Exclusive interview with author Pamela Holmes and her book about St Mary’s Church in Suffolk and its beautifully painted ceiling
Rating: 3 Stars
“I wasn’t thinking about making a New Year’s resolution,” says The Huntingfield Paintress author Pamela Holmes. “But, I came out with one, to write a novel about the woman who had decorated the church. Two years later, I achieved that ambition. It’s a resolution and a dream come true.”
On New Year’s Day 2011 Holmes and her husband visited the beautiful village of Huntingfield in Suffolk. “We went inside the ancient church of St Mary’s. It was bright outside but dark and gloomy in the small church. A sign suggested the visitor to the church put a pound into the box on the wall. Now, where above our heads it had been shadowy, there shimmered a medieval ceiling of saints, apostles and religious iconography in bright colours and gold leaf. The rafters were wild with patterns and pigment. Carved winged angels leapt from the ends of the hammer beam roof. I was bowled over.”
Based on the true Victorian era story of Mildred Holland and her husband William Holland, who was the vicar in a small Suffolk village, I love that it’s a real place we can visit. However, Mildred doesn’t get to painting until halfway though the book. There is lots of time with peripheral characters and with Mildred’s interaction (or lack of) with the women of the town. I was left wanting more about Mildred’s life after she finished painting. Although at times the story moved slowly, it’s still lovely.
For the first eight years of their marriage Mildred and William lived abroad as the living at the vicarage was still occupied until the current vicar decided to retire. When they returned they found the church in disrepair. As work progressed on the church, she thought they needed art on the ceiling, like they’d seen in Italy. She painted the first part of the church. The town was scandalized, but on seeing it they liked what she’d done. They had only one comment. Why was it only over the pews for the rich? Didn’t all the parishioners deserve art?
“I couldn’t understand what would drive a Victorian woman, expected to administer tea and sympathy to parishioners, to stand on a sixty feet high scaffold,” says Holmes. “And, to work stretching up above her head or lie on her back, without the benefits of heating or lighting, to create a 15th century angel ceiling. I was inspired to find out more…and I did. Then I began to write the story behind the facts, what drove this woman to take on this Herculean task. A leaflet explained that in the 1850s, Mildred Holland, the parish vicar’s wife, had single-handedly created this medieval fresco.”
“I read widely around the topic of Victorian England including the lives of vicars, artists, the impact of industrialisation, public health and the role of women,” says Holmes. “I interviewed people such as an art historian, a specialist in gold leaf application and a vicar’s daughter. I visited places and buildings relevant to the story, I drew pictures and patterns from the Church ceiling and I lived for two weeks in Huntingfield village in an ex-laundry, walking the hills and woods, to absorb what it might be like to live in Huntingfield.”
Holmes won the Jane Austen Short Story Award in 2014 for The Wedding Planner and was Highly Commended with the HISSAC award in 2015 for We Battle for the Taj. Besides writing short stories, Holmes writes a diary and has written songs for her band. The Huntingfield Paintress is being considered by several production companies for film or TV.
Matthew Smith, founder and owner of Urbane Publications, is Holmes editor. “There are many stories that deserve to be told, but it is a very rare and wonderful feeling when you see a story that has to be told,” says Smith. “As a small, but quickly growing, independent publisher, Urbane is focusing on developing brilliant new authors and taking them to a wider audience.”
Holmes is currently writing her second novel, a story set in the 1970s.
Pamela Holmes was born in Charleston, South Carolina and now lives in central London, where she likes to cycle around her beautiful city and walk on Hampstead Heath.
The Huntingfield Paintress by Pamela Holmes. Paperback: 288 pages Publisher: Urbane Publications (October 1, 2016) Language: English ISBN-13: 978-1910692660 $14.00
