"Without a single redeeming feature"

In October 1879 the distinguished architect Sir Arthur William Blomfield, who had recently built a replacement parish church in the Gothic style on a new site in Upton on Severn (Worcestershire), wrote to SPAB “I cannot conceive of any possible ground for any one unconnected with the place wishing to preserve any part of the church except the Tower”. ’The Pepperpot’, as the very distinctive remains of Upton on Severn former parish church https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1226692?section=official-list-entry is known to locals, has a fascinating place in early conservation battles.

Following damage in the Civil War everything but the C14 tower was rebuilt in 1758 and the ‘pepperpot’ cupola was added in 1769. While some of A W Blomfield’s later repair projects, such as at Salisbury Cathedral, went on to receive praise from SPAB, his letters on this one show him to be absolutely clear that the 1758 body of the church was? “without a single redeeming feature (not even being a fair specimen of the style of the day)”

The Rector, having raised funding and had built in 1878 a new church designed by Blomfield https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1227107?section=official-list-entry told SPAB was in no mind to try and save the old building, which he described as being “something in the style of a Town Hall of the period”. Later double-decker galleries added in the early C19 irked him further as parishioners seated there were “the source of much irreverence and ill-behaviour”

The Rector went on? “I greatly regret its disreputable appearance owing to the temptation its windows present to the stone-throwing portion of the Town’s population.....I have had great cause for thankfulness in the new Parish Church and no grounds for regret in the undistinguishment of it predecessor, all the leading families agreed in this view, and, in order to keep the older building free from profanation and creeping decay we wished to pull down all but the tower and a foot or two of the outer walls. I can hardly think you have seen the building in question and can scarcely understand on what grounds it is pronounced as of ‘historical interest’.”

Local people played a key part in keeping the old church standing for many years, with town meetings were lively affairs with much cheering and laughter and resolutions to keep the building repaired. Correspondence in the SPAB Archive https://www.spab.org.uk/learning/spab-archive? shows that some money was spent on minor repairs, and SPAB encouraged such an approach in the decades following the initial fight to keep it. Eventually, however, the main body of the church was demolished in 1927, with ‘road widening’ being given as the reason. SPAB has continued to be involved in advising on periodic repair of the tower.

In many ways the conservation battles of 130 years ago were the same as those being fought today; the only difference being the style of architecture being fought over. Georgian architecture is greatly more appreciated now, but much very good later C19 and C20 architecture is in the firing line now. ?The 1893 SPAB Committee noted that “It has been the fashion for the last 50 years to efface from our parish churches all trace of the C18 destroying thereby the connecting links without which History is impossible. This fashion has left very few of the period which the later work at Upton represents, and those are every year getting rarer, so that in a few years such a church as this will if preserved as it stands, be a rarity. The day in which it was thought suitable to place a Renaissance cupola on the summit of a Decorated tower is as completely gone as that of the Norman conquest. The frank belief in their own style of architecture which produced such quaint results was the same as dictated every change to which our ancient churches has been subjected, and as such a thing of the past as the place of pointed C14 arches on the Norman pillars in Tewkesbury Abbey choir."