12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", , 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 it)' with existing buildings. vVren felt that 'to deviate from the old Form, would be to rurn [ a building] into a disagreeable Mixture, which no Person ofa good Taste could relish.' At Christ Church. Chapter 1: Literature , he built Tom Tower, a rather florid Gothic gatehouse. For the restoration of\Vesmlinster Abbey he made designs for a Gothic facade and , intending 'to make the whole of a Piece'. \ Vren also appreciated the structural refinements of the Gothic. At St Paul's, London, the crowning achie\'ement of his .My stud.y holds three thousand volumes , he supported the great barrel va ult of the navc with a AndJet Jsighfor Gothic . mighty array of fly ing bu ttresses, although these were carefully Sanderson Miller, 1750 masked from sight behind a blank second-storey wall. Here was the characteristic seventeenth-century attitude toward the It is a leap to go frolll writing poems about to making ruins Gothic: respect and admi ration for its structural achievements, to represent poems, but in the early eighteenth century horror and disgust for its vi su al fo rms. did just this. The Gothic Revival began as a literary movement. Throughout Europe, simila r attitudes prevailed. Damaged or drawing its im pulses from poetry and drama, an d trans lating dila pidated cathed rals were patched with simplified Gothic ele­ them in to . It was swept into exis tence in Georgian ments, as at ~ oyon, in the mid-eighteenth century. In England by a new li terary appetite fo r melancholy, horror, gloom some cases entirely elements were designed: Gothic and decay. It revelled in the exalted psychological states of were designed fo r the cathedra1 of -Croix in Shakespeare's characters, the love of the fantastic an d the super­ Orleans in the 1620s; a Gothic facade fo llowed in abou t 1708. natural in Edmund Spenser and, later, the morbid graveyard This was no provincial outpost, but a major funded by poetry ofThomas Gray. All these themes, which stood in opposi­ royal contribution, and the decision to proceed in the Gothic \\'as tion to the cl assical val ues of clarity and orderliness, came to be made personally by Louis X lV. And the quality of the work wa s associated wi th the crumbling Gothic lan dscape ofEngland. uncommonly high, carried out in finely dressed stone, much fi ne r, The medieval landscape of Englan d had long been the foc us of in fa ct, than much oft.he that followed it. powerful cultural associations. It was exceptionally rich in its At the other side of Europc, the Gothic was Ilkewise enjoying heritage ofmedieval monasteries and abbeys. Al th ough di ssolved a spirited afterlife. The Bohemian architect Giovann i Santini­ and looted by Henry VIII during the protestant Reformation, Ai chel (1677-1723) concocted a ri chly idiosyncratic blend of these decaying monasteries were an es scnti al component of the and Gothic forms, reviving the sinuous and landscape. The Engl ish attitude toward this landscape was web-like vau lting of the late Gothic Parl er style. T ypically unusu.ll ly reverent. Because of the social history of England - a inventive was his pilgrimage church of 5t John of Nepomuk, Norman aris toc racy arri\-ing in l066 to supplant an Anglo­ Zclena Hora, now in the Czech Republic (c. 1720-). T hi s was Saxon kingdom - pedigree and dynastic continuity were matters Baroque in its pentagonal central plan and undulating wa lls even of great symbolic weight. At the same time, Englan d's aristoc­ as its la minated surfaces and its energetic ribbing were resolutely racy was rural. not urban, and enjoyed an intimate relationship to Gothic. These works and those of \Vren represent the culmina­ the land, as it does to this day. \Vhen the Puritans ruled England tion of Gothic Survival, requiring j ust a speck of nostalgia and from 1646 to 1660, Tory aristocrats were exiled to their rural antiquarian pleasure to tip them over into Revival. estates; barred from public life. many took refuge in antiquarian ­ Ironically, even as the Renai ssance dislodged the Gothic, it ism, a favourite aristocratic diversion in troubled times. Most suggested by its own example that a discarded style might. at estates were built on or near the ruins Of monasteries, whose some distant day, be made to li ve again. T hus in 1700,just as the antiquity seemed to oOer historical legitimacy to their upstart Gothic finally vanished as a structural system and a style, it was possessors, albeit of a rather spu ri ous sort. Such is the back­ about to be revived as an idea. ground 10 vV illiam Dugdale's lvlonosticon Angliconum ( 1655), an extravagant compendillln of these monasteries produced during

l:.! IS 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 the Puritan interregn um . \Venzel Hollar's su perb plates formed a 7 Gothic TemP'e at PMk, rich sou rcebook for the Gothic Hcvi\,al.e\·cn into Pug in's day. . 1716-17. If the point 0( a building was 10 evoke I t was one thing to draw and research medie\'al monasteries; it Gothfc associations, II could never was quite another to build copies of them. For this to happen be Clammed too full of Gothic required mental adjustments of a traumatic nature. Up to the motifs. Tyrrell's GOthfc TemP'e at Shotover Par1l. presented a full start ofthe eighteenth century it was slill taken for granted that a panopty 0( cathedral elements in building mllst be beautiful to look at. This meant classical archi­ shorthand form: an arcaded porch slung between two octagonal tecture, as revived by the Renaissancc and proportioned turrets. a rose and a according to the punctili ous method ofVitrU\,jus. In this system lonely fin~1 atop its crenellated had no place. To admit the merit of Gothic gable. architecture, either oneoftwo things mu st occur. Either the defi­ nition of beauty could be stretched so that the Gothic could be defined as beautiful, orthe merit of a building could be S(.'C 11 to reside in va lues other than beauty. The eighteenth century. though it struggled to do the fi rst, chose the second course. T he consequences of this \\ ere not restricted to the Gothic Re\'i\'al and came to affect mu ch of\ Vestern cu lt ure. T he doctrine which came to compete with beauty as the fun­ damental end of art was that ofassociationi sm. Accordi ng to this doctrine, a wo rk of art should be judged not by sll ch intri nsic qualities as proportion or form, bu t by the mental sensations they conjure in the mi nd:) of\·iewers. Such an idea has a long pedigree and it ultimately stretches back to John Locke's Essa) Concerning /luman Ullderslalldillg(1689), which treated sensory experience as the source of human kn owledge. T he relationship of this con­ cept to art was stated most sllccinctly by Hichard Payne Knight (1750-182 1- ), whose IlJItlI)'lical Inquiry into the Picturesque pro­ pa inted landscapes of Claude Lorrain and Salvato I' Rosa. Tn their claimed that 'all th e pleasure of intellect ari se frolll the paintings melancholy ruins were indispensable, serving to estab­ association of ideas' . Fo r I\ night, the real richncss of a work of an lis h scale and perspectival depth, and in la ndscaped they was not in th eo plll cnceof it ~ materi als oreleganceof its forl11 bu t did the same. Ofco u r ~ c . while Cl audc's ruins were classical, those in its limitless capacity to induce thoughts and impressions: of the English countryside were medieval. Thus from an early 'almost every objcct of nature or art. that presents itself to the date the English landscaped introduced medieval senses, ei ther excites fresh train s and combinations of ideas, or \' ignettes among its cl assical . Some ofthese consisted of vivifi es and strengthens those \\ hid l existed before.' A wooded remodelled or altered monastic ruins while others consisted of landscape might summon agreeable thoughts and memories of entirely ne\\ buildings in the 'Gothick' sty le. Such lighthearted childhood picnics; a ruined abbey might call to mind melancholy structures posed no menace to the classica l tradition, which reRectionsofthc \'iolence of the , or reRections on it::, ah\ ays tolerated grotesqueness in the Saturnalia of the garden. piety. Payne Knigh t's book did not appear until lS05 but it only (The speJ1ing 'Gothick' was gradually replaced by 'Gothic' in the put into words what had long since become common practice. . In the nineteenth cen lury. 'Gothick' came to stand for any The pl ayground fo r in dulging associations was the pic­ Gothic Rc\'ival building that was particularly nai've. Rim sy or his­ turesquciy landscaped garden. that essential creation of toricalJ y incorrec t.) eighteenth-centll ry English culture. T hese gardens rec reated One of the firs t of these new buildings was the soli tary GothiC' the rambl ing irregularity an d cOll trasting scenery found in the Temple bui lt fo r Colonel at Shotover Park ,

14 r 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 Oxfordshire. in 11 16. T his was a modest arcaded loggia, wh ich faced Tyrrell's across a small lake, each structure offering a view of rhe other. I ts function was purely scenographic: a flat frontispiece set among the trees as a pi cturesque accent. Its lit no usable space and its crenellations sheltered no crouching archers. Only its Gothic details were novel wh ile in every other respect. even in name, it was classical. \ Vi th such ami­ able works the Gothic tiptoed back into \\'estern culture through that most unguarded aperture. the garden. Many of these early Gothic garden buildings were shoddily built in impermanent materials; they were fashioned by amateurs who knew little of design an d even less of archaeology Bur to mock these pavilions, gazebos

16 ' 7 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

Given this lack of basic historical knowledge, English pedan ts 10 . the Temple of couJd cheerfully associate the Gothic with semi-legendary fig­ liberty, Stowe, Bucks. 1741. 'I thank God I am not a Roman: the ures such as Ki ng Al fred or King Arthur. Likewise, they Temple of Uberty was Inscribed , connected it not with Catholic bu t with secul ar build­ Pfoctaiming Viscount Cobham's ings. above all sturdy . Such imagery was entertained at disdain for continental absolutism and Catholicism. Ironically, hIS the highest levels, up lO the throne itself In I i SS Queen Caroline architect was a Catholic who had commissioned the bizarre Merlin's Cave for Rich mond Park in trained in Rome. Surrey. T his rustic little pavil ion was a sort of subterranean , wh ose Gothic arches and vaults were mad e of unshaped boulders, bark-covcl'ed tree trunks and thatched . Here was a Gothic for a protestant queen, suggesting nothing of Catholic cathedrals but evoking the Druidical origin of Gothic. Light fil­ tered in from high above to fa ll upon a didactic exhibition of wax figures taken from English history - associat­ ing the newly arrived German court with the most ancient of English monarchs . .Merlin's Cave was built by \Villiam Kent, the painter and architect to Lord Burlington, the patron of England's nco­ Pal1adians. It is ironic that the fi rst champions of the Gothic should ha\'e come from Burlington's circle. which practised a 11 Rather than plastering the rather narrO\l,,' and bookish classicism and which cherished the Interior of the Temple of Liberty, Gibbs let its hardy masonry sober and decorous Renaissan ce classicism of Andrea Palladia. remain bare, a sttikinggesture In Nonetheless, the same trait that made them susceptible to an age th at was contem WIth Palladio - the connoisseur's craving for fa shionable novelty ­ archllectural iIIusJonism. Before of Parliament in its struggles with the monarchy. They cou ld archllects would again learn the made them sympathetic to the Gothic. At the same time, expressive power of genuine argue that the Gothic was just as mllch a \ Vhig style as a Tory Burlington's circle consisted of\Vhigs. who upheld the authority matenals and construction style. T he Tory co uld say that the Gothic was the style of lradi­ techniqUes a century would pass ti on and legitim acy; the \ Vhig could retort that it was also the 9 William Kent's Merlin's Cave, style of the thirteenth century and the Magna Carta, \\ hen the Richmond ( 17 33) was an power of the ki ng was checked. Here, at the very outset of the exercize in dynastIc grafting, spuriously connecting the revival, was th e first indication of the infini te elasticity of the HaOOYefian kings to Arthurian Gothic, whi ch could be twis ted by literary argument in to j ustify­ England at a time \'Ihen the Stuan pretenders stili posed a threal lO ing any cause - church or state. people or king, aristocrat or the throne The pavllion was as democrat. For the moment, however, it com-eyed Englishness. a much an exertize in stagecrah as quality to which both parties were busily stakingout a clai m. architecture, as the print from Merlin Of the Borish Inchanter Kent became the favourite i[(.>("( for medieval-minded and Kins Arthur, the British \\lhigs. most of his work consisting of carefr<.'e garden follies, Worthy (1736) shows, depicting such as those in the garden at Rousham, Oxfo rdshi re ( 17S7-40). it as a theatrical proscenium. plete with backdrop and cast AtStQwesomething more serious was built. T his \ .... ;IS the Temple of Georgian players. of Liberty, buil t fo r Richard Templ e, the Vi scoll o[ Cobham. It marks rhe culmination of the \.\lhig Gothic. Cobham was the champion of the \-V hig faction in Parliament, standing up for the pa rliamentary tradi tion in defiance ofcontinental absolutism. At the peak of hi s poli tical struggle he built fo r hi mself a gol rden

18 1.9 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 pavilion that represented his position in symbolic terms Unlike other examples, where a few contri\'cd buttresses braced a rick­ 7/'" f///' O,. J c," {I I;'~ Gothic!, ety tower, the T emple of Liberty was a substantial piece of ItN~ ,\,11r. architecture. Its designer was James Gibbs, who had trained in ~ the Ba roque of Rome and who had far more fee ling for th e move­ ment and massing of the Gothic than his paper-bound ~ neo-Palladian rivals, who kept thei r noses in books. He gave the Temple ofLiberty a compact triangular form with robus t polyg­ onal bays and rich ly sculpted blind arches, all executed in ~ handsome sandstone. Its interior waS perhaps more impressi\'e. forming a dramatic well of space surmounted by a gallery and a glillcringdomeat the apex. " 12 SandefSOfl Miller, Tower Temple's iconography was literary; it included statues of al , , seven Saxon worthies, the motto 'I thank God that I am not a 1745-49. Miller's lower established the fad for the Roman', and even its punning title, 'the Temple of Liberty'. The inhabitable ruined as well imagery was adeli ri ous swirl ofideas, a mixed metaphor in which as its formulaic programme: the Saxon freedom. Protestantism and the Gothic style were con­ battlemented mass of the tower, a 100'1er volume to offset the fl ated to stand against Catholi cism, Homan absolutism and vertical and a spur of ruinous Classicism. Its complex and interlocking programme, like that of wall that trailed from it and died an allegorical painting. was just the sort ofwitty performance the away. This was the minimal number of elements needed. Enlightenment lo\'ed. a short story of a ruined castle Gothic nostalgia burned brightly during [he reign of the rather than an epic. H anoverian Georgian era. \ Vhen Squire Sanderson Miller acquired the site at Radway, \ Varwickshire, o\'erlooking Edge ~ •.. -l-.­ HiJJ, the culminating battl e of the - where Cha rles 1 was decisi\·ely beaten - he rreated it as a national shrine. • 'i 13. 14 . 'The Fifth Order of the Gothick Architecture' ;."-~: and 'An Umhfello for the Centre ~ ./ or Imersection of Walks' (from ;n Gothic Architecture Improved, 1741-42). langley's impec:c.able draftsmanship set the stage for a century of paper Gothic crealions. " 4 from which even Pugin, his great "I opponent. was not immune.

