Two Bentleys

Strongly partisan though I am for Watford, and keen to proclaim the town's merits, I can't really argue it is full of architectural gems. Indeed on that point it is probably most famous for a building it lost, James Wyatt's Cassiobury House, described by Pevsner as 'one of [Hertfordshire's] major architectural losses of the C20'. Its famous staircase, which is often attributed to Grinling Gibbons, but which I've just read isn't, is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York where, unlike last time I looked this up, it does at least appear to be on display.

So it is always a pleasure to visit one of the town's undoubted architectural masterpieces, Holy Rood Roman Catholic Church, although my attendances at Mass are rare these days and even the current Pope would probably regard my religious views as more heretical than merely heterodox.

Holy Rood, Watford

Holy Rood was part of the great programme of Catholic church building in England during the nineteenth century as anti-Catholic laws were repealed and worship no longer needed to be quite so furtive. It was designed by John Francis Bentley, regarded as one of the great architects of the gothic revival and this is his only complete church. Hence it is sometimes referred to as 'Bentley's Gem'.

With its wide nave, crossing and series of side chapels, and highly decorated chancel, it feels like a kind of mini-cathedral rather than a mere parish church. Its Rood loft, unusually without a screen below, is a highly distinctive feature. One can feel the sense of exuberance at the Catholic Church putting itself back on the map, both literally and metaphorically.

Westminster Cathedral

Bentley's most famous work, by contrast, is anything but complete. Distinctive outside for its striking red brick and Portland stone stripes, inside Westminster Cathedral is a riot of colour and decoration in its bottom third, but above that it's all bare brickwork turned black from candle smoke. It creates a rather eerie sensation, one commentator likening the upper parts of the cathedral to railway tunnels. I had always assumed that at some point the money had run out and plans to decorate the rest of the building had been abandoned. But the late Gavin Stamp in a 2016 article refers to it always having been known that it would take a century to complete the interior. It even seems that plans to complete the work remain in progress.

Unusually, I had occasion just before Christmas to attend services in both Holy Rood and Westminster Cathedral giving me a chance to compare and contrast. As well as their relative levels of completrness, the striking difference between the two is their contrasting styles, the one Gothic Revival the other Byzantine. The one thing that does unite them visually is that each has a dramatic Rood cross dominating the nave.

I am curious as to whether that is a common theme in Bentley's churches. And I wonder too why Bentley, who seems to be considered an important gothic revival architect designed so few complete churches, and why his most famous one is in a completely different style.

Answers to such questions can be hard to find, but I see that since I last pondered them at all, Historic England and Liverpool University Press have published a biography of Bentley by Peter Howell, which might enlighten me. Yet it's just after Christmas, when more books that remain unread came into my possession. And its price of over £30 is that little bit more than I like to pay for a book I don't actually need. So it will have to wait while I monitor its price on various websites and hope I can swoop in for a bargain. In the meantime I will have to remain curious and wait for my answers.