Reformation history
A MARGERY ALLINGHAM sometimes gets me through a delayed train journey; and it was recently her Look to the Lady — the novel in which Albert Campion has to protect the Gyrth Chalice, held in a secret chapel in one of the great country houses of England (and rather well looked after in its own way).
So, fleetingly, fact and fiction mingled in my head when I heard from Tim Ashton about a concealed domestic chapel — in Soulton Hall, Shropshire — to which the public had access for the first time this month.
The house was that of Sir Rowland Hill, statesman and religious thinker (not to be confused with the later Penny Post founder), to whom Mr Ashton is related. The chapel is located behind the central window on the house’s only symmetrical façade.
Mr Ashton tells me that it was purposely designed by Hill so that effects of the light on Good Friday and Easter morning evoke the cross and the empty tomb.
The Soulton Hall website speaks of the chapel’s “disruptive and structurally incongruous placement within the internal walls. This deliberate departure from the building’s flow emphasizes the chapel’s primacy and importance within Soulton Hall.
“All of this gave rise to a strong family tradition, safeguarding a concealed element within the house. For centuries, the creation of any plans depicting the interior wall configurations was strictly prohibited. Additionally, access to these floors was strictly denied.
“This tradition of forbidding plans and access finally relaxed in 2021, when a scholar, James Wenn, arrived with questions that demonstrated the sensitivity and insight these matters required. This marked a turning point, prompting a renewed focus on Soulton Hall’s 16th-century legacy.”
Hill’s special interest to Church of England people is that he was on the Privy Councils of the Tudors, and “used Soulton Hall as a clandestine base for his most daring act — the publication of the Geneva Bible”.
Soulton Hall has a priest hide and was a haven amid persecution. “Scholarly materials, were also kept secure home within Soulton’s walls, ensuring their survival for future generations.”
Tradition has it that Archbishop Matthew Parker stayed in one room, now named after him, although this remains out of bounds. Would-be visitors will, I think, need to keep their eye on the website, as “spontaneous visits” cannot be accommodated.
Mr Ashton is himself very protective of a place from the age of martyrs, and photography in the chapel is not allowed. But the penalty awaiting those who breach this condition is unlikely to be in the Allingham league.
soultonhall.co.uk
Watts remembered
IF WE had only “When I survey”, we would be grateful to Isaac Watts, even if it wouldn’t be quite the same hymn without its famous tune, Rockingham, after which, it has been suggested, Barbara Pym may have named one of her characters.
The Revd Steve PenroseThe Leysian Missioner, Thomas Smith, lays flowers at Isaac Watts’s tomb in Bunhill Fields
They were celebrating Watts’s 350th birthday and his legacy little more than a stone’s throw from this office this summer, when Wesley’s Chapel and Leysian Mission held a short service at his tomb in Bunhill Fields; for he was, of course, a Nonconformist (Congregationalist).
But the world of hymns is a very ecumenical one: the 1906 English Hymnal, on which I was brought up, includes ten hymns by Watts, but, as I thumb through it now, I see we didn’t sing them all, though, of course, everyone who went to church regularly used to know “O God, our help”, “Jesus shall reign”, and “Come, let us join our cheerful songs”. I wouldn’t be so sure of that these days.
And this is not to mention “Joy to the world”, which, for some reason, I have always thought of as an American Christmas carol. It certainly took off more in the United States than over here, though I see that The Revised English Hymnal has found a space for it under “Advent”.
The press release calls Watts the first prolific author of hymns in the English language, and quotes the Congregationalist scholar Bernard Manning: “No one can read Watts without having Wesley in mind, and nothing will enable a man to see the greatness of Watts’s hymns so well as a thorough knowledge of Wesley’s.”
The Wesley in question is Charles, not John, and they seem to have been something of a mutual-admiration society; but there was plenty to admire, given Watts’s wide learning.
It is a very London life, stretching east to Stoke Newington — and west to Methodist Central Hall, as it was the venue for last Sunday’s special Radio 4 service.
‘No photography’?
ANNE WILLIS asks: “Was there any feeling during the 19th century that depicting the interior of a church was in some way profane?”
Two churches in Bradford on Avon, where she lives, do not appear to have images of the interior during the incumbency of the Revd W. H. Jones (1851-85).
Holy Trinity, the parish church, has no images of the interior between c.1842 and 1885, despite a rebuilding in the 1860s. St Laurence’s, the Saxon church opposite, has many images of the exterior during this time, but there are only three architects’ drawings of the interior between 1872 and 1885, when restoration was taking place.
Jones was away from the parish when J. T. Irvine made his 1881 drawing of the chancel arch.
“Granted the lighting may not have been ideal, but flash photography was available in the 1870s. Indeed, a pioneer of the technique, Dr Maidstone Smith, lived near by and took exterior photos of St Laurence,” our correspondent writes.
“But almost immediately after Jones’s death in 1885 a photo was taken of the south-east corner of the Saxon church nave with interior wooden buttressing. Subsequently there were many more interior photos.”
Readers in the know can send their explanations to 15 Sandy Leaze, Bradford on Avon BA15 1LX. It does indeed look likely that Jones was one of those clerics who don’t get on with photographers. How wise of him, then, to live at a time when there were so few.
Long-time reader
I CAME out of mourning to write this column; for the Church Times reader who mattered to me most was, of course, my father. Indeed, my mother once said that when they were first married she could barely understand a word of most of the articles. Her parish, where she was a Sunday-school teacher, was what in those days would have been described as liberal Evangelical.
My father started reading it in the late 1940s, before he did his National Service. He had a paper round in Ilford, Essex, and one of his deliveries was a copy of The Church of England Newspaper.
He asked the Vicar of St Cedd’s, Barkingside, Mr Barnes, whether it was something that he should be interested in. “No,” the Vicar said. “People like us read the Church Times.” And thereby hangs a tale.