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20 'l l 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 He raised an octagon .. l tower, whose form was loosely based on that ofGuy's 'Tower of\Varwick Castle, one of the first instances of an actual historical model being followed for a ruin, Miller's building \\as built on an agglutinative plan, in which parts \\ere added by accretion and without regard fo r formal symmetry. T his was probably happenstance rather than design, He added a section of wall to the original tower, along with a smaller square tower and a spurious draw-bridge. and clearly liked the results. Soon he was repeating the scheme for his neighbours. One of

these was the T O\\ er at Hagley, \Vorcestershire (1748). one of the firs t to feature an arcaded wa1l, a familia r sight from abandoned abbeys and now an essential component of the artificial ruin. Another was designed for the grounds of Lord Hardwicke's estale, \Vimpolc(although this was bu ilt ro revised plans in 1768, apparently by the architect James Essex). \ Vitll the growi ng popularity ofGothic hOllses, a correspond­ ing architectural literature arose, T he most notorious cmry was by Batty Langley, the en terpri sing landscape gardener and archi­ tec tural publicist. In 1742 Langley brought out his ('''Ccentri(' Ancz'enl ArchiILdtlrt Restored and Impr()'(Xd b)' a Greal Pan'eiJ' of Grand and Useful DeSigns, entirely New III the GOlhick 1110dtJur Ihe Onwmnlling ojBuildings and Gardens, reissued fi ve years later as 15 Horace Walpole, Strawberry eight or nine to one, while a genuine Gothic shaft might easily be Gothic Architecture, lmproved by Rules and Proportions. Despite the Hill. . 1750-77. several ti mes that. YVhen Walpole announced that customary bombastic ti tle, the book was a prim attempt to sub­ 'I am going to build a little Gothic For al l of his painstaking work with compass and dividers, Ject Gothic forms to classical discipline. Langley was a great foe castle,' his friend Horace Mann Langley did not propose to rehabili tate the Gothic as a monu­ of bu t he was nonetheless a classicist was aghast: 'Why will you make mental style, His ambition ran no higher than the making of it Gothic? I know it is the laste through and through, who believed that any architcctureworthy at present, but I really am sorry merry 'Umbrellas for the Centre or Intersection of Walks', His 13 of the name was based on 'gcometri cal rules ', If no Gothic trea­ for it. ' Gothic range was limited,consisting of buttresses, crenellations tises on proportion su rvived and there was no medieval and his ubiquitous ar ch. This was a rather late Gothic fea­ equivaJent ofVitnJvius. this was only because the ravages ofhis­ ture, a halJ mark of fourteenth-cen tury English design, and it tory lutd obliterated them. Surely 'there ",,'ere many ingenious comprised a four-centred arch each of whose sidcs traces a deli­ Saxon architects in those times who composed manuscripts ofall cate $-curve. Langley appreciated the fo rm for its decorative their va lu able rules, which with themselves were destroyed and lightness and used it repeatedly, making the fea ture an essential bu ried in ruins'. To reconstruct those rules was {he burden of element ofanything purporting to be Gothic. So indelibly did the

Langley's book. He presented fi\'e Gothic orders in analogy to J'" public associate the agee with Langley that \\ hen he fell from the fi ve Vitruvian orders. arranged from most robust to IllOst del­ favour a ha lfcentury passed before anyone used the feature again. icate, He also sho\\ cd that the proportions of the tiniest Far more influential than Langley's quaint book was mouldings and subdivisions ofpa rts \\'ere generated by rhediam­ Strawberry Hil l, the rambling and eccen tric playthingof llorace eterofthecolumn base, again li ke Vitnl\'ius, making the design of \Valpolc (I i Ii-97), youngest son of prime min ister Robert a Gothic buildi ng a fussy matter of adjusting modules and pre? \Val pole. Unlike Langley, ""'alpole had no desire to domesticate portions. This was ha rdly the Gothicofthe g reat cathedrals, and thc Gothic or to remove its gloom; he cherished it for the melan­ in fact Langley's proportions were more classical than medievaL ~ choly tal es it 101d. In Ii50 \Val pole bough t a cottage at Like classical columns, the relationship of height to width was Twickenham, on the T hames nca r London, whi ch he altered and

22 23 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 expanded repeatedly over the next three decades. Its strongest point was its gradwl1 growth by accretion, improvisation build­ ing upon improvisation. giving it a rich complexity \\ hich distinguished it from the schematic quality ofmosr examples of early Gothic Revi\aJ. ) \ \'aJpole designed his house as he had amassed his art collec­ tion: as a connoisseur, by scrupulous selection of indi\'idual treasures. To design the house he formed a Committee ofTaste_ comprising John Chute, Richard Bentley, Johann Heinrich Muntz and others, \\ ilh \ Valpole as the controlling mind. He himself selected the Gothic models which they fined to their ne\\ functions. T he change in use was often extraordinary: the tomb of Archbishop Bourchier at , for example, 1 became the fi replace in rhe long gallery; the screen at the high altar ofRouen Cathedral, the Holbein Chamber screen; the va ult~ of l\ ing Ilenry VII's at \Vestmins ter Abbey, the plaster ceiling of the gall ery; and the choir screen of old St Pau l's I Cathedral, th e arched and crocketed bookshelves of the library. 'I Scarcely any element - carpets, chairs or wallpaper -lacked an authenticated pedigree_These imaginati\-e leaps across archi­ tectural categories are not surprising if one considers that \ Valpole often worked from books and prints, where his motifs were already flattened into outline form, and where a lomb was as useful a motifas a window, or even an entire facade. That his motifs came from different countries and centuries

16 $uawbefry Hill was built from east to west in successively bolder 17 Strawberry Hill's long gallery caused \Valpole no distress. He demanded the precise copying of campaigns. The OIiginal cottage was arranged so that visitors medieval models-indeed, he was the fi rst todoso- bur historical (al the bottom of the plan) was might inspect Walpole's collection remodelled and givetl its stair and without disturbing his privacy. accuracy martered discretely. So long as each detail had a Gothic polygonal bays in 1750-53. In 0~-: WaljXlle was pleased with John source, so he seelTl s to have believed, th e overall ensemble would the campaign of 1758 the RI:H Chute's design, especially its take ca re of itself. \Valpole had no wish to buil d a dank medjeval Holbein Room and a half-heaned ~ exterior: Well, how delightful! ; he wanted to li \'ein Georgian comfort, in warm rooms with section of ckltster were added. I How the deuce did you conuive to Immediatety thereafter came the Ir...L..J. get such proportion? You will high ceilings and sash windows. His 'Gothic' hOllse was a witty ) certainly have all the women WIth more maSSive south cloister, the sham, an immense cu riosity cabinet of architectural fragments long gallery abc:Ne It, the round short legs come to you [Q design I high-heeled shoes for them.' heaped up into a building. There is no artistic uni ty other than tower to the west and the ~ polygonal cabinet called the I Itt.:)) lt1 that provided by \Valpole's whimsical perso n alit)~ much as a tribune. By 1763 visitors were 18 (overIeaO Strawberry Hill, admItted, although as late as library. Walp:>le and his great an collection can evoke rhe taste behind it. The interior 1776 Walpole was still tinkering, ~G coUal:X)(ators were generally details, howc\'er, are ofa piece. Most were by Ben dey and show a indifferent to questions of addll'18 the Beauderk tower to the similarly playful treatment. and a 100'e or graceful, elegant lines . northwest comer. , ~r malerials and form. It made httle ~~D' ) difference 10 them thai the pointed On his wainscoted walls and panelled ceilings Bentley draped a .~~ arches, buttresses and finials of filigree of deli cate, gossamer-thin detail whose spi rit was as his library were forms that had L ~ /""-- Ll, structural meaning when made of much rococo as it was Gorhic, whi ch was in keeping with his stone but none in wood. materials o f" choice: pla ster and papier machc.

'N 2S 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 If the Gotllic Revi val was ori ginally II1spired by literature. Strawberry Hill look the process full circle. I n June 1764 \Valpole dreamed of a gigantic armoured hand hovering at the top of his staircase and he immediately elaborated his dream into a novel, the Castle cljOtrallto: A Gothic Stor;,y, which appeared in 1765. The story was overwrought and ridi cul ous: King Manfred. seeking to marry the intended bride of his dead son, imprisons her in his gloomy castle; she escapes, braves underground passages replete with spectral voices and the occasional skeleton, finds her true love, at which time the castle collapses spectacularly The mix­ ture of horror and romance strikes us as conventional but these arc the conventions \Valpole himself created. The Castle clj Otrallto begat a new and du rable literary genre, the Goth ic novel , whose pedigree extends from \ValpoJc through \Valter Scorr and Edgar Allan Poe to the Stephen Ki ng novelsofourown day. It isa mo re lasting achievement than \~Ialpo l e's house. Even before Strawberry Hill was fini shed, it was widely copied. \Valpole's Committee of Taste, his happy band of Gothic draftsmen and artisans, took its fo rms and lessons io other clients. By the 1760s there was a considerable number ofself-styled Gothic architects, including Sanderson Miller, Henry Keene and the talented ama­ teur Sir Roger Newdigate. A cha rming English eccentr ic, Newdigate insisted on making his own architectural drawings and des igned a fa "-reaching series of additions to his sixteenth- century house. Arbury Hall. \Varwi cksh ire. Al most all of these 21 men continued to work on the \Valpole method. composing each room additively out of features copied from approved Gothic models. But the quality of work im proved rapidly, spurred by the rivalry of fash ion and the rapid movemen t of architectural ideas. Already by 1768 we find a Gothic design whose construction, detail and spatial character were aU the product ofa single unified conception. This was the Chapel at Audley End, Essex, of J 768, a jewel ofrococo lightness wh ose authorship remains a mystc,-y. The Gothic Hevival took a difrerent course in Scotland, wh ere the medieval past was not quite so distant. Conditions were quite fe ud al in some of the more rugged, less hospitable regions, wh ere 19 A lovely drawing of the Chapel at Audley End, Essex chieftains still held sway by personal authority, ensconced in (1768) shows the growing competence of professional designers. Unlike the awkward improvisations of Walpole's their remote f.:"1stn esses. Unlike England, where the military fea ­ circle, this design shows an ability to conceive of the space tures of a castle had become purely symbolic, the Scottish castle as a totality, to integrale its conslruction with its design and remained a useful place of retreat when warfare erupted, as it did also to use historical prototypes boldly, particularly the vaulted ceiling, based on Henry VII's Chapel at "Xestminster. during the Jacobite rebelli ons of 171 5 and 1745. Many estates Such is the quality that some scholars have attributed the were rebuilt and reinforced during these upheavals, using the design {O , who WOfked al Audley End, rather {han James Hobcraft. the london carpenter who built it. tough g ranite masonry of Scottish tradition. Nothing could be

28 29 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 further remo\'ed from the dainty affectations of \\'alpole's 22 'What I admire here is (he Stra" berry Hill. lotal defiance ot expense: wrote Dr Johnson ollnverarayCastie. The o\'erlap of Gothic Rc\·j\'aJ and Gothic Sur\'i\al in 20 BrizleeTower(1777-811. He may have meant the Alnwic:k Park, Illustrates Robert Scotland is shown at In\,eraray Castle, Argyll. Some time before Impressive moat and array of Adam's jaunty approach to the his death in 1726, John Vanbrugh made plans for an abstractly crenellated banJements, a luxury Gothic. The ornate wincklw at a time when there was little Gothic castle to replace the original medie\'al structure. This surrounds look as if they were occasKJn for firing arrows or glued to the solid wall behind project ca me to nought but it was e\'idently dusted off in 17 ..,9 pouring boiling oil. Built by Robert Moms from 17431Oc. 1757, them while the triangular arches when Archibald Campbell (1682-1761) became Duke of Argyll. at ground level have little Inveraray was subsequenuy raised architectural logic. But what is He chose Robert Morris (died 1(49). the English Palladian archi­ by a storey in the nineteenth glaring to us hardly maneted to tect, to make a new design. which \\,IS close in spirit to century, ~ng its creneUatJOns. eighteenth-centUfY eyes, which Vanbrugh's. The build ing, begun in 1745 and completed around did no{ look al buildings for structuraltruth. 175 7, was a prodigy of stern Scottish masonry Four round tOw­

. ' ; . k • • .. - ~ .i , ; . " ;' " ....' .... , -.. , .. ~',;.-~: " ' J.. A ? ... , ~'1

21 The sumptuous forms of the thirteenth· century tomb of Aymer de Valence. Abbey, appealed to eighteenth· century Rococo taste. Not only did Horace Walpole copy the tomb for his library shelves but Sir Roger Newdigate borrowed it for his drawing room chimney at Atbury Hall, Warwickshire (1762).

