Dance worked for Sir Francis Baring at Stratton Park from 1803. Stratton was in the parish of St Mary the Virgin at Micheldever of which Sir Francis was patron and impropriator. A faculty for the repair of the Church (dated 9 September 1808: ING Baring Archive NP2.S 8.8.1) states that it was 'a very ancient building and that the walls floor and seats...[are] in a very ruinous situation and stand in need of very considerable repairs...resolved that the walls...should be strengthened repaired and added to where necessary. That the whole of the old roof should be taken off and be replaced...that the floors... seats and pews...should be properly finished and decorated agreeable to the plan and under the direction of Sir Francis Baring's architect'.

Dance made a survey in November 1806 and a month later produced a first design that left the nave and west tower as they were and offered modifications only to the chancel, placing Lady Baring's memorial (she had died in December 1804) on its south side. Further drawings suggest that work went ahead on the chancel but that nothing happened to the rest of the Church, probably because in December 1806 Dance was also making a radical design for a new chapel at East Stratton that was not, in the event, executed. However, in Aprl 1808 Dance made a design in an Early English style for an octagonal nave and for the additions of a vestry and school to Micheldever Church that was carried out. A note on the verso of a drawing for the Royal College of Surgeons [SM D5/5/15] of Dance's fee for Micheldever chancel suggests that on his usual rate of 5 per cent, the work cost £2,022.92.

Micheldever Church is one of Dance's few extant buildings and survives relatively intact. In its rural setting, the unadorned, angular red brick walls of the octagonal nave and its projections between the rendered walls of the chancel and the stone and flint Tudor tower are shocking, even today. Inside, the play of light from the clerestory on the smoothly plastered forms and mouldings of the octagon and its ceiling is subtle and harmonious. The contrast between the expressed, abrupt architecture of the outside and the suavely modelled interior is striking.

The first alteration to the Church after 1808 was the replacement of the east window in 1866 by a window with flowing tracery. The north and south windows of the nave received similar windows in the 'restoration' of 1881 and in the same campaign the chancel ceiling was replaced and the wall treatment removed, the chancel archcut back and a pair of corbelled colonnettes inserted. The window glass was renewed throughout and it was probably then that the gallery was removed as well as the pulpit and other fittings.

LITERATURE. A.B. Milner, History of Micheldever, Paris, 1924: Stroud pp.203-04; Kalman pp.147-8.

OTHER SOURCES. ING Baring Archive, London

Notes on [SM D2/12/15] and [SM D2/12/12]

Dance's proposals regularise three bays of the nave with arcades, vaulting and windows all having drop-head arches. Each of the roof trusses in the nave and side aisles is a regualr king-post truss with tie-beam, two struts, principal and common rafters (which are not parallel) and purlins. A raised central pulpit, lit by a higher lateral source, flanked at floor level by reading desk and clerk's desk, fills the space between the compound piers at the west end and pews are arranged on a rake facing the centre of the nave.

The chancel houses a memorial to Lady Baring (wife of Sir Francis Baring of Stratton Park in the parish of St Mary's, Micheldever) who died on 3 December 1804. The north and south chancel walls were each articulated by three blank drop-head arches, the middle arch larger, and the centre arch of the south wall was the site for Lady Baring's monument carved by John Flaxman and shown here [SM D2/12/15] as executed, that is, a seated woman framed by a square hood-mould and armorial device. A model for it is illustrated in M. Whinney & R. Gunnis, The Collection of models by John Flaxman R.A. at University College London, 1967, fig.11b. Of Flaxman's monument, David Irwin (John Flaxman 1755-1826: sculptor illustrator designer, 1979, pp.129-33) wrote that it was his most elaborate private commission, costing £1,387. This was because it was enlarged from the single figure of a seated female figure symbolising Resignation and illustrating 'Thy will be done' by two further panels depicting 'For Thine is the Kingdom' and 'Deliver us from evil''; all three parts were exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1809. The three panels fitted Dance's three blank arches, which a late 19th century remodelling has unfortunately removed, and they are now fixed to a plain wall. The memorial also commemorates Sir Francis, who died on 11 September 1810 before it was completed, and two granddaughters; further epitaphs were added during the 19th century.

Group

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