St Lawrence's Church, Aldfield

Never were two neighbouring churches offering so great a contrast. St Mary’s Church at Studley Royal is high Victoriana par excellence; it replaced St Lawrence’s Church, above and below, at nearby Aldfield which is a more typically Georgian preaching house. The former is longing for that medieval world of arches and incense; the latter loves the Common Prayer and the reading of the Authorised Version. St Lawrence’s ‘altar’ is off to the side, while the pulpit dominates the room. The eighteenth-century Anglican came to pray the familiar words of Cranmer’s liturgy and to hear the parson's preaching; the later, high Victorian came for visual delight and audible beauty. St Lawrence's is plain and dignified rather than busy and gaudy.

Curiously, it was the plainer of the two that produced the famous artist William Powell Frith RA (1819 – 1909), not the aesthetically overwhelming one at Studley Royal. This may just, of course, be God’s good providence rather than any proof of plainness producing beauty. Yet sometimes it is bareness which makes plenty, and simplicity which makes loveliness. The most ordinary-looking folk often have the most attractive characters, and the people from the poorest backgrounds work the hardest and rightly value money. Humility makes the best Christians, and serious, Word-based churches the finest followers of Christ.

The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. Ps 51:17