Making Britain Gothic

Architecturally speaking AWN Pugin: making Britain gothic Literature and architecture, Certainly, if you walk along the Sadly, the gothic masterpiece intertwined, are part of the remaining section of medieval of King Edward’s School was gothic story. JRR Tolkien was a town wall abutting the garden of demolished in the 1930s and the Brummy, a pupil of the old King the Lord Leycester Hospital, it is school relocated to Edgbaston. Edward’s School, located on easy to picture yourself in Middle But some of the interior fittings New Street, Birmingham. His Earth, probably in Minas Tirith. designed by Pugin were salvaged, school was a gothic masterpiece, and many people said it was Birmingham’s best building. Its architect was Charles Barry, but the interiors, and possibly some of the architecture, were by AWN Pugin. It was the first building project that Augustus Pugin and Charles Barry collaborated on. Charles Barry was very much the senior figure in the partnership. They would go on to build the Palace of Westminster together. The exhibition about Tolkien at the Bodleian in Oxford last year, Tolkien: maker of middle earth, revealed that as a boy Tolkien was a proficient drawer of architectural detailing. It is easy to imagine the young Tolkien being impressed by the gothic splendour of his school, and perhaps Pugin’s interiors encouraged him to think about medieval England, and to delve further back into history. It is possible that they even helped him to conjure up the places we read about in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit. When Tolkien was married in St Mary’s Immaculate Church, Warwick, in 1916, he would surely have known that Pugin’s son, Edward, designed it, and he would have been conscious of the Christian symbolism of the gothic architecture, not least because Tolkien was brought up in the Catholic church after the death of his mother when he was 12. That church, and the other gothic buildings of Warwick, probably The cathedra of the Archbishop of Birmingham in St Chad’s Cathedral (Photo: James Bradley, influenced Tolkien’s writing. Wikimedia Commons) 50 CONTEXT 158 : MARCH 2019 including timber panelling and the headmaster’s throne (he really did have a gothic throne), and they went into the new school building. Pugin would go on to design the Sovereign’s throne in the House of Lords. Birmingham has several surviving Pugin buildings, including St Mary’s Convent in Lozells, the seminary at Oscott, a number of churches, and St Chad’s Cathedral, which contains many Pugin- designed treasures in its crypt. Pugin was born in 1812, the only child of middle-aged parents, an English mother and a French father, who both doted on him. The family lived in Bloomsbury, London, in a happy household, full of life, and from within the family home Pugin’s father ran a drawing school. Pugin was indoctrinated into gothic design from an early age; as a boy, he made annual trips with his father to study the medieval cathedrals of England and France. At the age of 15 he started working for his father, who was a cabinetmaker as well teaching architectural drawing; and the pair of them, father and son, worked together on furniture for George IV at Windsor Castle. At 18, Pugin was running his own furniture-making business in St Chad’s, Birmingham, was the first Catholic cathedral built in England since the Reformation London, and he was also designing (Photo: Oosoom, Wikimedia Commons) and making stage scenery for the Covent Garden theatre. At the start engaged to Mrs Amherst’s daughter This table was made and presented of his career, Pugin would travel up Mary, but the relationship ended to this church by Augustus Welby to the Midlands, where some of his when she decided to become a Pugin, AD 1831. I wonder if Anne best clients lived, like Mrs Gough nun. Mrs Amherst’s son, Kerril, was with him when he presented of Perry Hall, and Mrs Amherst of was a boy when Pugin first the table to the church. She might Fieldgate House, Kenilworth, for visited the family home. Later, have been waiting secretly outside whom he later built St Augustine’s when Kerril went to study for the because Pugin had got Anne Church, Kenilworth. Pugin priesthood at Oscott Seminary, on pregnant, which would have been visited Kenilworth Castle with the the edge of Birmingham, Pugin scandalous at the time. They eloped Amhersts. This is the castle that taught him there as the professor and Pugin lied about his age so inspired Sir Walter Scott to write his of ecclesiastical antiquities. that they could marry without historic novel Kenilworth. Scott’s Kerril later became a bishop and parental consent. His parents historical novels had a significant remained a good friend to Pugin. were forgiving and took in