The same scenes were being enacted in many parts of England. Everywhere ignorant commissioners were rampaging about the country imitating the ignorant ferocity of this Dowsing and Jessop. No wonder our churches were bare, pillaged, and ruinated. Moreover, the conception of art and the taste for architecture were dead or dying, and there was no one who could replace the beautiful objects which these wretches destroyed or repair the desolation they had caused.
Another era of spoliation set in in more recent times, when the restorers came with vitiated taste and the worst ideals to reconstruct and renovate our churches which time, spoliation, and carelessness had left somewhat the worse for wear. The Oxford Movement taught men to bestow more care upon the houses of God in the land, to promote His honour by more reverent worship, and to restore the beauty of His sanctuary. A rector found his church in a dilapidated state and talked over the matter with the squire. Although the building was in a sorry condition, with a cracked ceiling, hideous galleries, and high pews like cattle-pens, it had a Norman doorway, some Early English carved work in the chancel, a good Perpendicular tower, and fine Decorated windows. These two well-meaning but ignorant men decided that a brand-new church would be a great improvement on this old tumble-down building. An architect was called in, or a local builder; the plan of a new church was speedily drawn, and ere long the hammers and axes were let loose on the old church and every vestige of antiquity destroyed. The old Norman font was turned out of the church, and either used as a cattle-trough or to hold a flower-pot in the rectory garden. Some of the beautifully carved stones made an excellent rockery in the squire's garden, and old woodwork, perchance a fourteenth-century rood-screen, encaustic tiles bearing the arms of the abbey with which in former days the church was connected, monuments and stained glass, are all carted away and destroyed, and the triumph of vandalism is complete.
That is an oft-told tale which finds its counterpart in many towns and villages, the entire and absolute destruction of the old church by ignorant vandals who work endless mischief and know not what they do. There is the village of Little Wittenham, in our county of Berks, not far from Sinodun Hill, an ancient earthwork covered with trees, that forms so conspicuous an object to the travellers by the Great Western Railway from Didcot to Oxford. About forty years ago terrible things were done in the church of that village. The vicar was a Goth. There was a very beautiful chantry chapel on the south side of the choir, full of magnificent marble monuments to the memory of various members of the Dunce family. This family, once great and powerful, whose great house stood hard by on the north of the church—only the terraces of which remain—is now, it is believed, extinct. The vicar thought that he might be held responsible for the dilapidations of this old chantry; so he pulled it down, and broke all the marble tombs with axes and hammers. You can see the shattered remains that still show signs of beauty in one of the adjoining barns. Some few were set up in the tower, the old font became a pig-trough, the body of the church was entirely renewed, and vandalism reigned supreme. In our county of Berks there were at the beginning of the last century 170 ancient parish churches. Of these, thirty have been pulled down and entirely rebuilt, six of them on entirely new sites; one has been burnt down, one disused; before 1890 one hundred were restored, some of them most drastically, and several others have been restored since, but with greater respect to old work.
A favourite method of "restoration" was adopted in many instances. A church had a Norman doorway and pillars in the nave; sundry additions and alterations had been made in subsequent periods, and examples of Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular styles of architecture were observable, with, perhaps, a Renaissance porch or other later feature. What did the early restorers do? They said, "This is a Norman church; all its details should be Norman too." So they proceeded to take away these later additions and imitate Norman work as much as they could by breaking down the Perpendicular or Decorated tracery in the windows and putting in large round-headed windows—their conception of Norman work, but far different from what any Norman builder would have contrived. Thus these good people entirely destroyed the history of the building, and caused to vanish much that was interesting and important. Such is the deplorable story of the "restoration" of many a parish church.
An amusing book, entitled Hints to Some Churchwardens, with a few Illustrations Relative to the Repair and Improvement of Parish Churches, was published in 1825. The author, with much satire, depicts the "very many splendid, curious, and convenient ideas which have emanated from those churchwardens who have attained perfection as planners and architects." He apologises for not giving the names of these superior men and the dates of the improvements they have achieved, but is sure that such works as theirs must immortalize them, not only in their parishes, but in their counties, and, he trusts, in the kingdom at large. The following are some of the "hints":—
"How to affix a porch to an old church.
"If the church is of stone, let the porch be of brick, the roof slated, and the entrance to it of the improved Gothic called modern, being an arch formed by an acute angle. The porch should be placed so as to stop up what might be called a useless window; and as it sometimes happens that there is an ancient Saxon[29] entrance, let it be carefully bricked up, and perhaps plastered, so as to conceal as much as possible of the zigzag ornament used in buildings of this kind. Such improvements cannot fail to ensure celebrity to churchwardens of future ages.
"How to add a vestry to an old church.
"The building here proposed is to be of bright brick, with a slated roof and sash windows, with a small door on one side; and it is, moreover, to be adorned with a most tasty and ornamental brick chimney, which terminates at the chancel end. The position of the building should be against two old Gothic windows; which, having the advantage of hiding them nearly altogether, when contrasted with the dull and uniform surface of an old stone church, has a lively and most imposing effect.
