 | St. Michael and All Angels is the parish church for the villages of
Great Witley and Little Witley.
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| The parish of Great Witley was a flourishing community in saxon times
and it is believed a parish church had existed on or around the present site for many
centuries.
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| Thomas Foley of Stourbridge in Worcestershire bought the estate in 1655.
At that time a sandstone medieval church stood to the west of the current site. His
grandson Thomas III decided to build a new church but died in 1732 before work started.
It was left to his widow Mary and son Thomas IV, the second baron Foley, to pay for
the new church, which was built closer to the court, was of similar size and had access to
the court through a door in the east transept. The church was completed in 2 years
probably to designs of James Gibbs. It was plain with a brick exterior and stone dressings
matching the facade of the court at that time. Lady Foley died in
December 1735, before the church was opened for worship, but had already commissioned the
huge monument to her late husband which stands in the south transept. The memorial,
sculpted by John Michael Rysbrack commemorates Lord and Lady Foley and the five children
who predeceased them. It was completed in 1735 at a cost of £2000 and is the tallest
funerary monument in the country. The interior of the church was plain with a flat
ceiling, plain windows and walls, box pews and a high pulpit that had a sounding board
above. The reredos panels were wood with the Lord's prayer, ten commandments and the
creed.
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| The Georgian church was transformed in 1747 when the second baron Foley
acquired at auction the windows, ceiling paintings and organ from the chapel of the great
house of Canons, Little Stanmore, near Edgeware, Middlesex. The owner James Brydges 1st
Duke of Chandos, had lost most of his money in the South Sea Bubble in 1720 and his son
had to auction the contents of his mansion built between 1713 and 1743 after his fathers
death in 1744.
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| The stained and painted windows were by Joshua
Price in 1719 and 1721 from designs by an Italian artist. The original openings were 9
inches shorter than those at Witley Church so a border had to be added at the bottom of
each. The ceiling paintings are the work of the Italian artist
Antonio Bellucci. The organ had been used at
Canons by Handel who was music director to the Duke of Chandos. The gilded stucco
mouldings were originally created by Giovanni Bagutti who also worked at Castle Howard in
Yorkshire. Instead of transporting all the plasterwork to Witley, papier mache moulds were
taken from the original designs, a method which had just been perfected by Henry Clay of
Birmingham a short time before the sail. The barrel-vaulted ceiling was suspended below
the original flat ceiling, so the lightness of using papier mache was very important.
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| Later members of the Foley family incurred massive debts and had to sell
the court. In 1837 the court was sold for £890,000 to the Ward family, Earls of Dudley.
In 1846 at the age of 28 Lord Ward came into his inheritance and soon started
to transform both the court and the church. He employed architect Samuel Whitfield Daukes
to enlarge the court and transform it based upon the 16th and 17th Italian designs which
had become more fashionable after Osborne House on the Isle of Wight had been constructed
for Queen Victoria between 1845 and 1848.
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| The outside of the court and church were covered in Bath stone. James and William
Forsyth were sculptors who worked on the house, fountains in the gardens and in the
church. The box pews were replaced, and a new pulpit was added in place
of the plain Georgian one but the original wrought-iron stair railing was reused.
The marble floor that was laid was identical to the one provided by the Earl
in Worcester Cathedral. The font carved by James and William Forsyth is in white
marble with a black base. The oak wooden cover has a figure of St. John the Baptist on the
top. The communion rails are of wrought brass and ironwork and the three sanctuary
lamps were a gift from Lady Dudley after the safe return of her husband and his brothers
from the Boer War. The mosaic panels of the reredos were brought from Venice by
Rachel 2nd Countess of Dudley in 1913.
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| As a result of foreign competition the Dudley wealth was on the wane. Between 1889 and
1913 the Earl is known to have mortgaged the estate and sold paintings to fund his
extravagant entertaining. In June 1920 the second Earl's wife Rachel was drowned in
a swimming accident in Ireland. The court was sold to a Kidderminster Industrialist named
Herbert Smith, later to become Sir Herbert. Staff numbers were reduced over the years and
when the fire broke out in the court in 1937 only a few servants were in the house.
Fortunately the fire never reached the church. The insurance was only enough to cover a
quarter of the cost of rebuilding. Sir Herbert decided to sell.
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| The church had always had it's heating supplied by the coal fired boilers at the court,
so after the fire the church was rarely heated, neglected and damp and decay set in. In
1965 parishioners realised that the building would be irreparably damaged if action was
not taken. A restoration programme was begun. Extensive renovation has already been
carried out on the roof, tower and cupola, but these and the whole of the external
stonework required comprehensive work to rectify some of the deterioration due to natural
weathering and corrosion. In the 1970's the windows were removed, restored and releaded.
Roger has further information on his own website www.nifty.demon.co.uk |
Great Witley Church 
