Conrad Noel: Paycocke's House & Thaxted

Paycocke's House and Gardens is a stunning Tudor merchant's house in Coggeshall. Visiting Paycocke's and Thaxted forms a mini Conrad Noel pilgrimage.

In 1904 Paycocke’s was bought by Lord Noel Buxton, a direct descendant of the previous Buxton owners, who oversaw the restoration making the house as one again and returning it to what he believed was its original state.

This was an ambitious task that took 20 years to complete and during the restoration, Noel Buxton’s cousin Conrad Noel and his wife Miriam lived in the building rent free. Noel was born in Kew and as a boy was "incarcerated in two public schools", as he later wrote. He went as a student to Cambridge but only stayed for one year in which time he acquired the Socialist beliefs that shaped the whole of his subsequent career. His early career was chequered; he was initially refused ordination because of his political beliefs and in 1906, with Reverend Percy Widdrington and others, formed the Church Socialist League.

Noel described living on a building site yet being enthralled by the new discoveries that were continually being made: "We lived in an atmosphere of dust and white-wash and broken plaster." Miriam was an extremely keen gardener and whiled away many hours in the little garden which stretched down to the river. Inspired by the contemporary Arts & Crafts movement, she set out the entire garden in that style, installing a central path, a circular feature, stepped terraces, a writing shelter and a dovecote. The site even included a tennis court.

By 1910 the main restoration work on the house had been completed and that year Noel was appointed by the Countess of Warwick to the living of Thaxted, remaining its vicar until his death in 1942. In this rather remote corner of Essex, Noel preached his own version of Socialism and the Anglo-Catholic gospel. He brought life and controversy to the town though his outspoken political views and his enthusiastic encouragement of music and traditional rural customs.

Despite his patron's hope that he would use Thaxted as a base from which to propagate their shared socialist beliefs to a countrywide audience, Noel remained stubbornly faithful to and diligent in his work for the people of his parish, refusing her wishes that he should preach the gospel at large by "careering up and down the country giving Socialist lectures" as he later described it. In 1911 he was a founding member of the British Socialist Party but left it in 1918 to found the Catholic Crusade. He was also a member of the Independent Labour Party. But, for Noel, the parish was always the focal point of the priest's work, though his Catholic Crusade did carry his ideas to a wider public. 

A major event in Noel's life for which he is well-remembered was the "Battle of the Flags". As he later wrote, in Thaxted "we date everything from before or after the Battle of the Flags". Towards the end of the First World War he displayed in Thaxted Church the Sinn Fein flag, the Red Flag and the flag of St George, each of which was provocative and anti-establishment. Noel looked upon the Union Jack as the emblem of Britain’s "cruel exploitation" of the peoples of its Empire. With the rise of post-war Irish and labour troubles feelings polarised, and in 1921 a "battle" broke out, bringing Thaxted and its "Red Vicar" national notoriety. Cambridge students journeyed to Thaxted and ceremoniously pulled down the flags. Fighting broke out inside the Church and there were other disturbances. Questions were asked in Parliament and Noel was accused of sedition. Eventually, a Church of England consistory court was convened and Noel complied with its order to remove the flags.

Noel was a man of enormous charisma, energy and talent, all of which he brought to bear in making Thaxted a centre of religious, political and cultural activity, the last in particular for the English Arts and Crafts movement. His insistence that Christianity was about beauty and ritual attracted well-known artists and musicians to Thaxted, which became a place where folk traditions were encouraged. Noel was a strong influence on Gustav Holst during the years that the composer lived in Thaxted.

In 1923 Holst spent a summer at Paycocke’s House with his family. Having suffered a personal injury, Gustav saw Paycocke’s as the perfect retreat to recuperate in the country. His daughter, 16-year-old Imogen, spoke of her stay in letters to her school friend: 'This house is absolutely too wonderful for words...it is a dream. And it is great fun living in a dream...The house is supped to be the best example of the period in the whole of England, and artists and architects make pilgrimages from all over the country to see it. We are tremendously proud of it, and as it isn’t our own we can swank about it to our heart’s content.'

Under the influence of Noel and his wife Miriam, musical festivals, folkloric gatherings, maypole and Morris dancing all became part of local life. The Noels were experts in these traditions and encouraged everyone to be part of these activities. A folk revival was happening across Europe in the 1920s and 1930s, and the Morris Ring, the national organisation, was founded at a meeting in the town in 1934. English Morris Dancing still sees Thaxted as its home and the town boasts the country's oldest continuous existing 'side'.

Noel loved the medieval poem ‘The General Dance’, also known as ‘Tomorrow Shall be my Dancing Day’, and sometimes read it from the pulpit instead of giving a sermon. The poem describes the ministry of Christ as a dance, to which will call his ‘true love’, Christian believers who will dance with him in joy. Holst composed a new setting for Noel, dedicated to him as a birthday gift. 

