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St. Mary's Wellingborough, Northamptonshire, displays the apogee of church design in the 20th century. In its design it is a complex mixture of Late English Perpendicular and what Sir Ninian Comper, its designer, called "Beauty by Inclusion". What Comper meant by this phrase was a marrying of a host of styles into a beautiful and meaningful whole. St. Mary's defies the contempt in which late 19th century and early 20th century churches are often held, because of it is eclectic in its design, avoiding the earlier dark Gothicism and the later plainness of many churches in the Modern style.
Ninian Comper (1864-1960), was an Anglo-Catholic, whose grounding was in the Late-Gothic Revival school, he being apprentice to Charles Kempe, the glass designer and also later articled to George Bodley and Thomas Garner, the great church architects of the late 19th Century. Comper designed some complete churches such as St. Mary's, Wellingborough, St. Cyprian's Clarence Gate, London, in which he used his earlier "Beauty by Exclusion" technique and St. Philip's Cosham. However, the bulk of his work, some 500 commissions, was undertaken in the field of church furnishings including: English altars, silver, statues, vestments, banners, screens, roods, fonts, ciboria, baldachini, reredoses and pulpits. In St. Mary's Wellingborough, it is possible to see Comper's work at its finest and most complete. Here Comper proves himself both as architect and church decorator. The refined layout of the church, with its expressive and masterly fulfilment of interior decoration, also adorns and fulfils its liturgical purpose. It is the work of genius and a masterly integration of architectural styles.
Comper designed St. Mary's Wellingborough in 1904 for three women, Henrietta, Gertrude and Harriet Sharman, daughters of a local worthy, John Wood Sharman. They are memorialised in a simple yet graceful lozenge, designed by Comper, which is set into the chancel floor.
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The church
The building is in the Late Perpendicular style of English Gothic with five aisles: a nave aisle with two side aisles; a north transept comprising the North door vestibule with organ case above and the Jesus Chancel, the first part of the church to be finished in 1908; and a south transept with an enclosed chapel of St. John. There are eight bays with concave octagonal piers, an unusual feature, the only design argument that Comper lost to Father T.J. Watts, the first incumbent at St. Mary's. Like the rest of the building, they are made from locally quarried ironstone. There is a dazzling gilded rood screen and an ironwork chancel screen upon which stands a loft. On this loft and screens is woven an impressive array of styles which create a perfect whole. The styles include Gothic, Classical, Medieval Greek and with Italian and French ornamentation. The fabulous rood figures mounted on the rood screen and accompanied by Comper's six-winged angels draw the eye up to a Majestas, depicting Christ without a beard, a trademark of Comper. All of this is surmounted by a beautiful and intricate plaster lierne vaulted ceiling, decorated in blue and gold above the altar, rood screen and font, which spans the whole centre of the building with the exception of the west door vestibule. A modern touch by Comper is the placing of electric lights in the fan pendants of the ceiling.
The chancel like the rest of the church is the epitome of Comper's ethos of church design as described in his pamphlet of 1917 "Of the Atmosphere of a Church" in which he wrote: -
"The purpose of a church is not to express the age in which it was built of the individuality of its designer. Its purpose is to move to worship, to bring a man to his knees, to refresh his soul in a weary land. This would seem to me the Creator's purpose toward man in giving him the beauty of nature, and it should be the purpose of all art. ceremonial, sculpture and painting to be the expression of his worship.
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