YALE IN LONDON – SUMMER 2013 British Studies 189 Churches: Christopher Wren to Basil Spence

THE CHURCHES OF LONDON: ARCHITECTURAL IMAGINATION AND ECCLESIASTICAL FORM

Karla Britton Yale School of Architecture Email: [email protected] Class Time: Tuesday, Thursday 10-12:15 or as scheduled, Paul Mellon Center, or in situ Office Hours: By Appointment Yale-in-London Program, June 10-July 19, 2013

Course Description

The historical trajectories of British architecture may be seen as inseparable from the evolution of London’s churches. From the grand visions of Wren through the surprising forms of Hawksmoor, Gibbs, Soane, Lutyens, Scott, Nash, and others, the ingenuity of these buildings, combined with their responsiveness to their urban environment, continue to intrigue architects today. Examining the ecclesiastical architecture of London beginning with Christopher Wren, this course critically addresses how prominent British architects sought to communicate the mythical and transcendent through structure and material, while also taking into account the nature of the site, a vision of the concept of the city, the church building’s relationship to social reform, ethics, and aesthetics. The course also examines how church architecture shaped British architectural thought in the work of historians such as Pevsner, Summerson, Rykwert, and Banham. The class will include numerous visits in situ in London, as well as trips to Canterbury, Liverpool, and Coventry. Taking full advantage of the sites of London, this seminar will address the significance of London churches for recent architects, urbanists, and scholars.

______

CLASS REQUIREMENTS

Deliverables: Weekly reflection papers on the material covered in class and site visits. Full participation and discussion is required in classroom and on field trips.

Due: at mid-term, a short 3-5 page paper with annotated bibliography and 10 annotated images on a specific church building and its relationship to its site.

Due: at course end, a ten-page research paper with original source material, bibliography and 20 annotated images. The topic will be decided in discussion with the instructor.

COURSE READINGS

The PMC Library has some important primary references. In addition, I would ask that you purchase three books:

Margaret Whinney, Wren (Thames & Hudson, 1971) Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, London: The City Churches (Penguin Books, 1998) John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830 (Yale, 1989)

Other readings will be posted on the V2 classes server. Other helpful resources for this class include:

Christopher Hibbert, London’s Churches (Queen Anne Press, London, 1988) Elizabeth and Wayland Young, London’s Churches (Grafton Books, 1986) Gerald Cobb, London City Churches (Batsford Ltd., London, revised edition, 1989) Terry Friedman, The Eighteenth-Century Church in Britain (PMC and Yale, 2011) Joseph Rykwert, Church Building (Hawthorne Books, 1966) Giles Worsley, Inigo Jones and the European Classicist Tradition (PMC and Yale, 2007) Louise Campbell, Coventry Cathedral: Art and Architecture in Post-War Britain (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996) Vaughan Hart, Nicholas Hawksmoor: Rebuilding Ancient Wonders (PMC and Yale, 2002) Steen Eiler Rasmussen, London: The Unique City (MIT Press, revised edition, 1982)

June 11 The View from St Paul’s: The Cathedral in the City

--the cathedral and the social and cultural framework of the city --St. Paul’s impact on the urban planning of London --the cathedral’s impact on urban experience and sensory responses to the city

Field Trip: St. Paul’s Cathedral

Readings:

Dana Arnold, “The View from St. Paul’s,” in Re-presenting the Metropolis: Architecture, Urban Experience and Social Life in London 1900-1840 (Aldershot, UK, 2000), pp. 1-25.

Margaret Whinney, “The Planning of St. Paul’s” and “The Building of St. Paul’s,” in Wren, pp. 81-133.

June 13 Reading the City and its Buildings (Seminar Room)

Readings:

Lewis Mumford, “Introduction” The Culture of Cities (London, 1938), pp. 3-12

Roland Barthes, “The Semiotics of the City” in Architecture Culture, 1945-68, ed. by Joan Ockman (New York, 1993), pp. 412-418.

Steen Eiler Rasmussen, “Chapter 1: Basic Observations” in Experiencing Architecture (Cambridge, MA, 1959), pp. 9-35.

Joseph Rykwert, “Introduction,” Church Building (New York, 1966), pp. 7-21.

Recommended:

Steen Eiler Rasmussen, “Introduction” and “Chapter 1,” London: The Unique City (Cambridge, MA, 1934), pp. 9-23.

Nikolaus Pevsner and Simon Bradley, “Introduction,” London: The City Churches (London, 1998), pp. 15- 47.

