THE Consistory Court of the diocese of Carlisle has granted a school, despite the opposition of the diocesan advisory committee (DAC), for a hatchment to be hung in St Michael’s, Bowness-on-Solway, in memory of Dr Alistair M. T. Maxwell-Irving, who died on 29 February 2024.
A hatchment is a memorial in the shape of an armorial shield painted on a square or lozenge-shaped frame. In the current case, the hatchment is meant to be lozenge-shaped, showing Dr Maxwell-Irving’s coat of arms.
The church is Grade II* listed, and its oldest parts date back to the twelfth century. There are already several memorials contained in the church on its partitions and windows.
The parochial church council (PCC) had supported the school application, and the Church Buildings Council had stated that it considered the impact of the proposed hatchment on the church to be “minimal,” and so it was also content.
The majority of the DAC, nonetheless, didn’t recommend the appliance for approval. While the DAC accepted that the proposed hatchment was “perfectly proper and traditional in its artistic approach”, nearly all of its members were “not persuaded that it was an appropriate memorial for our current age”. The DAC found that the proposal was “distasteful and potentially anachronistic”, and that Dr Maxwell-Irving’s reference to the parish was insufficient to justify the erection of a memorial to him within the church.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful James Fryer-Spedding, said that it was clear from a call of the Court of Arches that faculties for memorials inside churches couldn’t be “freely or extensively granted” and “ought to be thought to be a special privilege reserved for very exceptional cases”.
In considering whether this case was exceptional, the Chancellor was required to have in mind not only whether Dr Maxwell-Irving had made an impressive contribution to the local people, the church, the country, or humankind, but in addition whether there was a family history or tradition of such memorials.
In view of the DAC’s doubts, the Chancellor considered Dr Maxwell-Irving’s reference to the church. The Chancellor said that “an individual’s reference to a church was able to being greater than simply a matter of physical proximity to it”, and families and individuals could have “powerful ties to a church despite not living near it”, for instance, through tradition and places of marriage and burial.
For several generations, the Irving family had been very influential in recent centuries in Bowness parish. They had supported St Michael’s with large donations and contributions. There were several significant family memorials within the churchyard. There were three large stained-glass windows within the church in memory of their ancestors. The proposed position for the brand new hatchment and its explanatory brass plaque was near those stained-glass windows.
The Chancellor said that, in his view, the hatchment would “proceed the family tradition of memorials expressed through the display of a coat of arms”. He took account also of the publicly available tributes to Dr Maxwell-Irving. Taking them along with the strong family association, the Chancellor was satisfied that the exceptionality test was met.
Both Historic England and the DAC had advised that the school, if granted, wouldn’t end in harm to the importance of the church as a constructing of special architectural of historical interest. The application had the unqualified and enthusiastic support of the PCC.
As for the DAC’s arguments of supposed anachronism, the Chancellor observed that “what may strike some as anachronistic may equally be regarded by others as a faithful and authentic exposition of a living history, wherein continuity with the past is a virtue, not a fault.”
The faculty was granted as sought, to hold a hatchment to Dr Maxwell-Irving above the transept door, adjoining to the Irving family stained-glass window. A heraldic artist, Mark Dennis, has been engaged by Mrs Maxwell-Irving to color the hatchment.
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