The Almonry

Frederick (commonly F.L.) Griggs (1876-1938), was a distinguished English etcher, architectural draughtsman, illustrator and early conservationist, associated with the late flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds. He was one of the first etchers to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he worked as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of regional guides for the publishers, Macmillans. In 1903 he settled at Dover's House, in the market town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, and went on to create one of the last significant Arts and Crafts houses at 'New Dover's House'. There he set up the Dover's House Press, where he printed late proofs of the etchings of Samuel Palmer, amongst others. He collaborated with Ernest Gimson and the Sapperton group of craftsmen in architectural and design work in the area.

'Fred' Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, and set about producing an incomparable body of etchings, 57 meticulous plates in a Romantic tradition, evoking an idealised medieval England of pastoral landscapes and architectural fantasies of ruined abbeys and buildings. His best known etchings include Owlpen Manor dedicated to his friend and near neighbour, the architect-craftsman Norman Jewson, Anglia Perdita, Maur's Farm, St Botolph's, Boston and this print, The Almonry. Collections of his etched work are held in major public collections worldwide.

Griggs was one of the finest and most respected etchers of his time. He was an influential leader of the British etching revival in the Twenties and Thirties, and "the most important etcher who followed in the Samuel Palmer tradition" (K.M. Guichard, British Etchers, 1977). He occupies a pole position in the Romantic tradition of British art: he links the world of Blake, Turner and Samuel Palmer to a younger generation of neo-Romantic artists, including Graham Sutherland, John Piper and Robin Tanner.

The Almonry is a feat of Griggs's romantic imagination. No such place ever existed, though in his pious, antiquarian and artist's mind it certainly did. An almonry is a place where alms are given by people in holy orders to the poor. The benefactors are attached to the magnificent minister, with flying buttresses and stained glass to die for, which soars beyond the confines of the sheet. Quite likely Griggs was influenced by the citadel-like site of Durham Cathedral, though his architecture is entirely different.

Evidently Griggs worked on the copper plate for many months, resulting in his most elaborate composition. The aerial perspective - the illusion of a wintry atmosphere, through which we can see the pinnacles and flying buttresses of the magnificent church in the distance - is really a marvel of technical achievement. This scene of Gothic buildings, peopled with musicians - no doubt given the season playing Christmas carols - and a pair of travellers, under freshly fallen snow, is Griggs' most magical evocation of Medieval England. The travellers appear impoverished - no doubt they have just been in receipt of Christian charity in the nearby Gothic building that gives the etching its title; and no doubt they are duly thankful to their benefactors - and to God.

Harold Wright, the print connoisseur at Conalghi's, London, and a generous benefactor via his widow to the National Art Gallery, wrote of this etching: '...there can be no question that The Almonry contains some of [Griggs's] finest etching technique or that it eminently deserves the welcome it has received as one of the most romantic of all his prints, possessing, too, a strong human appeal." (Comstock, p. 156).

See:

Art Gallery of New South Wales, https://www.artgallery.nsw.gov.au/collection/works/365.2001/

F.A. Comstock, A Gothic Vision: F.L. Griggs and his Work (Oxford and Boston, 1966, reprinted 1978)

Wikipedia, 'F.L. Griggs', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018