St MARY AND ST NICHOLAS. Built in 1841-5 by Thomas Henry Wyatt & D. Brandon for the Rt Hon. Sidney Herbert, Secretary of War, at a cost of £20,000. The church is a tour de force in the Rundbogenstil, the round-arch style, to use a German term for a style revived particularly in Germany, first by Schinkel and then by others. It had a vogue in England in the forties, and a measure of Wilton’s international prominence in the style is the fact that it was described in the Allgemeine Bauzeirung of Vienna. The term ‘round-arch style’ is appropriate; for it could take the shape of Early Christian, Byzantine, Italian Romanesque, or indeed Norman. At Wilton we are faced with the Italian Romanesque. The symptoms are unmistakable: twisted columns in the main portal standing on recumbent lions; friezes below the eaves climbing up and down them in the facade; a big rose window; an isolated campanile. The basilican appearance on the other hand is generally Early Christian to Italian Romanesque. The church is remarkably high, and the campanile reaches a height of 108 ft. It is connected with the church by a playful little gallery of richly decorated colonnettes. Rich also is the carving of the portals. The apse is lower than the chancel, has shafts reaching right up it, and incidentally faces the green of the estate. The interior is certainly monumental, with its erect proportions and its open timber roof. The proud columns have capitals carved by William Osmond Jun. of Salisbury. Above them a kind of triforium, of eight little arches for each bay, not at all an archaeologically correct motif. The chancel is divided from the nave by very tall black marble columns. It is groin-vaulted. There are also chancel aisles ending in apses. Their W arches have black columns too, and they are original ancient Roman pieces from the Temple of Venus at Porto Venere (C2 B.C.). The chancel aisles are divided from the chancel by a tripartite colonnade, again not a correct motif. The mosaic pavement in the chancel is by Mr Singer, the very Italian mosaics of chancel and apse by Gertrude Martin, the chancel colouring and patterning by Willement, the side apse mosaics by Gertrude Martin to the design of Sir Charles Nicholson. Heavy W gallery forming two sham ambones round the first columns. Doorways flanked by twisted columns with stone mosaic. Of the same type the CANDLESTICKS in the main and the S apse. All these columns are genuine Cosmati work. But the NW doorway has thick black marble barley-sugar columns instead. The PULPIT stands on a forest of black marble columns with excellently carved capitals. The upper colonnettes are again of Cosmati work and from the same source as those in the chancel. Sidney Herbert bought for 47 guineas at the Strawberry Hill sale in 1842 the so-called Shrine of Capoccio which William Hamilton had acquired in 1768 and presented to Horace Walpole. It dates from 1256 and was at S. Maria Maggiore. The Shrine of Capoccio had been made fit for display in Horace Walpole’s chapel by John Augustus Richter in 1774, and some of his work ought also to be traceable.* Moreover, the journal of the Brit. Arch. Ass., xv, reports that some twisted columns came from Palermo. The church ought to be investigated properly with full use of the Pembroke archives.
FONT. Of Italian marbles, more sensuous in shape than the rest. The font is called ‘of ancient Italian workmanship’ in The Illustrated London News, 4 August 1849. - PULPIT. See above. - READING DESK. With Flemish (Spanish?) Baroque reliefs. - DOORS. The doors have old wood panels: Early-Renaissance English (N chancel aisle), Flemish C16 (N aisle), Flemish C16 and others (W doors). STAINED GLASS. An amazing collection of pieces from the Continent and England, starting with the wonderful panels in the apse. The centre panel, part of one large figure, comes from the clerestory of a French later C12 cathedral, the other panels are French C13 glass.** So is one group in the N apse. Also in the N apse fine early C14 angels. Then there is German C14 glass, badly preserved, in the N aisle NE window, English C15 glass in the S apse, English mid C16 glass from the chapel of the first Earl of Pembroke’s house in the S aisle SW window (kneeling donors), and German and Flemish glass in the N aisle NW window. The figure of God the Father came from Malines, is attributed to Arnold van Nijmegen, and belongs to a group the rest of which is at St George’s Hanover Square (from Antwerp). Excellent German Pieta below. In the W rose window the glass is mostly C19, but there is also German C16 glass. In the vestry Netherlandish C16 and C17 roundels. Of C19 glass TK mentions in the N wall glass by O'Connor, 1853, at the SE end by Wailes 1847 and Gibbs & Howard 1882. - PLATE. Paten, 1683. - MONUMENTS. John Coffer d. 1585. Small brass plate with kneeling figure (N aisle). - William Sharp d. 1626. Kneeling figures above the N aisle NW door. Children below, but the whole not in its original state. - Ninth Earl of Pembroke d. 1749. Big grey base and bust on top. - Elizabeth Countess of Pembroke, by Rossi, 1793, with a delicate relief, partly schiacciato. - Tenth Earl d. 1794. Designed by James Wyatt and carved by Westmacott Sen. A severe sarcophagus and nothing else. - Eleventh Earl d. 1827. By Sir Richard Westmacott. A beautiful relief with a Holy Family and a Grecian Shepherd. Portrait bust in relief in a medallion at the top. - Lord Herbert of Lea and the Countess of Pembroke, his mother, the founders of the church, d. 1861 and 1856. Recumbent white effigies on tomb-chests. Designed by Wyatt and carved by John Birnie Philip.
