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Re St Andrew, Hexham

Newcastle Consistory Court: Duff Ch, 17 November 2014 Disposal – church treasures

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2015

Ruth Arlow
Ruth Arlow*
Affiliation:
Chancellor of the Diocese of Norwich
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Information

Type
Case Notes
Information
Ecclesiastical Law Journal , Volume 17 , Issue 2 , May 2015 , pp. 260 - 261
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical Law Society 2015 

The petition concerned a painting donated anonymously to Hexham Abbey in 1947. The sixteenth-century Flemish painting, of ‘The Descent from the Cross’, while striking and valuable, had no connection with the church or the heritage of the region and it had been on loan to the Shipley Art Gallery in Newcastle from 1989. A photographic copy of the painting hung in its place in a chapel within the church. In 2011 the gallery indicated that they no longer wished to store or insure the painting and approaches to other galleries in the region failed to find an alternative home. After consideration the parochial church council (PCC) decided to sell the painting as it was no longer on public display, was not part of the Abbey's historical collection and did not fit with the paintings to be displayed in the new Carnaby centre built to exhibit the Abbey's history. The Diocesan Advisory Committee recommended the sale.

Enquiries had revealed that the painting was the middle part of a triptych, the wings of which were in a museum in San Francisco. A limited sale to that museum so as to reunite the triptych was proposed but the Church Buildings Council opposed the sale. Applying the principles set out in Re St Lawrence, Oakley with Wootton St Lawrence [2014] WLR (D) 176 the chancellor refused the faculty, finding that, although the painting itself had not been on display in the church, a copy had been displayed which had proved spiritually helpful to some of the congregation. The fact that the donation was anonymous did not make the painting any the less a part of the Abbey and the nation's heritage. Insurance was not prohibitive, particularly if insuring for replacement rather than market value, and the premiums could be afforded.

Even if the PCC continued to be of the view that the painting should not stay at the Abbey the next steps outlined in the Oakley with Wootton St Lawrence decision should be taken. The options for it to be displayed elsewhere on loan had not been exhausted. Although a limited sale might be achieved to reunite the painting with the rest of the triptych this would mean that the painting would be lost not only to the Abbey but to the nation. On this basis there were insufficient grounds to rebut the presumption against disposal. [Catherine Shelley]