Nathaniel Hitch was the sculptor of the Hanging cross over the chancel steps at All Saints', the four figures and backdrop to the altar in the chapel, the wooden gates to the chapel, and the ornate lid of the font. But who was he?
He was born at Ware in Hertfordshire in 1841, went to London at the age of fourteen, and was apprenticed to the church furnishings and metalwork firm of Farmer and Brindlay. They did the screen in front of the baptistery and the metal grilles between the nave and the chapel, though the figures in those came from an Italian church. The firm sent its apprentices to evening classes in sculpture at Borough Polytechnic, and it is said that almost all the students in the class came from that one workshop. Nathaniel Hitch then worked as a journeyman sculptor for some years, being sent around the country to work on various projects, Cardiff Castle being the most noteworthy. And he exhibited at the Royal Academy in the 1870s.
In due course he set out on this own though with a link to the architect J. L. Pearson; when Pearson designed a church Hitch did the woodwork, though he was to prove equally adept at stone and at marble. He is said to have worked continuously and cheerfully for seventy years, which would have taken him up to 1935 - he died in 1938 at the age of 92. And much of his best work was done in his last years; he must have been in his late seventies when he worked on All Saints'. And most of his work was in the Gothic tradition.
In 1878-90 he produced fourteen statues for the North Transept of Westminster Abbey, and he did all the sculpture in Truro Cathedral, with a famous reredos in stone. He did the reredos in Bristol Cathedral, a reredos in the cathedral in Adelaide, the same in Sydney, and sculpture for cathedrals in Calcutta, Canterbury, Lincoln, Peterborough, and Washington. He sculpted the Chapel of the Sacred Heart for the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Leeds, and his work appeared in countless parish churches and banqueting halls and other buildings. The Cathedral at Sydney was a special challenge for that most Protestant of dioceses was, and largely still is, opposed to the cross on or behind the altar. Hitch had a crucifixion scene at the centre of his design, but the sponsors demanded its removal and he substituted the Annunciation instead.
He is remembered for works of art across the world.
Article by: Gavin White