June 18 The Mind of Christopher Wren (1632-1723): The City and its Churches

--The Great Fire as the “watershed” in 17thc London: Christopher Wren’s plan; plans by John Evelyn, Richard Newcourt, Robert Hooke

--The extent and variety of Wren’s works: variety, experimentation and evolution of the centrally planned church: St. Bride’s Fleet Street (1671-78); St. Mary-Le-Bow (1680); St. James’s Picadilly (1676) --Exterior architecture: towers and spires --Wren’s Successors: James Gibbs (1682-1754): St. Martin’s in the Fields (1721-26); Wren’s St. Clement Danes (1682) with steeple by Gibbs (1719); Thomas Archer’s St. Paul’s Deptford (1712-30) --Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo’s Wren’s City Churches (1883) --The legacy of Wren and contemporary London

Class Visit: 10:00-12:15 Christ Church, Spitalfields; 17:45 St. Mary-le-Bow, Cheapside

Readings:

Terry Friedman, “Churchscapes,” The Eighteenth Century Church in Britain (New Haven, 2011), pp. 3-21.

Christopher Hibbert, “The Churches of Christopher Wren,” London’s Churches (London, 1988), pp. 49-79.

Margaret Whinney, “The City’s Churches,” Wren, pp. 45-71.

June 19 Class Visit to Westminster Abbey (with BRST 188)

June 20 A Sign of Something New: Hawksmoor’s Churches

Field Trip: 10:00-12:15 Hawksmoor’s St. Mary Woolnoth (1716-27) and Wren’s St. Stephens Wolbrook (1679), City of London

--Nicholas Hawksmoor: “The Tower, The Temple, and the Tomb” --Hawksmoor’s six great London churches and London’s skyline --Comparison of Wren with Hawksmoor --Royal Academy of Arts 2012 Exhibition, “Nicholas Hawksmoor: Architect of the Imagination” in celebration of the 350th anniversary of the architect --Hawksmoor and the literary imagination: Hogarth, Dickens, T.S. Eliot, Ackroyd; Iain Sinclair’s Lud Heat (1975) psychogeographical theory and “Nicholas Hawksmoor, the Churches”

Readings:

John Summerson, “English Baroque: Hawksmoor, Vanbrugh, Archer” in Architecture in Britain, 1530- 1830, (New York, reprinted 1989), pp. 271-295.

Vaughan Hart, “’A Steeple in the forme of a pillar’: The Memorial Towers on the London Churches” and “‘The better they will suit our . . . Situation’: The Ornamentation of the London Churches,” in Nicholas Hawksmoor (New Haven, 2002), pp. 131-162 and 167-187.

June 21 The Soane Museum

Field Trip: Sir John Soane’s Museum (with special attention to “spirituality” and domestic space, e.g. the Monk’s Parlour and Monk’s Cell)

Short Paper is Due.

June 25 The Classical Impulse: Jones, Dance and Soane

Field Trip: Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Chapel

--Inigo Jones, The Queen’s Chapel (1627); St. Paul’s Covent Garden (1633); Chapel at Lincoln’s Inn

(1623) --George Dance the Younger, All Hallows London Wall (1767) --Sir John Soane, Holy Trinity, Marylebone (1824-28)

Reading:

Geoffrey Scott, The Architecture of Humanism: A Study in the History of Taste, Introduction (New York, 1969), pp. 14-23.

Pierre de la Ruffinière du Prey, John Soane: The Making of an Architect, Introduction and Conclusion (Chicago, 1982), pp. xxi-xxiv and 317-323.

John Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, “Inigo Jones and His Times (1610-60),” Chapters 7 and 8 (London, 1953), pp. 113-141.

Reference:

Sir John Soane, The Royal Academy Lectures, ed. by David Watkin (Cambridge Univ. Press, 2000).

June 27 The Shape of English Christianity: from Monastic Origins to Established Church

Day Trip: ST AUGUSTINE’S ABBEY; THE CATHEDRAL OF CANTERBURY

--The ancient monastic origins and distinctive nature of English Christianity: Ecclesia anglicana and the “non-conformists” --The tradition of pilgrimage --The wounds of religious conflict --Gothic architecture and the religious imagination

Readings:

Jonathan Keates and Angelo Hornak, Canterbury Cathedral, “The Building of the Cathedral to 1200,” “The Cathedral Priory of Christ Church,” “Saint Thomas Becket” (London, 1994), pp. 8-45.

English Heritage, St. Augustine’s Abbey (1997), pp. 1-15.

Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of the English People, Chapters 23-33 (731: Penguin edition, 1955), pp. 66- 92.

