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26 Sep, 8 tweets, 4 min read
Brithdir has powers of transportation.

Behind a thicket of fleshy, fuchsia rhododendrons, a rugged granite church hides. Inside, the stippled plaster walls are daubed in burnt sienna, the ceiling soars in royal azure.

But the Mediterranean vibe doesn’t end there... #thread
St Mark’s, Brithdir was built in the 1890s. Louisa Richards commissioned Henry Wilson to design the church in memory of her husband, the Rev’d Charles Tooth, founder of St Mark’s church in Florence.

He had died within a few months of their marriage.

2/
Wilson was inspired by Tooth’s legacy in Florence, but also by “those delightfully simple churches just south of the Alps”.

3/
The buttery yellow walls in the nave glow. The chancel is lower, darker, closer, creating an air of mystery. The walls are curvaceous. The squinches throw shadows. The small space seems cavernous.

4/
Right at the back, a cast copper altar glitters. On it, the Virgin Mary receives the Holy Spirit before a trellis laden with roses, lilies and daffodils. Two figures with bowed heads bear witness. It's thought these are Charles and his brother Arthur…

5/
Mice, squirrels and rabbits scurry around the legs of choir stall. Owls and kingfishers watch silently from the shadows. The top of each pew has a stylised tree spelling ‘SM’, for St Mark’s. 

6/
Love-hearts and grapevines feature heavily – from glazing to gutter brackets, pews to pulpit.

7/
Wilson wanted this church to appear is if it had sprung out of the soil, rather than set down upon it.

Through the richness and boldness of his design, he created a church of unparalleled wonder and warmth.

More here: friendsoffriendlesschurches.org.uk/brithdir/

All photos by @fotofacade ♥️🙏

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Friendless Churches Profile picture
25 Sep
On the Llŷn Peninsula, St Mary’s, Penllech sits in splendid isolation overlooking the Irish Sea. A church has been here for 800yrs, serving generations of farming communities.
From the 1500s, it was also used as a school, and was one of the earliest grammar schools in Wales.

1/
The church's grey interior, open benches, and box-pews jostling at the east end, is simple and special. Most of what you see today is a rebuilding in 1840 by Samuel Jones. It's hard to imagine a classroom in this this place of deep stillness.

2/4
One of the students of Penllech was Henry Rowlands, a man who went on to Oxford to gain a university education and eventually became the Bishop of Bangor.  
But Rowlands never forgot the parish of his childhood – or its people.

3/4
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Friendless Churches Profile picture
19 Sep
Great art is created when the hand, the head, and the heart come together.

Llandeloy church was nothing more than a few medieval stumps by the 1840s. In the 1920s, John Coates Carter set about re-imagining the ruins to symbolise a personal journey through life...

#thread
Rebuilding the church from the fragments was meant to start in the early twentieth century. Locals donated more than £600 towards the work. But, just as they were about to begin, the Great War broke. Progress was halted for more than a decade.

2/7
In 1926, Carter returned. He designed a simple church to nestle deep into a hollow in the churchyard. An ancient holy well is hidden in the greenery to the south.

3/7
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12 Sep
In 1876, the chancel of St John the Baptist's, Allington, in Wiltshire was decorated with stencil and freehand decoration, including orange trees, curtains and rosettes, in memory of Fulwar William Fowle, rector of the parish for 60 years.
More oranges appear in a charming 'trompe l'oeil' priest's seat with an orange tree painted in the recess.
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11 Sep
Old St Peter’s, Wickham Bishops was established to serve the Bishop of London in the 12thC. Since the 90s it has been home to Ben Finn's stained glass studio. Tomorrow there's a rare opportunity to look inside ... and see four beautiful new windows created and installed by Ben.
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Friendless Churches Profile picture
10 Sep
At the end of July, just days after completing a £150k re-roofing project, St Mary Magdalene’s church in Caldecote was vandalised. We’re thrilled to announce that the church will be open this Sunday and the next as part of #HeritageOpenDays 2021.
Come and talk to a local volunteer about this fascinating church in the site of a lost medieval village. Treasures awaiting you include an extraordinary, floor-to- (almost) ceiling stoup and an octagonal font encrusted with cusped panels, heraldry and foliage. Both 15th century.
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📷@badger_beard
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Friendless Churches Profile picture
9 Sep
The Gloucester Candlestick is an extraordinary survival. Dating from 1104-13, it’s a masterpiece of English metalwork, a gilt tangle of beasts clambering, clawing through fleshy foliage, struggling “to reach the light or sink into the darkness below”...

#thread
Incredibly, an inscription on the stem of candlestick clearly indicates its provenance: ‘The devotion of Abbot Peter and his gentle flock gave me to the Church of St Peter of Gloucester’. Peter was the abbot of the Benedictine Abbey in Gloucester in the early 12th century.

2/
However, somehow, Abbot Peter’s candlestick ended up in the treasury of Le Mans Cathedral, France. There are several points when it could’ve made its journey: the Abbey was destroyed by fire in 1122, was the candlestick stolen?

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