"How to ornament the top or battlements of a tower belonging to an ancient church.
"Place on each battlement, vases, candlesticks, and pineapples alternately, and the effect will be striking. Vases have many votaries amongst those worthy members of society, the churchwardens. Candlesticks are of ancient origin, and represent, from the highest authority, the light of the churches: but as in most churches weathercocks are used, I would here recommend the admirers of novelty and improvement to adopt a pair of snuffers, which might also be considered as a useful emblem for reinvigorating the lights from the candlesticks. The pineapple ornament having in so many churches been judiciously substituted for Gothic, cannot fail to please. Some such ornament should also be placed at the top of the church, and at the chancel end. But as this publication does not restrict any churchwarden of real taste, and as the ornaments here recommended are in a common way made of stone, if any would wish to distinguish his year of office, perhaps he would do it brilliantly by painting them all bright red...."
Other valuable suggestions are made in this curious and amusing work, such as "how to repair Quartre-feuille windows" by cutting out all the partitions and making them quite round; "how to adapt a new church to an old tower with most taste and effect," the most attractive features being light iron partitions instead of stone mullions for the windows, with shutters painted yellow, bright brick walls and slate roof, and a door painted sky-blue. You can best ornament a chancel by placing colossal figures of Moses and Aaron supporting the altar, huge tables of the commandments, and clusters of grapes and pomegranates in festoons and clusters of monuments. Vases upon pillars, the commandments in sky-blue, clouds carved out of wood supporting angels, are some of the ideas recommended. Instead of a Norman font you can substitute one resembling a punch-bowl,[30] with the pedestal and legs of a round claw table; and it would be well to rear a massive pulpit in the centre of the chancel arch, hung with crimson and gold lace, with gilt chandeliers, large sounding-board with a vase at the top. A stove is always necessary. It can be placed in the centre of the chancel, and the stove-pipe can be carried through the upper part of the east window, and then by an elbow conveyed to the crest of the roof over the window, the cross being taken down to make room for the chimney. Such are some of the recommendations of this ingenious writer, which are ably illustrated by effective drawings. They are not all imaginative. Many old churches tell the tragic story of their mutilation at the hands of a rector who has discovered Parker's Glossary, knows nothing about art, but "does know what he likes," advised by his wife who has visited some of the cathedrals, and by an architect who has been elaborately educated in the principles of Roman Renaissance, but who knows no more of Lombard, Byzantine, or Gothic art than he does of the dynasties of ancient Egypt. When a church has fallen into the hands of such renovators and been heavily "restored," if the ghost of one of its medieval builders came to view his work he would scarcely recognize it. Well says Mr. Thomas Hardy: "To restore the great carcases of mediævalism in the remote nooks of western England seems a not less incongruous act than to set about renovating the adjoining crags themselves," and well might he sigh over the destruction of the grand old tower of Endelstow Church and the erection of what the vicar called "a splendid tower, designed by a first-rate London man—in the newest style of Gothic art and full of Christian feeling."
The novelist's remarks on "restoration" are most valuable:—
"Entire destruction under the saving name has been effected on so gigantic a scale that the protection of structures, their being kept wind and weather-proof, counts as nothing in the balance. Its enormous magnitude is realized by few who have not gone personally from parish to parish through a considerable district, and compared existing churches there with records, traditions, and memories of what they formerly were. The shifting of old windows and other details irregularly spaced, and spacing them at exact distances, has been one process. The deportation of the original chancel arch to an obscure nook and the insertion of a wider new one, to throw open the view of the choir, is a practice by no means extinct. Next in turn to the re-designing of old buildings and parts of them comes the devastation caused by letting restorations by contract, with a clause in the specification requesting the builder to give a price for 'old materials,' such as the lead of the roofs, to be replaced by tiles or slates, and the oak of the pews, pulpit, altar-rails, etc., to be replaced by deal. Apart from these irregularities it has been a principle that anything later than Henry VIII is anathema and to be cast out. At Wimborne Minster fine Jacobean canopies have been removed from Tudor stalls for the offence only of being Jacobean. At a hotel in Cornwall a tea-garden was, and probably is still, ornamented with seats constructed of the carved oak from a neighbouring church—no doubt the restorer's perquisite.
"Poor places which cannot afford to pay a clerk of the works suffer much in these ecclesiastical convulsions. In one case I visited, as a youth, the careful repair of an interesting Early English window had been specified, but it was gone. The contractor, who had met me on the spot, replied genially to my gaze of concern: 'Well, now, I said to myself when I looked at the old thing, I won't stand upon a pound or two. I'll give 'em a new winder now I am about it, and make a good job of it, howsomever.' A caricature in new stone of the old window had taken its place. In the same church was an old oak rood-screen in the Perpendicular style with some gilding and colouring still remaining. Some repairs had been specified, but I beheld in its place a new screen of varnished deal. 'Well,' replied the builder, more genial than ever, 'please God, now I am about it, I'll do the thing well, cost what it will.' The old screen had been used up to boil the work-men's kettles, though 'a were not much at that.'"
Such is the terrible report of this amazing iconoclasm.