Restoration of a sculpture at St Martin’s church
While the winter storms are raging outside, a sculpture conservationist is at work in St Martin’s, cleaning and restoring a relief sculpture of St Christopher in plaster. This is the latest project promoted by the St Martin’s Heritage Trust.
St Martin’s was deliberately designed by its Victorian architect, J. D. Sedding, to look, from outside, like a simple village church, but inside it is a rich assembly of works of art. Sedding believed that architects should work closely with artist-craftsmen: this co-operation was ‘the one great desire of his heart, and the purpose of his life’. After his untimely death his successor-in-practice, Henry Wilson, continued to adorn St Martin’s. Wilson was a notably inventive and versatile artist, moving out from architecture into teaching, architectural journalism and exhibition design, and, as a craftsman himself, becoming a leading silversmith and jeweller, and ultimately a sculptor.
His sculpture of St Christopher (bigger than life-size) at St Martin’s was installed in 1909 as a memorial to the founder of the church, Miss Maria Ann Hudson. It faces you as you enter the church by the south door. There was a longstanding tradition of placing a representation of St Christopher here, because there was a superstition that if you saw a representation of St Christopher you would not die that day. There are more than thirty medieval representations of St Christopher in English churches; the nearest to here is in the chapel of Haddon Hall, Derbyshire. Wilson’s figure is in a grand Renaissance style, inspired by Michelangelo.
Because the sculpture was in plaster, with only touches of gilding, its pristine whiteness had become grubby over the years, and the cleaning process is already revealing it with greater clarity. It is being restored by Mareva Conservation of Birmingham. The Heritage Trust is grateful to our local charity, the Macnair Trust, for a grant towards the restoration.
St Martin’s, inconspicuous as it is, is Marple’s stand-out artistic heritage site. A stained-glass window by the famous William Morris was restored in 2024, and now this further project is under way (watch this space for further news). The Heritage Trust has an enthusiastic following, for whom a programme of lectures, events and trips is organised.
Here are a few images of before and during the cleaning process:
