| Description | Account of Restoration of Holy Sepulchre Church, 1841 - 1845. In August 1841, the south wall of the nave aisle collapsed, as a result both of repeated undermining by burial vaults, and the outward thrust of the 15th century bell tower erected above the clerestory.
To direct the work of reconstruction a Restoration Committee was appointed, consisting of the Vicar and Churchwardens and members of the Cambridge Camden Society, under the chairmanship of the Society's President, the Ven. Thomas Thorp, M.A., Fellow and Tutor of Trinity's College and Archdeacon and Chancellor of Bristol.
The Cambridge Camden Society, founded in 1839 by John Mason Neale and Benjamin Webb, then undergraduates of Trinity College, combined an individualist Romantic interest in the spirit of the Middle Ages with an adherence to the dogmatic authority of the Oxford Movement. Although its stated object was the promotion of the 'study of Ecclesiastical Architecture and Antiquities and the restoration of mutilated Architectural remains', the society's interest in the principles embodied in Medieval symbolism quickly attracted accusations of 'a tendancy to Romanism'. The Society's journal 'The Ecclesiologist', which included in its first issue in 1841 a sweeping condemnation of Ambrose Poynter's designs for St. Paul's, Cambridge, was one of the chief means by which a wider publicity could be gained for its objectives and researches, but the dogmatic overconfidence of many of its statements led church restorers to destroy numerous ancient features in their quest for 'correctness'.
The Society's direct involvement in actual restoration projects was brief, Holy Sepulchre Church being its one major work. Nevertheless, it was intended that the restoration of one of the four medieval circular churches surviving in the kingdom should be 'a lasting, and if possible a perfect example of the principles of church building' as advocated by the Ecclesiologists. Although the original form of the church was largely unascertainable, a detailed building programme was formulated (see P21/24/2b-g) under the direction of Anthony Salvin, a pupil of John Nash, and later architect of several college buildings in Cambridge. Restoration work began in November 1841 and had almost been completed when Queen Victoria and Prince Albert came to inspect the church during their visit to Cambridge on 25th October 1843.
The rebuilding and refurnishing had been carried out with very little consultation of the non-resident incumbent, the Revd. R.R. Faulkner, who had some years previously accepted the vicarage of Havering-atte-Bower, near Romford, Essex, as an additional living, on the grounds that the income of Holy Sepulchre was insufficient to maintain him. (See P21/24/9 for a satirical comment on this). On his return to Cambridge he refused to allow the reconsecration of the building until the stone altar and credence table introduced by the Camden Society, apparently on the suggestion of the architect, had been removed, on the grounds of their being, in his view, 'Popish' intrusions, contrary to the Canon Law of the Anglican Church. In the long legal battle that ensued Faulkner lost his case in the Consistory Court, which upheld the legality of the stone altar and issued an additional faculty for the credence table, (P21/24/3a & b), but he succeeded in obtaining a new hearing in the Court of Arches. On 31st January 1845 Sir Herbert Jenner Fust, Dean of the Court, gave judgement that according to the Rubric such fittings were contrary to Anglican practice. (see P21/24/7,10).
Mr. Faulkner, not without a considerable feeling of triumph, sold the stone altar and credence table for £2.10s. to be used as paving slabs, and having provided a wooden Communion Table, as well as reintroducing wall monuments, reading pew and Commandment boards, reopened the church in August 1845. (See especially P21/24/10 volume of newspaper cuttings, correspondence etc. relating to the restoration and stone altar case. 1843 - 1846).
The controversy aroused by the court action was one of the contributory factors in the crisis of 1845 which led to the resignation of a number of prominent members of the Society and its removal to London. ("The Cambridge Movement" by James F. White C.U.P. 1962 contains details of the history of the Cambridge Camden Society and a bibliography of Ecclesiology and the Gothic Revival as well as a list of the Society's publications). |