying influence of William Morris on his day and generation, or on ours. He died all too soon, in 1896, recognised as one of the greatest creative geniuses, and perhaps the most perfect craftsman, that modern England has known.
If we come to it over the bridge across the marshes (here still called the Lammas Lands), we tread where its oldest inhabitants trod in the days before history, for in the excavations of the river banks have been found a pile dwelling of the Bronze Age and a British canoe of the 5th century, dug out from the trunk of an oak. The boat is in the British Museum. Here also has been found a Viking ship 45 feet long, lying keel upwards in the mud with a skeleton under it.
By the road across the marshes stands a quaint old inn which was once the haunt of Izaak Walton, and the road brings us to an old copper mill which struck copper coins to relieve the distress in the Napoleon wars.
Essex Hall, the old school with wooden pegs on which Disraeli would hang his coat (and Granville Sharp before him) has gone, but in Lloyd Park, which now belongs to the town, stands the Georgian house where William Morris lived as a boy, boating and fishing in a moat running round a little island there. It has attained a new dignity in our time, for it is to house a rare collection of pictures given by Arthur Mackmurdo and Frank Brangwyn, including many of Brangwyn’s own works. The house is the chief link the town now has with William Morris, his birthplace having disappeared.
At Walthamstow lived Sir William Penn, the father of the Quaker; he was sent out by Cromwell to start the Empire in Guiana, and succeeded only in the capture of Jamaica, so setting up the flag between the two Americas. Lady Penn lies in the churchyard. Salisbury Hall Farm, built about 1600, stands on the site of the house in which the old Countess of Salisbury was arrested before her butchery by Henry the Eighth; her death was probably the foulest stain on his name. Forest School has two old windows from Howden Church in Yorkshire, with 13th and 14th century glass, in which are eagles, acorns, and a priest. Woodford County High School for Girls is housed in a fine 18th century manor called Highams, and in the charming grounds is a great lake.
The pride of Walthamstow is the 200-year-old Vestry House, once the workhouse and now transformed into a museum. Over its doorway remains the old inscription, If any would not work, neither should he eat. It is one of a group of buildings gathered on a hill near the church in the middle of the town. As we walk through it the past history of Walthamstow is gradually revealed to us by a case of pre-historic objects found in the marshes, or by photographs, drawings, and plans of buildings, and people. Set up within this building is the old parish lock-up, with the ring to which refractory prisoners were fastened. Round one of the rooms runs a series of 40 painted brilliant coat-of-arms. There is some panelling and a doorway from Essex Hall and the bell which may have called Disraeli and Granville Sharp to their lessons. There is an original drawing by Burne-Jones, a portrait of William Morris by G. F. Watts, a parish chest with eight locks, a magnificent piece of 17th century smith’s work, and a motor car which claims to be the first ever made in England with an internal combustion engine.
In the group of buildings about the Vestry House stands the old armoury, gaol, and Volunteer Centre. Like the Vestry House, it was built about 1700 by a master carpenter, Thomas Turner, who lies in a plain tomb with a yew at each corner. There is here a tomb (that of Jesse Russell) carved by Chantrey and in a plain tomb near it lies Ann Pearce who died in the home of Sir Robert Wigram, and was the faithful nurse of his 23 children for nearly half a century.
The tower of the church, with the porch, aisles, and chapels, are all from the reign of Henry the Eighth; the chancel is modern. On the walls is a fine brass of Sir George Monoux wearing his chain as lord mayor, and by him is his wife in her 15th century dress; Sir George was the founder of the delightful group of red brick almshouses (with the original grammar school) seen in the churchyard. There is a palimpsest brass of 400 years ago, one side with an Elizabethan in a fur coat, the other with a civilian. Lady Lucy Stanley kneels in a cloak and coronet under a kind of triumphal arch, with four daughters dressed as in Stuart days; there is magnificent heraldry on her tomb. A monument by the famous Nicholas Stone has busts of Sir Thomas Merry and his wife, with richly detailed portraits of their four children. A Jacobean wall-monument with fine ironwork in front of it shows Sigismund Trafford in Roman dress with his wife and their little one.
