“THERE are many ways to consider a cathedral. You can visit it for purely spiritual reasons. You can admire its architecture, its stained glass, its sculpture, its bells. You can study the lives of its monks and bishops and deans. You can treat it as the social centrepiece of a city. But few stop to think about the cushions we sit on, the kneelers we pray on, and how they too might contribute literally and figuratively to the history of a cathedral.”
So wrote Tracy Chevalier in the Winchester Cathedral Annual Record about her 2018 novel A Single Thread, a novel which followed her previous bestselling novel Girl with a Pearl Earring.
Tracey had visited Winchester some years previously with a view to setting her new novel in or around the cathedral and had expected to concentrate on one of its better-known stories: Oliver Cromwell’s soldiers using it for stables and throwing royal bones through the great west window; or, diver William Walker heroically shoring up the sinking foundations. Instead, she was captivated by the huge collection of exquisitely embroidered cushions and kneelers in the cathedral’s 14th century choir stalls.
Over a period of five years in the early 1930s, under the direction of Louisa Pesel and her friend Sybil Blunt, hundreds of these embroidered items were produced. Miss Blunt was responsible for the designs and, in their entirety, they formed a pictorial history of both the cathedral and the diocese of Winchester. One of the cushions even depicts the famous Cunard Liner, RMS Queen Mary, based in Southampton and launched when the embroiderers were in the middle of their project.
Nearly a century ago now, it was the first time any such project had been attempted by a British cathedral but it is currently held to have influenced cathedral and church embroideries the world over and is officially known as the ‘Winchester Style’. More than 200 volunteers had put themselves forward to be trained for the stitching work. An appeal to fund the project partly led to the establishment of The Friends of the Cathedral by Dean Gordon Selwyn in 1931.
A year after the publication of A Single Thread, Tracy Chevalier visited the office of the Winchester Friends in the Cathedral Close after learning it was there that a complete set of original drawings were kept of the embroidery designs. To her astonishment, there was one important design among all the others which was never made into a finished cushion.
The water-coloured design depicted the names of three most celebrated Hampshire women: Florence Nightingale, Jane Austen and another writer, Charlotte Yonge. (No one really knows why this one design was left out. Notes on the drawing, however, suggest there was some discussion about deleting Florence Nightingale from the cushion and substituting her name with Charles Kingsley, thereby creating ‘a writers’ cushion’.)
At a Cathedral Friends’ event following her discovery, Ms Chevalier said she’d always been surprised that Jane Austen didn’t have a cushion in the cathedral and thought it high time the ‘women’s cushion’ was made to take its rightful place among Winchester’s other precious embroideries.
The so-called ‘missing cushion’ was subsequently commissioned with Ms Chevalier donating a significant sum to cover the cost of the work. In timely fashion, the small army of the present cathedral embroiderers have now finished the cushion ahead of next year’s 250th anniversary of Jane Austen’s birth.
Today’s embroiderers, or broderers, meet every Monday morning in a room in the Cathedral Close to carry out their painstakingly intricate work. Most of it involves the repair and renovation of important, historic embroideries in the cathedral but new commissions come, too, such as this latest cushion.
Anna Diamond, who leads the Cathedral Broderers, said: “Ninety years on, the broderers were delighted to be asked to stitch another cushion from an unfinished design by Louisa Pesel. Margaret Bingham took on this project and has done an excellent piece of work.”
It’s hoped the new cushion will be assigned to a stall in the cathedral at a special ceremony later this year.
By Bruce Parker
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