80 8 1 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 ers with marked the corners of the square castl e, which rasear thecentreto form a might)' towered block, express­ ingthe great hall within. Its medieval character depended almost entirely on size and the severity ofits construction. fo r other than the traceried windows of the great hall and the arched po rtal, there was no ornament at all. T he walls were taut ashlar planes, without any projection or recession to create a play ofshadows ­ a sensible omission given Scotland's climate. Strawberry Hi ll and Inveraray represent two distinct types of eightecn th-century Gothic. One was the self-conscious creation of fashionable antiquarianism, the other the ad aptation of a local tradition that was sustained by a warring nobil ity of great antiquity. Strawberry Hi ll was an in strumentiorcommuni­ eati ng associations, literary in its programme and pictorial in its executi on. It was a pastiche, although a learned one. It mi xed its sources indiscriminately: twelfth-century lancet arches. fou rteenth-century crenellations and sixteenth-century Tudor window labels. Inveraray was also an invented Gothi c, but as the work of a trained architect it had the uni ty of a single con­ ception. Robert Morris·s imagination wa s disciplined by two lively traditions, that of Palladian pla nning and of Scottish stone; there was nothing fri·volous or calligraphic about it. And yet Inveraray was as much an intellectual creation as Strawberry Hill, a carefully orchestrated work of an cestral symboli sm. Built during the Jacobite troubles, its immense stone mass stood for a desired dynastic stability that was in reality all too precariou s. T he masons who built Inveraray Castle were \Villiam Adam and hi s SOilS John and Robert, wh o took its style throughou t

23 After the death of Adam, the 24 Culzean Castle (I 777-90) Scotland an d beyond. In fac t, Rober t Adam worked at both chief practitioner of the castellated is the summit of Robert Ad am's Inveraray and Strawberry Hill - for wh ich he designed a ceiling, Gothic in Scotland was James castellated work. Recognizing that Gillespie Graham (l776-1855). elaborate ornament and intricate fi replace and some furniture - and he drew on both bu ildings to His earty Culdees Castle, carving was not appropriate in a form his own personal va riant of the cast le type. Of this there Perthshire (l81O) showed a love rugged castle, he generated were many, including Dalquharran Castle, Ayrshire (1785), of vigorous outline and bold, pictorial excitement through blocky 'Iolumes that distinguished \IOlumetric means alone, Seton Castle, East Loth ian ( 1789) and Airthrey Castle, all of Graham's wOfk. He was the juxtaposing round towers, Stirlingshire ( 1790). Because of his trai ning as a stone mason, first to recognize the architectural curved bays and compact Adam's castles were more solidly architectoni c than those ofany talent of young A. W. N. Pugin. cubical masses, creating a whom he briefly used as his ghost Scottish picturesque. other early Revivalist. In part this came from hi s predilection for designer. building around an existing medi eval building, exploiting its his­ torical associations. T he Illos t splendid of these was Cu lzean Castle ( 1777- 90). superbly sited above a craggy promontory Like many Sco ttish castles, the character is late medieval, with

82 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 round or flat-headed windows. Only in the interior did Adam depart from Scottish rigour, providing gracious salons in the ele­ gant Pompeiian tas te that he had pioneered during his years of Italian study. The Adam brothers were no t the only architects to imitate I!lveraray. which served as the model for a century of castellated Scottish houses. Its castellated styl e had two great merits: it evoked hereditary legitimacy and it did so cheaply. without the cost of raising a classicall>ortico. Carved ornament was held to a minimu m and each rambling volume in the picturesque composi­ ti on contained serviceable rooms within. The style was immediately popular. E\'en Richard Payne Kn ight, the author of the A!lalJ'lical lllquiry illto the Picturesque. built himself a castel­ lated house: Downton Castl e, Ludlo\\". Kni ght had no ancestral nobility to celebrate. Hi s stately castle was built by the wealth of the family iron fo undry in Shropshire. Perhaps for that reason, Knight look pains to explain that the 'associati on of ideas' 25 Richard Payne Knight arollsed by a building was a purely Illental process, and did not designed Downtoo Castle, lLXllow need to reflect any actual state ofaffairs or historical truth.Such a 26 Eastern State Penitentiary, slight changes - to make prisons terri fyi ng. John Havil and·s (1774-78), as an irregular Philadelphja (1821- 36) was composition mat would doctrine could not help but be embraced at a time of colossal Eastern State Penitentiary, (1 821-36), wi th its designed by John Haviland, who com~t wild and rocky its social upheaval. was born in England and certainly innovative radiaJ plan and system of solitary confinement. was site. The experience helped him It is iron ic that Knight's doctrine should have produced so krte'N Knight's cetebrated the world's most progressive pri son. And yet its exterior was shape his doctrine of the Downtoo Castle. Unlike its picturesque, and it also gave him many tasteful and refined Gothic estates. for the associations that nothing more than an austere version of Do\',mton Casue, the prototype, the Gothic of Eastern a lifelong contempt for the the Middle Ages conjured were still primarily ones of melan­ State Penitentiary made functional windows narrowed and the phtyfu l irregularity made rigidly artificial pduresque, in which sense: its stout walls were meant landscape was dipped and shorn choly and gloom. In fac t, the castellated style lived a double life. symmetrical . to be Impregnable and sentinels create irregularity. to contrived and the same forms that made mansions elegant served - with actually paced its battlemented By the end of the eighteenth century. the Gothic had pro­ turrets. gressed a long way toward rehabilitation. I t was now an essential paft of the architecr"s repertoire, an indispensable mode fo r lighter commissions. i\onelhcless. the rehabil itation was only partiaJ. There was stil1 only the most imperfec t understand ing of reaJ Gothic architecture; it had yet to be attached to more seriolls cultura1 ideas than affectations of me1ancholy and gloom. \VhiJe it was handy fo r country houses or inherently gloomy objects like prisons, it was not ye t fit for the most im porta nt civic commj s­ sions. [n short, the Gothic had still not gathered the irresistible cuJtural momentum that a true revival requires. T his woul d hap­ pen only with the twin forces of and the Industrial Revolution, which liberated the Gothic from the quarantine of the picturesque garden an d placed it in the centTe ofpu bl ic life.

34 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

Chapter 2: Romanticism

t

Someptopledn"llk toforget their unhappiness; J do not drin". I build. \Vill iam Beckford

The li terary Gothicofthe eighteenth century had the limitations of li terature as well as the merits. It was intelligent and va rie­ gated but at best it was the nature of book illustration. failing to exploit those abstract properties that are essential to architec­ ture, the sculptural and the spatial. In the late eighteenth century this state of affairs changed, rhe Gothic at last bei ng treated in architectural terms, and with an eye towards artistic un ity. This was the ac hievement ofthat glib and overworked designer James \Vyatt ( J746-181S), the first of the Gothic romantics. \\lyatt showed that a building might thrill by its sheer scale, confrontin g the imagination rather than merely titillati ng the intellect. In other words, a building might be sublime. T he concept of the subli me was the peculiar contribution of the philosopher Edmund Burke, whose Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful appeared in

27,28 The most awe-inspiring r'l-=-() aspect of Foothill Abbey was the Greal Western Hall leading 10 the '1:---", central octagon, a sumplUOlls ~I . processional space nearly ecclesiastical in charactet. There rr- t was much damour 10 see it, despite Beckford's social disgrace t - and he discreetfy remained out of sight during visits. In general, qr- ho\'teVer, his behaviour was indistinguishable from that of his {~.: ...... r·r .. r~ -r,,!!'l .....r.. "1oA.r"'-t imperious fictional crealioo ,..; . ..'II" L. Vathek: not even his archilect was .,.. . ~----- . - excepted. (In 1811 he demanded of Wyatt: 'Where infamous Beast. &. - - -- 1Jr...- ....~ . where are you? What putrid inn, -~ ; . ., , ~ what stinking tavern or pox-ridden Cr ...... ~.. ,...\./..,.-... brothel hides your hoary and gluttonous limbs?') I d.

3 7 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 1757, wh en its 3uthot was twenty-se\'en. Burke noted that there were aspects of nature that were neither agreeable nor pl easant but which exercized a powerful effect on the mind. Phenomena such as ocean tempests or glaciers suggested the menacing vaSt­ ness of nature and the seething, implacable forces within her, a rather different view of nature than that of Cl aude's benign land­ scapes. Burke subsumed these phenomena under the rubric of the sublime, which was not only a psychological but an aesthetic cate­ gory, to be se t alongside beauty. Artists were in vited to explore the sublime, to call forth infinity and to plumb the emotions of dread and terror that this ind uced. Burke wrote in the spirit of the Enlighten ment, seel-iing to analyze a misunderstood as pect of human experience, but his doctrine confron ted something that was itself anti-rational. Inadvertently he helped plant the seeds of Romanticism. In short order arch itecture would not be judged according to the cool and di spa ssionate sta ndards of\Valpole but by its ability to inspire reve rie and delirium. T hi s en tailed colos­ saJ scale but also contrast and the manipulation of dark ness and shadow. Accord ing to Burke, 'aUedifice s calculated to prod uce an id ea of the sublime ought to be dark and gloomy'. By the tur n of the century this idea became the common coin ofromantic arti sts and architects, and to \Vyatt it was especially congenial. An artist of rare imagination, \Vyatt knew what the pious an ti­ quaries did not, th at the most potent aspect ofthe Gothic lay in its sublime and ove rwhelm ing vistas and not in its repertoi re of crockers and pinnacles. J-Ie fo und his ideal cli ent in the milJ ionaire \Villiam Beckford, the tragic eccen tric who built the nlost fan tas­ tic of Gothic prodigies. If\Valpole Iive~ at Strawber ry Hill in an imaginary world of Gothic dreams, Beckford lived them. He fl ed England to escape charges ofpederas ty and while O\'erseas wrote his novel J7alhek, an Arabian tal e of a cruel caliph li ving in his tower and flirting wi th the temptations of demonic genii. Beckford wrote his novel in French, perhaps to put at a distance wh at wa s otherwise a parable of his own life. Upon his return he built Fonthil l Abbey (1796-1812) in \Viltshire, an appropria te 27. 28 setting for playing the pan of the capricious despot. Beckford's first idea was to create a fiction of a ruined abbe)'~ with a fe w wings an d fragments of cloister huddled at the base of his tower. T he improvisation g rew more elaborate over time, as 29 Fonthil1 Abbey, 1796-1807, by James Wyan, was composed much like a painting: sprouting pyramidally out more wings were added and the abbey turned from pl aything to of a cluster of doistered wings, the vertical of its tower permanent residence. Its hub was a '178-foot-high tower which emerged to offset the bleak horlzootaliry of the Salisbury rose above a lofty octagonal hall from which fo ur wings radiat ed. plain. Roughly 278 feet in height, the tower collapsed twice. \ Vyart's arch itectural tastes were in keeping with Beckford 's

38 39 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

30 The nave of Salisbury megalomania; he appreciated absolute magnitude and the power Cathedral, facing east, from John of a long axial procession, and he treated the western hall as a 8rittoo's Cathedral of England, 1814. Salisbury's long and solemn nave, surmounted by an intricate hammer­ sweeping horizontal continuity beamed ceiling and leading to a flight of all egedly wide seems to have fascinated Wyatt enoug h to drive a carriage up. The stunning complex effecti vely ) and he broke down the rood screen, still visible here, to ended the Georgian phase of the Gothic Revj yal. Compared to accentuate the sense of \ ¥yatt's performance, Strawberry Hi ll looked prim and poli te. continuous vista. This axial sequence is surety the origin of No longer did it suffice to equip a Georgian pa rlour with Fonthill Abbey's most sub(ime medieval chitnneypieces and crocketed panelling or to furnish a feature, its long nave-like hall. Palladian facade with a matched pair ofbay windows. 11 Beckford's abbey recalls th e biblical parable of the man who buil t his foundations on sand. \Vyatt's build ers, working day an d night by torchlight. skimped on fo undations, a fact belatedly revealed by the builder on hi s deathbed. But no heed was taken and in December 1825 his mournful tower collapsed spectacu­ larly. For Beckford's architectural this was an appropriate end. like the strik ing of the sets after a play. But \\fyan has come in for harsher historical judgment. 1-1 is romantic impulses may have , been \'irtues in his imaginative work bu t they were \'ices in his architectural restorations, the most notorious aspect of his I career. Hi s freewheeling restorations of Durham, Salisbury and cathedrals, as well as \Vestminster Abbey, earned him an indelible reputation fo r ruthlessness, 'VI/yatt the destroyer' in Pugi n's epithet. And indeed, his habi tual destruction of medieval , tombs an d rood screens in the name of archi tectural purifi cation is la mentable, Salisbu ry (begun 1789) is typi cal of the lot. There his cha rge I was to 'clean and colour th e Church', to 'clean and va rnish the stalls' an d to remove the rood screen that di \'ided the choir from the . But \Vyatt was operating upon fi r m aesthetic principle, as at Fonthill Abbey. His controlling idea \\'as to treat the cathedral as an artistic whole, to unify its di sparate parts into one overwhelmi ng space. The stIrring emotional effect, touching on rhe sublime, was one that Burke hirnselfmight have endorsed, I even though a good deal of histori cal evidence was moved or lost in the process, Morcover \Vyatt's restorations were always excessi" ely tidy. eliminating the sense of congealed ti me that is the principal charm of cluttered old buildi ngs. 1\onerheless, his were the firs t systematic reconstructions, where historical and aesthetic considerations were consciously at the forefront. \:\,iyau's sel f-consciously an istic restorations showed how speedily pictoria l val ues had become ascendant. Of course, painters were now di scovering Gothic arc hitecture as subject

