PLANS to remove the tiled floor and pews of All Saints’, Ryde, have been opposed by the Victorian Society, which warned last week that the legacy of Sir George Gilbert Scott was “suffering a remarkable rate of attrition” within the Church of England’s parish churches.
The reordering of the church forms a part of the diocese of Portsmouth’s technique to “revitalise Church of England churches across the Isle of Wight” (News, 5 January 2024). In 2023, it secured £1.2 million from the Church Commissioners’ Strategic Mission and Ministry Investment (SMMI) Board for plans including the planting of a recent congregation at All Saints’ — “the cathedral of the Island”.
A recent family service was established with the assistance of Harbour Church — a church-plant of Holy Trinity, Brompton, in Portsmouth — along with traditional eucharistic worship. The aim is to extend attendance from 30 to as much as 300 recent worshippers attending different types of service.
A Grade II* listed constructing, All Saints’ was designed by Scott, a major figure within the Nineteenth-century Gothic revival, and built between 1867 and 1872. The Victorian Society has objected to the plans in the course of the faculty process; it said in a press release last week that it was looking for “a more responsive and better-balanced solution, one which meets the needs of the parish whilst being significantly less harmful to the special historic and architectural interest of the constructing”.
The plans, currently being considered by the Diocesan Chancellor, include replacing the tiled floor to accommodate underfloor heating, and replacing a lot of the pews with chairs. Both the seating and floor had been specified by Scott, the Victorian Society said, and their loss would “seriously impact the constructing’s special architectural interest”.
On Wednesday, the Victorian Society’s director, James Hughes, said that it was difficult to call a single interior designed by Scott which remained intact. The great work that he had conducted was being lost at an “extraordinary rate”. Mr Hughes referred to the removal of pews in churches and cathedrals equivalent to Bath Abbey, St Edmundsbury Cathedral, and Wakefield Cathedral.
Scott’s “hugely prolific” output and skilled success were one in every of the explanations that he tended to be “disregarded”, Mr Hughes said. There was also an absence of scholarship and a bent to overlook the later Nineteenth-century work of restoration of medieval buildings — a skill by which Scott was unmatched.
“The Victorian Society is commonly characterised as being uncompromising, but our experience is that we’re suggesting compromise and never being met in the center by schemes and parishes,” he said. “It’s all or nothing.”
The Society was not against achieving greater flexibility in churches, but “it’s an issue of the way it is completed. . . We will not be here to make the Church’s life harder, or prevent change, but to advise on how it may possibly be done in ways in which best preserve these buildings while also achieving broadly what the Church itself wants to realize, which is larger use.”
Underfloor heating might be installed without the lack of the tiles, he identified. The Society’s position is that that more of the pews might be preserved and still accommodate the specified activities.
A spokesman for the diocese said this week that the proposals “aim to refurbish this necessary church constructing to ensure its future”. Chairs might be easily reorganised to permit more flexible use of the constructing.
“We agree with the Victorian Society that All Saints’ Church is an architecturally significant constructing that deserves to be preserved for future use,” he said. “This is precisely why All Saints’ has drawn up these plans to refurbish their historic church. Gilbert Scott was indeed involved in the long-lasting design of the church constructing, and these proposals seek to honour and construct on that original design, whilst encouraging the church’s continued use for mission in Ryde.”
The diocese has previously reported that about 1400 people worship on the Isle of Wight each week (lower than one per cent of the population). A recruitment push has resulted within the filling of all of the vacancies prior to now two years, taking the variety of stipendiary clergy on the island from 11 to 19.
The Victorian Society must be statutorily consulted on any planning application that involves the partial or complete demolition of a listed Victorian or Edwardian constructing. In 2023, it argued successfully against the removal of a considerable portion of pews designed by George Gilbert Scott, Jr, at St Peter and St Paul, Knapton, within the diocese of Norwich.
