Catholic Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen, Lynford, Lynford, Norfolk

Summary

A Roman Catholic church completed in 1878 to the designs of Henry Clutton.

Description

A Roman Catholic church completed in 1878 to the designs of Henry Clutton.

MATERIALS

The church is walled in coursed, circular knapped flint with limestone dressings and the roof is covered in plain tiles. The internal walls are faced in ashlar limestone.

PLAN

All compass points given here are liturgical rather than geographical, so that the altar is described at the 'east' end of the church. The church is constructed as a single cell with internal divisions forming a western narthex and an eastern sanctuary. There is a single storey presbytery passage on the south side.

EXTERIOR

The church is a rectangular building of four bays with a pitched roof and gabled ends, like a reliquary. There are stepped side buttresses and, at the west end, a large central buttress supporting a circular bell turret. There is a pierced and traceried parapet on the north and south side and bands of stone at the plinth, sill and eaves levels. The glazing is tall and narrow with perpendicular tracery: one window to each bay under segmental arches.

The entrance is at the west end of the north elevation within a square hood moulding with exaggerated hoodstops. The vertical plank door has applied mouldings forming square panels. Above it is a canopied niche housng a Baroque figure of the Virgin and Child.

The bell turret rises to form two tiers of blind and pierced tracery panels, eight in total, surmounted by a conical spirelet and a wrought iron cross.

From the third bay on the south side of the church a single storey passageway connects to the former presbytery. It is four bays long, has narrow rectangular window openings and an external entrance at the west end.

The side buttresses contain at their bases inset decorative panels of Romanesque design, dating to the late eleventh century and probably brought from Thetford. Some are figurative and are rare examples of pre-1100 sculpture in Norman Norfolk.

INTERIOR

There is a single bay narthex separated from the nave by an oak screen with perpendicular tracery. Within the narthex is an elaborately ornamented harmonium and a platform for a vestment chest. Above the doorway is an alabaster figure of the Virgin and Child. A marble angel offers a stoup by the side of the door.

The nave is pewed with oak benches, the ends carved with blind tracery and quartrefoils. Brass candlesticks project from the walls.

The two curving sanctuary steps are paved with mosaic tiles, and support a curved brass altar rail above panels of linked quatrefoils within iron frames rather than a balustrade. The risers are marble and the sanctuary pavement is again tiled with elaborate mosaic patterns. The altar, reredos and tabernacle are richly ornamented with late Gothic ornament and tracery and flanked by iron riddel brackets.

The glass is all the work of Mayer & Co. of Munich and London, two on the south side are signed. They depict various saints on the north and south sides, all single light windows; the four evangelists in the pair of two-light windows on the west wall; and in the four-light east window scenes of the Annunciation, Visitation, Nativity and Flight into Egypt.

The timber ceiling is ribbed and barrel vaulted. It springs from a string course populated with head-corbels, above which is an embattled frieze of traceried panels.

On the south side of the nave, next to the altar rail, a square-headed door leads to the presbytery passage. The passage, which is clear glazed, no longer connects to the former presbytery.

History

England’s many medieval churches had been built for a Roman Catholic mode of worship (the Latin rite). Elizabeth I’s 1559 Act of Uniformity rendered them all part of the Church of England and outlawed the Catholic Mass. The following two centuries imposed upon a diminishing minority of Catholic worshippers in England severe civil inequalities, public suspicion and periods of outright persecution. Aside from a small number of private chapels and foreign embassies, there were very few buildings dedicated to Catholic worship.

The Second Catholic Relief Act of 1791 permitted the first new generation of Catholic places of worship to be built in England and Wales since the Reformation. They were forbidden to feature bells or steeples and were typically small, classically or domestically detailed, and were often hidden or set back from public view. The 1829 Act of Emancipation removed most remaining inequalities from Catholic worship and was accompanied by a growing architectural confidence. By the 1840s AWN Pugin’s vision of the Gothic revival as a recovery of England’s Catholic medieval inheritance fuelled stylistic debate and inspired new design for both Catholics and wider society. In 1850 Pope Pius X ‘restored’ the role of bishops, cathedrals and dioceses in England, inviting even grander architectural projects.

The Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen was built as part of the private estate established by Stephen Lyne-Stephens at Lynford Hall. Lyne-Stephens, a wealthy banker and Tory MP, acquired the Hall in 1856 and had set about rebuilding it before he died in 1860. The estate passed to his wife, Yolande Lyne-Stephens, whose early career as a dancer in Paris had been curtailed by their marriage. On the death of her husband she inherited a considerable fortune and became a generous supporter of Catholic causes. Her patronage for Catholic church buildings included funds for the mission at St Mary’s church in Thetford, and the construction of the church of Our Lady and the English Martyrs in Cambridge (both Grade II*).

Tired of travelling roughly 8 miles across open breckland to attend mass in Thetford, Mrs Lyne-Stephens decided to build her own church.

The new church was sited about 600 metres south of the Hall, adjoining the existing 'Home Farmhouse' that became the presbytery. Construction took place between 1877 and 1878, and the building was formally consecrated by the Bishop of Northampton on 7 October 1884.

The architect for the project was Henry Clutton (1819-1893). Clutton began his career articled to Edward Blore. Between 1845 and 1856 his work included commissions for country houses, Anglican churches, schools and colleges. He was a recognised authority on the history of French domestic architecture. His conversion to Catholicism in 1857 reduced his access to public projects. There are numerous listed buildings associated with Clutton, among them the church of St Francis of Assisi in Notting Hill, London (Grade II*), and Minley Manor in Hampshire (Grade II*).

Following the death of Yolande Lyne-Stephens in 1894 the Hall's new Anglican owners objected to the presence of the church and screened it from their view with new planting. Nevertheless it remained a chapel of ease to Thetford until 2009 when it was leased to the Norfolk Churches Trust. In 2022 the building underwent various stonework repairs. Unlike the vast majority of Catholic churches in England, the building was not subject to alteration after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) and is little altered since its completion.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of Our Lady of Consolation and St Stephen, Lynford, a Roman Catholic church completed in 1878 to the designs of Henry Clutton, is listed at Grade II* for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* as the work of Henry Clutton, a highly significant architect of the late C19, also responsible for the church of St Francis of Assisi, Notting Hill, London (Grade II*) and Minley Manor, Hampshire (also Grade II*);
* for the exceptional quality of the building's architectural detail and materials internally and externally;

Historic interest:
* for the presence of rare reused Romanesque sculptural panels dating to the late C11;
* as a largely unaltered Roman Catholic church interior which did not undergo any changes associated with the reforms of the Second Vatican Council in the later C20;
* as a significant example of female architectural patronage, being a private chapel produced for a single patron and completed in a single phase of work.

Group value:
* for its contribution to the significance of the surrounding Registered Park and Garden and to the historical understanding of listed buildings at Lynford Hall, all of which are Grade II.

External Links

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