Look and Learn seemed to me inferior in every respect to a good novel and I only read it if there was absolutely nothing else available. These days Aquila is the go-to mag for a grandparent wanting to give a present that will not be well received. It’s why Aquila advertises in The Oldie.
However, the title of the former hits the spot. I like to read, as you may be aware, but some books demand illustrations, none more so than Matthew Byrne’s monograph on church fonts.
When I joined National Churches Trust in 2017 I was rewarded with English Parish Churches and Chapels by the same author. Matthew Byrne is unusual as he combines a deep knowledge of ecclesiastical architecture with an ability to hold a camera without wobbling. His ability to do the latter explains why he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Photographic Society in 1988 for his work in architectural photography.
He writes lucidly, explaining the significance of baptism in Christianity before embarking on a disquisition leading from Saxon to Salisbury; the latter the 21st century font installed in 2008.
There’s a lot in between. I thought Grinling Gibbons worked in wood; would a Look and Learn reader be better educated, I doubt it. His stone font dates from the last years of the reign of Charles II. It is very beautiful but one wonders to which Restoration skip its predecessor was consigned.
Fonts often survive; mostly stone they are inside churches and therefore not subject to erosion; unlike windows and pews that often fall foul to breakage and fashion. Furthermore, the Victorians, think Pugin, by and large built new churches. Economic prosperity saved older places of worship from architectural desecration so there are still Saxon fonts to be found like this one.
If you want to buy Church Fonts do it here. Or you could join National Churches Trust and maybe get a copy.
When I was a little boy in the late 50s & early 60s, I got LOOK & LEARN every Saturday – except when my parents were away, when my nanny bought me BOY’S OWN PAPER. Looking back it strikes me as odd that the dear woman should have favoured this celebration of Edwardian imperialism, as I was brought up in County Armagh and she came from a Catholic & republican family. For the same reason I now find it strange that, when I asked her, aged about 5, who the Queen was, she replied: ‘God’s wife’.
Happily, I don’t believe there was any destruction of an older font at St. James’s, as the church was commissioned (and construction funded) by Henry Jermyn, Earl of St, Albans, to serve his new development of St. James’s Square and the surrounding area (after Charles II settled debts to Jermyn with the land grant). He hired young talent to work on it: Wren designed the building, and Gibbons carved both the font and the astonishingly beautiful limewood decorations of the reredos (and I, too, always think of Gibbons working in wood). Luckily, their work survived the Blitz.
Services at St. James’s today are rather informal (perhaps eccentrically so), but it is a nice respite to duck into it between bouts of dining, drinking, and shopping (or was, pre-COVID), if one feels the call of God in the precincts of Mammon. I was surprised to find such a notable church “hiding in plain sight” when I finally wandered in one day.