CovSoc Chair, Peter Walters, reports back from our meeting in March 2024. Peter writes…..
Richard Twentyman would not be the first name on any honours list of modern British architects.
His 40-year career designing commercial buildings, churches and private houses was focused almost entirely on the environs of his native Wolverhampton. And for those who like their church architecture carried out with a little bit of a flourish, his work can seem at times blocky and unexciting.
Yet Twentyman, who died in 1979, is increasingly being seen as an important voice in mid-20th century British architecture, a man in tune with the times and the communities within which he worked. And that is very much the view of fellow architect Aidan Ridyard and linguistics professor turned architectural researcher Chris Kennedy, whose book on Twentyman’s churches was published last year.
Their engaging and informative talk to a well-attended March meeting of the Coventry Society examined in detail nine known Twentyman churches (plus two discoveries they say were by him), as well as two crematoria he designed for Wolverhampton and Redditch in Worcestershire. Although keen to minimise decoration in his churches, Twentyman formed long-standing partnerships with a number of artists, notably the Midlands sculptor Don Potter, who created eye-catching work for most of the churches.
Potter designed an extraordinary sculptural frieze above the main door and an eagle lectern for All Saints Church Darlaston, completed in 1952 on the site of a Victorian church destroyed by bombing ten years earlier. All Saints might be regarded as Twentyman’s finest achievement as an architect. It was also, coincidentally, where Aidan Ridyard’s father was vicar.
The church was given an impressive bell tower, a Twentyman trademark, and that was also the case for the architect’s only Coventry church – one of only two he designed outside his ‘home patch’ – St Nicholas Church in Radford, Completed in the mid-1950s, St Nicholas also replaced a church destroyed by war. But sadly now seems on the verge of demolition itself..
Now disused and in an advanced state of dereliction, its chances of longevity were hampered from the beginning by Twentyman’s design that used leaning side walls, ten degrees from the vertical, that allowed the weather to start to take a toll on the building from the outset.
Reluctantly, Ridyard and Kennedy accept that the final bells may have tolled for St Nicholas. But the enthusiasm and grasp of detail in their talk suggests that Richard Twentyman’s reputation is in safe hands.
The Church Architecture of Richard Twentyman by Chris Kennedy and Aidan Ridyard is published by Forest of Arden Press at £25 and is available at richardtwentyman.com.
