A Charlotte Brontë of wood and stone

Sarah Losh is not forgotten (as the subtitle of this book suggests) in her own village of Wreay (pronounced ‘Rear’), south east of Carlisle in Cumberland. The locals refer to ‘Miss Sarah’ as if she were still alive, rather as they speak about Lady Anne Clifford at Appleby. Anybody who has visited the village and seen the extraordinary church built in 1841-2 by Miss Losh at her own expense will know why. Travellers are met with the apparition of a small Roman basilica stranded on a village green, embellished with mind-blowing carvings. They are partly inspired by fossils, obscure natural history specimens and esoteric symbols.

The Losh graves in the churchyard are strikingly odd and personal too. They comprise naturalistic boulder-like slabs carved with shells, branches and palm trees. In one corner a large stone pinecone commemorates some pine seeds (and the sender) sent to Sarah Losh by a soldier friend, Major William Thein, massacred (with 16,000 others) by the Afghans on the North-West Frontier. A cyclopean or ‘Druidic’ mausoleum to Losh’s sister Katharine has an interior side-lit from little windows which illuminate the ‘pallid image’ of the deceased in white marble. In front is a full-scale variation of the Bewcastle Cross commemorating the Losh parents.

The architecture of the church shows a remarkable range of sources, illustrating the breadth of Sarah’s learning, and the whole ensemble is largely autobiographical — a ‘landscape of memory’ — recalling her foreign travels, family, loves and friendships. The weird sculpture was done by local boys: a builder, William Hindson, son of one of her tenants, and Robert Donald, her gardener. It reads like a 3-D version of a Regency lady’s album of accomplishments, with stylised flora and fauna. Losh modelled much of it herself in clay for the carvers to copy in an appropriately archaic manner.