Sir George Grove

I stayed for a Sunday lately at Penn, the home of my ancestors for many generations.  A little Buckinghamshire village which has been practically unchanged for the last two hundred years. Penn stands in a triangle between Beaconsfield, Amersham and High Wycombe; and as its name implies, it is the highest land in that part of the county. One part of it is still called Beacon Hill; and the fires anciently lighted thereon are said to have been visible at sea. It is the height that has been its safeguard against innovation. The railway station is Loudwater; and from that it is a steepish gradient of some three miles to the village.

Penn consists of a street about half a mile long, a school, a chapel, a few houses and cottages on each side, and, at the further or eastern end, the Church, the blacksmith’s shop and the Institute, which is almost the only modern thing in the place. On either side of the street are some of most delightful fields in England, and thence you may have unrivalled views.

It was in the Church that I found my greatest pleasure. The chancel was burned down many years ago¹, and was rebuilt (apparently on its ample foundations) in brick, without any attempt at architecture; but the nave, with a south aisle, two large roomy porches and a low tower, massive with large spreading buttresses, all of the fourteenth century at latest, remain pretty much as they always were. The churchyard is large, with many graves, and most of them turfy hillocks. The vicar is aged², and somewhat feeble in voice; but he is quite in character with the whole scene. He reads the lesson like a scholar and a gentleman with most appropriate delivery. It was a pleasure to listen to him. His sermon too! — I reflected how differently I would have listened to it thirty or even twenty years ago, when I had more enthusiasm and less patience and thought more of my own ideas than the feelings of others. This is a confession, but it may not be without its use. I now heard and was satisfied with good sound sense and quiet expression, where before I should have wanted originality and emphasis.

But it was the prayers that touched me the most; for a very different thing it is to say your prayers in an old Church, its walls seeming to enclose an atmosphere of the past, and in a modern one built a quarter of a century ago. In the old Church the presence of our forefathers seems to linger, and the the voice of their supplications to be not quite stilled. The very walls seem to be concious of the oft-repeated ritual and to be sanctified by it. Bits of old tracery peep out like archaic words and phrases in the liturgy. Even the change in style and of the wording on the monuments are like the changes in the Prayer book and in harmony wih them.

The south aisle of my old Church was built later than the rest, and the two clerestory windows which it covers, and which once lighted the nave, still remain there, above the plain honest arches, without their glass, but otherwise sharp and firm, exactly as they were at first.

Zeigler painting 1850, showing old box pews

I sat in a large pew — square with very narrow seats , and with faded maroon curtains round it, which, if I were the squire, I think I should remove. Opposite, in the end wall of the aisle, was a monument, a vase of oval Roman form, delicately sculptured in gray marble, and setting forth that it was in memory of “Roger Mather³, clerk, eleven years vicar of this parish, to whom Asheton Curzon, Esq., was pupil, patron and friend.” How characteristic! The form of the monument, the character of the letters, the turn of the inscription, all spoke plainly of the eighteenth century.

Curzon was one of the great people of the place, and he and Mather, like Walpole and Gray, probably travelled in Italy togther. It is not “whose pupil, patron, friend” — that would have imported a certain familiarity into the phrase; but “to whom Asheton Curzon, Esq.,” etc., this giving all due pre-eminence to the great man! The music was unpretending and good, and the lovely hymn, “The Saints of God”, must have sunk into many a heart beside my own. At such times those whom one has lost, and those whom one is about to lose, take entire possession of the mind, and lift it into another and higher sphere.

After Church we walked into the parsonage and looked at the grand old yew tree, which I have seen on more than one spring smoke like an altar, and which first taught me the meaning of Tennyson’s lines:

O brother, I have seen this yew tree smoke.
Spring after spring, for half a hundred years

On one occasion the old clerk of Penn Church was ill, and the vicar brought in his stable-man to collect the offertory on a sacrament Sunday. The man did not know his way about the Church, and at first missed the square pew of which I spoke. Going back, he returned with the occupant’s half-crown, but could not make the parson understand where he had got it; till at last, pointing with his thumb over his shoulder, he whispered, “From the gentleman in the loose box, sir”.