the effect on British culture in the At the age of 19 Pugin, designing newlyweds, but the next couple of first half of the 19th century. The stage scenery for the Covent years were tumultuous for Pugin. young Queen Victoria and Prince Garden theatre, was dating a After giving birth to a daughter, Albert were fans, and they were also Covent Garden actress, Anne, three Pugin’s beloved young wife interested in gothic design. Scott’s years his senior, who he would tragically died. Pugin fulfilled novels fuelled Pugin’s interest in take on outings to Christchurch in her dying wish that she be buried medieval gothic design and chivalry. Dorset. When I visited Christchurch in the Priory at Christchurch. Pugin’s life became intertwined recently I stumbled on an altar By the time Pugin was 21, his with the Amhersts of Kenilworth. table, hidden away in a corner of devoted father and mother had Later in life he became secretly the priory. The inscription states: also died, leaving him alone with CONTEXT 158 : MARCH 2019 51 book Contrasts was receiving favourable attention from influential people. Walking along New Street, he saw King Edward’s School, the building he designed in partnership with Charles Barry, under construction. There was not time for him to loiter as he was on his way to a job interview at Oscott, the new Catholic seminary, built on the boundary of Birmingham Oak panels drawn by Pugin and the Royal Town of Sutton Coldfield. The job was to design the interior of the seminary’s chapel and two new gatehouses leading into the seminary. The interview at Oscott was life- changing and it was instrumental in helping him to turn Britain gothic. Poor houses modern and ancient, from Pugin’s He won the commission to design Contrasts the chapel and the gatehouses, and Contrasts was a discourse on he was invited to stay on at Oscott Pugin’s architectural beliefs, as their professor of ecclesiastical including authenticity in antiquities, a role created uniquely construction, which meant for him. He was the only lay expressing the structure of a member of the teaching staff. He building in an honest way. For stayed at Oscott, on and off, for a example, he did not hide the year. It was there that he met the hinges of a door but revealed them, Birmingham manufacturer, John A drawing by Pugin of St Peter’s Church, celebrating their function and Hardman, Lord Shrewsbury and Woolwich. The church was built in 1842–3 but their appearance. ‘All ornament Bishop Walsh, all of whom became the tower and spire were never built (Image: should consist of enrichment of his life-long friends, and with whom Yale Center for British Art) the essential construction of the he would change the face of Britain. a baby daughter to look after. building,’ he wrote. He believed that Pugin convinced John After these catastrophes he spent a only gothic or ‘pointed’ architecture Hardman to turn his Birmingham contemplative time walking around could satisfy all of his worthy manufactory over from the the medieval ruins of Tintern objectives. He hated classical production of buttons to the Abbey in the Wye Valley. It was Greek design, not only because he production of stained-glass windows here that he found his true calling considered it pagan but because and gothic metalwork, which he to be a gothic designer and he it was based on construction needed for his churches. They decided to convert to Catholicism. with timber posts and beams, worked together on the ancient A few years later, in 1836, at and when the ancients evolved to craft of glass making, and scaled the age of 24, Pugin’s fame was using stone instead of timber, they it up for mass production. They accelerated with the publication continued to build in the same recreated vibrant medieval colours of his book Contrasts. The book way, rather than applying the true at realistic prices, and Hardman’s contrasts the merits of gothic possibilities of stone to create Birmingham manufactory went architecture, or what Pugin refers soaring vaults and flying buttresses. on to produce all windows and to as Christian architecture, with To understand why Pugin the gothic metalwork needed classical Greek design, which he became so influential, it is helpful for the Palace of Westminster. dismisses as being pagan. With his to return to a sunny, spring day in There were other seismic factors combination of architecture and 1837, when he was 25 years old. simmering away that added to a writing Pugin was getting ready He travelled up to Birmingham perfect storm at Oscott seminary to change the face of Britain. on the brand-new railway, in 1837, which would advance A very effective networker and but the project had not been Pugin’s gothic cause.

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