A rare weekend in London raised the question, Where to go to church? In the spirit of my sabbatical there was only one answer. Hidden in the residential streets between Marylebone Station and Regent’s Park is St Cyprian, Clarence Gate, built in 1902-1903 to a design by Ninian Comper.
It is, according to the guide, ‘the first complete building to express Comper’s architectural vision of the ideal parish church.’ For Comper, the ideal style was Norfolk Perpendicular. Simon Jenkins recalls visiting this church with John Betjeman in the 1970s. The Poet Laureate ‘fell theatrically to his knees on entering, crying “Ah, Norfolk, Norfolk in Baker Street”’.
This was my first visit. Betjeman was right. The nave, based on St Mary, Attleborough, is all arcades and aisles and clerestories. The octagonal font, like so many Norfolk fonts, is centrally placed, mounted on steep steps so that it is level with the altar. (It just needs the sacraments to be carved into its faces.) High above is a hammerbeam roof, each beam carrying differently designed tracery in its spandrels. The windows in the north and south aisles are glazed with round mullion glass, which floods the church with light, but prevents a view outside. That’s probably a good thing; I would have expected to see fields of corn or poppies or rapeseed.
The clear glass and white-washed walls of the nave give way to a feast of colour and gold-leaf in the chancel.
The rood screen stretches the entire width of the church, gold-glimmering and, unlike the medieval screens of Norfolk, unbattered and pristine. It is a rood screen with a rood, including cherubim mounted either side of the traditional figures of Christ, his Mother, and the Beloved Disciple.
The altar and reredos appear from a distance to be painted wood. On closer inspection, they are buckram (stiffened linen). At the centre of the altar is depicted the Fall: a serpent with a human face winding itself around the tree, while Adam and Eve, their vanity skilfully protected by a carefully placed Latin scroll, pass the apple between them. Above, on the reredos, is the Crucifixion: Jesus hangs from the tree of life, remedying Adam’s sin. On a tester over the altar reigns Christ in Majesty. St Cyprian’s is as much a theological masterpiece as it is an architectural one.
Religion here has not changed much since the 1900s. It embraces an Anglo-Catholicism with an emphasis on the ‘Anglo’: Common Worship Order One Trad Language (for those who care about such things), with a refined style lost in the more Romanistic shrines of central London. The voluntary choir is really excellent: Darke in E felt like the perfect Mass setting for this building.
Pevsner was disparaging about this church:
If there must be medieval imitation in the C20, it is here unquestionably done with joy and care. Beyond that appreciation can hardly go. There is no reason for the excesses of praise lavished on Comper’s church furnishings by those who confound aesthetic with religious emotions.
I couldn’t disagree more. It is an utterly glorious building, and it helped me understand both Comper’s brilliance, and what the Perpendicular style, exhibited by Norfolk’s churches, is trying to do.
The genius is this: A church building should draw the eye to the altar – the focus of Catholic worship – while at the same time draw the heart and soul heavenward. The former is done successfully in most medieval churches. The genius of Perpendicular, as the name suggests, is that it uses the building to point upwards and beyond itself. So, while intentionally looking at the altar during the celebration of the Eucharist, the worshippers find themselves subconsciously ‘uplifted’ by the lines around them. Comper achieves this with aplomb.
All this became clear to me while we sang J. M. Neale’s translation of To the name that brings salvation, a Latin hymn written – you’ve guessed it – in the fifteenth century. This verse could be a summary of the Perpendicular church architecture which I been privileged to immerse myself in over the last two months, and which is so gloriously championed in this London church:
Jesu, we thy name adoring,
Long to see thee as thou art:
Of thy clemency imploring
So to write it in our heart,
That hereafter, upward soaring,
We with angels may have part.
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