The Bucks Herald, Saturday, October 2, 1886 [From the St. James’ Gazette]

First published in St James’s Gazette on 27 Sep 1886, written by Sir George Grove who inherited his older brother Thomas’ Penn estate in 1897 (see Mansions and mudhouses p.16), and it was apparently repeated in Sir George’s 1897 Reminiscences.  He wrote it after a visit to his brother, noting it was “so spoiled by the editor that I hardly care to own it”, but a very full biography by Charles L. Graves, The Life of Sir George Grove  (1903), describes the article as ‘one of the most charming pieces ever written by Grove, recapturing much of the  spirit of Addison, anecdotal, and touched with a sense of sadness over a lost world and forsaken ideals.’ 

Sir George Grove (13 August 1820 – 28 May 1900) was a member of the Grove family who lived at Watercraft and Stonehouse in Church Road, Penn. Their name is re­corded in the earliest tax return of 1332. He inherited the Grove family estate in 1897 and his descendants held it until they sold up in 1953.  In 1883 he became the first director of the Royal College of Music and between 1878 and 1889 he compiled and published a magisterial four volume Dictionary of Music and Musicians which has been the standard reference work for the musical world ever since. It was an enormous achievement and has been updated many times. The most recent edition, just published and known as New Grove II, takes up 29 volumes and 25 million words.
Apart from his distinction as a musicologist he was also an archaeologist, lexicographer, educator and author.   Arthur Sullivan was a very close friend and was godfather to his third son Arthur, born in 1864. Arthur Sullivan is popularly supposed to have written “The Lost Chord” and “Onward Christian Soldiers” in the summerhouse of Watercroft. (Miles Green, 2001)

It is a full year since my last article about the arrival in Penn of the Revd John Grainger, and the many changes which he made  to  the  interior  of  the  church,  inspired  by  the  Oxford  Movement with its advocacy of a higher degree of ceremony in  worship  to  bring  it  nearer  to  that  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Church. This also required ‘improvements’ to the fabric  of the church, which in effect meant the removal of any feature which was not in accord with the ideal of the architecture of the medieval Decorated period (c.1280-1380).

Thus,  as  I  noted  before,  two  galleries  were  removed,  a  two-storey  south  porch  was  taken  down  and  the  three-decker  pulpit  was  removed.  In  addition,    an  altar,  carrying  a  cross  and  candlesticks,  was  restored  after  more  than  three centuries,  although the altar was of wood rather than stone  as  it  would  have  been  before  the  Reformation.
The  eagle  lectern,  another  reversion  to  medieval  tradition,  may  have been installed around this time and the black and red Victorian tiles laid on all the floors.  The natural colour of the  oak  of  the  roof  timbers  still  survives  in  the  tower,  but  elsewhere they were stained black, probably at this stage.  The very fine, early 18th century pulpit, oak with marquetry, arrived  from  the  Curzon  chapel  in  Mayfair  when  it  was  closed in 1899.

The photograph is of a water-colour of the exterior of Penn Church by Henry Zeigler (1793-1874). He was a leading painter in his day and taught Queen Adelaide,  the wife of William IV, to whom the 1st Earl Howe was  Lord Chamberlain. The painting shows the church as it was in c.1860, just before the first significant changes were made to it since the 1730s, and  was  presumably  commissioned  for  that  reason.  The  east window was still the ‘Road to Emmaus’, installed in the 1730s and set in a brick wall.  Both were soon to be taken down and replaced with a more suitably Gothic window set in the knapped black flint fashionable at the time.

The two lancet windows in the north wall were presumably regarded  as  too  early  and  too  primitive,  and  so  the  single  lancet  was  blocked  in  (to  be  rediscovered  in  1952)  and the double lancet was replaced by a copy of the late 15th century clerestory (higher level) window on the other side of the porch. The three-light brick window in the clerestory the other side of the porch was rebuilt as a copy of the other two original 15th century clerestory windows and the lower brick window was filled in. All these changes were aimed at  producing    a  symmetrical  all-Gothic  appearance  to  the  church as you approach from the main road.

On  the  far  side  of  the  church,  Two  semi-dormer  windows  were  put  in  the  south  isle,  presumably  replacing  either  worn  out  original  14th  century  windows  or  unacceptable  later replacements.