A version of The General Dance can be found in the church in coloured manuscript, framed in carved wood. It hangs over the chest by the entrance door. This chest was carved by Arthur Brown, with panels, beginning with the preaching of the Gospel from Thaxted pulpit, resulting in the treading down of dynasties and crowns; the hammer and sickle adorn the third panel, the symbol of artisans and labourers coming into their own, and the fourth panel represents the music of the spheres, which will be the music of the Kingdom of Heaven here on earth. On this hutch rest the delicately shaped “Praying Hands” by Eric Kennington, flanked by two shapely candles in black.

When Noel died in July 1942, he was buried in the churchyard, close to the high altar inside the church. Inside, he is remembered by a bronze head in the crossing, facing the high altar. His tombstone carries the words "He loved justice and hated oppression".

Noel's legacy continues with Thaxted Morris and the Thaxted Festival. In 1951 his legacy also led to Thaxted being part of the fortnight-long Three Villages Festival for the Festival of Britain. The Essex Rural Community Council chose the three Festival villages in Essex with care. Great Bardfield had been an artists’ colony since Eric Ravilious and Edward Bawden fell on it in the early 1930s; Finchingfield, with its archetypal village green, was full of ‘theatrical settlers’ such as Val Gielgud (and Dodie Smith); Thaxted prided itself on its musical life, since Holst had lived there and Noel held concerts in his luminous, lofty medieval wool church.

Today Thaxted Church has a thickly textured monochrome moon portrait by Stanley Clifford-Smith who painted many religious works and was greatly influenced by the French expressionist Georges Rouault. Clifford-Smith was an active member of the Great Bardfield Artists community during the mid to late 1950s and became the Honorary Secretary of the group.

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Gustav Holst - Thaxted.

Sabbatical art pilgrimage: Coventry Cathedral

Basil Spence's Coventry Cathedral, built side by side with the ruins of the old Cathedral (bombed in 1940) and integrated with them has become an icon of God's power at work in the world to reconcile and renew. The current Dean, The Very Revd. John Witcombe, has written that, "The narrative of chaos and destruction being taken and offered back to God, issuing in resurrection and new life, is one that speaks into the reality of the lives of many of our visitors, and many of our communities.”

Spence was the only architect in the competition to design the new Cathedral to propose retaining the ruins of the old Cathedral and therefore create a literal and spiritual link between old and new. This is so right in terms of the ministry of reconciliation which Coventry has modelled that it seems inconceivable that any other design might have been possible. This design decision then dictated several of the other significant features of the building including its north-south axis, the concept of a vast translucent screen between old and new, and a dominant image behind the high altar visible from every point within the nave and setting the tone for the entire building.

Coventry Cathedral was the first major opportunity in Britain to combine contemporary religious art and architecture. Spence described his intention for the Cathedral as being "like a plain jewel-casket with many jewels." The artworks it contains are the jewels in the casket. In this respect, Spence was building on the commissioning undertaken by Canon Walter Hussey at St Matthew's Northampton and the style exemplified by the Festival of Britain. His approach was also synchronous with the work of the Dominican Friars, Marie-Alain Couturier and Pie-Raymond Régamey, as they sought to revive Christian art by appealing to the independent masters of their time.

Hussey controversially kick-started the commissioning of modern art by the Church in Britain with commissions for Henry Moore and Graham Sutherland. Both received further church commissions following their acceptance of Hussey's invitation to create work for St Matthews; Moore at St Paul's Cathedral and St Stephen Walbrook, Sutherland at St Aidan's East Acton plus Coventry and Chichester Cathedrals. Some of the artists Spence commissioned for Coventry had also featured in the Festival of Britain, where Spence had also been involved as an architect. As a result, Coventry Cathedral has been described as "the apotheosis of the Festival" and as "the Festival of Britain at prayer."

The task of reconstruction dominated the post-war years. The Festival of Britain showcased the drive for modernity in the rebuilding of Britain. New churches and commissions replacing what had been destroyed during the war were part of this process of transformation and Coventry came to stand as a symbol of what was being achieved. Scratch beneath the surface of both the Festival and Cathedral artists though and as well as their interest in modernity one can also quickly find a preoccupation with British tradition and a focus on the land. That many of the key Festival and Cathedral artists were neo-Romantics combining modernism with ruralism was symptomatic of this reality.

Benedict Read has written of an alternative artistic culture provided by church commissions as a result of an almost unprecedented campaign of church building and decoration throughout the thirty years after 1945. The commissions at Northampton and Coventry were not about engaging with an alternative culture but the mainstream of contemporary art; Moore, Sutherland, John Piper and Jacob Epstein were the independent masters of their time in Britain. What Hussey and Spence were doing was, in effect, the British equivalent of the approach that Couturier and Régamey were advocating in France.

