The History of St Giles

It is a commonly-held fallacy that the prime function of the nave and aisles of a church is to seat as many people as can possibly be crammed into pews and benches. That was certainly not the case in medieval times when the nave and aisles were regarded not as an auditorium filled with a static body of people in fixed seats, but as a liturgical space in which there was movement and drama, for example the festal processions on high days and holy days, and the penitential processions in Lent. Though benches were not uncommon in medieval times, fixed seating as a generality came about only after the Reformation, and the arrangements in early nineteenth-centry Catholic chapels were little different from those of Nonconformist ones, with seating often running right across the width of the building, and with galleries to provide extra accommodation. Pugin would have no such "protestantism's" at Cheadle. When Lord Shrewsbury proposed to fill St. Giles' with seats running the full width of the nave, with so much as a central passage, Pugin reacted with characteristic indignation.

The care which Pugin took over the design of the rood-screen for Cheadle, and his passionate belief in the necessity of screens, have already been noted. The joiners were at work on it as early as February 1842, and Pugin promised that it would be "the richest yet produced". All went well until, in order to cut costs, Lord Shrewsbury proposed to dispense with the services of an expert wood-carver. The screen could be finished instead by one of his own estate joiners, Thomas Harris, who had already done carving in Alton Towers chapel and at St. Johns, Alton. Pugin responded in half-joking fashion, accusing the Earl of penny pinching, and heading his letter (left) with sketches of a rood-screen and a block of cheese marked 2d1/2 a pound. It is not known if the joiner returned.

Pugin experienced great difficulty in finding stained-glass artists who could make windows to his complete satisfaction, and at the right price. The process involved the working-up of Pugins drawings into full size cartoons, and the production of accurate colours by fusing various pigments on to the glass in a kiln at controlled temperatures. For the Cheadle windows he employed William Wailes (1808-1881) of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne. With the exception of the figure of St. Giles' in the south aisle which he had altered at his own expense, Pugin was generally pleased with Wailes' efforts, noting that some of his best craftsmen had gone to Normandy to make special studies of old-style glass.