One of the odd things we found here was a beadle’s stick carved with a crown and mitre over 250 years ago, and on the wall is a memory of the Maynards who were for 300 years lords of the manor.
The Craftsman Who Transformed the English House
WILLIAM MORRIS came into the world on a spring day in 1834, and for nearly fifty years he was fighting for the causes he had at heart. As artist, poet, reformer, printer, and manufacturer, he stands among the giants. His father was a bill-broker in the City, his mother a member of a musical family. It was a lucky parentage for William, for he inherited his mother’s gifts, his father’s business instincts, and he had immeasurable gifts of his own. He had a happy childhood, running wild in Epping Forest and grounding himself in that passionate love for trees and flowers which never left him. He went to Marlborough and then to Oxford. At that time he was determined to become a clergyman, but at Oxford he fell in with a group of undergraduates who formed a friendship that was only broken by death, young men full of ideals reaching out toward a wider inheritance and development of culture than Morris had dreamed of.
He developed a great love for art and history, particularly that of the Middle Ages. He read everything of Ruskin and Carlyle that he could lay his hand on, and he travelled. He took up architecture, becoming the articled pupil of G. E. Street, and soon another influence came into his life, that of Dante Gabriel Rossetti, who persuaded Morris that he would be much better as a painter than as an architect. His giant intellect had already grasped the principle and history of architecture, and in his spare time he was writing poetry. Well it was for Morris that he had a father with a purse behind him while he battled between professions, developing his gifts, enriching his genius. A poor man could not have taken such a course. It was Morris’s peculiar destiny to be a Jack-of-all-Arts and master of all. His poetry, in particular his Earthly Paradise and Death of Jason, placed him high among the English poets. He also wrote a great deal of prose. When he was 25 and about to marry beautiful Jane Burden, he wanted a home, and set to work to build a palace of art of his own at Bexley in Kent. He designed the house himself, and a nice time the builders had getting their foundations in, for Morris would allow no trees to be felled! Then, when the Red House was built, he set about the finishing and furnishing, and found that there was no ironmongery, no carpets, curtains, or furniture to be bought in the shops that he considered fit to be put into a palace of art. The search for his own home-fittings made him realise in horror to what a depth the applied arts had sunk in England. He could find nothing that did not offend an artist’s eye. “I will make them,” said he; and it was good for the country that he did, for now the giant Morris began to get into his stride. With the cooperation of a group of friends, chief among them Burne-Jones, he started a business at Merton Abbey in Surrey to produce painted windows, furniture, metal and glass work, artistic tiles, hangings, tapestries, printed material, jewellery, embroideries - a vast workshop wherein the ideals and the pure beauty of medieval art came to life again.
William Morris built up in English home life and in our art schools an influence which has never died. It was largely through him that people came to see the horrible little meannesses of design and colour which were carried out by manufacturers and seen everywhere in ordinary houses. He spent his life sweeping such rubbish out of our lives. He mixed up politics and art and ideals in a delightful way, and became a convinced Socialist. He felt that art should be the great and purifying power in all men’s lives, as it was in his; and how could that be if man lived in squalor and poverty?
As time went on he concentrated his energies on weaving, dyeing, and printing. He considered that, like all the applied arts, the trade of printing was in a bad way. He had left his small palace of art and bought a lovely 17th-century Manor House at Kelmscott, a small village on the Thames, where he set up the Kelmscott Press and printed books from type cut by himself, illustrated with woodcuts by Burne-Jones and other artists of the day. He also found time to write and illumine manuscripts in the manner of the Middle Ages.
It is impossible to estimate the purifying influence of William Morris on his day and generation, or on ours. He died all too soon, in 1896, recognised as one of the greatest creative geniuses, and perhaps the most perfect craftsman, that modern England has known.
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