Terry Friedman, “ Gothic in Transition” and “A New Spirit: ‘Truest Gothic Taste’”, in The 18th Century Church in Britain, pp. 212-263.

References:

Paul Crossley, “Medieval Architecture and Meaning: The Limits of Iconography” in The Burlington Magazine Vol. 130, no. 1019 (Feb. 1988) pp. 116-121.

Michael Camille, “In the Margins of the Monastery” Image on the Edge (Reaktion Books, 1992) pp. 56-77.

July 2 Taming the Crowd: Nash and the Romantic Classicism of Regency London

--John Nash, All Souls, Langham Place (1824) --Regency Park, London --Guest Lecture: Geoffrey Tyack, Director of Stanford-in-Oxford program [to be arranged]

Reading:

Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Architecture: Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, “Great Britain” (New Haven, 1958), pp. 97-120.

Christopher Hibbert, “Memorials of the Regency,” in London: The Biography of a City (London, 1969), pp. 125-142.

John Summerson, “John Nash,” in Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects (London, 1982), pp. 265-271.

References:

Geoffrey Tyack, ed. John Nash: Architect of the Picturesque (English Heritage, 2013).

Michael Mansbridge, John Nash: A Complete Catalogue. (Phaidon, 1991).

John Martin Robinson, James Wyatt, 1746-1813: Architect to George III (Paul Mellon Center for British Studies, 2012).

July 4 Social Renewal and High Church Fervor: Pugin, Butterfield, Street, Scott

-- J.L. Pearson, St. Augustine’s Kilburn, 1871-98 -- Architectural language and social values --William Butterfield, All Saint’s Margaret Street (1849-59), St. Alban the Martyr, Holborn (1863) --George Edmund Street, St. James the Less, Westminster (1861) --Sir George Gilbert Scott, St. Mary Abbots Church, Kensington High Street (1872) --architecture and ecclesiology --utopia and the remaking of the modern world

Readings:

A. W. N. Pugin, Contrasts, Chapters 1 and 5 and selected images (1836; reprint ed. Edinburgh, 1898), pp. 1-7 and 35-50.

Robin Middleton and David Watkin, “The Gothic Revival” in Neoclassical and 19th Century Architecture (New York, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 324-367.

John Ruskin, “The Nature of Gothic” in Stones of Venice (1851-53, reprint ed. London, 1874), vol. 2, pp. 157-190.

John Summerson, “William Butterfield, or the Glory of Ugliness” in Heavenly Mansions (London, 1949), pp. 159-177.

Reference:

Michael J. Lewis, The Gothic Revival (London, 2002).

Chris Brooks, The Gothic Revival (London, 1999).

July 9-11

FIELD TRIP: Liverpool, Coventry, Oxford

Sir Basil Spence: Cathedral of St. Michael, Coventry (1962)

Giles Gilbert Scott, The Anglican Cathedral Church of Christ, Liverpool (1901 competition; 1910 redesign)

Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King (Edward Welby Pugin’s 1853 design; Sir Edwin Lutyens’ design as response to Giles Gilbert Scott; Sir Frederick Gibberd’s present cathedral begun 1962 )

Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool – model of Lutyens’ Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral of Christ the King, “The Greatest Building Never to be Built”

Readings:

Sir Basil Spence, “The Conception,” “The Idea,” “The Result,” “The Awakening,” Phoenix at Coventry: Building of a Cathedral (New York, 1962), pp. 1-6, 11-16, 17-20, 21-30.

Louise Campbell, “The Cathedral and the City,” “The Cathedral Project,” “Towards a New Cathedral?”, “Modernism and Tradition: The Genesis of Spence’s Competition Design,” “The Competition Design Refined, 1951-1954,” “The Architect and the Artist” Coventry Cathedral: Art and Architecture in Post-war Britain (Oxford, 1996), pp. 7-130.

Sarah Brown and Peter de Figueirdo, “Cathedral City” and “Cathedral Ambitions,” Religion and Place: Liverpool’s Historic Places of Worship (Swindon, 2008), n.p.

Gavin Stamp, “Edwin Lutyens,” Macmillan Encyclopedia of Architects, pp. 42-49.

July 16 Material Experience / Spiritual Transcendence: Bentley, Gribble, and the Catholic Resurgence

Optional Field Trip: John Francis Bentley, Metropolitan Cathedral of the Most Precious Blood (Westminster Cathedral) (1903); Herbert Gribble, Brompton Oratory (1884)

Reading:

A.S.G. Butler, “John Francis Bentley: The Architect of Westminster Cathedral” (London, 1961), pp. 1-31.

