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Nineteenth-century Restoration and the Victorians who left their mark on The Cathedral and Abbey Church of St Alban, created in 1877

In 1797 "The Great Storm" devastated many trees and buildings all over England.

St Albans Abbey suffered damage, and though a survey commissioned soon after suggested substantial urgent repairs, they were not carried out due to lack of funds. So it was no surprise to those who had read the survey that, in 1832, a tremendous noise was heard locally when part of the top of the south nave wall collapsed taking lead and timber down with the falling masonry. This was reported in the national press of the time: a crisis point had been reached. Was the great church to be left to collapse entirely, or was it to be saved? Fortunately the Earl of Verulam led a fund-raising campaign which raised £4,000 but much more was needed. In 1835 events took a turn for the better when Dr Henry Nicholson arrived as rector and for the next 30 years provided strong leadership, beginning with the formation of a restoration committee.

He uncovered many of the monastic wall paintings, some of the finest in the British Isles, and alerted the educated classes to their importance. He wrote the first scholarly guidebook, and personally bought the advowson from the town corporation and gave it to the bishop. He appointed Sir George Gilbert Scott as architect in 1856, marking a period of great change, and Scott worked on the Abbey, his favourite church, until his death in 1878.

In 1870, just as work was about to begin on the nave, a crisis occurred. During a service John Chapple, the clerk of works, heard an ominous crack from the tower. Close examination revealed that the south east pier had been undermined, probably in the 17th century, and a man-sized cavity excavated. Perhaps a plan to bring down the tower had been abandoned. The cavity was filled with struts which, during a hot summer, had begun to split. Chapple realised with horror that the whole tower was moving towards collapse. With Scott giving emergency instructions from his London sick bed, Chapple and his men worked for four days and nights to prop up the tower and thus save it from collapse. Then serious work took place to save the finest 11th-century tower in the kingdom.

Scott returned to the repairs needed for the south wall of the nave, leaning out at a perilous angle, which he planned to realign with strategically-placed jacks. Meanwhile, in 1877, the Abbey church became the cathedral for Hertfordshire and Essex, and the elderly Bishop of Rochester was appointed the first Bishop of St Albans. Scott told him that, once the nave was righted, all other necessary restoration could be done piecemeal, as money was raised. And then Scott died of overwork, enabling a retired barrister Edmund Becket Denison (later Lord Grimthorpe) to assert himself over the Bishop and the restoration committee with the understanding that, if granted a legal faculty, he would fund the repairs himself. This childless millionaire was keen to leave his mark on the Abbey for posterity.

Unfortunately Lord Grimthorpe had no architectural training and bad taste. True, he was a good clockmaker, having designed the mechanism of Big Ben. Grimthorpe disliked the Perpendicular style of work and systematically destroyed the west front, the main windows in the north and south transepts, replacing them with elephantine designs of his own. Many antiquarians protested, but no one had the power to stop him. Only Lord Aldenham overcame the “venomous, pompous, righteous bully” as Pevsner describes him.

Lord Aldenham, another millionaire, but with a scholarly understanding of architecture and monastic life, wished to restore the High Altar Screen, bereft since 1547 of its statues. He obtained a faculty and proceeded, after much research, to replace the saints on their pedestals, but when it was clear that he intended to replace a crucifix in the central position, Grimthorpe, a Low Church man, began to roar his disapproval. The Lords went to law over this, as, according to the Book of Common Prayer, only a cross was allowed in the Church of England. But since the reorganising of churches to the medieval design, promoted by Pugin and the Gothic Revival, crucifixes had been making their appearance again. To most people’s delight Aldenham won his case, and the crucifix was restored by the architect Sir Arthur Blomfield.