St Mary’s Church, Twickenham

St Mary’s Church at Twickenham is a peculiar building, with a late medieval tower affixed to a later, Georgian nave and chancel. The older stone and newer brick do not make happy bedfellows, and I assumed that the eighteenth-century folk of this smart village wished to update their church in the latest, neo-classical style without the expense of a new bell tower. In fact, the nave had collapsed on 9th April, 1713 (which mean it is older than Georgian), with only the tower surviving.

Lady Wentworth, writing in the following May, mentioned the vicar, one Doctor Pratt, who

“… had insisted that a tabernakle be erected in the churchyard, prior to the collapse. Soe he preached there and exhorted al to giv thanks for thear great deleverenc for the church not falling when they wear in it, it being then standing. The people all laughed at him, and in a weeks time it fell to the ground, soe all the parish contrebutse to the building of it”.

How he could detect this imminent disaster is not recorded, but the fashionable folk of Twickenham pooh-poohed his caution, yet it was their very lives he might have saved without their even knowing.

I hope that Doctor Pratt’s awareness for the dangers of the coming judgement of God proved just as determined as his intuition of structural weaknesses in buildings. The Christian warns of the great tribunal that is being arranged and the gospel’s glorious remedy. Many will respond with careless laughter and mocking merriment, but one day, the whole earth is going to collapse, and our great rebellion with it.

And heaven departed away, as a scroll, when it is rolled, and every mountain and isle were moved out of their places. And the kings of the earth, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, and every bondman, and every free man, hid themselves in dens, and among the rocks of the mountains, and said to the mountains and rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the presence of him that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the Lamb. Revelation 6:14-16, 1599 Geneva Bible

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