Sandham Memorial Chapel
| Sandham Memorial Chapel | |
|
National Trust | |
|---|---|
 Sandham Memorial Chapel, Burghclere | |
| Grid reference: | SU46326084 |
| Location: | 51°20’41"N, 1°20’11"W |
| Built 1920 | |
| Information | |
| Website: | Sandham Memorial Chapel |
Sandham Memorial Chapel is a remarkable decorated chapel in the village of Burghclere, Hampshire. It was built in 1920 to the design of by Lionel Godfrey Pearson, commissioned by Mary and Louis Behrend (1881–1972) as a memorial to Mary's brother, Lieutenant Henry Willoughby Sandham who died of illness contracted in Macedonia after the First World War. The chapel was built to accommodate a series of paintings by the artist Stanley Spencer.
The chapel is surrounded by lawns and orchards, with views of Watership Down.
Today the chapel is run by the National Trust and is open to the public. It is a Grade I listed building.[1]
Contents
Paintings
Spencer's series of seventeen paintings was inspired by his own experiences during the First World War, in which he served as an orderly with the Royal Army Medical Corps, first at Beaufort War Hospital in Bristol, and then on the Macedonian Front, where he was subsequently transferred to the infantry. He was influenced by Giotto's Arena Chapel murals in Padua. He wanted to paint frescoes too, but the environmental conditions were not appropriate.
The subsequent paintings were commissioned in 1923, with Spencer moving to Burghclere in 1926 to work in situ. The series was completed in 1932. It is dominated by the Resurrection scene behind the altar, in which dozens of British soldiers lay the white wooden crosses that marked their graves at the feet of a distant Christ. The series chronicles Spencer's everyday experiences of the war rather than any scenes of action. When the art historian R. H. Wilenski saw the recently completed sequence, he wrote of his sense "that every one of the thousand memories recorded had been driven into the artist's consciousness like a sharp-pointed nail".[2]
Name
The Chapel is consecrated as The Oratory of All Saints and only became officially recognised by its colloquial name 'Sandham Memorial Chapel' following the National Trust's takeover of the property. Spencer would refer to it as his "Holy-Box", whilst the architect and patrons would privately refer to it as Spencer's "God-Box". Meanwhile, John and Mary Behrend's children pejoratively called it the "biscuit factory", in response to its "municipal" characteristics.[3]
Outside links
 |
("Wikimedia Commons" has material about Sandham Memorial Chapel) |
References
- ↑ National Heritage List 1339741: Sandham Memorial Chapel (Grade I listing)
- ↑ Haycock, David Boyd: 'A Crisis of Brilliance' (2009) p 331
- ↑ Bromwell: 'The God-Box of Burghclere' (2014), p 58
- Behrend, George (1965). Stanley Spencer at Burghclere. London: MacDonald.
- Gough, Paul (2006). Stanley Spencer: Journey to Burghclere. Bristol: Sansom. ISBN 1-904537-46-4.
- Haycock, David Boyd (2009). A Crisis of Brilliance: Five Young British Artists and the Great War. London: Old Street Publishing. ISBN 978-1-905847-84-6.
- Bromwell, Tom: 'The God-Box of Burghclere': National Trust Historic Houses and Collections Annual, Apollo Magazine (2014)