40 4 1 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

mailer. but in\'ersely. a building was now more likely to be con­ ceived as a painting. its features organized pictorially. its lines and contours arranged for visual effect. T his meant a great inc rease in the amount of picturesque interest of a design, and in general irregul arity and movement. A sign of this shift in \·al lies was the sudden emergence of the picturesque rendering. Archite<" lural dra\\ ings were heretofore simply a meaTlS to all end. T his is not to say that there \\ere not attractive renderings ofStrawberry Hill, fo r example, but these were made after the fac t; the architectural amateurs who conceived these bu ildi ngs and the carpenters who assisted them made no ravis hi ng dra\\ ings. But in the middle of the eighteenth century the Indian architect and artist Piranesi had shown that architec tural drawings might themselves be objects of intrinsic aesthetic interest - an idea that was intensely exci ting to Gothic archi tec ts. Soon they devised a rendering style befi tting their archi tcc ture. Atmospheri c watercolour drawings depicted the bui ldings in wooded or moun tainous settings whose jagged lines ec hoetl the towered fo rms of the churches them­ selves. T homas Sand by ( 1721-98), professor of architecture to the Royal Academy. was exceptionally adept at the romantic ren­ dering. integratjng building and landscape in a seamless ensemble. T he rela tionship of archi tecture to landscape was somethi ng to wh ich Englis h designers gave much thought. Since the 17S0s

[he pi cturesquely lan dscaped park had arisen in opposition [0 the stiO"fo rmality of the F rench and Dutch tradition, 'with its insis 32 John Constable painted LanC'eJot (' Ca pabili ty') Brown, who tormented gardens and parks rence on subjecting nature to geometric order. The chief apostles SaiisburyCalhedral in 1826 for throughout England into serpen tine lines punctuat(od with Bishop John Fisher, shown of th e new style were first \Vi lli am l, erH and then the prolific pointing 10 the apex. Constable clu mps of trees and meandering lakes. Brown applied hi s studied clearly appreciated the intrinsic irregul arity wi thout much variation or subtlety and after his 31 The neurotic fascination for pictorial Qualities of the cathedral, death in 178S it became fas hionable to deplore his hig hly artifi ci al vioaence and madness thaI is so framing it SO as to emphasize Its strong in Gothic literature of the noble silhouette and accentuate conception of naturalness. A morc sophi sticated doctri ne of the eighteenth century is usually Its vertitality. Picturesque emerged in the 1790s. I ts chief advocates - Richard absenl in Its architecture. The Payne Knight, UvedaJe Price and Richard Gil pi n - argued that Gothic churches of (1721 - 98) were the inherent qualities of a landscape must always be taken into thoroughly Georgian in their account and that any process of landscaping should work to reticence, dignity and well groomed politeness. Unidentified st rengthen these qualities through a process of in telli gent cor­ church. c. 1790 (from the rection and pruning. T he optimi stic era termed the process Architectural Archives of the Impro\ emcm ' University of Pennsylvania). The greatest of the improvers was Humphry Repton ( 1752-18 18), the author of SketcJ~s and H illis 011 La,ulscllfM Garde1li1lg ( 1795) and Observations on the Theo')l and Practice of L andscape ( 1803). Hepton made his fa me with his ·H €.'(I Books', portfolios of recommended alterations wh ich he would

42 'f.Ii 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 prepare after his site visit, superbly illustrated by before-and­ after views and bound in red leather as a book. T his clever presentation technique wa s fully in the spi rit of picturesque doc­ trine. the comparisons showing how his interwntions followed logically and inevitably from the natural traits of the landscape itself. Often Gothic buildings were proposed, whose rambli ng \\ ings complemented the undulations of the setting Repton's reassuring landscapes hinted at permanence and stability, and were dearly \'allled during an age wh en the landscape was roiled by immense physical changes, brought on by the Industrial HcvoIlHion and the disruptive enclosure mo\'emen t - which was bringing unpartitioned COlll mon land under cu ltivation at a con­ siderable human cost. dislodging countless thousands of agricultural labourers fro l'Jl their homes and livelihoods. T he great theme ofHepton's landscapes was the con ti nuity of English culture and life, a theme expressed in the archi tecture as well as the planting. Here he found an ideal complement in , his architectural partner. Nash had a particul ar knack for the making of picturesque castles, which e\·oked the same associa­ tions of hereditary continuity and legitimacy as did Repton's parks. From 1796 to 1802 they worked together, the summi t of the Gothic Rev iva l in its pictorial mode - the counterpart to the bl ithe and graceful world of Jane Austen, although it masked forces and social pressures that werecon\'ul sive and terrifying. Nash was a genius at architectural pastiche, untroubled by qualms about historical accu racy. Nonetheless, during these years the archaeological q w:lli ty of nco-Gothic work mad e a sud­ den an d remarkable leap. Up unlil the en d of the ei ghteenth century, the Gothic Rev ival did not scr uple to distinguish between mil itary. ecclesiastic an d domestic Gothic, nor between the various epochs of . There was no great advance beyond Wren's division of medieval architecture into 311 older Saracenic style and Gothic (that is berween Homanesque and Gothic). In fac t, accordi ng to associational theory it was no violation to place a six [{."'Cnth-centu ry Tudor window above a twelfth-century archway. All the better, if such a juxtaposition 33,34 Humphry Repton's view of Rivenhall heightened the allra or ch ivalry, romance and gloom. Bu t there Place (above) and his proposed alterations (below). Repton produced his quincy Red Books now came into being a growing corpus ofdocumented buil dings, W ith astonishing speed. Believing that me plans and elevations reproduced in accurate line drawings. peculiar genius of each landscape shoukt be intuitively perceived at the first encounter, he largely ac hieved through the patient spadework of local anti­ swept through an eslate in a day and recoroed quari es. The key fig ure was the industriolisarch itectJohn Carter. his ideas thai evening. Somethmg 01 the same who produced ViewsofAltcielll l3uildings in England( 1786-9.3); he overwhelming sensation must also strike the viewer who opens the flaps of Repton's drawings. systemat ically measu red and drew the nation's cathedral s and

, " ,­ 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

.~ .,"lO...J .~-

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35 Design for a castellated abbeys, subsequently etching them for the Society ofAn tiquaries' 36 Caerhays Castle, Cornwall Th rough the efforts of Carter, Bri tton and others. it gradually residence, from 's Cathedral Series ( 1795-). T hese books established the mould fo r (l808). John Nash's rugged , low· became possi ble to identify the various phases of the Gothic style unpublished album of original slung castles were intended to designs, c. 1790. With his habit all subsequent compendia of Gothic architectu re, such as John communicate dynastic pefpetuity. and to classify them in terms of thei r interna l process ofdevelop­ of composing amateur operas set Britton's Architectural Antiquities ofGreat B ritain. wh ich appeared Ironically, of his fout greatest ment. \\' hen th is firs t happened in the years around 1800, it was ones, only Caerhays survives. in the Mlddle~. Carter in fo rty lavi sh instalmen ts from 1805 to 1814. Carter \\ as inAu­ inevitable that the whole men tal framework of the cl assification narrowty escaped being a medieval dilettante; instead he ential in another respect. for as the chiefarchirecnll"al writer for be borro\\ ed fro m classical scholarship. There the concept of became Englalld's most the Gentleman's ivfagazine he brought learned and intell igent - if styl istic development was at that ti me a novel in sight. Until thc knowledgeable scholar of not dispassionate - discussion of Gothic architecture to a \\ ide third quartcr of the eighteenth century. the classical heritage was medieval architecture. Fellow architects often turned to him to popular audience. Frequently he commented on \ ¥yatt's free­ commonly seen as one long unchanging afternoon of perfection. Critique their efforts and much of wheeling restoralions which to Carrerothe best-informed Gothic This understanding was shaken by recent archaeological discov­ the period's growing competence In neo-Gothic design reflects his sc holar of his day. were acutely pa inful. H is diatribes against these eries at either end of cl assical antiquity. wh ich could not be behind the scenes activitIes. were conducted on a plane offuriolls invec tive, injecting in to the reconci led with the seemingly li meless proportions of . Gothic polemic a dogmatic. almos t theological tone that would Hather, they seemed to show an unfo lding continuum from the resound in th e works of Pug in . Ru skin and the Ecclesiologists. archaic Doric of to the late Imperial style of Diocletian's

, :; 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 palace at Spalato. a trajectOry which progressed inexorably from a state of early vigour and vitality to one ofoverelaboration and degeneracy. This seemed to suggest that inexorable laws of organic development and decline might apply to any style. and this was the insight that John Milner applied to Gothic architec­ ture. A Catholic priest, Milner was an antiquary of unusual sophis­ tication. Tn J79S he was the fi rst EnglJshman to argue that the pointed arch itself was the fundamental element or all Gothic architecture, in distinction to its variolls decorative fea tures. lie elaborated the concept in his Treatise 011 lh~ Ecclesiastical Architecture oj England during the i\1lddle Ages (lSI I). which divided the Gothic into three orders of 'Pointed Arch itecture' wh ich, like the architecture of antiqui ty, progressed from uncouth vitality to cor ruption. This suggested that an ideal Gothic might be found , midway between the periods orbirrh and decay, in which the properties of vigour and refinement were exactly counterbalanced, neither too brutal nor too decorative. This was the 'chaste grandeur' of the Middle or Second Pointed, 37 The Gothic as a cloak that England during the and Napoleonic wars, could be pulon at will, without inevitably assumed a patriotic cast. Once applied to the Gothic, which Milner illustrated by the forms of York \1inster, which any change of plan or materials. dated from about ISOO. Here was a fateful turn for the Gothic Such was 's vision of this patriot.ic vocabulary and the associations it aroused - like Revival, for this way ofcategorizing Gothic architecture simulta­ the Commissioners Churches Milner's moral ones - would be diffi cult to extirpate. (1818), a drunken masquerade Unlike Milner, Rickman was no moralist but a practising neously permitted the maki ng of moraJ j udgments about it. Like party of the styles. To Soane's Carter, Milner's ability to recognize the period styles made him generation this was a thrilling architect who worked happily in the Perpendicular - the first to display of facility, but to the next it an indignant critic of con temporary restoration practice. He know consciously that he was doing so. Kever before had an seemed to shoo,... a lack of moral came to enjoy the acc umulated stylistic phases of me great cathe­ COllviction about style. J. M. architect conceived hi s Gothic designs as stylisti c unities, based drals, Ben eath the visual disorder he saw the orderly and poetic Gandy made the striking on a specific momenrofhistorical denlopment. H is notion orhis­ rendering. march of time, each successive building campaign contributing torical fidel ity ended at the wall s, however, and hi s interiors were elements in its distinctive stylistic voi ce. \:Vyatt' ~ crime wa s the modern creations in both the spatial and technlcaJ sense. attempt to give these pa rts a spuriolls unit)~ which led unfaili ngly Rickman was a Quaker and he gave his interiors something of the to 'the destrllc tion of the proportions. and of the rclation of the open spatial sense ofa Quaker meeti ng house, lI sing spindly cast different parts of the Cat hedral'. iron columns to support bri ttle gall eries. 38 Milner's chronology was fu rther refi ned by Thomas Rick ma n The early efforts W O I1 acceptance for the use of the Gothic in (1776- 184 1), who in 1819 published his Attempt to Discriminate Anglican churches. "r he trick le ofessays soon rose to a torrent, as the St)'les

"s "9 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 5t Luke's, Chelsea (1820--24) \\'as a true , wi th low aisles and a lofty nave, instead of the customary barn-like auditorium. It was also vaulted in stone, a radical advance over the plaster and lath vaults of [he eighteenth century. This gave the church an unmistakable sense of structural reality, e\'efl to the Hying but­ 39, 40 St luke's, Chelsea, tresses of the exterior, no affectation but structurally necessary London (1819-24), by James elements Perhaps not surprisingly, its designer was a bridge Savage, was in the Perpendicular style, with its crenellated bu il der, James Savage 779--1852). Here at last, after a century of (J parapets, strongly stated paper Gothic by draftsmen, was a building whose artistic form rectilinearity and net at thin and structural system were the work of the same mind, It mouldings suggesting fussy wood panell ing. The mature Gothic instantly made \,vyatt's work look like sham and gimcrad, rais­ Revival would condemn these in g both the aesthetic and technical standards of the Gothi c. features, and also the lack of a The Ilew fad for precise period accuracy was apparent in other chancel and the reliance on galleries to inuease the capacity; ans, especially literatu re, T he novels of \Valter Scott's Jf/aver/ey nonetheless, its use of stone vaulting was revolutionary.

