Church recording

Church Recording has been a major project of our Arts Society for many years. Under the formidable and kind guidance of Rosanne Kirkpatrick we surveyed dozens of churches. Rosanne led the Church Recorders for more than 25 years. In July 2018, she retired from her role. 

Churches and chapels contain many objects of great artistic and historic interest, in some cases of outstanding quality.  Always under threat from theft, decay and vandalism, it is of great importance that a lasting record is made of this wonderful heritage.  Church Recording is a national project, established by The Arts Society and now 40 years old, which the Saffron Walden society joined in 1981. Rosanne Kirkpatrick led the Church Recorders for our society for many years. She has now retired from active involvement after the mammoth project of putting together the record for St Mary’s Saffron Walden. There are no current projects planned. 

Our group of 16 volunteers made detailed records of the contents of churches in Uttlesford. We described, measured, photographed, and where suitable, researched the memorials, metalwork, stonework, woodwork, textiles, pictures, library and windows. There is a Miscellaneous section which includes, for instance. the organ.

 

  • A printed and bound Record was then compiled containing the illustrated information and a copy of this was presented to the church. Four other copies went to:
  • the Essex Record Office (ERO),
  • the Library of the Cathedrals and Churches Building Division (CCB) at Church House Westminster,
  • the Arts Library at the Victoria and Albert Museum London and
  • the National Monuments Record Centre (NMRC) at Swindon.

Church Recording – St Mary’s Saffron Walden

After two and a half years’ work, the Church Record of St Mary’s Saffron Walden is complete.

St Mary’s is the largest parish church in Essex and it has been a huge job to record the contents – over three hundred pages of text and seven hundred photographs!

It has been a fascinating project, and the final step was to present the result to the Church Wardens.

This took place during the morning service on Sunday 3 September 2018, in front of a large congregation and with representatives of the team of Church Recorder volunteers from The Arts Society, Saffron Walden, who had worked so hard to complete the Record. 

Special tribute was rightly paid to Rosanne Kirkpatrick, the team leader and chief editor of the Record.