St. Andrew, Cuffley
Cuffley’s 1960s church looms over the town, its A-frame presenting a glazed gable to the street. With its high central position and its big brutal cross, it looked like the sort of church that Albert Speer would design. To top it all off, the metal cross has florescent lighting built in, an unbelievably kitsch idea. All metal and glass on a brick clad podium that contains grubby meeting rooms, its approach up a fair number of steps is made no prettier by unimaginative planting and the odd trough of plants.
Cuffley’s 1960s church looms over the town, its A-frame presenting a glazed gable to the street. With its high central position and its big brutal cross, it looked like the sort of church that Albert Speer would design. To top it all off, the metal cross has florescent lighting built in, an unbelievably kitsch idea. All metal and glass on a brick clad podium that contains grubby meeting rooms, its approach up a fair number of steps is made no prettier by unimaginative planting and the odd trough of plants.
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An attempt to add artworks has been only partially successful, with a chrome spittoon for a font and the much vaunted annealed glass windows by Alf Fisher, which make so little sense that he’s had to scrawl a text across them to give them meaning. The later window with a tree of life is aesthetically preferable, indeed better than most, as so often modern stained glass artists feel afraid to come off the fence of abstraction and make a figurative stand, preferring instead the vague or the bland. There’s a sort of crucifixion hung over the altar, with arms outstretched from a torso but repeated twice; as an artwork it looks interesting, but I was lost for a meaning, and surely in this context meaning is all. Perhaps art for art's sake is the closest we can get to the numinous nowadays, and it sure beats dogma.
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What really struck home was none of these quibbles, but the fact that this felt like an exclusive rather than an inclusive building; here was a church not built for everyone in the parish, but only for that minority who were a particular sort of believer. Most old parish churches were formed and altered by an ever changing set of beliefs, and everyone from catholics to atheists had a right of burial, whereas here is a meeting house for a small group on Sundays, lacking in history and heritage alike. This was a church for Anglican Christians, not the common man, and the feeling of being in someone else’s house was the same that I have in some non-C.of E. chapels, whereas in most parish churches I’m completely at home. Maybe this is something that time could cure, but I doubt such a building will last that long. If it’s lucky, time will add enough layers to give this church what it lacks, after all everywhere was new once, and it’s people not gods that give such places meaning and atmosphere.
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Generally open in the week, though the first time I visited, I rang the churchwarden to check, only to find it locked when I arrived. Not what you want after a two hour trip, though I’ve tried really hard to not let that affect my judgement.
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All rights reserved for this entire site. Copyright reserved to stiffleaf for all text and images, which may not be reproduced without my permission.
