Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 1929-1990

Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland, 1929-1990. Edited by P S Barnwell and Allan Doig, Shaun Tyas, Donington, 2023, 298 pages, 115 illustrations.

The sculpture of St Michael and Lucifer by Jacob Epstein at Basil Spence’s Coventry Cathedral.

Places of Worship in Britain and Ireland is a gripping read. In origin, it is the proceedings of a conference organised by the Oxford University Department of Continuing Education. As a publication it provides a welcome and constructive collation of contemporary research, bringing an erudite analysis of 60 pivotal years. It makes a valuable resource for those studying the history of the period, a guide to understanding the buildings these decades created, an accurate reading being the essential first step in conservation.

Barnwell warns that, such was the nature of deep-rooted change affecting these places after 1929, an untrained eye considering British townscapes in 1990 might find superficially little difference. However, the preceding decades brought enormous change to the demographics, to the religious faiths of the country and to their buildings. In managing this heritage today we meet a very different reality, a much-altered context. The carefully selected essays in this volume will leave you duly equipped. Christianity, we are reminded, began in a Jewish country, and Judaeo-Christian principles continue to underpin our society.

The particular strength of the volume lies in the breadth of coverage and the combined narratives that win your attention throughout, identification of the diverse causes of physical change and key examples of their translation to built form. Drivers were often the result of a fusion of societal, economic and demographic factors. The Liturgical Movement evolved in parallel with an evangelical appeal to wider communities, seeing a lessening of institutional dominance and, with the impact of Vatican II Council, bringing an ecumenical consensus. Looking beyond the full extent of Christian denominations, including Orthodox, the essays also address the places of worship of the Jewish and Islamic faiths.

Patterns and common themes are carefully outlined, ensuring that the reader is equipped with clear understanding to appreciate design choice, setting and the distinguishing purpose in assessing significance. The chapters detail movements within the various faiths, amalgamations, the re-ordering of churches and re-purposing by others.

The expert authors include Clare Price, Andrew Derrick, Christopher Wakeling, Sharman Kadish and Shahed Saleem. They explain the influence of designs by architects such as NF Cachemaille- Day, Frederick Gibberd, Edward Mills, Maguire and Murray, and the Percy Thomas Partnership in shaping faith buildings by the later years of the twentieth century.

While valuable alternatives combine with this text to complete appreciation of faiths’ evolution in these years, the book stands for the conservation professional and amenity interest as a go-to single volume. The Twentieth Century Society’s Holy Houses (edited by Harwood and Powers, 2022), for example, looks helpfully in more detail at church design and key practices across the decades, and Callum Brown’s Religion and Society in Twentieth Century Britain 2006) focuses on secularisation, the spiritual revolution and the displacement of religion in society. Well-illustrated and with a full index, Places of Worship, 1929-90 captures the essentials, why and how the fabric formed and evolved.

This article originally appeared as ’Evolving faiths’ in the Institute of Historic Building Conservation’s (IHBC’s) Context 181, published in September 2024. It was written by Deborah Mays, a heritage professional and director of the Lutyens Trust.

--Institute of Historic Building Conservation