The  first  Earl  Howe  paid  for  this  work  and  one  wonders whether his money was well spent. Fortunately, our mainly 14th-century aisle and tower were seen as correct, so what happened in Penn was only a modest example of Victorian restoration,    when    well-intentioned,  but    over-zealous    concerns to sweep away the past often carried away much of value that contributed to the atmosphere of the church.  In other local churches, such as Beaconsfield and Amersham, very little is visible of  the former medieval church.

Penn Church, North East view, c.1860, by Henry Zeigler (1793-1874).

Miles Green, Penn Parish Newsletter No.53, November 2018

© Eddie Morton ARPS, Earl Howe

The East window of our church has been changed several times over the centuries to accord with changing fashions. We don’t know what it was like in the pre-Reformation Roman Catholic era, but all churches were required to remove any such evidence of Popery and the windows are plain glass in the earliest surviving view, a late 17th-century drawing.  In 1736, the new Proprietor, Sir Nathaniel Curzon, the 4^th baronet who had been brought up in Penn, and was the second son of Sarah Penn, commissioned a ‘painted’ window picturing ‘Christ Making Himself Known to his Disciples at Emmaus’ (Luke 24:30). We see it, set in a brick wall, in the photograph of Henry Zeigler’s water colour of c.1860 which hangs in the church.  The top of the window contains three coats of arms.  On the right: the Curzon arms, centre: the Penn arms, and on the left: the Penn and Curzon arms combined. The window was made by John Rowell, of ‘High Wickham’, and was probably his last piece of work before moving from Wycombe to Reading.

Penn East window, postcard c.1920

Soon after Henry Zeigler’s water colour was painted, in 1865, perhaps encouraged by a new Vicar, and as part of considerable changes to the church, Earl Howe paid for an expensive and imposing new window in the traditionally Gothic tradition advocated at the time by the Victorian Oxford Movement. The window depicted Jesus’ Transfiguration, and had Jesus in the centre with Moses on his right and the prophet Elijah on his left. It was set in a rebuilt chancel east wall of Bath stone and black knapped flint.

Then, in 1931, the Vicar, of High Church persuasion, was intent on restoring the more Catholic tradition of an altar curtained at the back and sides by a dorsal and riddell posts. However, the curtain covered the bottom foot or more of the Victorian East window. The Vicar therefore commissioned the present window with coloured green glass at the bottom to go behind the curtain.
The green glass incorporates a notice “This window was drawn (and donated) by Margaret and Hugh Pawle at A.K.Nicholson’s Studio’s 105 Gower Street WC1. In the event of the dorsal ever being removed please apply to the above for the complete design”. The curtain was duly removed in 2003, but by then, the designer’s workshop had long since closed. The window is dedicated to Hugh Pawle’s mother and sister, who lived at Hutchins Barn, Knotty Green.

So what happened to the Victorian window? Many years ago I was assured by Pat Cuthbert and more recently by Herbert Druce, that they remembered the stained glass had been given to Penn Street Church. I tried to find evidence of this, but all the Penn Street windows were firmly assigned to the same 1849 date when the church was consecrated. I could find nothing in local or Diocesan records, or the Bucks Free Press.

Penn’s 1865 E. window, now in Penn Street’s N. transept

The solution to the mystery came from Michael Hardy, who was photographing the Penn Street windows and read a 1988 NADFAS report which noted that in the North transept the stained glass was not tall enough for the window height and the gap above had been filled in with opaque pale yellow mottled glass. He checked the design and size against the only surviving shadowy old photograph of the 1865 Penn window and there was no doubt they are one and the same. Mystery solved!

More details with superb photographs of all the stained glass windows can be seen on the Stained Glass of Buckinghamshire website,
I strongly recommend a visit!
Stained Glass of Holy Trinity, Penn.
Stained Glass of Holy Trinity, Penn Street.

Miles Green with Peter Strutt, Penn Parish Newsletter No.54,  January 2020
Photos and descriptions: Michael Hardy
East Window painting c.1860, © Eddie Morton ARPS, courtesy Earl Howe.

Death of the Late Vicar of Penn.

The Rev. John Grainger, who was one of the first assistant mathematical masters at Eton under the ….. of the late Rev. Stephen Hawtry, from 1851 to 18.. has died at St. Mary Hearne, Hants, aged 81. In 1860 Mr. Grainger was presented by the first Earl Howe to the living of Penn, and continued to hold it til last year (1898), when he resigned owing to advanced age and failing health.
Bucks Herald April 29th, 1899.