Henry Woodyer
by Stuart White and Barbara Salvage

Henry Woodyer (1816-1896) was born in Guildford, and educated at Eton and Oxford. He arrived in Oxford in 1835 as the Oxford Movement was gaining a momentum that was to transform religious life in England. Its adherents were committed to achieving the spiritual and religious renovation of the Anglican Church, and were drawn to medieval architectural styles, resulting in ‘Victorian Gothic’. The Movement influenced Woodyer profoundly. It seems his decision to be primarily a church architect was driven by a sense of religious vocation; his buildings were for the glory of God, not his own fame or financial reward. A pupil of Butterfield, Woodyer was entrusted with some 180 projects all over the country. According to Pevsner, he was the most prolific church builder in Surrey. He also designed schools (for example Cranleigh School), convents and a few private homes. Commissions flowed into Woodyer’s office in Guildford, many of them from contacts made at Eton and Oxford, and from personal recommendations from other High Churchmen, such as the wealthy artist Thomas Gambier Parry, for whom he designed the lavishly decorated Church of the Holy Innocents in Highnam, Gloucestershire. Another project was restoring St Blaise Church at Milton, where J S Bowles, an Eton and Oxford contemporary, was churchwarden. It was there Woodyer met Bowles’ sister, Frances, whom Woodyer married in 1851. Just 10 months later, Frances tragically died, having given birth to a daughter, Hester. In 1854 Wooder bought Grafham Grange south of Guildford, where he lived with Hester for the next 36 years (somehow finding time to cruise the Mediterranean each year on his steam yacht, ‘Queen Mab’). Possibly ever since Frances’ death Woodyer had hoped to build a church in her memory, and it might have influenced his decision to buy the Grafham estate, which eventually extended to 300 acres. In 1855 Woodyer obtained permission to build a church, of which he would be the patron, where services could be arranged in keeping with his Tractarian outlook. It is likely that Gambier Parry assisted with the decorative scheme. Work started in 1860, and St Andrew’s was consecrated in 1861.

He also built the vicarage to one side of St Andrew’s and the village school to the other. Accordingly, the village of Grafham was a major beneficiary of the generosity of its most famous inhabitant. It is rare that both the funding and design of a building is done by the same man – here Woodyer was his own client. Accordingly he could build what he truly wanted, influenced by no-one else, and so it is probably fair to say that of all the many churches he built, it is St Andrew’s that displays best the essence of Henry Woodyer. Although Woodyer moved away from Surrey in 1893 after his daughter had married, he clearly felt he still belonged in Grafham. When he died in 1896 his funeral was held at St Andrew’s, and he was buried there, beneath the large cross which keeps watch over ‘his’ church and churchyard.