A bitter row has broken out over a 19th-century textile that was donated to the Dean of Christ Church College and Cathedral half a century ago. The grandson of the donor is seeking the return of the Whittingham Cope, a liturgical vestment, after struggling to find out where it was or if it was appreciated.

Dr Selby Whittingham, a leading art historian, was a student at the University of Oxford in the 1960s, when he watched his grandmother formally donate her treasured textile to the Dean, who gratefully accepted it for use in the Cathedral.

Now he has lost patience, having written repeatedly over the years to find out what use was being made of it, only, he says, for questions to remain unanswered.

He told The Telegraph: “I’d had a correspondence some years ago, which was very unsatisfactory. I’d had no proper response.”

Asked what had prompted him to request the return now, he spoke of being dismayed by press reports of Christ Church’s handling of a bitter feud involving Dean Martyn Percy, who was suspended in 2018 over alleged misconduct in a pay dispute and then fully exonerated by an internal tribunal. 

As The Telegraph reported in July, a new tribunal will hear a claim by a woman who alleges that he stroked her hair and complimented her on her appearance. He denies the allegation and his many supporters – including alumni, college staff and undergraduates – have come to his defence, while he is suspended.

Dr Whittingham, who does not know Dean Percy, said: “I read more and more about the saga in the press about Christ Church. I gather lots of donors are withdrawing promises and gifts. It just seems a scandal.”

It is decades since he last saw the Chinese silk textile, originally a mandarin’s robe, but he recalls its embroidered dragons.

On Aug 10, he wrote to The Rt Rev Dr Steven Croft, the Bishop of Oxford, that he was seeking support for Christ Church to return the “Whittingham Cope” presented by his grandmother, Edith Whittingham-Jones, in 1962, when he was an undergraduate at Oriel. “Dean Cuthbert Simpson donned it for our benefit and said he was pleased to accept it for use in the Cathedral… The Professor of Chinese had declared that the Chinese symbolism…  was compatible with Christian ideas,” he said.

He added: “Becoming aware of how such gifts are sometimes mistreated, years ago I enquired from the college about the cope, but got no reply. I eventually discovered that Dean John Drury preferred some modern vestments he had commissioned and had sent the Whittingham Cope to the Ashmolean Museum. On further complaint, I was eventually told that it had been let out of the museum and used in a service, presumably a token gesture to appease me. As the House clearly has so little appreciation of the gift… I would like it to return the cope to me… so that I may give it to a church that would have greater appreciation and use for it.”