St Mary's Church, Wreay is the
Church of England parish church
A parish church in the Church of England is the church which acts as the religious centre for the people within each Church of England parish (the smallest and most basic Church of England administrative unit; since the 19th century sometimes ca ...
of
Wreay
Wreay ( ) is a small English village that lies on the River Petteril in today's Cumbria. The M6 motorway, A6 trunk road and West Coast Main Line railway all skirt the village.
Governance
Wreay was once a civil parish, In 1931 it had a populat ...
in
Cumbria. It was designed by
Sara Losh
Sara or Sarah Losh (1785 – 29 March 1853) was an English architect and designer. Her biographer describes her as an antiquarian, architect and visionary. She was a landowner of Wreay, Cumberland (now Cumbria), where her prime work, St Mary's ...
in about 1835 and built between 1840 and 1842. It is notable as the earliest known example in Britain of a revival of
Lombard architecture. It is a
Grade II* listed building.
Prominent in the churchyard are a mausoleum of Sara Losh's sister, Katharine, and a copy of the
Bewcastle Cross
The Bewcastle Cross is an Anglo-Saxon cross which is still in its original position within the churchyard of St Cuthbert's church at Bewcastle, in the England, English county of Cumbria. The cross, which probably dates from the 7th or early 8th ...
.
Style and inspiration
St Mary's replaces an earlier parish church in Wreay. Losh funded the new church on condition that she was allowed to choose the design. She intended her design to follow the style of
Roman basilicas of the
early Church
Early Christianity (up to the First Council of Nicaea in 325) spread from the Levant, across the Roman Empire, and beyond. Originally, this progression was closely connected to already established Jewish centers in the Holy Land and the Jewish ...
. But its style is in fact Lombard, which was a 7th-and 8th-century successor to early Christian architecture and predecessor of
Romanesque. Lombard is an Italian style, but the church also includes French features.
In the 1830s the architectural fashion for new churches was shifting from
Neoclassical to
Gothic Revival
Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic, neo-Gothic, or Gothick) is an architectural movement that began in the late 1740s in England. The movement gained momentum and expanded in the first half of the 19th century, as increasingly ...
, but Losh chose neither. By the 1830s Britain had a very small number of buildings designed in a revival of
Norman architecture, which is a form of northern European Romanesque, but these do not seem to have been a direct influence on Losh either.
Losh seems to have been inspired by architects in
Berlin and
Munich who had begun to revive Lombard architecture in the 1820s. She designed her church at the same time as
Romanesque Revival architecture in the United Kingdom was pioneered by the architects
TH Wyatt with the parish church at
Wilton, Wiltshire and
John Shaw Jr.
John Shaw Jr. (1803–1870) was an English architect of the 19th century who was complimented as a designer in the "Manner of Wren". He designed buildings in the classical Jacobean fashion and designed some of London's first semi-detached ...
with Christ Church, Watney Street in the East End of London, but she seems to have developed her ideas independently.
Losh and her sister Katherine had been on the
Grand Tour. Neither was married. Katherine died in 1835 and Sara dedicated the church to her. In the churchyard is a mausoleum in which is a life-size marble statue of Katherine Losh that was sculpted by David Dunbar based on a sketch supplied by Sara.
Dunbar worked locally.
Losh innovated liturgically as well as architecturally. She designed the chancel with a freestanding altar, allowing the priest to face his congregation as he presided at the
Eucharist
The Eucharist (; from Greek , , ), also known as Holy Communion and the Lord's Supper, is a Christian rite that is considered a sacrament in most churches, and as an ordinance in others. According to the New Testament, the rite was instit ...
. In doing so she followed early Christian practice, and broke with the Anglican tradition of standing either at the north end of the altar or, in the
High church Anglican tradition, facing east with one's back to the congregation. The practice became common in Anglican churches after the 1960s but was a radical departure in the 1840s.
Description
The church has a rectangular nave and a semicircular
apsidal
In architecture, an apse (plural apses; from Latin 'arch, vault' from Ancient Greek 'arch'; sometimes written apsis, plural apsides) is a semicircular recess covered with a hemispherical vault or semi-dome, also known as an ''exedra''. In ...
chancel.
Dante Gabriel Rossetti admired Losh's works in Wreay and described St Mary's church as "extraordinary architectural works" with "a church of a byzantine style and other things ... full of beauty and imaginative detail, though extremely severe and simple" and "much more original than the things done by the young architects now."
Losh decorated the church with many carved details both inside and out. Many are of plants or animals: birds, insects, flowers, foliage, corn ears, and a recurring motif of pine cones. A young local stonemason, William Hindson, carved the sculptures. A plaque in the church commemorates him.
The style of the sculptures prefigures that of the
Arts and Crafts movement of the 1890s and 1900s, which coincided with a small-scale revival of
Byzantine Revival architecture. In the architecture and decorative arts of the early 1840s, St Mary's church at Wreay is pioneering and seems to be unique.
File:Main Door, St Mary's Church, Wreay - geograph.org.uk - 174080.jpg, Main west door
File:Wreay Church - window with insects and birds - geograph.org.uk - 561747.jpg, Stone window surround decorated with insects, birds and pinecones
File:Wreay Church - window surround with shells and pine cones - geograph.org.uk - 561740.jpg, Stone window surround decorated with fossils, plants and pinecones
File:Gravestone of Katharine and Sarah Losh - geograph.org.uk - 561751.jpg, Gravestone of Katharine and Sarah Losh in the churchyard
See also
*
Listed buildings in St Cuthbert Without
St Cuthbert Without is a civil parish in the Carlisle district of Cumbria, England. It contains 43 listed buildings that are recorded in the National Heritage List for England. Of these, two are listed at Grade II*, the middle of the three ...
References
Bibliography
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External links
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Wreay, Mary
Church of England church buildings in Cumbria
Grade II* listed churches in Cumbria