Category: Church

Le Thoronet Abbey, Var, Provence, 83340 France

On a perfect day in Provence, I leaned against a wall and sketched a view of Le Thoronet.

Le Thoronet Abbey, Var, Provence, 83340 France sketched 15th February 2026 on Arches 300gsm watercolour paper, size A5

I loved this place because of its mathematical precision. As I sketched, I noticed that the tower is an isosceles triangle on top of a square. The windows are semicircles on top of rectangles. Some of the windows are circular.

The whole building has similar satisfying geometry.

Le Thoronet Abbey, 7×5 photographs on Ilford XP2 film with an Olympus XA2 point-and-shoot camera, film developed by filmprocessing.co.uk. Film reference 201.

This is a Cistercian abbey, founded in 1136. It was built between 1160 and 1230. “restoration work began in 1841 and continues today” says the leaflet. The building is now State-owned. While we were there, a service was taking place in its austere geometric chapel.

Le Corbusier visited the Abbey in 1953.

He wrote of the Abbey of Le Thoronet: ” Light and shadow are the loudspeakers of this architecture of truth, calm and strength “.

Quoted on the Abbey website on this link
Le Thoronet Abbey, photograph on Ilford XP2 film with an Olympus XA2 point-and-shoot camera, film developed by filmprocessing.co.uk. Film reference 201.

References and links:

Novel, by Fernand Pouillon (1912-1986), about the building of the Abbey, and the struggles faced by the construction workers: “Les Pierres Sauvages” (1960)

An article in the Journal “Drawing Matter” about the drawings of Fernand Pouillon: https://drawingmatter.org/fernand-pouillons-survey-of-the-abbey-of-le-thoronet/

Reference to Le Corbusier’s visit in 1953 from the website of the Abbey shop: https://www.boutiquedupatrimoine.fr/en/content/58-abbaye-du-thoronet.html

Click below to download a scan of the leaflet from the Abbey.

Leaflet from Le ThoronetDownload
Sketching at Le Thoronet Abbey
A glimpse of the unadorned interior. Digital photograph.

Rotherhithe Tunnel, South Entrance, London SE16

Having sketched the North entrance of the Rotherhithe Tunnel, I then went to have a look at the South entrance. Here it is:

Rotherhithe Tunnel South Entrance, and St Olav’s Church, Rotherhithe, London SE 16 7JB, sketched 18th November 2025

The church is St Olav’s, the Norwegian Church in London. It was designed by John Love Seaton Dahl, and the foundation stone was laid in 1926 by Prince Olav, later King Olav V, of Norway.

The steel arch over the tunnel approach road is part of the equipment used to cut the tunnel, as on the North side.

Sketch detail showing the steel arch.

Below is a photo taken from the front courtyard of the church, looking back towards my sketching location. You can see the steel arch above the wall of the Church courtyard.

View of the arch above the Rotherhithe Tunnel Approach road, from the front courtyard of St Olave’s church

As you see, there were many trees. I was sketching from a traffic island, between major roads.

Map showing my sketching location (red dot and arrow)

Above me there were parakeets, the green ones. I think this is the furthest east I have heard parakeets. They seem to be migrating slowly across London, West to East, and North to South.

Sketching amongst greenery, Rotherhithe Tunnel South entrance

I enjoyed the weathervane on the church: a viking boat.

For completeness, here is a map showing the entire route of the Rotherhithe tunnel.

Background map (c) OpenStreetMap contributors

I reached the South entrance via the “Brunel Tunnel”, which is now used by the Windrush Line.

I’ve now sketched both entrances and two of the shafts. Here are the other posts. Click on the image to go to my article about it on this website.

North Entrance
Shaft 3
Shaft 2

Here’s my sketchbook with this sketch:

Sketchbook 16 page spread

Sketchbook: Arches Aquarelle 300gsm, book made by Wyvern Bindery

Paints: Roman Szmal

Pen and ink: De Atramentis Document Ink, Black, in a Lamy Safari fountain pen with Extra-Fine nib.

St Barnabus Jericho, Oxford OX2

Walking through Jericho on my way to the station, I glimpsed this church tower, and heard its bells. I wove through the small streets until I found it.

St Barnabus Jericho, OX2 6BG, sketched 26 April 2025 in Sketchbook 15.

This is St Barnabus Jericho. Its website says that it is also known as “Oxford Basilica”. It was built as the daughter church of St Paul’s, which is the Grecian-style building on Walton Street, now no longer a church1.

