Church of St Mark the Evangelist, Farnham, Surrey

Summary

Church, to designs by A R Barker, opened 1883, with chancel murals of 1911-1920 by Kitty Milroy.

Description

Church, designed by A R Barker, opened 1883, with chancel murals of 1911-20 by Kitty Milroy.

MATERIALS: the building is faced in flint with red brick dressings and banding; the roof is tiled.

PLAN: rectangular in plan with the liturgical East end to the north. A gable-ended roof over the nave steps down over the lower chancel. To the east of the chancel is a small cross-range containing a vestry. A later, larger, brick-built flat-roofed vestry has been added to the west and a large community hall* to the south.

EXTERIOR: a simple composition with lancet windows, mostly with plain leaded glazing, and a bell-cote to the south (liturgical West). The East window is formed of a cluster of three lancets. There is a painted timber porch with tiled roof on the east side of the nave and triangular vents in the nave roof. The south elevation contains the original main entrance with three lancets and an oculus over. This elevation is largely unaltered but is now enclosed by the glass-roofed atrium of the community hall*.

INTERIOR: the interior is red brick with blue brick banding and the floor is boarded with timber. The underside of the roof is clad in narrow timber boards and the roof trusses are of timber with iron ties and bracing. Over the chancel arch are painted the words WORSHIP THE LORD IN THE BEAUTY OF HOLINESS. Fittings are simple in character and seating is in the form of chairs rather than pews.

The chancel has a panelled, waggon vaulted roof and the walls are entirely covered with the scheme of murals by Kitty Milroy. The subject of the murals are the Magnificat on the East wall, in the form of the Annunciation, and the Benedicite, the hymn of praise to God’s creation, on the north and south walls. There is no attempt to illustrate each verse of the Benedicite in order, but the north and south walls depict various powers of nature through a set of eight figures, and typical 'wonders of creation' in smaller vignettes. The murals are described in greater detail below based on their liturgical orientation.

EAST WALL: this depicts the Annunciation, the Angel Gabriel and the Virgin Mary arranged between the lancet windows; they stand in a flowered meadow with a backdrop of trees and a blue sky. Around the window arch is a vine-scroll border punctuated by quatrefoils bearing the symbols of the four Evangelists and at the apex, a ship.

NORTH WALL: above dado height, four standing figures are depicted, each within a flowered meadow with blue sky behind and framed by the trunks and branches of a row of apple trees. Left to right, the figures represent ‘Showers’ – a figure with plaited hair and arms cast downwards, dressed in blue-green and mauve tones; ‘Sun’ – dressed in yellow, orange and pink with short wavy blond hair and hands raised aloft (the frames of Showers and Sun are linked by a rainbow); ‘Moon’ - in a blue hooded cloak, hands held low and clasped together and ‘Clouds’ shrouded under a voluminous ochre cloak, lifting the hood to reveal his face. A window with painted patterned reveals separates Showers and Sun from Moon and Clouds.

Beneath the figures is a dado painted with the opening verse of the hymn ‘O all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord: praise him and magnify him forever’. Below this, quatrefoils and roundels depict flora and fauna and landscape vignettes, some seemingly inspired by the local landscape and conjuring the imagery contained within the Benedictine. These studies are set within patterned bands and borders with Gothic revival motifs and similar decorative treatment is used in a band over the figures.

SOUTH WALL: this uses the same composition as the north wall, the figures, from left to right being ‘Water’ - dressed in blue and green, standing with arms crossed at the chest; ‘Summer’ – dressed in full-length orange dress, hands clasped behind the neck and elbows raised; ‘Winter’ – in a purple robe wrapped over folded arms, head swathed in a green hood, and lastly ‘Wind’ - in a golden-brown dress and blue shawl, clothing and long wavy golden hair billowing in the wind. This figure is distinctive for not being depicted square-on, as with the others; there is a dynamism in the composition which conveys the sense of being buffeted. A door into the vestry separates the figures of Water and Summer from Winter and Wind.

