Talk:Old St Peter and St Paul's Church, Albury

Interesting
I've just had a fiddle with your architectural description as usual. H.E. Malden describes the plan of the church as "unusual". In fact it is exactly what one would expect of a Saxon church: small dark nave, tower and chancel plus later additions. The suggestion that the tower is on the site of the previous chancel is probably wrong. The present chancel is probably on the site of the Saxon chancel. That would be a quite normal arrangement. However, having the tower in the centre like that makes the entrance into the chancel very small, and the arrangement has often been altered with a new chancel and higher arches.

My feeling is that the rather ugly tracery in the south transept window is Pugin's doing. He was a brilliant designer in some ways but had little sense of proportion when it came to architecture.

Amandajm (talk) 14:27, 27 March 2011 (UTC)


 * I've just looked at the Heritage gateway site. They say that the nave and south aisle are both 14thc. I think they have looked at Malden's plan and interpreted it wrongly. I'll just look into it further. Amandajm (talk) 14:33, 27 March 2011 (UTC)
 * Having looked at the lovely photos on this site St Peter & St Paul, Albury, Churches Conservation Trust,, I'm none the wiser about to what extent the nave retains its Saxon fabric... none of the photos show it well enough to indicate. However, that rendered wall to the north may indicate that there is very old fabric underneath it. The photos revealed one interesting fact... some restoration has been done and the chancel is no longer roofless, and although all the tracery has gone, there is now glass in the east window. Pugin's colouful stencils are exactly as one would expect! Amandajm (talk) 14:52, 27 March 2011 (UTC)


 * Thanks for your input into the article. As a non-architect I appreciate your expert help.  Incidentally, since writing the article, CCT have changed the URLs of all their churches, so I've changed it in the article (and in your message above).  There are now some hundreds of articles I've tried to write on churches, so if you want to improve them (all) ...! --Peter I. Vardy (talk) 15:50, 27 March 2011 (UTC)