General Introduction

Summary

The parish churches of England are among the most noble and conspicuous of the nation’s architectural monuments. Their survival, however, owes more to chance than to good stewardship. Neglect, decay, and deliberate destruction are as much a part of their history as the work of dedicated benefactors and parishioners who strove to make our churches worthy for Christian worship.

As the sources selected for inclusion in this series demonstrate all too clearly, many Bedfordshire churches were in a dilapidated state in the opening decades of the nineteenth century. Others, whilst structurally sound and decently furnished for the worship of the day, needed “restoration” – a term meaning much more than just repair. This was the situation facing the Victorians who – far from vandalising our heritage – sought to restore these precious buildings from years of neglect and adapt them to suit the new liturgical arrangements of the time.

The coming of the ecclesiological movement in the 1840s brought a new concern for the ceremonial aspects of worship – the ministry of the sacraments instead of the ministry of the word. This entailed a change in the arrangement of church buildings, the old “preaching boxes” of the Cl8th giving way to churches in which all attention focused on the chancel and the holy table in the sanctuary. The reformers often exaggerated the poor state of church buildings as a means of drawing attention to the need for change, and the Victorians were invariably critical of alterations and repairs carried out in previous centuries when utility had been regarded as more important than sanctity.

Between about 1840 and 1914 virtually every parish church in England was in some measure restored, and vast sums of money were spent on what was seen to be one of the most worthy causes of the Victorian era. Many churches were rescued from the brink of collapse and given a new lease of life. Some were restored to their former glory. Others were mutilated beyond recognition or wholly rebuilt. Churches viewed by the Victorians as “tainted by classical alterations” were gothicised. Sound buildings were “improved” to suit the needs of a new religious age.