* Professor Julian Gardner has recently identified the following pieces as parts of the original shrine: two colonnettes framing the sacristy door; two colonnettes free-standing in the apse; two architraves (used upright) flanking the doorway to the N porch; two of the panels in the apse; four of the colonnettes in the pulpit. Some of the other Cosmati work at Wilton may come from the sides of the shrine. See I . Gardner, Papers of the British School at Rom, xxxvrn, 1970, 220.
** Professor Grodecki has made it probable that a prophet in this window belonged to a scene from the Childhood of Christ at St Denis Abbey.
Wilton. Once the capital of Wiltshire and of Wessex, it has lost that high distinction, and today, an hour’s walk from Salisbury, although it still has the carpet industry that has made its name famous, it is a quiet place with three things for the traveller to see. There is one of the very greatest treasure-houses in England, Wilton House, the home of the Pembrokes for many generations; there is the chancel of the old church, off the marketplace, which has been brightened and given a new lease of life after being long neglected and forlorn; and there is a modern church not like any other we have seen, a Byzantine structure a little over-splendid, a gorgeous example of the architecture of the Victorian Era, built regardless of cost.
For nearly seven centuries Wilton was the seat of one of the four most important nunneries in England the other three were Barking, Shaftesbury, and Winchester - whose abbesses were peeresses of the realm though being women they had no seat in the House of Lords. It stood on the site of Wilton House but the only visible remains are to be found in some outbuildings nearby.
The old church has been restored and hallowed as a place of rest in memory of Robert Bingham, the American ambassador, and his ancestor Robert de Bingham, second Bishop of New Sarum, who was consecrated here 700 years ago.
The remarkable new church is raised above the street on steps 100 feet wide, with a tower 100 feet high linked with it by a cloister. Its west front (which is not really west, for the church is one of the very few not laid out east-to-west) has three deeply recessed round arches, the central one with four orders of moulding and pillars resting on lions. Inside everything is remarkably rich. There is much mosaic, rich carving on capitals, fine marble monuments, mosaic chancel steps, a sanctuary floor of agate and marble, an enamel chalice covered with scenes and figures by a 12th century craftsman, two massive monoliths brought from Italy, and two twisted marble pillars which were part of a shrine in Rome in the 13th century and in the 18th century in the collection of Horace Walpole.
The monuments, an interesting group, have often the high quality of genius. There is a lovely white figure of Lord Herbert on a black marble tomb sculptured with scenes from his life, and near him is a lovely sleeping figure of his mother. There are sculptures by. Rossi and Westmacott, one of the Countess of Pembroke with a mourning woman over an urn, the other a big wall sculpture to George Augustus Herbert, showing a beggar with his dog, a woman with her child, and a man leaning on his staff, a symbol of charity and good works. Over the cloister door is a Jacobean monument of William Sharp kneeling with his wife, their three children below in tiny recesses. There is a marble bust of the ninth Earl of Pembroke and a brass of John Goffer three years older than the Spanish Armada.
Among much ancient glass the most extraordinary piece is a panel brought from Wilton House with the arms of Philip and Mary, a piece of heraldry rarely met with in a church window. In the same window is a portrait of the Earl of Pembroke and his countess with their two sons and a daughter kneeling. The east window has some pieces of glass among the oldest in England, 12th or 13th century; the picture of Stephen is supposed to be 1200. In this window is St Nicholas, the Flight into Egypt, the wedding feast at Cana, the driving-out from the Temple, and Gethsemane. Other glass is from St Chapelle in Paris. The east windows of both chancel aisles have also rich old glass, much of it 13th century, and many of the fiigures are quaint and charming. There is an old Venetian chest, a wheel window showing the Flight of Time, and a reading desk with old Flemish carving.
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