Below the dado is a painted a quote from Psalm 107: ‘Give thanks unto the Lord, for his mercy endureth forever’. As with the north wall, the south wall is decorated with quatrefoils and roundels picturing aspects of the natural world, set within patterned bands and borders.

The reveal of the chancel arch is painted with a band of fruit and foliage, punctuated by quatrefoils bearing angels playing musical instruments.

*Pursuant to s1 (5A) of the Planning (Listed Buildings and Conservation Areas) Act 1990 (‘the Act’) it is declared that the community hall to the south of the building is not of special architectural or historic interest, however any works which have the potential to affect the character of the listed building as a building of special architectural or historic interest may still require LBC and this is a matter for the LPA to determine.

History

The village of Hale experienced significant population growth from the mid-C19 as the neighbouring hamlet of Aldershot become a major garrison town. The parish church of St John was extended in 1870 but more worship space was needed so a daughter church, dedicated to St Mark the Evangelist, was opened in Upper Hale in 1883. It was built at a cost of £1200 by Goddard and Son of Farnham and Dorking; the architect was Arthur Rowland Barker (1842-1915) of Buckingham Street, The Strand, London, surveyor for the Diocese of Winchester and former pupil and assistant to Ewan Christian.

Between 1911 and 1920, a scheme of murals was painted on the chancel walls by artist and congregation member, Eleanor Catherine Wallace Milroy (1885-1966). The east wall was complete by January 1915, when it was reported in The Surrey Advertiser, noting that the painting of the side walls would follow. The murals suffered damage over time due to environmental conditions in the church and underwent some retouching on the west wall in the 1940s, this work was undertaken by local artist and friend of Milroy, Evelyn Cesar, who apparently also added the cherubic face of her niece, Josephine Jones (née Caesar) into a quatrefoil beneath the window in the west wall. The frescos have recently undergone (2021) specialist consolidation and conservation works.

As with most female artists of her day, Milroy is little documented. She was known as Kitty and was one of 8 children born to the Reverend Andrew Wallace Milroy and Mary Elizabeth Rosher. The family moved from Hampshire to The Oast House, Upper Hale, Surrey after the death of Reverend Milroy in 1902. Milroy is understood to have used an ear trumpet and it is thought likely that her hearing impairment was congenital due to her distinctive speech pattern.

Milroy was an intermittent student at the Slade School of Fine Art in London, between 1906 and 1914, and she enrolled again in 1922-1923. There are records of her exhibiting paintings both locally and in London, and drawings of the St Mark’s frescos were exhibited in the 1923 Winter Exhibition of Decorative Art at the Royal Academy, alongside the work of figures such as Sir Reginald Blomfield, Sir George Frampton and Mary Sargant Florence. Her only other known fresco scheme was in the chancel of the chapel at St Elphin’s School, Matlock, Derbyshire, which she painted between 1921 and 1931. These frescos were lost when the chapel was enlarged in the early 1940s. It seems most likely that this commission came through her sister, Lilias (1877-1966). The murals were painted under the then headmistress, Margaret Flood; Flood and Lilias Milroy had been headmistresses at a girls’ schools in Truro, Cornwall before the War.