While the casket contains many jewels, those which shine most brightly are Sutherland's Christ in Glory in the Tetramorph (undoubtedly the largest tapestry in the world), the abstract baptistry window by Piper and Patrick Reyntiens, and John Hutton's Great West Screen. These are major statements and huge achievements both conceptually and technically. Yet the immensity of each is also managed through position and purpose to enable our scaled engagement. Hutton's screen can be viewed inside and out and from the steps leading to the old Cathedral as well as from the ground. While much of the screen can only be viewed from distance and at height, the lower panels can also be approached and appreciated close-up. Each abstract panel in the baptistry window is an abstract expressionist work in its own right enabling the window to be appreciated as a whole from distance and in part when close by. Sutherland's tapestry is designed to dominate from distance but reveals hidden depths of detail when near-by, including the hidden chapel with its own altarpiece formed by the lowest panel of the tapestry. To image the foundation for Christ's exaltation as being his suffering of the cross is to profoundly visualise the early Christian hymn quoted in Philippians 2.

While visiting I spoke to a churchwarden who had recently been in Rome. Despite the many jewels in its jewel-casket, when compared to St Peter's, Coventry seemed to him like minimal space. Similarly, Spence described the simple brick-built rectangle that is the nave in terms of the plainness of a jewel-casket. Both restraint and surprise are built into his clever design, as we have already seen in his engagement with and use of the creations of Hutton, Piper, Reyntiens and Sutherland.

Angling the nave's stained glass, as Spence does, ensures the primary focus looking down the nave is Sutherland's Christ in Glory. Continuing down the nave the eye is drawn to Ralph Beyer's carved textual panels, which, in their monochrome simplicity, would otherwise be overwhelmed and overlooked if bathed in coloured light. Relentlessly maintaining these foci then ensures surprise and delight as one turns to look back down the nave revealing sudden ruptures of colour in the plainness of the brick and concrete.

Among the many other jewels in the casket:

“The nave windows are the work of Geoffrey Clarke and Keith New, discovered at the Royal College of Art, with Lawrence Lee their teacher. Their skills combined to produce the modern windows with bright rich colours and strong design that Spence wanted. The Chapel of Unity glass is by Margaret Traherne whose thick abstract glass set in concrete impressed Spence.

There are many other inspired works. These include the lectern and pulpit designed in Spence’s office by Anthony Blee with the bronze eagle by Dame Elisabeth Frink and also tablets on the walls with lettering by Ralph Beyer.”

Sir Basil Spence was “the co-ordinator of the whole operation of commissioning artists and craftsmen with the skills to create a variety of elements, including glass, congenially juxtaposed and working together as a whole”:

“Spence believed that the architect, as leader of the team, should collaborate at the earliest possible stage with his engineers and artists. With the art in progress there was also a reduced risk of it being lost in any subsequent budget cut. He was therefore careful to commission work from the outset. Artists were sought to suit each project and the artist’s freedom was maintained.”

The result was, an “alchemy of art and architecture” which contains, as Spence stated, “understandable beauty to help the ordinary man to worship with sincerity.”

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Graham Kendrick - For This I Have Jesus.

ArtWay meditation: Emmaus mosaic by John Piper

My latest meditation for ArtWay has been published today. It concerns the Emmaus mosaic by John Piper at St Paul's Harlow.

Here is some brief context to the production of the mosaic:

Visitors to British Design 1948 - 2012, an exhibition in the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Year at London’s Victoria & Albert Museum, were confronted by one third of John Piper’s huge mural created for the Festival of Britain and depicting varying forms of British architecture. Home and Land were key themes of the Festival of British where the English Neo-Romantic sensibility exemplified by Piper was prominently featured. Often viewed as nostalgic for its recognition of indigenous tradition and landscape, Neo-Romanticism actually aimed, as art critic Peter Fuller argued, to redeem the threatened and injured land.

Piper’s mural was selected by Frederick Gibberd, masterplanner of Harlow New Town, to be gifted to Harlow at the end of the Festival of Britain. The mural was installed on the wall of Harlow Technical College's main assembly room, where it remained until the college re-located in 1992. The design of Harlow New Town reflected the Festival of Britain style; light structures, picturesque layout and incorporation of works of art. So it was appropriate that the huge collection of public art Gibberd assembled for Harlow (to the extent that the Town is now known as a sculpture town) also included a mosaic by Piper for St Paul’s Harlow.

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Leigh Nash - Saviour, Like A Shepherd Lead Us (Blessed Saviour).