July 18 Lutyens’ Urban Vision

Field Trip: St. Jude on the Hill and Hampstead Suburban Garden Church, Hampstead

--Large Churches in New Suburbs, before the First World War --Raymond Unwin and Sir Barry Parker’s Hampstead Garden Suburb, 1906 --Lutyens’ Cenotaph, Whitehall (1919)

Reading:

Frank Jackson, “The Building of Hampstead Garden Suburb” in Sir Raymond Unwin: Architect, Planner and Visionary (London, 1985) pp. 81-97.

Reference:

Alan Greenberg, “Lutyens’ Cenotaph,” JSAH, vol. 48, no. 1, March 1989, pp. 5-23 July 19 FINAL PAPERS DUE electronically as a pdf to the Instructor and a hardcopy to the PMC by 5pm.

Grading will be based upon the following:

1) Full class participation and attendance: including verbal engagement both in class and field trips; evidence of attentive reading of required texts and close observation of urban fabric and architectural form. 2) Reading responses: representing attention to the readings and a willingness to interpret the material in relation to experience and site visits (often resulting in a close reading of the place such as description of light, color, details, material, acoustics – urban sounds, singing, instrumental music, liturgical practice) 3) A short paper that begins to analyze a building in relation to the architect’s intention 4) A carefully researched paper of 10-12 pages. Topic is to be chosen in discussion with the instructor.

Also please see the Yale-in-London Course Guide to Academic Procedures and Policies for rules on plagiarism, attendance, grading, submission of work, etc.

FOR ADDITIONAL READING:

General works

Peter Ackroyd, London: The Biography Karla Britton, “The Case for Sacred Architecture,” in Constructing the Ineffable Paul Goldberger, “On the Relevance of Sacred Architecture Today,” in Constructing the Ineffable Erwin Panofsky, Gothic Architecture and Scholasticism S.E. Rasmussen, Experiencing Architecture Rudolf Wittkower, “The Religious Symbolism of Centrally Planned Churches” Nikolaus Pevsner, London: The Cities of London and Westminster

The Churches of Christopher Wren

Lisa Jardine, On a Grander Scale: The Outstanding Life and Tumultuous Times of Sir Christopher Wren Adrian Tinniswood, His Invention so Fertile: A Life of Christopher Wren Anthony Geraghty, The Architectural Drawings of Sir Christopher Wren Paul Jeffrey, City Churches of Sir Christopher Wren Vaughan Hart, St Paul’s Cathedral: Sir Christopher Wren

London Churches

Gerald Cobb, London City Churches George Godwin, The Churches of London: A History and Description of the Ecclesiastical Edifices of the Metropolis Gavin Stamp and Colin Amery, Victorian Buildings of London, 1837-87 Elizabeth and Wayland Young, London Churches Ann Saunders, St. Paul’s: The Story of the Cathedral

Various sites grouped by location: students may wish to visit those not included in field trips

The Churches of Westminster The Queen’s Chapel, Inigo Jones Holy Trinity, Marlyebone, Sir John Soane St. Clement Danes, Christopher Wren; steeple by James Gibbs Works by Butterfield and Nash Westminster Cathedral, John Francis Bentley The City of London St. Paul’s Cathedral, Christopher Wren St. Mary Woolnoth, Nicholas Hawksmoor St. Mary Abchurch, Christopher Wren St. Mary Aldermary, Christopher Wren St. Mary-Le-Bow, Christopher Wren St. Stephen’s Walbrook, Christopher Wren

North London St. Jude on the Hill, Sir Edwin Lutyens St. George’s Bloomsbury, Nicholas Hawksmoor St. Giles-in-the-fields, Henry Flitcroft St. Mary’s Stoke Newington, George Gilbert Scott St. Matthias’s, William Butterfield

West London St. Thomas’s Fulham, Augustus Welby Pugin St. Mary Abbots, George Gilbert Scott

East London Christ Church Spitalfields, Nicholas Hawksmoor St. Anne’s Limehouse, Nicholas Hawksmoor St. George’s-in-the-East, Nicholas Hawksmoor St. Michael and All Angels, Norman Shaw St John on Bethnal Green, John Soane

South London St. Alfege’s Greenwich, Nicholas Hawksmoor (tower, John James) St Mary-at-Lambeth, Philip Hardwick St Paul’s Deptford, Thomas Archer St Peter’s, Walworth, Sir John Soane Lambeth Palace