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7 Mar, 5 tweets, 4 min read
Meet Lady Mander, the only woman founder of the Friends of Friendless Churches. After a short career in politics she became a noted biographer of writers and artists, and gave the @nationaltrust its very first house.

#thread

Photograph in the collection of the @NPGLondon Image
Several of our churches were also founded by women, such as Mary Barton and Louisa Tooth - grieving the loss of loved ones, Louisa Harris - who wanted a place for an unusual memorial, ... Image
and Bertha Kessler and Katherine Hudson - WW1 nurses devoted to spiritual and mental healing.

These women have left us with a legacy of four glorious Arts and Crafts places of worship. ImageImageImageImage
Women have also been instrumental as fundraisers, maintaining and enhancing the buildings we now care for.
Like Mrs Abra Hughes Wienholt, whose colourful bazaar in 1882 paid for Llandawke’s beautifully carved altar. Image
To celebrate #WomensHistoryMonth and #internationalwomensday2021 we’ll be sharing stories about Women of Friendless Churches throughout the week, starting today with tales of Founders & Funders, in our new blog:

friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/womens-history…

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More from @friendschurches

Friendless Churches Profile picture
8 Mar
St Beuno's at Penmorfa, Gwynedd showcases the talents of two great craftswomen: windows by the renowned stained glass artist Joan Howson, and a wealth of wood carving by the mysterious Constance Greaves.

#thread
Joan Howson trained at the Liverpool School of Art before being apprenticed to Caroline Townshend. Together, Townshend and Howson opened a studio in Putney in 1920. As well as their shared skills and business they both supported suffragette and socialist causes.
Howson was also an expert conservator of medieval glass; Westminster Abbey entrusted her with the restoration of bomb-damaged windows after WW2.

Two of her windows were installed in St Beuno’s porch between the wars.
Read 6 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
5 Mar
Squelching marshes, cockleshell spits and open skies broken by bird-calls make up the Dengie Peninsula: a mass of land in Essex washed into existence by the Rivers Crouch and Blackwater, and the North Sea.

On it you’ll find St Marys, Mundon with its timber-framed skirt.

#thread
At the end of a winding lane, it looks as though it just landed on earth. It could almost pass as a spaceship. This oak and clay frame wraps around the weather-boarded bell-tower of 1600, steadying the double-storeyed structure against the shifting earth.

2/
The peninsula was once thick with trees. Now, the Mundon Furze - with its petrified oaks poisoned by the salty marsh - is one of the last remaining ancient woodlands. The gnarled branches reach, almost in agony, to the sky. Here, it feels like time has ended…

3/
Read 8 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
27 Feb
By the 1860s, St Andrews, South Huish was showing its age.

During a service, high winds blew in a pane of glass. Shards narrowly missed Fr Hole, the officiant.

It was the death knell for the church...

But not before it gave up one final secret hidden in its walls...

#thread
Fr Hole stopped all services. To repair the church they were quoted £300. (About £37,000 today)

That sort of money simply wasn’t available. It would be cheaper to build a new church.

Fr Hole set about dismantling St Andrew’s bit-by-bit…

2/
The 14th-century font and marble tablets were relocated to the new church at Galmpton. The ancient stoup found its way to Salcombe church. The 16th-century painted screen was sold to Mr Ilbert of Bowringsleigh for 20 guineas. The Earl of Devon bought the pews.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
26 Feb
When we took St Denis’s, East Hatley into our care in 2017. It had been empty since 1961. The windows were left to rot till they fell out, the openings boarded up. We thought all glazing had was long lost until, a man called us to say he had some fragments in his shed...

#thread
I went to meet him. He carefully pulled out some fragile fragments from a shelf. It was an angel’s face, one wing, and some brightly-coloured arcs. He had found them in the churchyard in 1985 and kept them safe for 33 years. 

2/
We’ve been restoring St Denis’s in stages, as funds permit. In 2018, we put in new floors and plain glazing to the nave windows. Right now, we’re conserving the much-damaged Butterfield scheme on the chancel walls, and restoring glazing to the chancel windows.

3/
Read 7 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
25 Feb
Long Crichel is a small and rather sleepy village in the Cranborne Chase.
So shockwaves must have rippled through the lanes in 1945 when a group of artists, critics, authors and gay rights activists moved in to the Long Crichel House… right next to the church.
#thread #LGBTHM21
Long Crichel House had been the church rectory until 1945 when it was sold to music critic and novelist, Eddy Sackville-West; his partner, music critic, Desmond Shawe-Taylor and Edward Eardley Knollys of the Bloomsbury Set. Soon, literary critic, Raymond Mortimer joined them.

2/
The new owners of Long Crichel House had a wide circle of creative and influential friends who would meet here. The house – and village - became a retreat for like-minded people, including writers, composers, poets, artists and actors.

3/
Read 8 tweets
Friendless Churches Profile picture
24 Feb
St Philip's, Caerdeon, Gwynedd: the first church of 2021 to be saved.

Since closing in 2014, we've been working to take this church into our care. In 2019, we appealed to our supporters to help us fund the most urgent works.

You did it. St St Philip's is protected.

#thread
Tucked between Barmouth and Bontddu, St Philip’s is a church of extraordinary individuality and importance. It has been described as rustic Mediterranean, Alpine, of French Basque influence. Curiously, it’s just a stone’s throw from St Mark’s, Brithdir – another exotic church.
2/
St Philip's rubble-slate construction dates to 1861. It includes a loggia with stone benches and pairs of round-headed, Romanesque windows, and a bellcote-cum-chimney, which shelters four bells that are rung by large wheel found in a shelter to the north of the church.

3/
Read 10 tweets

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