38 St George's, Everton, , 1813-14, Cheap. effICient, historically accurate without being pedantic: the Gothic of Thomas Rickman made him the StH of the Church Building Act of 18 18, Of the 214 churches built in the first campaign, he was scries, such as Ivan/we ( IS 19) and Kellihvorllt ( l82l ), depend on responsible fo r twenty-one, a the accul'acyoftheir setting, language. costulllcand overall men­ splendid haul considering that he was a Quaker. St George's shows Ia l atmosphere; they can rightly be called the fi rst his torical the open and well lighted interiOfS novels in the modern sense. (In comparison to their vivi d recre­ that suited Regency taste, arion of medieval life. The Castle ifO/ranio and Va thek were no more than fairy taI es.) Hi s in stant financial success showed that there was a thirst for med ieval romance in E ngland - and in F rance as well, where he was wil dly popular and where Victor Hugo copied both the technique and th e medie\'al subject maUe r. Scott was one of the reviva l's most in fl uential propagandists, whose readers carried aw ay a vast mental storehouse of charac­ ters and even ts which was agreeably activated whenever they gazed on a Gothic bui lding, Su rely many of the Gothic houses and churches built in increasing num bers from the J820s onward t race their origin to a happy encounter with Scott. T he pursui t of period accuracy also characterized Scott's own house, Abbotsford, which followed the baronial sryk of the si x­ 41 teenth and seventeenth centuries. r[ is unfortunate that Scott did nO( choose as hi s archi tcct \Vill iam Burn ( 1789--1 870), the chief practitioner of the baronial style, fo r this would have brought together the two greatest arrists of Scottish medieval ism. Burn had the strongly architectoni c sense ofSconish architccture, and the memory of the qua rry. His favourite sources were Jacobean

50 :, / 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 and Elil.abethan - me rged by him into a solid and elegant 'lacobethall' synthesis - without Na sh's dainty fl ou rishes. \Vhil e earlier revivalists deployed their irregular rambling wings in order to manufacture pictorial drama, Burn's compositions were sober and stately, in which the occasional asymmetrical wi ng was rnoti\'ated by function. His greatest importance was in planning, and he designed theera's mostdlicient and comfortable domestic interiors, becoming one of the most brilliant planners of the entire revj\'aJ. He intelligently wo\'e together three types of spaces - the family's private dwelling quarters, the sen'ants' rooms and the principal public chambers - which in chilly Scodand might on ly periodically be heated for use, By making the fami ly's private rooms ttle spatial heart of the house, and subord i­ nating the rest of the plan to them, Burn singlehandedly abolish(.J the tyranny of the Palladian plan, with its compulsory symmetry and its obligatory for mal salons. T hi s revolution would longoll tlivc the Gothic Revival itself

41 Walter Scon's house, 43 Dupplin, 1828-32. William Abbotsford , Roxburghshi re Burn's house for the Earl of (1816-18) was not generically Kinnoul was built in a highly Gothic, despite the author's accomplished Jacobean style. As ardent . II is an essay in all the architect's work, the in the rugged Scottish Baronial asymmetry was molivated by style, with massive walls, internal planning needs and crowstep gables and po/ySorIal handled with the classical barlJZans It was designed by discipline that might be expected Wilham Atkinson In consultation of a pupil of , With Edward Blore. and preserved fragments of actual medieval buildings - a touch not all thai 44 Bum was also an dlfferentlrom the cleverly accomplished church architect integrated historical learning and SI John's Episcopal Church, in Scott's novels. Edmburgh, 1814, built in the Perpendicular style, is one of the 42 The Sir Walter Scott finest Although the subsequent Monument, , Revival ....wld come to scorn the 1840-46, by G, M. KemP. was Perpendicular, the earty in the spirit of his nc7iels: the OIneteenth century was MKklIe Ages of happy jousts and particularty fond of it, perhaps chivalrJC romance, not the gloomy, because its emphalJC comk:es and bfOodlngGothic of Beckford. The strong delinealion of borcIefS excessiVely pinnaded composition matched the neo-classicai taste recalled the of for clearly defined volumes, Burn's the late-Gothic churches of church was an early examp6e of a or Holland , Gothic basilica, with its raised central nave, lighted by a clerestory, and shouldered between two lower aisles r",,:.Jr..lJ<.JI"-"1 ," 11,

52 ,,; 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

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5 ~J. 55 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 York City to the American interior, and transforming the majes­ Dm\lling created the foundation for the pi cturesque ti c Hudson River into something of an industrial corridor. This American suburb. of which Llewellyn Park, ).Jew Jersey, with its even t, coupled with the rapid deforestation of the settled regions. Gothic hOllses and picturesque wooden 'rambl e', \\as the first un leashed a g reat \\ aVe of nostalgia fo r America's vanished example, This was the democratization of the picturesque land­ forests. In painting this led to rhe H udson River School; in litera­ scaped garden of U\'edale Price and H umphry Hepton. its visual ture to the Leatherstocking T ales of James Fenimore Cooper irregularity and continujt)' preserved e\'en as it was car\'ed into (who ad mired \\'alter Scott so much that he visited Abbotsford saleable parcels. T hese picturesque suburbs remain Ihe preferred and modelled his own house after it). The canal's completion also model fo r American Ih'ing to the present. Although their speci fi ­ coincided with the in trod uction of the naturally landscaped pa rk, cally Gothic features have been abandoned. modern suburban which had been irrelevan t during the initial period ofsettlement. tracts continue to be characterized by architectural informality, The new mode was introduced, strangely enough. in sc\'cral winding serpentine roads and continuous swaths of lawn. rural cemeteries - Mount Auburn, near ( I S~II), an d Probably no other contribution of the Gothic Hevi\'al to the fo rm Laurel Hill. P hiladelph ia (1856) - where the conventional classi­ of the modern world was so sweeping, or is so li ttle recognized. call1lonument now competed with a rising tide of Gothic tombs and chapels. 47,48 Davis's design for 'A l ake T he mania fo r Gothic cottages followed , an d the Hudson or River Villa' was widely dislributed in A. J. Qo\.vning's River became the showplace of the new style. Here was some Architecture ofCountry Houses of America's most picturesque scenery and here was poured (1850) and paraphrases ale found throughout the United the commercial weailh that was transforming it. A. 1. Davis States. Seldom did the imitators ( 1803-92) and his friend Andrew Jackson Downing (18 15-52) ) work so rigorously to achieve were the leading figures of the mo\·cmen t. the fo rmer its most 'local truth' as Davis ancl Downmg did Here the sprightly loofscape imaginative designer and the laner its outstanding theo rist. of gables, dormer.; and chimneys Downing's influence was sensational. Like Loudon, his model. mimiCs lhe jagged tines of the he too was a landscaJX! arch itect who was inevitably drawn into distant mountains, architectural ma tters. He produced a torrent of gardening manuals and pattern books which culm inated in T he Architecture ofCountry j-/ouSts ( 1850), America's fi rst great work of archi tec­ tural theory. Downing brilli an tly presented Engli sh la nd scape l theo ry and its fa shionable Gothic architecture-which had arisen in a nation whose understanding of history and landscape v,,' as

almost diametrically opposed to prevaili ng American views- in a " f" ~ way that \\ as acceptable to American patrons, Downing recog­ ni zed that American attitudes towards art were still coloured by the Puritan heritage. An was still JX! rilously close ro being a '] il l N "0 ~

'gra\'en image', disallowed by the Second Commandment, :: x li although it was tolerated if it was useful. Here 0 0\\ /ling found his opening, repeatedly stressing the utility of the picturesque II ~

cottage, IlOt only in crassly functi onal terms but in moral "A ~t. terms as well. For him the cottage was an instrument of moral . 1}(U V[~A"D" JO improvement. Rather than evok ing medieval nostalgia and

cultural continuity. as in England, he praised the cottage as a ~~ symbol of Repu blican simplicity, unaffected natural life and an absence ofpretence,

56 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 English protestan t Canada, one of North America's largest cathedrals, Notre Dame, was built in 1823-29. The architect was James O'Donne! , an Irishman and hi mselfa member of a Catholic minority. His design was somewhat crude - an immense barn ofa Chapter4: Truth nave, enormous in capacity, with two superimposed galJeries­ but it was an attempt to make a Gothic space rather than mere Gothic ornament. T he building was by fa r the largest neo­ Gothic church yet raised, showing the growing self-ass urance of Catholics under British rule,just on the eve of the pa ss in g of the There is nothing1.lJ()rth livingforhul Christian archztectu re and a boaL Act of Emancipation. A. \V N. Pug in Notre Dame also shows the limits of the doctrine of Gothic associatJonisl11. As a princJple. associational theory made amus­ On the evening of 16 October 1834, fi re blazed through the ing pavilions and houses. and even poignant monuments which Palace of \ Vcstminster, home of Engli sh Parl iament since the un leashed the power of thei r viewers' hi storical imagination. Middle Ages. The Ra mes ri si ng over the T hames suggested to Nonetheless. it was hard ly the bas is for the making of seri ous and T urncr a helli sh vision, and so hc painted them, but to another complicated buildings. T hese raised an endless barrage of ques­ Londoner they were perversely enjoyable. This was A. \ '\1: N. tions - concerning materials. pl anning. decoration, the proper Pugin. who despised all sham Gothic but particularly that of handli ng of details and ornament, the nature of originality and James \Vyan, who had remodelled the palace \vith his Customary the role of the craftsman - which [he casual stage-scenery princi­ low-cosr contrivances. Now the des truction of'\Vyatt's heresies' ples of associationism could not pretend to resoh-e. Against this amused Pugin mightily: 'OJ] itwasaglorio us sight tosee his com­ background the solitary fig ure of A. \V N. P ugin. the most position mull ions and cement' pinnacles and uattlements Hying important figure in the history of the Gothic Revival. strode and cracking whi le his 2.6 [two shillings and sixpence] turrets forth. were smoking like so many manufacturing chimni es ti ll th e heat shivered them into a thousand pieces.' 70 Notre Dame Cathedral, Montreal . 1823--29. Throughout 71 Holy Trinity, Cioudesley T his di saster ultimately drew Pugin into the design ofthe new the nineteenth century. American Square, Islington. london. 1826. and Canadian Catholics oscillated Houses of Parliament (1836-{i8). which inaugurated the mature Although a ClaSSicist, Charles beiWeen medieval and Gothic Revi\'al and gave the style the authority and prestige ora 8auy was able 10 design a Gothic Il'IOdels - associating church when necessary. His major bu ilding of state. No mOre would it be the garden SpOrt of themselves either with medieval Holy TrinIty gives an idea of his piety or with allegiance to Rome. dilettantes like Beckford. T here was never any ques tion that the medievalism without the benefit Usually the impulse to make a es of Pugin's counsel. Uke many new HOll s of Parliament must be Gothic: Pari i.amem was itself visual distinction with the local classically trained architects, a medieval instjtution, its Gothic associations not romantic affec­ protestant architecture was earry fOUnd it easier to design decisive. Notre Dame remained tation but literally true. Moreover, two genuine Gothic a convincing Gothic wall than the most important Gothic a ceiling. fragments survived, \Ves tminster Hall an d St Stephen 'S Chapel, cathedral until the building of 5t Patrick's , New York. which migh t set the stylistic key of the new co mplex. T he ensu­ ingcompetition stipulated 'either Gorhicor El izabethan' designs and produced ninety-seven entries, varyin g widely in qual ity. Among these antiquaria n perfo rmances and collations of cathe­ dral fronts, the design of Charles Ba rry ( 1795-1860) stood out by \"'rtue of its startling a1'1 istic in telligence. Barry specialized in the design ofgenteel London cl ubs, a rea­ sonable preparation for designing Parliament _ itself sometl]ing ofa great c1 ub- where comfort and ease ofcirculation were para­ mount. He was no Goth but a cl assicist, and was thus inoculated against the ex hibitionistic medievali sm that distracted his COIn­ 80

81 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 If Barry's Perpendicular-cum-Tudor facade was an excrcize in political nostalgia, the building's construction was another I matter. T he invisible structure - fo undations., construction, ven­ 'I tilation, heating. fireproof construction and the iron framin g of its towers - was a triumph ofindustrial technology, making it the world's fir st large modern building, where the architect was forced to consider the mechanical systems as a cen tra] part of his task. Indeed, it was precisely these technical demands that com­ jX!lIed Barry to delegate the decorati\'e aspects to Pu gin. Pugin transformed the building-and the Gothic Revival. Au gustu s \"'elb)' Northmore Pugin (18 12-52) accomplished more than any other architect ofthe revj"al. T au ght by his fa ther, a refugee from revol utionary France who hHd worked in the office ofJohn Nas h, Pugi n was a prodigy as a draftsman. At the age of twel ve he was already helping prepare the plates for his father's SpecillJens ofGolhle Architecture (182 1-23). He seemed to possess an in ex haustible ability to supply intricate and elegant ornament, 74 VVhile the House of Commons wh ich he could draw by the yard, often while sailing alone in the was bombed during the Second North Sea on his small boat. It iseasy to see why Barry. with aC res WOOd War, the House of Lorctsstill retains most of Pugin's sumptuous of walls to panel and ceilings to decorate, tur ned to him. Between decorallon and fittings. 18S6 and IS37 and again from IS44 to his death, Pugin embell­

72 'All Grecian, Sir; Tudor detaits petitors. Superb cl assical discipline di stinguished his design, as on a classIc body.' So fan PuglO'S well as a scrupulous sense ofscale. Barry recognized the threat of famous dlsmissal of Barry's symmetrical facade, made to a monotony in an SOO-foot-long symmetrical facade and he broke it fr)end while sailing along the in to shorter sections with a se ri es of turreted pavilions, paired at Thames. The remark came to either end. Any more variety would ha\'ecomprornised t he sense haunt Pugin's admirers, who look extraordinary measures to escape ofmonumen tali ty of the magnifice nt flank along the Thames. His similar cnlicism, contorting their only asymmetrical gesture was the pair of picturesque towers ­ designs into conspicuous the massive Victoria tower to the west and the slender clock irregularity. rower to the right - that accented the periphery rather than the centre. wh ich good classical practlce would have preferred .

