As you will probably have gathered if you’ve read through some of our regular postings, we are pretty heavily involved in St James Church Finchampstead.
As our church starts to move towards the big restoration project, I thought I’d take a look at the pictures of the church in the Francis Frith collection, the historic archive founded by the pioneer photographer in 1860, and compare the church in the past with how it looks today. You can read more about Frith himself in this biography.
The photographs in the collection of the church are both drawn from the early part of the twentieth century, and show the church as it was after the Victorian restoration that was in some part responsible for the work we have to do now, thanks to what they did to the walls. The first shot is this one taken from down in the lower part of the churchyard looking up at the church at the Norman Apse.
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.
Of course it is worth noting at this point, that you can’t get the equivalent shot today, thanks to the exceedingly big rhododendron bush that sits at that end of the building today.
In fact the bush highlights the one big difference with a lot of the Finchampstead pictures in the collection, which is quite how things have grown, something that long-time residents of the village often comment on.
Reproduced courtesy of The Francis Frith Collection.
Inside, although the basic layout is still the same, there have certainly been some changes.
The first thing you notice is the lighting. Not only suspended from the roof on chains, but also attached to the lecturn. All our lighing now is hidden flood lights up in the roof – a bit of a pain when the bulbs need changing, but certainly giving a better level of light. Moving across from the lights, there is one subtle difference that most people probably wouldn’t spot, which is that the walls around the arches into the north aisle are entirely plastered, complete with decoration. This is somewhat surprising because as we know them today, there is actually half a norman window above the arch, where the builders of the north aisle just cut straight through the wall. Obviously it was considered better to hide those back then!
In terms of decoration, if you look at the wall under the hymn board (which still hangs in the same place) it looks like back then they had a nice two tone effect with the walls, something that is certainly not apparent today.
This leads you on to the area of most difference, the chancel and sanctuary. Firstly the choir pews are still in place – these were removed to provide more flexibility with the space in the chancel – and now allow us to use the space for concerts if required, and also to have all the children sat on the carpet for family services. Looking further back you can see that half of the east window is obscured by a curtain. It is worth mentioning at this point that the current window, showing the transfiguration that is now there is a more recent addition – although it is interesting to note that the tracery is the same as currently, leading me to wonder what was there before. Either side of the altar are what look like boards on the wall. Whether these are the same boards that now hang in the vestry that contain the words of the creed and the Lord’s Prayer I’m not sure – especially as there are now only two of those, and there appears to be four in this picture.
In terms of what we still have, the altar rail is still the same, as are the much loathed pews. The font is still there, although it now has a lid. Also it looks like the stained glass windows in the south wall are there as they still are now, as is the pulpit.
All in all, it is recognisably St James – the changes have more been a case of evolution, rather than revolution – and certainly that is the core of the plan for our upcoming restoration. Essentially we will be doing things behind the scenes to bring the building up to modern standards – sorting out the electrics, lighting and heating – rather than doing anything radical.
If you fancy checking out the other Finchampstead pictures or seeing if you village or town is in the Francis Frith collection you can do so using the search box below. Hopefully as we look for fundraising ideas we’ll be able to have some pictures of the church available as postcards, maybe even the Francis Frith shots if we can get permission! For more details of the church and a selection of recent pictures you can browse the church website. You can also browse a collection of my pictures of the Church in our photo galleries.
