Dykes Bower
Sir: Thank you for your article in praise of the church architect Stephen Dykes Bower (12 April). May I add to it that more of his superb work can be seen at Lancing Col" lege chapel (where seven years ago he completed in the new west wall the largest rose window built in England since the two in the transepts of Westminster Abbey), and in unfashionable Oldham, Lancashire (where in the 1970s he totally and magical- ly restored the interior of the Gothic parish church of St Mary). You are right also to draw attention to the distressing fact that building has stop- ped on Stephen Dykes Bower's designs to give Bury St Edmunds a worthy cathedral. Many people are deeply concerned lest the cathedral authorities decide to abandon what the architectural historian Dr War" wick Rodwell has described as 'an unsur- passed example of modern Gothic, superb' ly executed and showing, as no other building today can, how an ornate church in this part of the country must have appeared in about 1400.'
James Bentley
6 Arborfield Close, Slough, Berkshire
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