December 2023 Picture of the Month

The 13th century St. Peter’s Church in Clyffe Pypard was the local parish church of the eminent architectural historian Nikolaus Pavsner and his wife, Lola. It was much modified in the 19th century by the Victorian Gothic architect William Butterfield who largely rebuilt the Chancel. Pevsner disliked 19th century ‘restorations’ and thus disapproved of Butterfield’s rebuilt chancel and, in the Wiltshire volume of The Buildings of England he noted ‘All except the chancel Perp[endicular], of good quality ashlar-faced.’ He approeved of the pulpit, however, describing it as ‘1629.An exceptionally richly ornamented piece with a rare gridiron bookrest.’ Butterfield also restored the Parish Church of St. Mary and St. Melor in Amesbury and churches at Blunsdon, Heytesbury, Highway, Latton, Ogbourne St. Andrew and Winterbourne Monkton. After Lola’s death in 1963, Pevsner gifted the wrought iron churchyard gates in her memory, and the couple’s black marble gravestone is in the churchyard.​