73 With a simple and lucid arrangement of two intersecting axes, Barry's plan fOf the Houses of Parliament organized a vast array of functions. A long spine running parallel to the Thames contained the House of Lords and House of Commons, poised a! either side of a central lobby, where the cross axis also terminated. This served as the public corrioor, which began at Westminster Hall, now reused as an entrance.

88 82 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 • ished Barry's preliminary sketches \\ith Gothic \\ainscotillg, sculpture and tracery. This di"isio l1 ofcreative labour peculi arly suited to the two architects. each of \\ hom fe lt he had designed the bui lding- Barry, because he had devised the plan and compo­ sition, Pugin , because he had drawn c\'cry windo\\', desk and in k\\cll, in short, most ofthevisiblefabricof the bu ilding. Pugin's fac ility with the pencil was incidental to his greatest achievement, which was to subject architecture to moral analysis. He had no terror of controversy, having already converted pub­ licly to Catholicism in 1835, a career-damaging 1TI00'e in protestant England. The following year he produced a slim vol­ ulIle with a massive ti tle, COlltrasts: or, a parallel beh.vee fl the noble edifices ofthefourtulllh muljifluIIlh cmturies, andsimilar buildings qf the prese"t day; shewing the present decay qftaste. I ts sixteen coppe r engravings juxtaposed the artistic creations of medieval

75 A. W. N. Pugin's Contrasts (1836) contrasted two rypes of 'residences for the poor,' a medieval almonry and a modem worI

84 85 • 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 nmeteenrh-cemurj' thinker, Karl Marx. And. as is so often the case in revolutionary times, each found his model for reform in the age before the present. Pugin yearned fo r the humane and cohesive society of the :v1iddle Ages. wh en a common faith and not capitali sm was the organizing principle. Marx had no use for religion but his appreciation of medieval society and its commu­ nal and cooperati\'e aspects resembled Pugin's, as did his horror at thedehumanizing natureof modern labour. Confronted with an architecture and a social order equally vicious, Pugin sought to reform the fo rme r. T he res ult was True Principles qf Pointed or Christian IJrchitecture ( 184 1), hi s brill iant attempt to j u sti~y Gothic architecture on the basis of objective principles, easily one of the most influcntial architectural books of all time. Its doct rine was proclaimed in the very first para­ graph: 'First, that thcre should be no featu res about a building which are not necessary for convenience. construction or propri­ ety: second, that all ornament shoul d consist ofenrichment ofthe essenti al construction of the building.' Such pri nci pl es seem in the nature of self-evident truisms - hardly revolutionary - but with them Pugin upended the whole apparatus ofclassical archi­ tecture (and most neo-Gothic architec ture, for that matter). Eve ry single element of - from pilasters and enrablatures to triglyphs and acanthus leaves - could be dis­ 78 Pugin's True Principles of missed by his princi ples as 'construc ted decoration', while Gothic Pointed 01 Christian Architecture bu ttresses or archivolrs were (:e! cbrated as the 'essential con­ observed that small and irregular individual stones produced a struction' of a bu ilding. and hence worthy of decorative richer effect than larger, regular elaboration. R

86 87 I 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

80,81 The ideal church shown in Pugin's True Principles served as the model for Trinity Church , New York, buill 1839-46 by Richard Upjohn. At a time when most American churches were rendered as white Greek temples. its walls were startling. The plaster vautts of the high nave req uired no flying buttresses, which accounts for the row of rather bewildered finials.

Shrewsbury, Pugin migh t produce somethi ng as splendid as the

soaring chu rch orSt G iles at Cheadle. But his ch urches were gen- 79 eraII)' stiff and boxy. and his Gothic remained that ofa draftsman, linear and graphic. the ineradica ble consequence of his early training. He never became the sculptor of volumes an d masses that his successors would be, although he envisaged the l\fiddle Ages with painful clarity, as a kind ofdream just out ofreach. Pugin's doctrines spread swiftly. His infl uence wa s already apparent in T rin ity Chu rch, New York, the firs t masterpiece of Richard Upjohn (1802-78). Gothic churches were not unknown in America - in fact, Trini ty itself replaced a 1788 bu ilding in the \;\fren-Gibbs Gothic mode - but these tended to be fli msy con­ trivances, in wh ich pointed windows and spiky wooden fi nials at the corners were applied to build ings ofmeeting hOllsecharacter. Upjohn's own first des ign, prepared in 1839, was not terribly dif­ ferent from this type. But within months of its publi cation he evidently acquired a copy of T rue Principles fo r he revi sed his design to fo llow P ugin's design for an ideaJ Gothic basil ica in the Perpendicular style. Instantly Upjohn catapulted the American revival from \Valpo1c's Gothic to Pugin's. At the same time he deviated from the model in telling ways. At this early date there '\\' as no prospect of building genuine rib-vaulting in America, wh ich lacked medie\'al precedents to drawn upon. The only J choices were an exposed timber truss or a fau x vault of plaster on lath; Upjohn chose the latter- heresy to Pugin, although hedid it

89 88 • 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 rather well. He also reduced the roofpirch of Pugin's desIgn, and lead from the roofs. Most of these depredations occurred long de-emphasized the chancel. Such adjustments would persist ago (chiefly during the 1550s, not during the later Puritan com­ through the course of the revival as architects perforce modified monwealth. as is sometjmes believed) but antiquarian knowledge English models in accordance \ .... ith American taste and cus[Qm. had suddenly made them distressingly visible. Given the state of These changes were invariably in the direction ofsimplification. the Anglican Church and of English architecture, one could only a pardonable pattern in a country with a wood-building culture. lamcnt this - at least until 1839. In that year the architectural which instinctively flattened its forms - or which received them thought ofPugin recoiled against the theology ofthe Tractanan pre-flattened, in the form of the patternbook illustrations that ).1ovement to produce that im'incible aJloy of architecture and often provided the only acquaimance American architects had moralism. Ecclesiology. with real Gothic work. The Ecclesiological Socicty (callt'(l at first the Pugin was a jolly figure, working 'with no tools but a rule and Camden Socicty) was fo r med by sC\'e ral Cambridge un dcrgrad­ rough pencil , amidst a continual rattle of marvell olls stories and uates, chief of whom were two future Anglican ministers, shouts oflaughter' . l3 ut while Il e enjoyed great stature abroad, as John !\Jlason Neale (1818-66) and I3 enjamin \Vcbb (1819-85). a Catholic in a protestant co untry he coul d never win fu ll accep­ and a fu ture Member of Parliament, A. J. Beresford Ilope tance as a reformer of religious architecture. Not until he himself 82 The Grange. Pugin's house al ( 182o--8i). Their original goals we re modestly antiquarian: to was personally disassociated fro m his doctrine could the Ch urch Ramsgate (1841), was anached gather drawings and descriptions of medieval churches and to to St AugustJlle's (1846), forming of England embrace it. This feat was the accomplishment of tile a kind 01 monaSltC enclave­ campaign for church restoration, reestablishing chancels and Ecclesiological Society. During the 1850s the Church ofEngland recreating with poignant fidelity the altars within them. In this they resembled other antiquarian the vanished mecheval world that was engaged in the turbulent process ofrenewal. T hreecenturies societies, such as the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Pugin brooded over in his after the protestant reformation. many felt the Church had Contrasts, Gothic Architecture, which attracted young as a become remote and spiritually unfulfilling. It had systematically eliminated all the vestiges ofCatholic ritual and ceremony, insu­ lating itselffrol11 Rome but it had also estranged itseJffrom the livelier currents of protestant worship. T he g reat evangelical revivals of the eighteenth century had made it wary ofexcessive emotionalism - the 'enthusiasm' d readed by polite Georgian society - and in reac tion against it. it had becollle even morc stately and detached. Between these two poles ofsuperstition and cnthusiaslIlthe Church lang uished; Kenneth Clark summed it up as 'cau tious sermons in bleak churches', Beginning in 18SS , the first critical tracts were published, urging a revival of traditional forms of worship. Ko longer should worship concentrate solely on the spoken word of the sermon, but the sacred, sacramental fi tes should be revived, restoring the solemnity and mystery of pre-refor mation worship. rl"hese tracts signalled the emergence oftheT ractarian or O xford Movement. T he T racrarian Movement arose during an age off.1shionable antiquarianism, when architecturaJ tourists would pause - Britton or :'vhlner in hand - to admire a fi ne bit ofDecorated trac­ ery or a handsome Early Engli sh capi tal. Increasingly well infor mcd, they would also no tice how seriollsly the Refor mation had altered these med ieval fabrics, stripping thei r altars, wall ing lip chancels, pulling down rood screens and even selli ng ofr the

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member. Bu t in November 1841 they began to publish a monthly 83 At SI MiChael's, long S~nton, journal. the Ealesiologisl.. and turne<1 activist, taking church­ Cambridgeshire, all the cardinal Ecclesiological elements were !'c building in its widest sense as their calling. T he effect of their pl'esent in their most condensed / ... J -../ r doctrines was instantly felt in every cor ncr of England and the form: the detached chancel , English-speakin g world. Even granting the influential connec­ oriented to the east, the south porch, and the compact nave and - , tions and wealth of their members, it is astonishing that such an aiSles, measuring a diminutive ?../ influence was exerted by a group whose founders were just o\'er forry-nine by fourteen leel. The most usefulleature was the ~ (wenty years old. elegant bellcote that crowned its Like Pugin, whom they privately admired, the Ecclcsiologists western gable, a far more despised the fa ux Gothic chu rches of the previolls generation, satisfying solution than the cramped and niggardly lower which they viewed as mere preaching boxes. glorified auditori­ usually attached to small ums in whi ch galleries huddled around the pulpit to pro\'ide clear churches. lines of sight and soun d. Seeking to restore the concept of the church as a sacred \'essel, they published A F'e;,v IVorels For Churchbuilders ( 1841) with its rigid strictures: first, the church was to be oriented to the East, as in the M idd le Ages, pointing to the rising sun as a symbol of redemption; it must also be divided into two clearly demarcated precincts - a worldly and a sacred ­ At fi rst the Eccksiologist had no confidence in modern Gothic reflected in the dh·ision between the na\·c and the chancel. T his and urged readers not to invent but ·to be content to copy separation was to be emphasized - within by a prominent chancel acknowledged perfection'. By 1843 it decided that this perfection arch and rood screen, without by differing height and treatment was to be found in the Early M iddle Poinred style (or, to use ofthe \·olumes. Further rules governed the placement ofthe bap­ Ri ckman's ter minology, the early Decorated). Earlier styles were tismal font, the three steps leading to the altar, the custom of the imperfect, later ones cor rupt, but rhe architecture to either side of sOllthern porch and even the role of galleries (there were to be 1300 was perfection itself. The foll owing year the Ecclesiologisl none). For the Ecclesiologists. these requirements were theologi­ began selecting models, measuring them and distributing scaled cal, not aesthetic. It so happened that they were consistently drawings to places where medieva1 examples were not at hand, fulfilled only in the Gothic style. such as Australia and the United States. Sl Mary"s, Arnold. T he Ecclesiologist had one instrument at its disposaJ- and this Notting halllshire and All . T cversham, Cambridgeshire was a bludgeon: the bracing review of new church designs that were measured and drawn, the latter by Bu tterfield. For smaller, j olted every issue. The forty-year r un of these reviews for ms the r ural churches. the society recommended St Michael"s. Long most sustained corpus of intelligent and savage architectural Stanton, in Cambridgeshire, an exceptionally pure example of a criticism in English literature. Noneofthe professional courtesy r ural parish church. that usually restrains architectural criticism was at play here. for \ Vith its advocacy orSt Ylichael·s, the EcclesiQlogisldiscredi ted the critics were not architects but clerics, with no tolerance for a practice that had bedevilled the Gothic Revival since the days of architccrural sins. A church was instantly condemned 'as bad as Batty Langley - the use of the heroic fo rms of cathedrals on anything can be' or mocked as ·an odious structure rendered at buildings that were not cathedrals. I t advocated the small parish once offensive by pretence, and ri diculous by fail ure'. Minor fea­ church type. a modest affai r ofa simple gabled mass. relieved only tures such as wi ndow shape, moulding profiles and the by a bell cate and gabled JX>rch. T he essential fitness of the arrangement of steps in the chancel were put to the question, and scheme was obvious. and copies and \'arianrs ofSt :,vrichael"s can pronounced as orthodox or heretical Even architects themselves be fo und throughout Britain and the United States. where they were divided into goats and lambs, with Bu tterfield. Richard arc occasionally of wood. E ven noticed, after Carpen ter and Benjamin ferry marked as ·approved' wh ile poor H.ei chensperger visited Eng land in 1846, returning with draw­ was placed on the 'condemned' roster. ings and photographs ofEnglish examples.

