CATHEDRAL HISTORY
Eric Gill – The Final Years Patrick Rogers for Russia to the Court of St James’s. August 1 1849 – January 11 1917. Requiescat in Pace.
Besides his work on mosaics, Eric Gill was involved in several other Cathedral projects in the years leading up to his death in 1940, though not all were completed. The first was for a tombstone, appropriately enough since Gill had started his career as a carver of tombstones. In 1917 Count Alexander Benckendorff, Tzar Nicholas II’s last Ambassador to Britain, had died of influenza and his daughter, the Hon Mrs Ridley, had arranged for him to be buried in St Peter’s crypt in the Cathedral, as he had requested. But his tomb was unmarked. In March 1938 Mrs Ridley set out to rectify this and the Cathedral Art Committee recommended Gill to carve the inscription. The memorial, of dark green Cumberland slate, was completed by him at a cost of
The design for a sanctuary column capital, with the uncarved capital
some £70 and placed on the tomb in early 1939. It bears the coat of arms of Count Benckendorff and the inscription, in Russian and Latin: Count Alexander Philip Constantin Ludwig Benckendorff, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary
The next work which the committee believed Gill should undertake was in the Cathedral sanctuary. Either side of this are three columns in coloured marble, but their capitals of white carrara marble are as yet uncarved, unlike those elsewhere in the Cathedral. In May 1939 the Art Committee recommended that Gill should carve them and, for good measure, design and carve a Paschal candlestick as well. Cardinal Hinsley turned down the candlestick (thus saving an estimated £200), but agreed to the capitals. Gill’s designs, dated January 1940 and only recently rediscovered, show the Last Supper, Garden of Gethsemane, Scourging at the Pillar, Crowning with Thorns, Nailing to the Cross and Piercing with the Spear. Sadly the War and Gill’s worsening health in 1940 prevented them being executed.
© St Peter’s church, Gorleston-on-Sea
The last project which Eric Gill undertook for the Cathedral was an altarpiece for the Chapel of St George and the English Martyrs. In October 1939 he produced his initial design for a carved panel of Hopton Wood limestone with Christ crucified in
The sanctuary arch at St Peter’s. In Gill’s design for the Cathedral, a chalice would have been at the centre of the arch, at St Peter’s, appropriately, it is the Apostle’s keys that are depicted. 16
Eric Gill’s War Memorial altarpiece for Rossall Scho the Baptist baptising Jesus and being himself behead Oremus
JANUARY 2021
