THE churchwardens of the Grade II listed St Peter’s, Little Budworth, have succeeded in persuading the Consistory Court of the diocese of Chester to grant a school permitting the sale by auction of a painting owned by the church for greater than a century.
The painting, The Good Shepherd by William Dyce FRSE, RSA, RA (1806-64), a Scottish painter related to the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, was given to the church in 1924 by a parishioner in memory of a member of the family, James Henry Stock, who had been MP for Liverpool Walton from 1892 to 1906. A college for its introduction was granted in 1925.
The original painting has not been displayed within the church for some 50 years. Since 1987, it had been on a long-term loan agreement, which had now ended. A reproduction has hung within the church for the reason that removal of the unique.
There is a robust presumption against the sale of “church treasures”, and such items might not be sold unless it may well be shown that there are sufficiently compelling reasons that outweighed this presumption.
The PCC unanimously supported the sale, and the diocesan advisory committee (DAC) beneficial that the college be granted. The Church Buildings Council didn’t change into a celebration opponent, but made it clear that there needed to be a robust justification for a sale, and that there was no such justification in the current case.
By 1977, the painting was visibly deteriorating, owing largely, it was believed, to atmospheric conditions within the church. In 1978, it was sent to the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, where “minimal restoration” was carried out. It remained on loan in Liverpool until its transfer to the Manchester City Art Gallery in 1987. It remained there on loan until 2024, when the parish was advised that the painting was not wanted. The churchwardens and PCC then arranged for the painting to be collected by Bonhams, where it stays, pending a call on its future.
The diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful David Turner KC, said that this was “not certainly one of those cases where the parish prays in aid a specific financial crisis or existential ‘emergency’ because the justification for a sale”. It was a case through which the parish had “concluded they simply [did] not have the funds to appraise, after which implement, the complex conservation and restoration work plainly required” on the painting. They were also convinced that the crucial work to effect the required environmental changes and a “security upgrade” were “unaffordable and . . . mustn’t be prioritised over the undoubted need for maintenance and improvement more generally to the material” of the church constructing.
The DAC was sympathetic to the parish’s reasoning. It also identified that the painting was not original to the church constructing; there was, and would proceed to be, a reproduction displayed within the church, in order that the sale wouldn’t cause any visible change within the church; the church was not financially resourced to perform restoration to the painting, or to upgrade its environment and security to make it more favourable for keeping the unique there; and the parish had not been in a position to find one other museum to take the painting on loan.
The Chancellor said that church treasures ought to be removed only in probably the most exceptional circumstances. “They usually are not ‘strange assets’,” he said. “They belong to the parishioners and are within the care in the intervening time of the present generation.” They formed “a part of the continued ‘story’ of the church”.
But, he concluded, “essentially for the explanations identified by the DAC”, this was “certainly one of those comparatively rare cases” through which he could “properly determine that the ‘cumulative weight of individual aspects’ is indeed sufficient to outweigh the strong presumption against disposal by sale”.
A college was granted for the sale by auction or private treaty by Bonhams, at one of the best price reasonably obtainable.