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hardy personal style. His churches of Saint-Nicolas at i'!antcs

( 184-10-69) and Saint-lean-Baptiste de Belleville in 92 ( 185+-59) were in the Cha rtres mode, muscularly buttressed and Chapter 5 : Development robust to the point of severity. Abadie. conversely. practised in southwestern France where he restored about fony churches. including the cathedrals ofSaint-Front de Perigueux and Saint­ Pierred'Angouleme. Many of these buildings were Romanesque - or Byzantine -- which set the key for his own work. If Gothic I should like to draw all St Jlarks and all this stOlle by stone, to architecture w(ts fundamentally ·true'. such Romanesquc eat It all up ill n ~y nu·mi, touch by touch. churches would be unacceptable to mi litant reviva lists., but John Ruskin Abadie was no mil itant. In fact. he could argue that his chu rches expressed a truth of an entirely difrerent sort: regional truth, that In the 184Os, the ideal ofmaking a building that could not be dis­ is, the respectful continuation ofwell developed regional bu ilding tinguished from genuine Goth ic architecture excrcized an practices. In France too, th erefo re. the Romancsquc became an irresistible attraction over the minds of young architects. auxiliary branch of the revival, an acceptable alternative mode Pre~cnt i n g them with a clearly defi ned goal. it gave urgency and 1I1ldercertain local circumstances. direction to their architectural studies, and acted as a healthy Thus by the middle of the 18405, England, France and tonic on the whole Goth ic Revivalmovemcnt. It certainly cannot Germany had each developed a characteristic Gothic Revival. be said to have destroyed anyone's powers ofimagination for out Between these centres ideas exchanged rapidly and continuously of the ranks of the most successful copyis ts later emerged the along a net of personal connections. Reichensperger, for exam­ re\'ival"s most original architects, such as Butterfield and Street. ple, was the German correspondent for both the EccleslOlogzst and But at bottom the impulse to create a convincing Gothic il lusion the Annalesurchiologiques. f rom these countries Gothic doctrine is not architectural bu t theatrical. and once the illusion \\as pcr­ spread outwards, exercizing more or less influence according to fee dy realized, it no longer seemed quite so tantalizing. geographic and religious closeness. Protestant Scandinavia drew Pedantic imitation was not necessarily wrong. \Vhen a mod­ from England and Germany, Catholic Spain and Belgium from ern building functioned precisely as did its medieval prototype, it France, and cosmopolitan Holland from aU th ree. I n the space ora made sense. A rural parish church. fo r example, required no sig­ decade the Gothi c had cast offthe last \·estiges ofGoorgian fri vo­ nifican t updating, other than the occasional exchangeofan organ lity and had emerged to rival classicism fo r the architectural loft for the medieval sacristy- a space not needed in a protestant stylistic leadership of Europe - matching it in theoretical and structural achievement and, in the sweep and audacity of its 94 G. E. Street's St Peter, social vision, surpassing it. Treveroyn. Cornwall, 1848-50, is ~. as pertecta recreation of a rural church in the Decorated style as can be imagined, with no hint of the mechanical rigidity that the precise copying of medieval models sometimes produced

/04 /05 12_D .Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 church. But anything larger involved matters ofcirculation, ven­ 95 In 1851 the Ecdesiologists' tilation, heating and fire-proofing that tested the limits of architect R C. Carpenter designed a wooden church for Tnstan da archaeological copyism. T he simplest of churches in a modern Cunha, a lonely volcanic Island in factory neighbourhood - requiring the architect to squeeze large the far South AtlantIC. ':/hose congregations Oll tO a constricted lot in an environment ofexcep­ populaoon numbered about eighty·five. Taking into accounl tional visual brutality - posed qu es tions that no thirteenth­ the island's poverty and isolatlOfl, century model could answer. Carpenter designed a roughly The Ecc1esiological Society felt these pressures in a way that a framed church under a low sheltering roof. AlthOugh intended pu rely architectural soc iety never 'would ha\'e, Most ofthe fo und­ for a site below the equator, the ing Ecclesiologists were trained to be ministers and groomed for tradllJOnai \XISItJOr'I at a sacristy to the north and the bapl1smal font achurch with an international missionary program, which forced to the south followed them to test their tenets in other cui tures and climates, Beresford Ecdesiol

106 j')7 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 Although this stylistic licence was a makeshift measure for crossing this tight entrance porch, would find himselfin a space the colonies, it set in motion a comprehensive re-examination of of surprising generosity. A broad basilica beckoned, whose roof Gothic theory. By sanctioning styles other than the M iddle rose to an unusual height, lifting the clerestory clear ofthe neigh­ Pointed. if only fo r distant mission churches, the Ecclesiological bouring buildings. T he space was a glittering vessel, a Society eventually surrendered the idea of a single moment of high-keyed ch romatic symphony in which Butterfield laid jewel­ Gothic perfection. Such an idea was not difficult to renounce. like colour on whatever he could touch. Pugin had attained a After all. it was derivative, borrowed from Greek art with its similar chromatic intensity at St Giles, Cheadle, but where he dream ofa Periclean golden age. and was alien to the spiri t of the used pa int and gilding Bulterfield painted with the materials Gothic Revival. Pugin had shown in his Contrasts that art and themselves: polished green and red marbles, tinted brick, architecture are intimately connected with the life of society. alabaster, and the brightly coloured tiles that paved the floors and To copy its forms an d motifs - even the best of them - without mottl ed the walls. reference to the society that produced and sustained them T his structural polychromy - the creation of colour through would be nothing more than a shuffling of bones. A true and construct.ion - was just as sensational on the exterior. Previously healthy Gothic Hevival mu st permit the style to evolve further, brick had been regarded as a humble material, an inferior SUITo­ bendi ng to the demands placed upon it and making lise of the gate for stone, but Butterfield used itdefiantly, letting loose a riot material mean s a\'ajiable. Stree t expressed the idea in hi s 1852 of stripes, zig-zags and diaper work. Colour and pattern alone lecture on 'The T rue Principles of Architecture and the provided the ornamental effect, with no carved decoration apart Possibilities of Development'. T his liberating insight produced fro m the si ngle oversized fi nial of the courtyard. Varicoloured the Hi gh Victorian Gothic, one of the most vital movements brick architecture was not unknown (northern an d the in all of architectural hi story, as an energetic body of archi tects Hanseatic cities of Gennany offered ample precedent) but there and patrons wa s rel eased in a sudden spasm from a position was ajustifi cation closer in time-and closer to home. U rban pol­ of the most docile antiquarian ism toone ofdazzling and limitless lution was wreaking havoc on stone architecture, particularly originality. marble, which swiftly blackened in modern Londo n's co rrosive The break with archaeological copyisill took place in 1849. ai r. Brick had no pristine patina to lose; its strong textures could For several year s the Eccl esiological Society had been looking to stand up to a rain ofsoot, which co uld only emphasize the strong bu il d a model church in England that would serve as a summation lines of the building. It al so related the build ing to its unlovely of ecclesiological doctrine, both artistic and liturgical. T he soci­ industrial environs. ety agreed to fund the ch urch, so long as it might con trol every Butterfield's taut. gaun t wa lls and agitated detail s had a mech­ aspect of its design, furnishing and decoration. \Vhen a suitable anistic quality that was absent in Pugi n or the picturesq ue rustic candidate was found in the St district of London, churches of the 1840s. T he new sensibil ity \vas partiClll arly evi­ ove rsight of the project was given to Beresford Hope, who helped dent in the iron wo rk, which was cut into slender straps, bent and fund it and chose its architect, \\Tilliam Bu tterfie ld. T he result of twisted to make foliated forms fo r his screens, an innovation this collaboration was All Saints, Margaret Street, one of the 96-98 which was widely imitated. Tn an age where the concentrated most innovative bui ldings of the nineteenth century. power of steam replaced ho rse power as the increment of applied The church wo uld not have been so good if the site had not energy, Bu tterfiel d's fo rms had t he directional in tensity of been so bad. Butterfield was handed a mere speck ofa lot, built in mechanical force. T he stubby colonen es of his pulpit and bap­ on three sides, making impossible the traditional free-standing tismal fon t look as if they might ha\'e been made by machine­ basilica. Instead he wedged the church to the rea r, lip to the prop­ extruded and roll ed in mills, then cut by steam-powered saws. erty line, and brought forwa rd the rector's residence and school; T his gave his work a quality of crisp, hard-edged newness that these th ree vol umes huddled about a small courtyard. At the cor­ startled contemporaries, either enchanting or maddening them. ner where church met school, he set a tall tower that marked the T he consequences were profoun d. No longer was it the highest church entrance and gave fOCliS to the rambling compound. The praise an architect might receive to have his work mistaken for a visitor, having slipped through the constricted courtyard and thirteen th-century bui lding.

108 109 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 97 After elimination of the brick tax in 1849 made the material affordable for AU Saints, Margaret Street. Bunerfield exploited its expressive possibilities. He articulated the walls in parallel bands and stripes, showing that the process of masonry construction is a horizontal one. These stripes also suggest the geological stIata visible in an eroded cliff, recalling that the church was built at a time when geology was the most progressive of the sciences .

~ ~ . • • • l , •1 • ';U. ! ' t f~

96 The plan of William The fli rting with continental forms in All Sain ts, M argaret Butterfield's church of All Saints, Street, was ;:} sig n of th e broadening hori zons of the Gothic Margaret Street, l ondon (1849-59) is a diagram of Revival. England's long afternoon of insularity, which began efficiency. Three tiny light courts d uring the decades of waf with France, was now at an end. are judiciously arranged so that Architects once scoured the English landscape with their sketch­ almost the entire cramped lot is utilized, while every space is pads; now the steamboat and the railroad brought most cities of provided with light and air. the continenr comfortably within the range of a two-week trip. High Victorian archi tec ture shows the restlessness and ecl ecti­ 98 The brilliantly coloured cism of an archi tectural culture that was as conversant with the interior of All Saints, Margaret buildings of Paris and as with those at home. T he Great Street, london, shocked even Bunerfield's client, Beresford Exhibition of 185 1, the first world's fair, proclaimed this new Hope, who privately lamented its international outlook. It confi rmed t hat London was the g reat 'clown's dress, so spotty and metropoli s of the age. a clearing house through which all the spidery and flimsy.' He complained in vain, for products, ideas and impulses of the modern worl d would pass. Butterfield's speckled interior set T his idea was unprecedented, and so was the bu ild ing that gavcit the tone for every colour essay that followed for the next three tangible fo rm: . the world's first monumental decades. structure of iron and glass. T he Crystal Pal ace was the very

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incarnation of developmen t, solving the demand s of the presen t 100 For John Ruskin, (he most with specifically Gothic means, frankly displaying its construc­ ek>quenl components 01 a building were decoratIve details tion with a fi ligree lightness that surpassed even the airiest of such as mouldings. capitals Gothic cathedrals. The structure was a rebuke to the servile and carved ornament. These represented ·sacnfice'. the copyism of the Ecclesiological Society, daring it to develop ) costly and lIme-<:oflSuming Gothic forms appropriate for iron construction, forms more embellishment ollhe structural adventurous than Butterfi eld's decorati\'e screens. It \\ould be torso thaI elevated mere ;truction to arcrlltec;ture. His some years before the challenge would be answered, and for the 1841 pencil and wash drawing moment the Crystal Palace served only to showcase the achieve­ of the Casa Contarinl-Fasan in ments of the Gothic Hevi val, not to inspire new ones. Venice, turned so as to maxtmize the profeCtion of balcorues and 99 Pugln's Medieval Court at the T he Crystal Palace was an abomination to the man who suc­ cornices. shows his exquisite Crystal Palace was crammed with ceeded Pugin as the principal theorist ofthe Gothic Revival,John concem for these sculptural decoratrve art objects produced by ments. his coflatxxators, including J. G. Ru skin (1819-1900). Buski n was an evangelical who stood out­ Crace (carpets), John Hardman side England 's established Churc.h and, like Pugin, he criticized (paintJng), Herbert Minion (tiles) Englis h architecture from without. Unlike Pugin, however, he and George Myers (sculpture). The Meclleval Court should have was a critic, not an a.rch itec t, and his influence was entirely been Pugin's crowning polemical. He was also one ofthe fines t English prose stylists. He achievement but it ended his had the ability to present subtle and complex id eas in striking career in a Gothic delirium. Shortly after its completion he was aphorisms, and to orchestrate them into a majestic cadence that confined to an asytum, dying in fell naturally into thumping iambic pentameter. In hi s two works 1852, Only forty years old, he seemed to many to have already ofarchitectur al theory, The Seven Lamps ifArchitecture (1849} and lived several lifetimes. The Stones if Pt1Iice ( 1851 /5.3), Huskin created the theoretical

basis fo r High Victorian architec ture. T his basis W

112 J IJ 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 closely at the lines, shades. cuttings, wrinkles, shifts in tone over the face ofa wall. This is not surprising in the author of1l1ode17l Painlers, a man who began his career as a critic of paintings. For Ruskin it was the elements that were added to the surface of a building that elevated it to the status ofarch itecture. These non­ essential elements, such as sculpture, painting or rich materials. constituted the Lamp ofSacrific.e. \Vithout them, there could be no architecture, only building. Ru skin's architectural theory concentrated on the ski n of buildings and his architectural ideal was the city with the most exquisite surfaces of all- Veni ce, with her tradition of coloured stone revetments and vividly contrasting marble and brick. Such decorative facing violated Pugin's strictures, because it masked construction, but Ruskin pointed 10 nature to show that lively colour needed no structural rationale: 'The stripes of a zebra do not follow the lines of its body or limbs, still less the spots of a leopard: For Ru skin, there was only one firm rule fo r architec­ tural colour: 1et it be visibly independent ofform.' Rus kin was sc.arcely able to admirea building without making it a pivot of world history. I n T he SIollesofVenue. he portrayed the Duca l Palace as the architectural embodiment of Venice, poised between northern Europe with its Gothic achievement and the 101 Deane and Woodward, Rusk in, like P ugin (and Marx), was troubled by the degrada­ rtalian peninsula with its Classical legacy, and uniquely qualified University Museum. Oxford, tion of human labour in the mo

