Context 165 - August 2020

60 C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 Church building in the Marches Lately I seem not to have been getting out and about quite as much as usual.What better opportunity to study heritage closer to home, like: why are the internal doors in this house such an odd collection? The house was designed in 1876 by Thomas Nicholson, an architect of some repute, and is otherwise full of architecty refinement; including the then innovation of a bitumen damp-proof course. But there were cost over-runs and the doors were second-hand from the old Georgian vicarage, whereby hangs a tale. In 1876 Caynham vicarage was deemed to be unsuitable as it was cheek by jowl with the glebe farm- house. This could hardly be the view of the retiring incumbent, who had lived with it for 16 years. It must have been the new man, who rejoiced in the name of Congreve Selwyn. He has previously been vicar ofWelshampton and had become accustomed to a substantial vicarage in large grounds; and where the patron for both parish- es, Salusbury Kynaston Mainwaring, lived at Oteley Park. Caynham parish applied for Queen Anne’s Bounty and received sufficient for Thomas Nicholson to build a palatial new vicarage, and a glebe farmhouse, less new internal doors, at a respectful distance over the road. Meanwhile, nobody seemed to have noticed that the church was getting into a bit of a state. St Mary’s is one of those two-cell, 12th-century churches that are common in the Marches. However, the most casual of glances reveals that it has been on the receiving end of a pretty severe Victorian seeing-to. The big- name London architect for this was James Brooks, begging the question as to why such a celebrity would be interested in a small country church way out here in the sticks. In 1879, a new vicar arrived. John Ross was the sort of serious high-churchman who could write a 64-page tract on the interpretation of 13 words of rubric in the Book of Common Prayer. In 1860 he took on the failing parish of St Mary Haggerston, where the eccentric gothic church by John Nash, not 35 years old, was unattractive to the churchgoing public. He gave James Brooks, just starting his architectural career, the job of giving St Mary’s a thorough makeover for high-church ritual; and, with a couple of well- connected and well-heeled ben- efactors, founded the Haggerston Church Scheme, which went on to build four further churches, includ- ing two by Brooks. John Ross had evidently swapped parishes with Congreve Selwyn. How this came about and why are unknown, although Selwyn at 40 may still have had ambition and Ross at 59 might have been seek- ing a quieter life. Which was not exactly what he got, as by then the church was in such a parlous state that services were being held in the school. So, he called in his old comrade-in-arms James Brooks. The Building News in June 1880 describes the ongoing works, and records that windows and historic features were being rebuilt in their original posi- tions. The unique transitional triple chancel arch was said to be in good condition. All well and good, except there was no faculty for the work. Ross finally got around to applying for a faculty after about 18 months. In a letter to the bishop, James Atlay, Ross excuses himself for this laxity, saying that applying had seemed a ‘matter not pressing’. But the two were well acquainted as Atlay had been a junior don at St John’s Cambridge when Ross was an undergraduate. Things were smoothed out and the church reo- pened to general rejoicing. Ten years later Ross was appointed vicar ofWaterbeach near Cambridge. By 1896 he had retired, still drawing his stipend, to a house owned by his in-laws at Kilduff near Tralee, leaving his curate ministering to the Waterbeach faithful. Congreve Selwyn was not so lucky. Within three years of moving to Haggerston he had died. James Brooks became eminent: vice president of the RIBA and, in 1895, recipient of its Royal Gold Medal. St Mary’s Haggerston was destroyed in 1941. St Mary’s Caynham is still here. And me and my Georgian doors. James Caird St Mary Caynham: why would a celebrity architect be interested in a small, remote country church?