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Gavin Stamp, ‘How We Celebrated the Coronation: the Foundation and Early Years of the Georgian Group’, the Georgian Group Journal, Vol Gavin Stamp, ‘How We Celebrated the Coronation: The Foundation and Early Years of the Georgian Group’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XX, 2012, pp. 1–21 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2012 HOW WE CELEBRATED THE CORONATION: THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE GEORGIAN GROUP GAVIN STAMP he Church; the Civil Service; the Judicial generally regarded as of little historical or artistic ‘T Committee of the Privy Council; the hereditary merit, especially when they stood in the way of landlords; the political parties; the London County commercial redevelopment, road-widening and Council; the local councils; the great business firms; other forms of modernisation. ‘The value of the motorists; the heads of the national Museum – architecture in England, according to official and all are indicted, some with more cause than others, because of some more decency might have been hoped for, but all on the same charge. These, in the year of the coronation, , are responsible for the ruin of London, for our humiliation before visitors, and for destroying without hope of recompense many of the nation’s most treasured possessions; and they will answer for it by the censure of posterity.’ So wrote Robert Byron in his excoriating polemic about the destruction of London’s finest Georgian architecture, How we celebrate the Coronation (Fig. ), published by the Architectural Press to coincide with both the crowning of King George VI in Westminster Abbey and the foundation of the Georgian Group in May . Since the beginning of the century, Georgian architecture had begun to be taken more and more seriously by certain architects and writers, yet, in the two decades since the Armistice, many of the capital’s principal architectural monuments dating from the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries had been demolished. There was no statutory protection for them – the scope of the Royal Commission for Historical Monuments ended in Fig. The front cover, illustrated by James Boswell, of – and the lingering prejudices of the Victorians How we celebrate the Coronation : the polemic by Robert combined with sheer ignorance meant that they were Byron published by the Architectural Press in May . THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE GEORGIAN GROUP ecclesiastical standards’, complained Byron, ‘varies a nation of shopkeepers’. The London Society in proportion to , its antiquity, . Its quaintness, and vigorously opposed the scheme and in it was , its holiness. By these standards, a bit of the old quashed by Parliament. Even so, St Katherine Roman wall is of more importance than Nash’s Coleman, a church rebuilt in – , was demolished Regent Street, and one ruined pointed arch than all in and others remained in danger. In , that Wren’s churches put together.’ rabid enthusiast for progress, Harold P. Clunn, Such was the widespread attitude which John author of The Face of London , could condemn the Betjeman would later categorise as ‘Antiquarian ‘extraordinary reluctance to sacrifice St Mary Prejudice’. Hence the need for a new body to fight Woolnoth when the site must be worth something for them as well as to educate. like £, , , a sum with which so many new Despite the improvements of the Victorians, the churches might be erected elsewhere.’ squares and terraces of Georgian London survived Next came the rebuilding of Regent Street, almost intact at the beginning of the twentieth century completed in . This had begun before the Great (except in the City of London), enhanced by the War with the erection of Norman Shaw’s Piccadilly presence of the grand aristocratic town houses which Hotel; now the H.M. Office of Woods & Forests made the city comparable with Vienna, Paris or demolished the rest of Nash’s elegant street as the Rome. By the outbreak of war in , however, most -year leases fell in. Brick and stucco gave way to of these mansions had given way to large American- taller structures of Portland stone over steel frames. inspired blocks of flats, while several of the finest Such was the Ruskinian prejudice against ‘false’ Georgian squares were being rebuilt or were under stucco that Nash had few defenders other than threat. Even before the Great War, however, the A. Trystan Edwards, the author of Good and Bad writing was on the wall for some of these grand Manners in Architecture published in . ‘The houses. In his book on The Private Palaces of London , trouble about Regent Street and the City churches,’ published in , Beresford Chancellor noted that he wrote, ‘Some we know are held on leasehold tenure, and when their term has run, may be ruthlessly ‘is that they are not ancient. The City of London Church Commission declare that they would not demolished; others stand proudly in the midst of ever- dream of touching the Gothic Churches which survived changing conditions of building development; will the Fire. Nor would any public body presume to