England's Thousand Best Churches
Parish churches are England's glory. They enshrine the history of a people, most of whom have lived far from the capital, court and Parliament. These people – their art, architecture and faith – are seldom recorded or celebrated. The parish church is their public monument.
Simon Jenkins has travelled the length and breadth of England to select his 1,000 best churches. They are of all periods and denominations, though most are medieval foundations. Organised by county, each is described and given a star-rating from one to five. The four- and five-star churches are listed as the '100 best'.
In the following extract, Simon Jenkins introduces these wonderful buildings.
Preparing this list has been a personal odyssey through the landscape of England. Old churches have survived best by being in parts of the country least affected by industry or suburbanisation.
I like to think that any reader who contrives to visit all 1,000 churches in this book will have been guided to the loveliest corners of England. Nor are these always at the extremities. Some of the most remote churches are on the marshes of Essex and the coast of Dorset, in Norfolk's Breckland and the Sussex Downs. They are the more precious for being relatively accessible.
Swamped by the suburbs
Such loveliness is ever more rare. Many superb churches are now swamped
by suburban development that, with the virtual collapse of rural planning
in the last quarter of the 20th century, has accelerated across England.
I have struggled to restrict references to this sprawl, far worse than
the notorious 'ribbon development' of the years between the two world
wars, but sometimes anger gets the better of me.
The march of the out-of-town estate and its ugly sister, the by-pass hypermarket, spells ruin for towns as much as for the countryside, sucking economic activity from urban centres and leaving behind dereliction and poverty. This will be regretted not only by those nostalgic for the vitality of country towns and for the seclusion of country areas, but even by those suburbanites who were promised a rural idyll and find themselves only in a bleak 'out-of-town'.
To stand in the churchyard of Willen in Buckinghamshire and gaze out over the grid plan of Milton Keynes is to feel the chill of a ghastly mistake. There must be a better way.
Conservation
The debates that divide the world of church conservationists are no
easier to resolve. English churches, especially medieval ones, are far
removed in appearance from their pre-Reformation state. Most were stripped
in the 16th century, refurnished in the 17th and 18th centuries, and drastically
restored in the 19th. They have been subject to constant change, each
reflecting the taste and opinion of the age.
Modern conservation, especially of the finer churches on my list, has veered against any further change. This has impeded any alterations to fabric and fittings, and insisted on minimal alteration to newly discovered relics of the past such as wall paintings.
Modern refurnishing
My sympathies flow back and forth. The Church of England has done
dreadful things to what is the most precious stock of medieval architecture
in Europe. Some alterations had to be stopped. But a church is primarily
a theatre for its liturgy, which appears to be in constant flux. In addition,
some churches are depressingly bare. Many have benefited greatly from
modern refurnishing, such as Clifton in Nottinghamshire and Rotherham
in South Yorkshire.
In my opinion, greater freedom could be shown in such innovation. Churches whose walls were scraped down to bare stone by the Victorians would be much improved by the reinstatement of their plaster. They would also seem less like archaeological sites if meaningless fragments of wall painting were not left stranded like flotsam in a sea of whitewash. A wall should have some visual integrity. If wall paintings are wanted, let us paint new ones, as the Victorians did so splendidly in the recently restored Garton-on-the-Wolds in the East Riding of Yorkshire.
Church art
A related ambition should be to reinstate the statuary for which Gothic
churches offered a rich platform. Whether reproduction or modern is no
matter. Empty niches, inside and outside a church, are as much an offence
to the eye as to architecture. They look like paintings from which the
faces have been removed, a triumph of archaeology over aesthetics. A campaign
to 'fill the niches' is overdue. Nothing so demonstrates the Church of
England's loss of self-confidence as its inability to encourage modern
church art.
However, this stricture does not apply to two ecclesiastical art forms that are at present alive and well: embroidery and calligraphy. The kneeler and the memorial slab shine out among the contents of churches as the 21st century at its best. Perhaps this is because both types of artefacts require skills that remain rooted in local craftsmanship.
Stained glass
A more complex challenge is stained glass. Ask people who seldom visit
churches for the word that most characterises them today, and they reply:
gloom.
Early medieval churches were dark, the only daylight coming from small window openings, themselves often thick with glass. This lent them an enclosure that suited the mysteries of the Mass. The Reformation swept away this mystery, bringing the English church into the light of day. The reredos at Shorthampton in Oxfordshire is formed, says the guide proudly, of 'the sky, the trees and the good earth outside'.
Victorian restorers and those of the 20th century turned their backs on daylight, reinstating dark stained glass. This sometimes worked as an artistic programme – for instance, the many installations of the Morris partnership for G F Bodley and his contemporaries. More often, the insertions were piecemeal, insipid and dour. Most such glass should be removed and stored, for a future generation to reconsider.
Sustaining the inheritance
Beyond such controversies of style, the Church of England's predicament
is more serious. It is how to sustain a vast inheritance of buildings
on the back of falling membership.
A glimmer of hope has been offered by the availability of public funds for church restoration. This, together with valiant fights against redundancy by individual parishes, means that almost all the churches in this book are in good repair. Even those declared 'redundant' have a friend in the admirable Churches Conservation Trust, which keeps them consecrated, in repair and accessible even if unused. Losses – such as the burning of Brancepeth in Durham in 1998 – are mercifully rare.
But money is not enough. Church conservation must appeal to a wider community than that of the Anglican faith, to people who will appreciate churches not as religious institutions alone, but as fine buildings and galleries of arts and crafts.
Enhanced purpose
Because of this, I cannot believe that, in 100 years' time, parish
churches will still be in the sole custodianship of the Church of England.
Unless it can find within itself some new Victorian revival, to rekindle
enthusiasm for church buildings among the faithful, this Church must rely
on the faithless to look after and keep open its places of worship.
I envisage some new version of the pre-Reformation division, with the Church guarding the chancel and its places of formal worship, and the wider community taking responsibility for the nave and the remainder of the fabric. In taking such responsibility, the community would also be regaining what it scarcely knows it once enjoyed, both a centre of community life and a gallery of community art. It might also find an enhanced purpose for secular parish councils. There are churches that already engage that spirit – for instance, Blakeney in Norfolk and Tamworth in Staffordshire – but they are rare exceptions.
It is to this new support for parish churches that this book is dedicated.
© Penguin Books Ltd 2002
