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St Chad’s Church, Stafford: A Young and Beautiful Virgin and her Decayed and Doting Husband
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
During the eighteenth century few medieval parish churches entirely escaped modernization of some kind, despite John Evelyn’s warning concerning ‘pulling down and patching up’ old fabrics ‘where there are great Dilapidations’ and where the architect ‘might have built entirely new from the Ground, with the same, and oftentimes with less Charge, but with abundance more Beauty and Conveniency.’ Evelyn expressed this belief in a striking analogy: ‘I have very rarely, or as seldom found a new Building joined with any tolerable Decency or Advantage to an old one, as a young and beautiful Virgin to an old, decayed and doting Husband.’
- Type
- Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001
References
Notes
1 ‘An Account of Architects and Architecture’, in A Parallel of The Ancient Architecture With The Modern (London, 1664), quoting the 1707 edition, p. 13.
2 Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Staffordshire (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 243 Google Scholar, pl. 9.
3 The William Salt Library, Hickin Papers (hereafter WSL: Hickin), 319/2/40: ‘To the Honourable and Worthey Gentlemen Trustees To the Revd, the Minister and Church Wardens and Parishioners of the Parish of St. Chad these proposeals are thought proper and Most Humbley Offered. By Gentlemen — Your Obligeing Humble Servant Samuel Webb Mason’, undated.
4 The Gentleman’s Magazine (March 1785), p. 100, illus.; Gomme, A., Smith of Warwick (Stamford, 2000), pp.412, 535Google Scholar.
5 Colvin, H., A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840, 3rd edn (New Haven & London, 1995), p. 1092 Google Scholar.
6 Trubshaw was married in Oxford in 1714 and may have been employed in the building of Blenheim Palace (Colvin, op. cit., pp. 994-95). The RIBA Library copy of Robert Pricke’s Perspective Practical (London, 1672) is inscribed (in the same hand as Fig. 2), ‘Richard Trubshaw his Book June 16th 1727 Cost me 5 shillings att Daventry’. He supplied ‘An Estimate of all Charges finding Materials & Workmanship for finishing ye. inside of a new house designed by Mr. Gibbs’ at Catton Hall, Derbyshire, which was built 1741-42 to an alternative design by William Smith the younger: see Friedman, T., James Gibbs (New Haven & London, 1984), pp. 146-47, 298Google Scholar.
7 WSL: Hickin 319/2/40: ‘An Estimate of all the Charges in Repairing the Parish Church of St Chads in the Town of Stafford’, undated. In 1777 John Wooler recommended the ‘restoration’ technique of skimming eroded stone as a preventative against wet lodging in the walls of Durham Cathedral: ‘to chip or pare off their Outsides to the Depth of 1, 2 or 3 inches . . . at the same time taking out & replacing such Stones as are almost totally perished and moulder’d away and filling up the joints and beds of the whole with a proper mortar struck in with the Chips or Splinters of Flints and Gallets, as full as it well can be . . . The Walls will thus be brought to as Perfect a State of Repair as they well can be, and may without any very considerable expence, resist the Ravages of Time perhaps for Centurys to come’ (quoted in Curry, I., ‘Restoration and Repair to the Fabric of Durham Cathedral 1777–1803’, in Medieval Art and Architecture at Durham Cathedral, BAA Conference Transactions (Leeds, 1980), pp. 130-32)Google Scholar.
8 WSL: Hickin, 319/4/40/38: ‘Richd. Trubshaw Agreemt. to take 5g. for his Troubles abt. St. Chadds Church’; ‘Mr. Trubshaw’ (presumably his son Charles) received 5 guineas on 2 October 1746 (ibid., 319/4/40/39).
9 WSL: Hickin, 319/4/40, fol. 1 : ‘St. Chadds Paper. The Workmens Agreement’, also including an agreement with William Dudley, carpenter (ibid., 319/4/40/29).
10 A Quarter Sessions certificate of 1738 (?) described the fabric as ‘very antient’, with ‘a very high [steeple] too heavy for the foundation [with] nothing to hold it together but some few cramps of iron which cannot possibly hold long the cramps themselves being so loose that they may almost be plucked out with ones fingers the walls of the body . . . are bulged of[f] the foundation the Timber of the roof so rotted at both ends and such a totali decay in it that it is in great danger of falling in every day . . . nor can the inhabitants . . . with safety assemble themselves to the publiek worship of Almighty God Especially in any windy or stormy wheatherso . . . must be pulled down and rebuilt’ (Staffordshire Record Office, D3361/5/31).
11 Ibid., D3361/5/30.
12 WSL: Hickin, 319/4/40/31: ‘Mr. Trubshaws Accot. of Botts & Grays Work’, ‘measurd & Valu’d December 19 1743 by me Rich’d Trubshaw’. See also items for work done by Thomas Nevili, plasterer, 1744 (319/4/40/36). Joseph Calkins, ironmonger, 1745 (319/4/40/15) and Hickin’s account of payments to craftsmen (319/4/4/34).
13 First at the hand of a local builder named Henry Ward and then at that of George Gilbert Scott, who rebuilt the west front and the north and south aisles of the nave (Pevsner, op. cit., p. 243). The tower was ‘rapidly going to decay’ by 1819 ( Dugdale, J., The New British Traveller, or Modern Panorama of England and Wales, IV (London, 1819), p. 259)Google Scholar.
14 View of the exterior from the north-east, 1837, the William Salt Library: see D. A., Johnson, T. P.|Wood’s Staffordshire (Stafford, 1990), pl. 34 Google Scholar.
15 John Buckler’s view of the interior towards the chancel, 1844, the William Salt Library: see Roper, J. S., Some Early Staffordshire Churches (Lichfield, 1970), p. 18 Google Scholar.
16 See n. 12.