St Paul’s is not far away, just the other side of The Oxford University Press. It was opened in 1836, and became part of the “Oxford Movement”. The Oxford Movement was campaign within the Church of England, led by influential clergymen and theologians in the 1830s. They challenged the contemporary way of thinking in the Church, saying that services were too plain, and that much of value from the Catholic tradition had been left behind. They sought to re-instate some of the theology, pageantry and ritual from the Catholic tradition, and they put it into their services. They also had a social calling, drawn to help working people and the disadvantaged.2

As you can imagine, this was contentious: popular with some people, and regarded as suspicious and un-English by others. In the 1830s, the movement flourished in this part of Oxford. The services at St Paul’s became so crowded that another church was needed. In addition, Oxford University Press moved into its huge site on Walton Street in 1830, which brought many workers to the area. So an additional church was created, and this was St Barnabus.

“The land for St Barnabas was given by George Ward who was an Oxford ironmonger, and the benefactor for the Church building was the generous Thomas Combe, Printer to the University, along his wife Martha.” [https://www.sbarnabas.org.uk/history]

St Barnabus opened for worship in 1869, and is flourishing to this day. Inside it is awe-inspiring and uplifting, with its highly decorated walls and vast size.

I sketched St Barnabus from outside “The Old Bookbinders” pub, delighted and frustrated in equal measure by the extraordinary detail in that tower. And I was looking at its clock, which informed me of the passing minutes until my train.

I finished the pen-and-ink drawing. Then I walked on, past Worcester College, to the railway station.

Sketchbook spread, St Barnabus Jericho. Sketchbook 15.

Footnotes

  1. St Paul’s: the impressive Grecian temple building on Walton St is no longer a church, but the “St Paul’s” name lives on. I’ve done an earlier sketch which shows St Paul’s Nursery, still very much in operation and part of Somerville College.
    ↩︎
  2. Oxford Movement: This is my non-specialist summary of a significant and complex theological and social movement. For a proper description see, for example the Wikipedia Article, or this glossary article. ↩︎

Tower of St Anne’s Church Limehouse, E14

This is the tower of St Anne’s Church Limehouse, seen from the south.
St Anne’s is a church designed by Nicholas Hawksmoor, consecrated in 1730.

St Anne’s Church Limehouse tower, sketched 28 August 2024 in sketchbook 15

This tower shows the marine connections of this church:

The prominent tower with its golden ball on the flagpole became a Trinity House “sea mark” on navigational charts and the Queens Regulations still permit St Anne’s Limehouse to display the White Ensign”.

Wikipedia (1 October 2024)
White ensign

The White Ensign is definitely flying. In my drawing the flag is blowing away from me, so you can’t see it well. It is the flag flown by British Navy ships and certain navy-related buildings on land, of which St Anne’s in one.

The golden ball is clearly visible on the flagpole, the “sea mark” mentioned in articles about the church. I had a look to see if I could find St Anne’s on a navigational chart. The Port of London Authority offers navigational maps of the Thames – but sadly St Anne’s is not shown as a “sea mark” on any of them.

Detail from Chart 319 from the Port of London Authority. The red circle where St Anne’s is, but it’s not shown as a “sea mark”.

The church has a lovely quiet garden. I sketched from the wooden seat, watched by a robin.

Sketchbook 15

Here are other sketches I’ve done around Limehouse and Wapping, near here:

Christ Church, Esher, KT10

Christ Church Esher stands on the top of a hill, near the intersection of roads that marks Esher town centre.

Christ Church, Church Street, Esher, Surrey, KT10 8 QS. Sketched 28 May 2024, in Sketchbook 14

The church has a “splayed foot” spire.

SPLAYED-FOOT: variation of the broach form, found in England principally in the south-east, in which the four cardinal faces are splayed out near their bases, to cover the corners, while oblique (or intermediate) faces taper away to a point.

BROACH: starting from a square base, then carried into an octagonal section by means of triangular faces.

– Pevsner’s Architectural Glossary, page 116, under “SPIRE”

This simple and elegant geometry turned out to be rather tricky to draw. I worked hard to get the shape of the spire correct.

Sketching the spire of Christ Church

The church was built in 1853-1854 to the design of Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880) according to its Historic England listing entry. Ferrey studied under A.W.N. Pugin1, and like Pugin, designed in the style known as “Gothic Revival”. Christ Church was built because the growing congregation could no longer be housed in the smaller St George’s, a little way down the hill.

I sketched the church on location and added the colour later. The colours are:

  • Mars Yellow
  • Green Gold
  • Phthalo Blue Turquoise

I used just three colours, all Daniel Smith. I used gold paint for the clock. The clock is on the roof of the spire, which is remarkable. Usually the clock is on the tower, below the spire. So I wanted to put it in and show its unusual location.

Here is a sketch map of the area.

See this post for my sketch of St George’s, this post for the Tin Tabernacle in West End Esher, and this post for sketches of the council housing in Lower Green.

