Sara Losh

Losh's papers were destroyed and none of her journals or drawings survive, but her life was described in Henry Lonsdale's The Worthies of Cumberland, published by Routledge in six volumes in 1867–1875.[3]

Losh was born at Woodside in Wreay, near Carlisle. Her date of birth date is unknown, but can be placed in late 1785, as she was baptised on 6 January 1786. She was the oldest of the four children of John Losh (1756–1814) and his wife Isabella (née Bonner). Her father owned land in Woodside and was a partner in an alkali factory at Walker on Tyneside, part of Losh, Wilson and Bell, with his brother William Losh.

One of her brothers died young and another had a mental disability, with the effect that Sara and her sister Katherine became joint heirs of their father's estate. Neither of them married, so that Sara inherited Katherine's share on her death in 1835. Her uncle, James Losh, was a barrister in Newcastle, an influential member of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Newcastle upon Tyne, and a friend of William Wordsworth, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Robert Southey.[4]

According to Lonsdale, Losh was well read and well educated. She attended schools in Wreay, London and Bath, and travelled in France, Italy and Germany in 1814 and 1817. She spoke fluent French and Italian and could translate Latin easily. Lonsdale compared her intelligence to that of George Eliot. Although she never married, she may have had a romantic attachment to a school friend, Major Thain, who was killed at the Khyber Pass in 1842.[1]

Sara Losh died at Woodside on 29 March 1853, and was buried in the yard of her church in Wreay, where she shares a grave with her sister Katherine.[1]

Losh designed and built several architectural projects in and around Wreay from the late 1820s onwards, using her own money. For example, she built a replica of Bewcastle Cross as a memorial to her parents built in 1835, and a schoolteacher's house based on a villa in Pompeii. She also built wells and village schools. By 1840, the old chapel in Wreay was in poor repair, and Losh offered to donate the land and pay for a replacement, provided she was given a free hand with its design. Permission was given by a faculty in May 1841.

Losh based her design on an early Christian basilica, having an aisle-less rectangular nave ending with a semicircular apse. She described the style as "early Saxon or modified Lombard". The apse has columns that form spaces for 13 seats. The altar is a slab of Italian marble on brass eagles. The inside and outside surfaces of the church are decorated with naturalistic stone carvings of fossils, plants and animals, many of them done by William Hindson, the son of a local builder. Sara and her cousin William carved the font out of alabaster. Pevsner compared the results to the arts and crafts workmanship of decades later. There are no explicitly Christian symbols, not even a cross, but the profusion of decoration is seen by some to be a celebration of creation.

The church was completed at a cost of £1,200 and dedicated in December 1842. It is now a Grade II* listed building. In the churchyard is a Grade II listed mausoleum built by Losh in 1850, in memory of her sister Katherine.[5]

Losh also worked on the restoration of St John the Evangelist's Church, Newton Arlosh.

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  St Mary's Church, Wreay
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  St Mary's Church, Wreay
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  Altar and part of apse
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  Replica of the Bewcastle Cross in the churchyard of St Mary's church, Wreay; the mausoleum of Katharine Losh is behind
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  Gravestone of Katharine and Sarah Losh at St Mary's church, Wreay
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  Mausoleum dedicated to Katharine Losh
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  Stone window surround decorated with insects, birds and pinecones at St Mary's, Wreay
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  Stone window surround decorated with fossils, plants and pinecones at St Mary's, Wreay
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  The main door of St Mary's Church, Wreay