Church renovations and the portrait of Roy
This sensitive portrayal of five-year-old Roy Lacey leaning over the back of the church pew was drawn by the untrained Stanley Spencer (1891-1959) when he was sixteen years old. It was acquired for the Gallery in 1993 with assistance from the V&A Purchase Grant Fund and the Art Fund and has proved a perennially popular image with visitors.
It’s a charming scene, set in Holy Trinity church in Cookham. Roy stands on the pew, peering over to see what he could see, just as Spencer peered over fences and walls in his native village, always finding something of interest in the unseen. Roy can be seen in the exhibition SEEING THE UNSEEN: Reality and Imagination in the Art of Stanley Spencer, at the Stanley Spencer Gallery in Cookham (to March 30 2025).
The Lacey family were close friends with the Spencers. Mother Minnie Lacey was a friend of Stanley’s mother Annie, and the boys often played together. Her husband Ernest ran a local boatyard, taking over from his widowed mother Elizabeth. Guy Lacey (1893-1956) would swim and walk with Stanley and Gilbert Spencer (1892- 1979) and Guy’s younger brother Malcom (1900-1990) would tag along. Lacey’s Boatyard was on the Cookham side of the bridge, and the boathouse featured in several of Spencer’s paintings – most notably in View from Cookham Bridge (also in the Exhibition) and Swan Upping (Tate).
Another of Stanley’s brothers, Sydney, wrote in his diary of their swimming and walking sessions – sometimes accompanied by Guy’s Airedale terrier – which itself featured in Spencer’s painting The Bridge (Tate).
Guy and Stanley must have made an odd couple – Guy was tall and athletic and won many rowing and swimming competitions. He would have had much more in common with Stanley’s brother Gilbert, who was equally tall and well built. Guy was a bright boy and he attended the Royal School of Mines (now part of Imperial College) in Kensington – in what is now the V&A building) and took the train most mornings from Cookham, often accompanying Spencer as he travelled to the Slade School of Art.
Roy was the fourth child in the family. The boys had an elder sister Leonora, the first born. Sadly for his mother Minnie, Roy’s father Ernest, died just weeks before Roy was born, leaving her to run the boatyard. Nine-year-old Guy would have had to share the responsibility of looking after him and undoubtedly Stanley and Gilbert would have spent time amusing the small boy. Roy never did grow up – dying of a childhood illness when he was just 8 years old. This portrait of Roy – drawn from life – must have been a very precious thing for his mother to see.
The pews captured in this drawing, which were part of Victorian reordering of the church in 1861 and therefore “modern” in terms of Holy Trinity’s history, have now been removed to allow for a much-needed new heating system to be installed. Virtually all of the pews have found new homes.