References

Historic England Listing Entry: https://historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1188268?section=comments-and-photos downloaded 7th June 2024, contains also many photos of the interior of Christ Church.

Ferrey’s biography is on Wikipedia, and also on “The Victorian Web” at this link: https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/ferrey/

1A.W.N. Pugin designed, amongst other things, the inside of the Houses of Parliament: https://heritagecollections.parliament.uk/stories/the-architects-barry-pugin-and-scott/. The Houses of Parliament are a classic example of Gothic Revival Style. The Houses of Parliament were designed by a team consisting of Charles Barry, A.W.N. Pugin and later Giles Gilbert Scott.

Crete sketches 2024

Here are a selection of sketches made in Crete. The sketchbook is Jackson’s Art Supplies’ own brand, 160gsm watercolour paper, cotton blend, about 8″ x 9″.

I used some of the local earth as pigment, to make a watercolour, using Schmincke watercolour binder.

Binder + earth = watercolour
Binder
Watercolour

I ground the earth using a stone, breaking it up to make a powder like talcum powder. It still had bits in, but I managed to separate it by shaking, and scooped most of the bits off the top with a teaspoon. Then add an equal quantity, by volume, of the binder, and scoop into a suitable receptacle. It can be used immediately: it has the consistency of paint from a tube. Or. leave it to dry, then it’s like a watercolour pan. The “suitable receptacle” here is an empty butter portion container.

Home-made watercolour pan.

The watercolour works amazing well. It is a rich red-brown colour. Ideal for painting the surrounding scenery.

Painting with home-made watercolour

You can see it, for example, in this picture:

Here is a flick through the sketchbook:

Crete sketchbook flick-through

Cambridge Hall, Tin Tabernacle, Kilburn NW6 5BA

I was reading about “tin tabernacles” having sketched the “Tin Tabernacle” in Esher. I discovered, via a Historic England blog article, that there is a Tin Tabernacle in Kilburn in London. So I went to have a look. It is an “iron church” built of galvanised corrugated iron in 1863. It used to have a steeple, but that has disappeared.

Here it is now:

Cambridge Hall, Cambridge Avenue, Kilburn NW6 5BA, sketched 28 February 2024 3pm in sketchbook 14

The building was built as a church, and more recently was a centre for Sea Cadets. Its future is under discussion, according to an article on the London Historic Buildings Trust site (LHBT).

The site is owned by Notting Hill Genesis Housing Association (NHG).  LHBT are currently working with NHG and the Sea Cadets, supported by Historic England and the Conservation Officer at Brent Council, to explore how the building can be stabilised and used in the future.

https://londonhistoricbuildings.org.uk/index.php/tin-tabernacle-kilburn/

The latest date mentioned in this article is 2021, so I guess the exploration is still going on. It’s listed as a “current project” on their website. The building was looking a little precarious when I visited this year (February 2024). An alarm was sounding inside.

It is Grade II listed, and on the Heritage at Risk Register. The listing is on this link. It is currently an events venue, the website is:
http://tintabernaclekilburn.org/

Here are some photos of the outside:

The building is about 150m north of Kilburn Park underground station on the Bakerloo Line.

The London Historic Buildings site has a “Virtual Visit” link, so you can see what it looks like inside, and there is a timeline of the building (click below to see it, 2 pages PDF):

tin-tab-timeline-v2Download

It’s a building with a varied history. I wonder what will happen to it?

Sketch and notes in sketchbook 14

UPDATE: 6th March 2026

An article on “Ian Visits” says that the Ministry of Defence is funding the removal of the two training guns inside the church:

Their removal is now expected to make it easier to pursue restoration works and attract the significant external funding needed to repair the building and secure a sustainable future. The London Historic Buildings Trust is leading the restoration work with the aim of opening the Tin Tabernacle as an active community asset for Kilburn.

“Ian Visits” website: https://www.ianvisits.co.uk/articles/the-church-with-anti-aircraft-guns-kilburns-unusual-naval-relics-removed-88029/

St George’s Esher, Old Church, KT10 9PX

After sketching the Tin Tabernacle in Esher West End, I walked into the town centre to sketch another St George’s: St George’s Old Church.

St George’s, Esher, Old Church. Sketched February 2024 in Sketchbook 14

Here is the notice by the door:

ST GEORGE ESHER
This church is cared for by
The Churches
Conservation Trust.
Although no longer needed for regular worship, it remains a consecrated building, a part of England’s history, maintained for the benefit of this and future generations.

