A 12TH-CENTURY Greek lectionary that was donated to a village church in 1948 cannot be sold without a faculty, the Consistory Court of the diocese of Southwark has ruled.
In his judgment, the Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Philip Petchey, said that the parish responsible for the unconsecrated church of the Wisdom of God, Lower Kingswood, must obtain a faculty in order to sell the lectionary, even though the item was gifted before the church became subject to the faculty jurisdiction.
The church is Grade I listed, and was built in 1896 as a gift by two residents of Lower Kingswood: Sir Cosmo Bonsor, chairman of Watney’s Brewery, and Dr Edwin Freshfield, a partner in a firm of solicitors which still bears his name.
Sir Edwin had a lifetime interest in Greece and commissioned the architect, Sydney Barnsley, to design a church in the Byzantine style. It is dedicated to the Wisdom of God, and is described in Sir Simon Jenkins’s book England’s Thousand Best Churches (1999) as “a Byzantine shrine somehow detached from Constantinople and dropped into the Home Counties”.
The church is licensed for public worship in the parish of St Andrew’s, Kingswood, but has never been consecrated. It is vested in three trustees, and the parish pays for its maintenance and management.
In 1948, the widow of Dr Freshfield’s son gave a 12th-century Greek lectionary to the church, and the plan was for it to be displayed in a glass cabinet in the church. But that did not happen, owing to practical difficulties, and the lectionary was put into a bank vault, although it may have been brought out and displayed in the church on festival occasions.
From 1968 to 2019, the lectionary was on loan to the British Library, and, since then, it has been in the care of Trinity College, Cambridge. In February 2024, the then Priest-in-Charge of St Andrew’s, the Revd Christine Colton, and the two churchwardens sought authority to sell the lectionary.
If the faculty jurisdiction did not apply, the sale could go ahead without the consent of the court. That would make the sale much simpler, and would avoid the possibility that the court might not give consent.
In February 1990, the then Bishop of Southwark had made an order under section 6 of the Faculty Jurisdiction Measure 1964 that the church should come under the faculty jurisdiction of the court of the diocese. Section 6(2) of the Measure provides that any building in respect of which such an order was made “shall, during the period specified in the order, be subject together with its furnishings and contents, to the jurisdiction of the court specified in the order”.
The Diocesan Chancellor, the Worshipful Philip Petchey, said that the question that arose was whether, in 1990, the lectionary formed part of the contents of the church. The Bishop’s order did not specify any period during which the building should be subject to the faculty jurisdiction, and, in the absence of express provision, the Chancellor said that the order should be read as being made “until further order”.
The Chancellor decided that, although the lectionary had never had a permanent home in the church, “in 1948 it would have been appropriately viewed as part of the contents of the church” since “it must have been given and received on the basis that it would in some way be made available to be seen within the church.”
Although the donor’s intention must be relevant to ascertaining the status of the lectionary, the Chancellor said that “Mrs Freshfields’s gift was not a conditional one and by 1968 it must have been apparent that the lectionary was never going to be displayed in the church.” The loan was not, in fact, a permanent one, but, in 1968, there were no envisaged circumstances in which it would come back to the church.
Even on the basis that it was a permanent loan, the Chancellor said that it was “still apt after 1968 to describe the lectionary as part of the contents of the church . . . even if its whereabouts were not physically inside the church”. Therefore, it was necessary that, if the lectionary was to be sold, a faculty be obtained, the Chancellor ruled.
The Chancellor asked for confirmation that the current proposal was for a sale at less than market value to Trinity College, Cambridge. On that basis, the Chancellor needed an up-to-date valuation, and to be told what the college was minded to pay. The Chancellor would then have to apply the guidance given by the Court of Arches regarding church treasures.