lay they be, in their turn, attacked, and if so – what then?’ sacrilegious hands on the half-timbered Elizabethan In the event, with a few precious exceptions like shops left standing in Holborn. But Regent Street had Spencer House, almost all would disappear. not the virtue of great age. It had nothing to The post-war assault on London’s historic recommend it except incomparable beauty. And with the offence of being comparatively new it combined architecture began, however, not on houses but the still worse offence of being faced with a rather churches. As if to celebrate the Armistice, in , delicate material. It positively invited the pick-axe!’ a report commissioned by the Bishop of London, Arthur Winnington-Ingram, announced that no Douglas Goldring, the real founder of the Georgian fewer than nineteen churches in the City of London Group, later recalled how Good and Bad Manners in – including buildings by Hawksmoor as well as by Architecture Wren – were to be demolished and the sites sold. ‘made a profound impression on me [...] Mr Edward’s Some Wren churches had already disappeared, one book was the first I had come across, perhaps the first by one, under the Union of Benefices Act, but, to be written, which challenged the till-then accepted as Byron put it, this proposal ‘was too much even for view of Regency architecture and gave Nash a THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XX THE FOUNDATION AND EARLY YEARS OF THE GEORGIAN GROUP generous meed of praise [...] It would be impossible ‘London was beset by great Houses, most of which have to over-estimate the influence on public taste which disappeared into service flats. Before Societies for the this book has exerted [...] Without it there would Destruction of Beautiful Buildings had gutted Mayfair, probably have been no Georgian Group’. London could offer the attractions of a classical City. A glimpse of the most beautiful of perished buildings, Nash’s Regent Street disappeared in one campaign; Dorchester House, survives in a few words: “the the ‘private palaces’ were replaced one by one. The staircase is that of an old Genoese Palace and was one first to go after the war was Devonshire House in blaze of colour and the broad landings behind the Piccadilly. Many of its treasures having been moved alabaster balustrades were filled with people sitting or leaning over as in old Venetian pictures”.’ to Chatsworth, the ninth Duke of Devonshire sold his town house and it came down in , to be Other Georgian institutions went the way of the replaced by new Devonshire House, a steel-framed private palaces. The Foundling Hospital in block of flats which was literally American in Bloomsbury, founded by the saintly Thomas Coram concept as its architects were Carrère & Hastings of and begun in , became redundant in the s New York. But London did not just lose William when it was decided to move the children outside Kent’s severe Palladian brick mansion but its central London. After much controversy and the forecourt and garden as well. Until the s, there failure of a proposal to move London University to the was green open space, albeit private, stretching all site, the original buildings were demolished but the the way from Piccadilly to the top end of Berkeley grounds were eventually saved by public subscription Square. First the garden of Devonshire House was and opened for children in . Elsewhere, however, built over, followed by that of Lansdowne House. open spaces were built over as there was no legislation A little later, almost all of the east side of Berkeley to protect the gardens of London squares. In the later Square was rebuilt with offices and motor-car s, Endsleigh Gardens, the south half of Euston showrooms. As for Lansdowne House itself, it Square, was developed, leaving the noble Greek suffered a fate possibly worse than death, for although portico of St Pancras New Church facing a mediocre some of its interiors survived its facade was truncated neo-Georgian facade. Owing to scandals like this and and mutilated when Robert Adam’s town palace was a campaign conducted by the London Society, the rebuilt in – as a sporting club and Curzon London Squares Preservation Act was passed in . Street was cut through on one side. However, even if the gardens of London squares Chesterfield House, designed by Isaac Ware for were now protected, the enclosing architecture was the fourth Earl of Chesterfield, statesman and man of not. The squares of the West End were redeveloped letters, came down in , despite having recently by their ground landlords while London University been the residence of the Princess Royal. Worst of was beginning slowly to devour the terraces of all perhaps, because efforts were made by Lady Bloomsbury. ‘It may seem strange to foreigners that Beecham to save it for public cultural use, was the the Duke of Bedford, the Duke of Westminster and destruction of Dorchester House in Park Lane, the other great landowners own enormous estates and great palazzo designed by Lewis Vulliamy for the can do whatever they like with them’, wrote the collector R.S.
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