Trip to St.Mark's Church with Michael Gray

 After our March talk on the History, Art and Architecture of St.Mark's Church, heritage architect Michael Gray kindly agreed to give us a guided tour of the church  on the 11th of May. It was our first trip of the year and we were looking forward to meeting up in person again. There was a great turn out, but the weather was challenging, the 11th marked the first day of rain after something like 7 weeks without rain. The garden was desperate for rain, but we weren't, especially when outside in the graveyard. I took some photos which appear here, for more detail on St.Mark's, please click on the link to the blog above.

We started by looking at the outside of the church, as you can see it was wet! The church is very impressive from the outside, designed by architect Sir George Gilbert Scott, it showed its best side to the railway line that went beside it so people on the train knew they took things seriously in Swindon and could be very grand

This photo shows Michael with Maria Drysz beside him recording the talk for radio 105.5. The interview can be heard as follows: Michael Gray talking about local architecture in general and St Marks in particular, Thurs 26th May 3pm.    Repeats on Sun 29th May 5pm Spotlight 105.5 FM Copied and pasted so strange white background!!

Some of the monuments in the graveyard are listed, I could only find a listing for the Armstrong monument, but they were very impressive.

I looked up Christian Rea, you can find a copy of his will here, he died on 15th of September 1857, and is described as a 'Gentleman of Swindon'.

Another view of the tower

And once safely inside, we were shown a print of the original Gilbert Scott drawing of the church, vicarage and school.

Here's a general view of the inside of the church looking towards the altar

I listened to Michael talking about these windows, and realise I have written something about each one in the post about the original talk, so will refer you to that now.

The lectern is rather impressive

This is the window designed by Martin Travers, on a sunny day, the sun shines through this wonderfully

The parable of the prodigal son is a wonderful window

This one is beautiful, an 'off the shelf' design rather than individually designed for the church

This is the latest addition to the stained glass, the top panel reads 'Forward in Faith' and references the 4 churches in the area: St.Mark's represented by the lion, St.Saviour's by a crown of thorns surrounding a ball, St.Aldhelm's by a lyre and St.Luke's represented by a flying bull or ox

We finished the tour off with a choice of home made cakes and biscuits and a drink. With grateful thanks to Michael Gray and Fr Toby Boutle, the Parish Priest and the whole team who were there on that day to welcome us. You did a brilliant job.