Four churches - one old, three new, all lnk. I liked All Saints, old, a lot but the others were indifferent.
ALL SAINTS, Church Street. A complicated building history, given as follows by the Royal Commission: nave walls with blocked clerestory windows Norman. Arcades to the aisles mid C13, only five bays long. Nave lengthened to the E c. 1400. Circular piers, heavy moulded capitals, double-chamfered arches. S chancel chapel late C15 (octagonal piers). N chancel chapel, the most handsome piece of architecture of the church, c. 1550, of red brick with blue brick diapering and windows of three- and four-light with brick mullions and depressed-arched lights. Early C19 refacing of the S side of the church with yellow brick. The commanding W tower of ragstone with taller SE stair turret is of c. 1400. The nave roof has late C15 tiebeams; the chancel roof is of c. 1500. - REREDOS. 1866 by Sir G. G. Scott. - ARCHITECTURAL FRAGMENTS from Stratford Langthorne Abbey: one two-light window, late medieval, near S Porch, one stone sculptured with skull, on inner N wall of tower. - PLATE. Set of 1693; Cup, Cover, and Almsdish of 1718; three Almsdishes of 1737. - MONUMENTS. Thomas Staples, d. 1592, brass with kneeling figures (E end of S arcade). - John Faldo d. 1613 and Francis Faldo d. 1632, two similar small monuments with kneeling figures (Chancel S wall). - William Fawcit d. 1631 and wife, and her second husband. Large monument with two kneeling figures, facing each other as usual and the first husband semi-reclining below (N Chancel Chapel). - Thomas Foot, Lord Mayor of London, d. 1688 and wife. Two life-size standing figures in niches with black inscription plate between, the whole under a pediment (N Chancel Chapel). - Buckeridge Children d. between 1698 and 1710. Kneeling figures of the parents, one kneeling daughter above. The other children small busts on pedestals. By Edward Stanton. - James Cooper d. 1743 and wife. Two life-size standing figures together in one niche under a pediment. The quality of the figures is excellent, and it is a great pity that they are not signed.
ST ANTONY, R.C., St Antony’s Road. By Pugin & Pugin 1887. Big, E.E., no tower.
EMMANUEL, Upton Lane and Romford Road, 1852 by Sir George Gilbert Scott.
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| All Saints |
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| St Matthew |
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| St Anthony of Padua |
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| Emmanuel |
WEST HAM. This big and densely peopled part of Greater London has great docks and great industries, and a population of nearly a third of a million. It includes Forest Gate and Silvertown, and is divided from London by the River Lea, crossed by the wide successor of the famous Bow Bridge. This is said to have been the first arched stone bridge in Essex, and was kept in repair by the monks of Langthorne Abbey, of which some 13th century window stones are built into a wall near the Adam and Eve inn.
Chaucer would gaze on the abbey from his rooms on the City gate, and did not his tender-hearted prioress pronounce her French after the school of Stratford-atte-Bow? The borough boasts a poet of its own, whose name was Thomas Lodge. He gave up law for letters, and his sonnets and elegies, lyrics and plays, brought forth the praise of Edmund Spenser and Robert Greene (the forgotten man who was jealous of Shakespeare).
Thomas Lodge’s father was the Lord Mayor of London whose ships from Africa are said to have begun our trade in slaves, at that unhappy time when Stratford was burning men and women at the stake. The site of their martyrdom is at the busy cross-roads, and here in a churchyard is a lofty spire capped by a martyr’s crown. On one of the six sides is a relief of the burnings from Foxe’s Book of Martyrs, and the other sides give the names and dates of all the local victims who are known. Behind rises the tall pinnacled spire of plain looking St John’s church, one century old, and opposite is the high tower of the town hall, its dome 100 feet above the street, brooding over a balustraded roof with many statues.
Another statue stands outside the public library, for Stratford must have its Shakespeare, be he ever so small. For years the little figure stood in the vestibule of Drury Lane Theatre, and was saved when the building was burnt in 1809. The poet is stroking his beard in meditation, and bids us “Come and take choice of all my library.” The rest of the block is used as a college and museum, and there are symbolical figures carved in relief on its many gables. Along the front stands a row of pillars on a frieze decorated with cherubs.
The museum owes much to the Essex Field Club and John Passmore Edwards, the philanthropist whose bust faces us as we enter. The collections illustrate the natural history and antiquities of Essex, and there are many models for teaching children. This was possibly the first museum to stage a living exhibit of wild flowers and grasses, and these have been renewed without a lapse since the beginning of our century. The survey of the animal kingdom starts with the tusks and teeth of mammoths and the skulls and horns of bison, all from Essex, and with fossils from all over the world. One fine exhibit is a wonderful panorama of Epping Forest, complete with stuffed animals and birds and models of toadstools.
The works of man start with cumbersome flint implements dropped at Leyton thousands of years ago, and next we see how he learned to put handles on his tools. There are relics from his dwellings, and his implements of bone and bronze. One exhibit deals with the mysterious low mounds, about a foot high, which are found along the high water mark of the Essex coast. We see their contents, red earth and rough red pottery, supporting the theory that at these mounds earthenware was made for evaporating salt. Soon afterwards came the Romans, and we are shown various types of the pottery they introduced. Finally there are prints and photographs of old Essex abbeys and priories.
The fossils and birds in the museum would have delighted George Edwards, born here in 1694. He went to a clergyman’s school at Leytonstone, and read incessantly while he was apprenticed in the City. He travelled in Holland and Scandinavia, where he was seized as a spy, but he returned home to make coloured drawings of animals. He studied fossils, corresponded with Linnaeus, and spent 21 years writing a great History of Birds. He gave to the world 500 bird scenes never pictured before, and he worked on to the end; then they laid him to rest from his labours in the crowded churchyard of West Ham.
The church has a big square sundial of 1803 which bids us Remember, and for sunless wet days is a long cloister joining the south aisle to the road. The tower of about 1400 has been liberally patched with brick: at the top is a turret and at the bottom a doorway with traceried spandrels.
There are signs in the clerestory that the Normans built no mean church here, probably a dignified building with transepts; now the nave has round piers of the 13th century, and above them are many Tudor beams. The chancel roof was built about 1500, a century after the chancel arch. Medieval arcades divide the chancel from its flanking chapels: the south chapel is probably 15th century and the other 100 years younger, a brick turret rising above its walls.
All forlorn lies the disused bowl of a font of 1707, and very gruesome is a 15th century stone on the tower, carved with skulls.
On the chancel arch is an Elizabethan brass of Thomas Staples faced by four women. Beneath are 20 verses, one for every shilling he left as an annuity to the poor. In a round-headed recess in the chancel wall are kneeling figures of John and Francis Faldo who died 300 years ago, looking very small beside the later monuments. In the north chapel is a memorial with rich pilasters framing the armoured figure of Captain Robert Rooke and his two wives, with their seven children. In a niche is James Cooper with his wife; he has been reading a book for nearly 200 years. Below the arch of the chapel is a 15th century altar tomb, but who lies in it we do not know. Angels hold shields in carved panels round the sides, and the beer barrel and maltster’s shovel suggest an unknown brewer. There is no mistake about Sir Thomas Foot, who stands with his wife on a fine monument with a festooned urn. He was Lord Mayor of London in Restoration days, and wears his chain. Near by are cherubs adorning the monument of one of his successors, Sir James Smyth, who died in the reign of Queen Anne.
On the wall of the other chapel is a quaint 300-year-old group in a recess flanked by columns, showing a woman kneeling at a prayer desk with one of her husbands, while another husband reclines contentedly reading a book. A pathetic story must lie behind another monument in this chapel, where Nicholas and Eleanor Buckeridge set up their own tomb after losing five children. A kneeling girl on the cornice is flanked by busts of four infants, and below kneel their parents, who died over two centuries ago. They are descendants of that Thomas Buckeridge of the last Stuart reigns who wished to have his bones mingled with the ashes of his “dear and innocent child” at West Ham church. He was a friend of Godfrey Kneller and the Duke of Buckingham, and wrote the Lives of the English Painters.
Near the church is West Ham Park, 80 acres of green beauty, with many cedars over 150 years old. At the house called the Cedars lived Elizabeth Fry. West Ham Recreation Ground is a delightful park, its lawns gay with flowers, and in the middle plays a fountain surrounded by irises, a band plays under the trees, and children play everywhere.
But the name that shines above all others is Lord Lister’s. Here he was born, and his house facing Upton Park is marked by a tablet.
He Saved Millions of Lives
LISTER was one of the greatest benefactors of mankind, born in 1827, son of a gifted Quaker. He took his medical degree at 25, was professor of surgery at Glasgow eight years later, and returned to London to give the last 16 years of his working life to King’s College.
It was as a prince of surgeons that he devised the methods associated forever with his name. He worked in hospitals where 80 per cent of deaths followed operations, even minor breakings of the skin, and he saw the imperative need of surgical cleanliness. When Pasteur announced his discovery of fermentation from germs Lister realised that germs were responsible for the frightful consequences of operations. He sought out sterilising agents and prevented contact with the wounds by anything calculated to create septic conditions. Almost at once he reduced mortality by 65 per cent, and today his disciples feel it little short of a crime to lose life after an operation which before his day was almost certain to be fatal.
A brave and noble spirit, Lister worked patiently on in face of professional doubt and jealousy, content with the results and the gratitude of his patients. What he meant to them is tenderly expressed in a sonnet by W. E. Henley, who was for two years in his care. We give some lines from this poet’s proud homage:
His brow spreads large and placid, and his eye
Is deep and bright, with steady looks that still.
Soft lines of tranquil thought his face fulfil -
His face at once benign and proud and shy.
If envy scout, if ignorance deny,
His faultless patience, his unyielding will,
Beautiful gentleness, and splendid skill,
Innumerable gratitudes reply.
His wise, rare smile is sweet with certainties,
And seems in all his patients to compel
Such love and faith as failure cannot quell . . .
He was raised to the peerage, and long before he died was acclaimed throughout the world as the greatest healer of all time. Prejudice had died down and he was acknowledged the saviour of millions of lives. The first doctor in the House of Lords, he was President of the Royal Society and of the British Association, was one of the original members of the Order of Merit (the highest distinction the King bestows) and was laid to rest among princes and poets in Westminster Abbey.
