Bodley and Garner in Lincolnshire

Friday was my day off, so I had a trip out with my camera to Laughton, near Gainsborough in north-west of Lincolnshire. I had visited this church before in the summer of 2005, but my photos were not good, so a new set were needed. The church was breathtaking in 2005 and as I stooped down to enter via the south chancel door the building was just as staggering.

 

Before the 1890s Laughton church was a somewhat dilapidated medieval building. It had been a fine structure and the remaining high quality Transitional north arcade is ample evidence of that. I understand that the chancel was early Decorated and there was much Perpendicular work too. Among the treasures of the church is a fine early fifteenth century brass to a member of the Dalison family, appropriated by a later member of the same family.



In the final quarter of the nineteenth century the lady of the Manor of Laughton and patroness of the living, was a widow, the Hon. Mrs Emily Charlotte Meynell-Ingram. The daughter of the first Viscount Halifax, she had married a wealthy MP called Hugo Francis Meynell-Ingram, who owned a considerable property, including Laughton and Temple Newsam hall in Yorkshire and Hoar Cross in Staffordshire. Tragically Hugo Meynell-Ingram died in 1871 in hunting accident, before he and Emily had any children. She a devoted churchwoman, who was greatly influenced by her brother, the Anglo-Catholic 2nd Viscount Halifax, set about building and rebuilding churches in her husband’s memory. The first work she undertook was the construction of the Church of Holy Angels in Hoar Cross, which was completed in 1876. It was a new building, designed by the fashionable Gothic revivalists G F Bodley and Thomas Garner. Here Mr and Mrs Meynell Ingram are buried side by side under marble effigies.

Twenty years after completing Hoar Cross, Mrs Meynell-Ingram decided to restore Laughton church and she turned to Bodley and Garner once again. The nave of the church was thoroughly restored and a new chancel was built in the Decorated style. The work of restoration was once again a memorial to her late husband and his effigy in white marble, a copy of that at Hoar Cross, is at the east end of the nave. Mrs Meynell-Ingram died in 1904, but her nephew and heir, Lord Halifax, continued the work of restoration at Laughton, which was finally completed in 1926 with the glazing of the nave by Burlison and Grylls. I will say no more and let the photos of this glorious, but little known building, speak for themselves.






























My full Flickr set is here.