100 Churches in 100 Years
By the Twentieth Century Society
Batsford, 208pp, £25/$35
The late Alice Thomas Ellis, contributor to this magazine and spirited controversialist, was fond of declaring that if you visited any English town and asked to be taken to see its ugliest building, that building would invariably be its Catholic church. Here comes a volume, cataloguing 100 churches built in the 20th century by a variety of denominations, which goes at least some way to proving her wrong.
Visitors to Bath, for example, will find in Our Lady & St Alphege an almost perfect representation of an ancient Roman basilica, the work of none other than Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, who, unsurprisingly, is one of the heroes of this book. St Alphege’s is made out of the very best materials such as Bath stone rubble, and, importantly, conserves its original light fittings. The floor is a Cosmatesque pavement made out of linoleum, still in situ. Unlike in so many other places, no parish priest has trashed and burned the fittings that are integral to the design and planning of every place of worship.
