We are celebrating 850 years of the church in 2015. Here is what the priest wrote in 800 year magazine about the church - 1165 was the year in which the advowson of the parish church of Curdworth was granted to the Augustinian canons of the Abbey of St Mary of the Fields, Leicester. The word, ‘advowson’ is the right of presentation of a priest, to a parish. In this case the granting of this right to the Abbey marked the beginning of the church as we know it now – hence our celebrations in 1965 and also 2015. But there was a church on this site before this. The chancel may be slightly earlier than our date, and the font has a decidedly Saxon look, and may have belonged to a preceding Saxon church. Curdworth was a Saxon settlement, and it is unthinkable that such a settlement have been without a church or chapel of some kind. The font in Curdworth Church is large. It is boldly carved with striking figures, which include the four Evangelists (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) and the ‘lamb and Flag’ symbol of Christ. And it was lost for two and a half centuries – hidden under the floor of the nave during the Civil War in the seventeenth Century, lest the puritans should destroy it in their hatred of graven images. And in case any reader thinks they would have been obeying the Second Commandment in doing do what that commandment forbids is not making and having such graven images but putting them in the place of God. The font was discovered during the very thorough and on the whole very good restoration of the church in 1895, to mark the 80th birthday of the then Lord Norton, one of the Patrons of the Living. It was a restoration in every sense of the word, for much of the work involved was in undoing the atrocious rebuilding of 1799. The worst example of what was done in this earlier restoration was the roof and windows of the naïve. Here the walls have been raise by a two foot course of brickwork, a new rather flatter roof built slated instead of tiled, and the stone tracery in the windows replaced by cast-iron frames. Inside was a false, flat ceiling. In 1895 all this was put right, and the church as it now is is the work of the 1895 restorers. Undoubtedly the most obvious and most beautiful feature of the church is the Norman chancel arch, rounded, of course, and with characteristic dog-tooth mouldings. On either side, balancing each other is the two-light traceried window of later date – in the case of the one on the north side, of much later date, 1895, in fact. The restoration of that year revealed a largish lancet-shaped opening on this north side, angled towards the altar, and so known as a squint. This together with the traceried window on the other side had been bricked up and plastered over by the builder of 1799. In the writer’s opinion what was done here in 1895 is a regrettable feature of an otherwise excellent piece of work. With the prevailing passion for balance and symmetry in art and architecture, the ancient and most interesting squint was destroyed and a prettified effect produced.
Posted on: Mon, 29 Sep 2014 18:12:55 +0000
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