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These sentiments made Ruskin an implacable foe ofarchitec­ \Voodward. In the end function carried the day. Sarry's rectan­ tural restoration, wh ic h he called 'the most lOtal destruction gular building. once completed, admitted no additions, And ,,,'hich a building can suffer: a destruction accompanied with fa lse the detached facilities necessary for security against odour, infec­ description of the thing destroyed'. He loathed the massi\'e tion and explosion were difficult to marshal into Palladian restoration campaign which the Ecclesiological Society had regularity, The Gothic of Deane and \\'oodward permitted a helped unleash, an d which was vigorously cleaning. scraping and loose monastic treatment, with the dissecting room and the recarving the walls of England's medieval churches. To him, this perilous chemistry laboratory both held at arm's length, the was nothing less than the destruction of the most valuable and laner cloaked in the form of the fourtecnth-cen tury Abbot's eloquen t aspect of a building, the chi sel marks and tooled sur­ Kitchen at Glastonbury. faces. Even worse was the replacement of damaged elements by \Voodward's building (he was the imaginative lobe of the firm) acc urate modern copies. 'W hat copying can there be,' he was strongly Italian in character: ho rizontal in composition, demanded, 'of surfaces that have been worn half an inch down?' brightly co]ou red and cubical in mass ing. Al so Italian was the lise Instead, Ru skin urged a processofdignified decay, letting a build­ of coloured marble and such details as the first-storey windows, inggradu311y sink into senescence. divided by marbl e colonettes. T his was clearly the mark of 102 James O'Shea, shown here Although Ruskin's influence was prodigious, he despised vi r­ Ruskin, to whosejudgment \Voodward continually subordinated in 1860 sculpling the museum's tually evcrything bu ilt in his name an d had little direct 'cat window'. disliked ....'OOOng himself until Ru skin himself was annoyed ('I've told \\"oodward from measured drawings and involvement with ac tu al building. T he critical except.ion was fifty ti mes that rmbu sy at present and yet they keep at me) But Instead he and his brother took Oxford University Museum ( 1854-60). the great test case of his 101-3 his rol e was less ghos twriter than ed itor and critic. His g reat pas­ potted P'ants from the botanical garden every morning 10 use as theory. At fi rst blush, the pu rpose of the museum - science. chem­ sion, as us ual , was fo r surfaces and ornament. He imagined models. Ruskin likOO the idea but istry and natural his tory - does not immediately call to mind the carved capitals an d mouldings that would faithfully represent the not the execution: 'When I said Gothic. A style assoc iated with the melancholy of ruins or the that the workman should be left boun t)' ofnature, depicting the natural history con tained within. free to design his work as he went au sterity of a fortress was ill-suited fo r buildings of science or Ruskin enthused:'1 shaH get al l the pre-Raphaelites to design one on, I never meant that you could learning. T here was also serious doubt about the fitness of the each an archivolt - and so mc capitals - an d we will have all the secure a great national monument 01 art by letting loose the first livety Gothic for public architecture. T he great proliferation ofspecial­ plants in England and all the ters in the museum.' Although Irishman you could get hold 01 10 ized building types that distinguished the modern city- nOt onl), a window was built to Buskin's design (the second pair of win­ do what he liked in it.' mu seums bu t also li brarif's, opera hou ses, banks and railway sta­ dows to the ri ght of the entrance, on the ground storey). only a tions - had all arisen after the seventeen th century, after the fragmen t of this ambitious scheme was realiz.ed. Gothic had been extinguished. f or their design there was no The most forward-looking aspect of the Oxfo rd mu seum, its medieval precedent. But this lack of for mal preceden t was itself a interior. was less interesting to Ruski n. \Vhen he fir st heard that kind of advan tage, Classical architecture suggested permanence it might copy the skeletal architecture of the Crystal Palace, he and authority, and the passing on of static knowledge, But was aghast: 'You don't want yo ur Ill useumofglnss-do you ? If you nineteenth-cen tu ry science was shaking apart. the store of do- I will h3\'e nothing todo with it.' Rusk in was simply ignored knowledge changing in every ficld. Here the Gothic had a and the museum court was built as intended, roofed in glass anu decided symbolic advantage: its open for ms suggested infinity, carried on slender iron colu mns. ]n its construction it owed a con­ making it a fi tting emblem of progress and development, in siderable debt to the Crystal Palace but its spatial sense was that which constant change was required rather than fixed perfection, of a late Gothic hall church. where aisles of equal height helped An architectural competition for the Oxford Museum was create a sense of und ivided spatial continuity. T his was not yet an held in 185+. requiring a three-sided building with an enclosed iron Gothic. however- that would come later- fo r this forward­ glass-roofed court, the fourth side to be treated ]oosely so that it looking construction was em bedded deep within (he build ing might be expanded in future. Separate facilities fo r dissection and and not permitted to show on the facade. chemi srry wcre mand ated. T he entrants were soon \' innowed Drawing its fo rms from Ven ice and its argumen ts from down to two. a Palladian design by Sir Charles Barry's son, Ruskin , the Gothic Revival nowcntercd into its Italian phase. For Edward, and a Gothic scheme by the Irish architects Deane and the nex t decade, vibrant colour, Italian hOl'izontality and delicate

116 1/7 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23

103 The great hall of the Oxford most literal Ruskinian buildlllg, however, was in New York, Museum is a gothicized version of where the National Academy of Design was built in 1862. J06 the Crystal Palace, its iron and glass architecture treated explicitly Designed by Peter Bonnet \Vight, it intelligently paraphrased as me::lieval vaulting. The pointed the Duca l Palace (,the central buildi ng in the worl d') which made arches are made from riveted iron sense as a model, its blank upper wall s suiting pain ting galleries plates and angles while the columns are bundles of hollow lit from above. \Vightclearly admired the botanical realism of the cast iron tubes. Hammered and Oxford Museum faca de, which he imitated in the carved capitals cut wrought iron was bolted to the abou t {he entrance, the luxuriant natu ralistic foliage proclaiming columns to form the capitals, thus forming 'applied ornament' in the buiJding to be a container of nature's truth. T he symbolism violation of Pugin's stricture that was appropriate in more ways than one. It showed that English ornament should derive from the 104 had met pre-Raphaelite taste reigned supreme among the painters of the construction itself. Ruskin in Venice in 185 1and had become convinced mat the north academy, their highest artistic law being fi del ity to nature. !lallan Gothic offered the best The Venetian Gothi c mode was not universally popular, how­ merlel for a modern public building, eve r. Many found it gari sh and outlandish;during the mid-1850s Its regularity and simple geometry giving it a dignity befitting civic or its supporters an d adversaries squared off in a parliamentary state authority. This was the Origin debate known as the Battle ofthe Styles, the Illost comprehensive of his design for the Hamburg Rathaus, with its emphatically public airi ng of the respective merits of the Gothic and the horizontal character and sprightly Classical. T he occasion was a joint competition for two large gov­ arches, whose voussoirs altemated ernment office buildings, a \Var Offi ce and Foreign Office. Not in colour. Despite its success. local opposition prevented its since the competition fo r the Houses of Parli ament had there construction. been such a lucrative project, and it drew an avalanche of 2 18

wind ow colonen es were in fas hion. The new style spread swiftly to the continent. where George G ilbert Scott won the J854com­ petition fo r the Hamburg Rathau s (). This was a clever and original essay, a translation of the cel ebrated medieval V-lool Gui ld Hall in Ypres, Belgium, into an Italian idiom. Scott also borrowed from the Oxford Museum but its glass-roofed hall wa s published too late to inspire his design. Rather than revising his drawings, the resourceful architect simply changed his captions, adding a note that the main courtyard would 'probably' be roofed in glass! In the United States. where Ruskin's highly moralizing prose struck a chord, the new I talian mode was embraced, even by low church congregations that had resi sted Ecclesiology. T he

/I 119 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 105 'I'm hen 00 COlour,' Jacob 107 George Gilbert Scott, Wray Mould bragged, an competltioo design for the Foreign understandable remark for a pupil OffICe, 1856. 'There is a noble of England's great colouriSI and design by an architect named decorative artist, . Scon which [Benjamin Mould was ooe of the first to bring Woodward] admits beats him to the taste for Ruskinian theory and chalks.' So a friend of Woodward's Venetian colour to the United reported his reaction to the Sta tes. His chief work is AIl Souls' public exhibition of the Unitarian Church, New York, competitioo entries. 1853-55, a synthesis of Byzantine, Venetian and motifs, ablaze with structural colour, although its planned campanile was never built. lOS Thomas Fuller and Chilioo Scott won the commission but lost the stylistic battle. He was Jones designed the Canadian fo rced to build in sixteenth-century Italian style, applying Houses of Parliament in Ottawa in 1S57-66. They produced a fully Henaissance racades to hi s unchanged floo r plans, much to the Gothic version of the English disgus t of his colleagues. Bu t he won a kind of moral vi ctory, Houses of Parliament, not merety bringing welcome publici ty ror the Gothic cause. Hi s original 106 Peter Bonnet Wight. a coating of TudOf details. A National Academy of Design. NeoN ~: -r picturesque complex 01several design, with its fo ur-square solidi ty and lack of medieval mysti­ York, 1862-63 (demolished). buildings, with towered rooflines cism, was widely published an d widely imitated. E. \ V Godwin's 109 Under the sway of Ruskin, many and rough rubble masonry, the architects paid tribute to the Canadian parliament strikes a Northampton Town Hall borrowed its Venetian colours and Dages' Palace in Venice but never note of robust vitality, befitting a even the canopied statues along the second storey. A s far away as as logically as Wight. Here the young country with a rugged Canada, Scott's polychromatic picturesque mode was used for t he richly patterned walls of the upper natural landscape. storey make sense for galleries for the displ ay of art, where windows are to be avoided in favour of skylights.

entries (on ly 19 of which were Gothic). Scott was placed second in both competitions and the parliamentary committee elected to entrust him with the entire complex. His des ign was a revision of his Ham burg project, augmented by considerable figural sculp­ ture an d bits of\Voodward's Oxford Museu m. Challenged by the Prime !\'1i nister, Lord Palmers ron, a ti reless foe of the Gothic, Scott defended the style as a rational, logical and fl ex.ible system.

He published Remarks Oil Secular and Dom.estic Architecture, Present and Future ( 185S) to elaborate the case, the most cogent state­ ment of the High Victorian belief that a free and Aexi ble Gothic was the suitable style for th e modern industrial world.

120 1'2 1 12_D Michael J. Lewis, "The Gothic Revival", London, 2002, pp.13-57,81-93,105-23 109 E. W. Godwin's taken as the motto tor much of the eclectic architecture of the Northampton Town Hall, ensuingdecades, in Britain and beyond. 1860-64, showed that Ruskin's Two churches from 1859 show Stree t's range: one a PiC­ Stones of Venice did not necessarily inhibit artlstic turesque collegiate enclave, the other a mission church in a seedy creativity. To heighten the industrial sl um of London. The rormer, the church or Sr Philip sculptural presence of the building's single facade, Godwin and St James at Oxford, is a compact basilica with transepts and thrUSl a stout tower aoo...e the polygonaJ apse, a muscular tower emerging from the crossing. cavernous opening of the arcade, the whole drawn together by a few broad bands of colour. In a a volumetric approach to design that he called 'the careful strange and lovely touch, absolutely unprecedented. the final adjustment or solids and voids.' of the nave visibly cants inward berore dying into the chancel The polychrome stooewol1\ of the wal l; at the same time the deeply laminatt.>d clerestory windows facade Is of exceptional richness. stubbornly refuse to fo l1 o\l..· the rhythm of the arcade below, as if they had been carelessly added by another hand at a later date. 110 G. E. Stleet'schurchofSt Philip and St James, Oxford. These subtle vio lations of rectil inearity enli vened what would should be compared with All otherwise be a regular box of space; they recall the count­ Saints, Margaret Street. Although Street also uses colour contrast. less structural irregularities that contribute to the li veliness he reduces their intensity and of a true medieval building, a quali ty that Ruski n repeatedly volume, and concentrates on the contrasted with the dry and lifeless geometry produced by rich textures produced by broad areas of simple stone masonry. modern construction.

Houses of Parliament in Ottawa, rather than the classicizing 108 Gothic ofBarry'S Parliament. T he chief in novations of 1850s architec rure - the ideas of Ruskin, Venice and development - worked thei r way grudgingly into civic architecture. But in religious archi tecture, where One had only toconvince a pastor and a fe w pa rishioners, rather than a whole nation, there came a lush flowering of originality. T he most talented figure was , a veteran of Scou's genial office and an assiduous ilrchitectural theorist. Street was also widely travelled and he publi shed important accountSof the Gothic architecture of Spain an d Germany. His Brick andl'farble ill the j\liddk Ages (I 855) was a practising archi­ tect's version of Ruskin 's Stones of Venice, c1eal·ed of ti rades and rhapsodic sermons, and focused squarely on the problem or improving contemporary design. Street cheerfully acknowl­ edged his eclecticism. wh ich sought to combine the 'verticality of Pointed wi th the Hepose of Classic architecture', which ca n be

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