Milroy’s fresco technique was a version of spirit fresco, originally developed in 1859 by Thomas Gambier Parry and revived by a small number of mural artists in the early C20. It was similar to that used by the renowned muralist Phoebe Anna Traquair (1852-1936) whose several major mural schemes in Edinburgh, dating from the end of the C19, she may have been aware of. The east wall of the Church of St Mark uses more direct religious imagery than the later side walls and it shares something of the pre-Raphaelite influences of Traquair’s work. The early C20 saw a resurgence of interest in the work of Sandro Botticelli, promoted by Christina Herringham’s 1899 translation of Cennino Cennini’s Italian Renaissance treatise on fresco. Milroy’s imagery appears to draw on works such as Primavera and Birth of Venus. The side walls of the chancel depict Milroy’s creative and personal interpretation of the Benedicite, completed between 1915 and 1920. Chosen aspects of the hymn, also known as A Song of Creation, are illustrated by blending imaginative personifications of elements of the natural world with imagery taken directly from her surroundings, from local landscapes and flora to the faces of fellow congregation members. The figure of ‘Water’ is believed to have been modelled on the Milroy family gardener, Edwin Thomas Warner. The side walls were painted during a period overlapping with the end of the First World War, and the use of imagery tied to local surroundings has synergy with ideals promoted at this time by Sir William Rothenstein, artist and principal of the Royal College of Art from 1920. He saw that murals painted for, and reflective of, local communities could help revive a sense of identity in Britain after the destruction brought by war. Compositionally and stylistically, the side walls blend traditional Gothic Revival decoration in the framing, with rendering that appears influenced by European symbolism in the treatment of the figures and their relationship to the landscape in which they stand.

Although an unknown figure in art historical terms, Milroy's work can be understood within an established artistic and historic context. Following a revival of interest in the mid-C19, murals acquired a certain prominence in the later stages of the Arts and Crafts Movement. They provided a vehicle for bringing the moral and social outlook of the arts and crafts ideology into the public realm through commissions for public or institutional buildings, as well as allowing the revival of traditional techniques. Art schools played an important role in the promotion of mural, or ‘decorative’, painting, offering classes dedicated to technical and compositional skills. Established in 1871, the Slade was one of the country’s foremost art schools and was unusual for its co-educational approach. In the first three decades of the C20, under the direction of Frederick Brown, and from 1918, Henry Tonks, it was noted for turning out a number of talented young muralists. Mary Sargant Florence (1857-1954), a major woman artist and muralist, led a fresco and tempera painting course at the school.

The progressive environment and teaching at the Slade would have been formative to Kitty Milroy’s practise. However, also relevant is the artistic, social and cultural landscape for women muralists, which was in part shaped by those of a slightly earlier generation to Milroy. Sargant Florence is an obvious example as both a practitioner and a teacher; others include three who have a connection to Milroy through geographic coincidence. Less than 10 miles from Upper Hale, Mary Watts (1849-1938) designed the Watts Mortuary Chapel (built 1896-1898, listed Grade I, National Heritage List for England (NHLE) entry 1029541), its interior covered with painted gesso decoration in her distinctive Celtic Revival style. A few miles further east from Compton is the village of Blackheath, where in 1893-1894, the artist Anna Lea Merritt (1844-1930) painted the interior walls of the Church of St Martin (1893, listed Grade II, NHLE entry 1241151) with the story of the life of Christ. Already mentioned, Phoebe Traquair is perhaps one of the best-known women muralists of the late C19. Irish by birth, she spent her working life in Edinburgh, the city which was home to Milroy’s extended family on her father’s side. There is little scholarship dedicated to women muralists of the late C19 and early C20, nevertheless whether as professional or amateur artists, they made an important contribution to this fertile period of mural painting. Obscure figures such as Milroy confirm that this contribution was not restricted to just a few established names.

Reasons for Listing

The Church of St Mark the Evangelist, Upper Hale, built 1883 to designs by A R Barker and with chancel murals of 1911-1920 by Kitty Milroy, is listed at Grade II for the following principal reasons:

Architectural interest:

* for its scheme of fine early-C20 chancel murals by Kitty Milroy in which the artist marries recognised stylistic and compositional influences with an original and personal response to her subject, using imagery bound to the local community and natural world of the surrounding area;
* for the building’s simple, stripped Gothic architecture, in which the straightforward massing and internal plan is enlivened by a bold use of contrasting materials.

Historic interest:

* for the contribution made to this building by an obscure artist, whose gender and artistic accomplishment places her amongst a small but significant group of women muralists of the late C19 and early C20.

External Links

Historic England Listing

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