Relhan Collection : 331 Whittlesea, church of St Mary. W view

Relhan, Richard, 1782-1844

Relhan Collection

Lysons 1808Drawn by S Lysons, copied by Relhan‘One of the most splendid steeples of Cambridgeshire’ and ‘in every detail as expensive as possible’ (Bradley and Pevsner), describes this mid-C15 late addition to the church, which is in the Northamptonshire style. This W end of the church is still very much the glorious view recorded in 1808 and was copied and embellished by Relhan, who added gravestones, the landscape at a cross roads with 4 well-dressed people (2 of the men looking suspiciously like Relhan senior, surely a complete invention in this location), and has coloured it. In 1745 Cole says that ‘The churchyard is as full of grave stones as ever it can hold; I only had time to take one handsome free stone altar tomb’, indicating a much larger churchyard than the present tight space. Relhan shows only 6 gravestones around the church and one that is almost legible (John Bea...) in the foreground. There was some invention here, for Whittlesea is a long way from Cambridge, Relhan recorded no other sites in the area and Lysons published engraving does not show a churchyard or other surrounding features that Relhan erroneously added. As at Stretham (296) the rural landscape in particular is fake, as the real view points to the centre of the medieval and later town, adjacent to a market place, whilst the rural landscape could be seen in the opposite direction. There are now C18 gravestones laid flat just S of the church, and more leaning against the N churchyard wall may be of a similar date. The earlier churchyard was cleared so it could be used for recreational purposes. The present churchyard is bounded by an iron fence close to the church, on the site shown by Relhan as a path at the W end. These additional misplaced features could reasonably have been added to the Lysons etching without a visit to the site.Bradley and Pevsner 2014; Palmer 1932; Lysons 1808; VCH 2002