St Wulstan Church

Introduction

St Wulstan Church in Little Malvern, within the Archdiocese of Birmingham, is a Roman Catholic church built in 1862 by B Bucknall.

History

The Berington family of Little Malvern Court made the land for the church available. The Baptistery was added some years after the main church was built in 1862. In 1996 a restoration fund was started after the church fabric had been neglected during the latter part of the twentieth century. In 2004 a major refurbishment project commenced, including replacing the roof and much restoration work inside the church, costing over a third of a million pounds.

Architecture and furnishings

The church comprises a nave, south transept and south baptistry, with rubble walls, limestone dressings and a slate roof. The church has a west rose window and a pointed, moulded west doorway in three orders with angle shafts. The east wall of the nave is of brick, with a blocked chancel arch and a blocked arch to a crypt; the chancel has remained unbuilt. The interior has a west gallery of pitch pine with organ, and a three-bay arcade of pointed arches opening into the vaulted north transept.

The church is a Grade II listed building, first listed on 23-Feb-1987. The windows have Geometrical tracery. The carving is incomplete, with rough stone blocks intended for head stops, crockets and gargoyles. The north wall of the nave is of five bays separated by buttresses and has windows of two pointed lights with quatrefoils.

The south wall of the nave has one bay to the west of the hexagonal baptistry and five to the east. The baptistry has chamfered pointed windows. At the south end of the south transept is a turret, with a gable facing east which has two windows each of two traceried lights at an upper level. The interior has inner stone arches separated by slim shafts which carry the roof trusses, which have carved braces to high collars.

John Nicholson (1815-95), who founded Nicholson and Co (Worcester) in 1841, built the organ. The organ is thought to have been transferred from elsewhere (possibly Belmont Abbey) around 1870. Originally installed in the tribune on the south side of the sanctuary, the organ was moved to its present position in 1884. The organ has two manuals (swell and great), tracker action and fourteen stops.

In 1974 the Trumpet pipework was removed and, in 1981, replaced by a very bright two-rank Mixture. At the same time, the composition of the Sesquialtra was altered slightly from its original. The left side of the main altar shows a tapestry of Saint Wulstan.

Music and liturgy

Monastic plainchant has always been part of the parish's musical tradition. Plainchant at St Wulstan's includes singing the Latin Kyriale on some Sundays, with cantors alternating with the congregation, as well as Marian antiphons at the end of Mass and particular Latin chants for certain feast days. The chants can be sung a cappella or with gentle organ underlay.

During the pandemic, when congregational singing was prohibited, a couple of stalwarts still sang from the gallery, at first a cappella and later with organ accompaniment. Since August 2021, when congregational singing resumed, a small choral group has sung on Sundays and feast days. The choir has used some of Elgar's smaller-scale motets such as the Ave Verum and O Salutaris Hostia, conscious of its links with Sir Edward Elgar and his family. When Nicholsons dismantled, repaired and restored the organ in 2017, they left this division as it was.