Here is the notice hanging from a post by the gate:

Welcome to ST. GEORGE’S CHURCH

Esher’s oldest public building and one of the earliest Anglican churches.
Most of the structure is 16th Century Tudor Two 18th Century features of te Church are a 3-decker pulpit and the Newcastle chamber pew designed by Sir John Vanburgh for Thomas Pelham., Duke of Newcastle and his brother Henry: both served as Prime Minister.
Princess Charlotte – heir to George IV – and Prince Leopold – who became the first King of the Belgians – worshipped here when they lived at Claremont after their marriage in 1816.
Queen Victoria, Leopold’s niece attended services when visiting her uncle and later came with Prince Albert.
When Christ Church was completed in 1854 St George’s ceased to be the Parish Church.
Restored by the community in 1965 it remains a consecrated building now in the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. Several services are held each year. It is also a venue for music and the arts.

I sketched it from the graveyard, as the sun set. So many angles and views! It has been altered and added to and mended, yet is graceful and somehow perfect.

Behind the church there were crocuses.

A wonderful place! Tranquillity just off the main road.

Here’s a map. I walked here from the St Georges West End, along the route marked with a red line on the map: a half hour’s walk, just over a mile.

Here is work in progress on the drawing.

Tin Tabernacle, St George’s West End, Esher KT10 8LF

Beside the green on the West side of Esher stands this iron church, St George’s West End.

St George’s West End, Esher. Sketched on location February 2024, in Sketchbook 14

It has a single bell in its small bell tower, and a fence made in a particular way, which I tried hard to show. I wondered if it is intentionally in the shape of a line of crosses, appropriate for a Christian church.

This is one of dozens of “tin tabernacles” or iron churches across the UK. Wikipedia has a whole list. Some of them are strikingly similar to this one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tin_tabernacle

They were built in the late 19th century, in response to expanding demand, using the new technology of corrugated iron. Many of them, including this one, were pre-fabricated.

According to a 2004 article on this church by Angela Stockbridge the land was donated by Queen Victoria in 1878. “A need was felt to make provision for “the spiritual wants of the “Aged, Poor and Infirm of West End”” and to spare them from the steep and often muddy climb into Esher” she writes. It was intended to be a temporary church. 145 years later, here it is, still standing, and still hosting services.

The church is dedicated to St George. Above the porch is a stained glass window, evidently showing the Knight slaughtering the Dragon. I could just make him out standing on the stirrups of his white horse. The church was closed when I visited, but I hope to go inside on a future occasion. I am told that inside it is cladded with white-painted wood panelling.

I sketched the church from the village green opposite. It was damp and muddy. When I’d had enough, I retreated to the “Prince of Wales” for some lunch. Then I went on to sketch the church in Esher town centre: another St George’s.

Esher is to the West of London, with a main line railway station in to Waterloo.

“They do tend to heat up in summer and stay cold in winter, and the rain makes a noise on their roofs, but they have proved remarkably sturdy. As one commentator writes, “Tin Tabernacles are an important if brief and overlooked episode in the history of church architecture,” and have a claim to “be recognised as listed buildings, particularly as examples of prefabrication” (Dopson 204-05).”
Dopson, Laurence. “Tin Tabernacles.” Words from “The Countryman”. Ed. Valerie Porter. Newton Abbot: David & Charles, 2007. 204-05.

https://victorianweb.org/art/architecture/churches/58.html
In the “Prince of Wales”

St Edmund, Kessingland NR33 7SQ

Here is the church of St Edmund, Kessingland, seen from the south.

Church of St Edmund, Kessingland. Sketched 11 February 2024, 12:30 in Sketchbook 14

I was a guest of the bell ringers, who kindly invited me to their loft. There are six bells. I witnessed their splendid peals, which made the tower shake slightly under my feet. This was a surprise to me, as the walls of the tower are about three foot thick. But apparently it’s perfectly normal. Then I went outside and sketched the church from the south.

It was a beautiful place to stand and sketch: a peaceful country churchyard. The gravestone in front of me, in the foreground in the picture, carried stone carved flowers, and cushions of moss.

view from the bell ringers’ loft

This tower is very old. According to the Historic England listing, the tower is from the 15th century and Grade I listed. There is neat flint work, in a chequerboard pattern higher up and in vertical lines lower down, with a horizontal border at ground level. The nave is thatched! It has recently received new thatch, in a glowing russet colour which you can just see to the right of the tower.

The church is about half a mile from the sea. There is a stained glass window, dated 2007, by Nicola Kantorowicz, dedicated to the “Glory of God and the memory of Kessingland driftermen, ‘where ever they may rest'”. It was given by G. Jack Strowger in memory of his wife Katherine. There is a ship’s wheel on the wall, and another on a low pulpit. An anchor hangs from the wall, “in loving memory of Jack and Mary Smith”.

The nave of the Church of St Edmund, Kessingland, looking east.

It’s well worth a visit if you are in the area.