Richard Suggett, ‘“Done after the Fantastic Order”: John Nash’s Restoration of St David’s Cathedral’, The Georgian Group Journal, Vol. XXI, 2013, pp. 106–122 TEXT © THE AUTHORS 2013 ‘DONE AFTER THE FANTASTIC ORDER’: JOHN NASH’S RESTORATION OF ST DAVID’S CATHEDRAL RICHARD SUGGETT ohn Nash tends to be viewed as the grand old man In Nash disappeared from the London scene Jof Regency architecture. His dignity radiates from and is next heard of in south-west Wales. A the portrait commissioned for Jesus College, Oxford, successful tender for rebuilding the roof of St Peter’s which portrays the architect (one can reasonably Church brought him to Carmarthen. The contract assume) as he wanted to be remembered: rich, was relatively small, but Nash decided to stay and successful, and at the height of his fame. Sir Thomas rebuild his career in Carmarthen, a county town and Lawrence was credited with capturing the essence of a flourishing regional capital. Nash’s metropolitan sitter’s personality, but his Nash is rather inscrutable. career was over for the time being, but one needs to This was perhaps the point. There was the immensely appreciate that by the later eighteenth century a successful Nash: the architect to the Prince Regent; successful architect need not be London based. the designer of Buckingham Palace, creator of Provincial architects were in demand designing the Regent’s Street and Regent’s Park, the Brighton improvements and new public buildings required by Pavilion, and a whole string of important country modernizing Georgian towns. This is exactly how houses. But then there was the other less reputable, Nash rebuilt his career. During Nash’s Carmarthen more rackety Nash. Scandal was never very far away period he designed a market hall, three prisons, an from Nash’s affairs, threatening to puncture his hard- asylum, a poor house, and several bridges. Many of won respectability. Early in his career there had been these commissions – especially the prisons – were unfortunate building speculation, bankruptcy, and rather prolonged building projects, but they a strange divorce. Nash, with his personal and demonstrated Nash’s competence. He was always professional affairs in crisis, had left London in the keen to find a quick route to celebrity, and the mid s and had tried to re-establish his career in restoration of St David’s would certainly bring him west Wales. The commission to rebuild the west front to the attention of a wider public, helping him along of St David’s Cathedral came in the s when he the path (which he so desperately wanted to tread) to was reinventing himself personally and professionally. fame and fortune. We can learn much about Nash’s character from his The restoration of the cathedral was initiated by manoeuvring to obtain the commission, and from the reforming Bishop Horsley ( – ) following a his relations with clerics and craftsmen. More ‘visit of curiosity’ to his new diocese in summer . fundamentally, the design and its presentation provide Horsley announced that he was ‘more struck than I an unexpected insight into Nash’s own mysterious can easily express’ by the ruined appearance of the transformation from competent but conventional cathedral, deploring the harm it must inflict on the architect into an architectural innovator. Church’s reputation generally, but particularly to the THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ‘ DONE AFTER THE FANTASTIC ORDER ’: JOHN NASH ’ S RESTORATION OF ST DAVID ’ S CATHEDRAL Fig. St David’s Cathedral before Nash’s restoration. (RCAHMW photograph of original © Pembrokeshire County Library ) reputation of the Chapter, which had responsibility in church repairs whose name had ‘sufficient weight for its repair (Fig. ). Horsley recommended the to satisfy the public’, presumably when appealing for immediate survey of the cathedral. Chapter members subscriptions towards the repair. The Chapter were required not to depart from the general audit ordered that Nash’s survey should be examined by until they had agreed to repair the cathedral, ‘Mr Wyatt’, who would make what alterations or demonstrating the strength of their resolve by additions he thought fit. Nash would have naming in an Act of Chapter the architect with subordinate status as the ‘acting surveyor’ under responsibility for the repair. Accordingly, on July Wyatt’s ‘management and controul.’ the Chapter empowered Canon William Who was this Mr Wyatt? He was of course James Holcombe to employ Mr John Nash of Carmarthen, Wyatt, the eminent architect, retrospectively architect, ‘to make a proper survey of the whole nicknamed ‘the Destroyer’ by his enemies, but at the cathedral’, with a plan and estimate of repair. time widely acknowledged as an experienced church Holcombe was the resident canon, who lived in repairer and improver in the Gothic style, who in an some style (accused by some of living in expectation intensely busy period in the later eighteenth century, of the mitre) and had undertaken improvements to during Nash’s Carmarthen decade – , altered the cathedral environs by reinstating the medieval several major English cathedrals, as well as other fish-pond and establishing fruit gardens near the ecclesiastical buildings. Wyatt was not afraid of Bishop’s Palace. Presumably Nash had come to radical solutions to structural problems, and when Holcombe’s notice when repairing St Peter’s, given the opportunity undertook ‘improvements’ Carmarthen, his first architectural commission in the beyond necessary repairs, even when this involved town. However, Nash was not appointed architect in the destruction of significant medieval fabric. Wyatt charge. Bishop Horsley insisted that the Chapter was slightly older than Nash and already immensely should employ an architect of established reputation successful. Like Nash he was naturally gifted; unlike THE GEORGIAN GROUP JOURNAL VOLUME XXI ‘ DONE AFTER THE FANTASTIC ORDER ’: JOHN NASH ’ S RESTORATION OF ST DAVID ’ S CATHEDRAL Nash he was not particularly businesslike, and was between Potter and Wyatt, but few could have reputed to have lost a fortune by neglecting his foreseen the effects of Nash’s persuasive personality. accounts. Wyatt was excessively busy, keeping clients Nash certainly surveyed St David’s Cathedral, at bay, reputedly more difficult of access than the Prime and his ground plan survives. It is the work of a Minister. Nash by contrast was very businesslike, if not competent surveyor who has drawn up what he has sometimes sharp, accumulating within a few years a measured, the essential prerequisite for understanding fortune sufficient to run a London house and a country a building thoroughly. If the Chapter’s original retreat that matched Wyatt’s establishment. Nash was instructions had been followed, Nash’s survey and also sociable, accessible and charming – indeed, recommendations would in due course have been dangerously so. We must remember Repton’s rueful submitted to Wyatt for his opinion. This did not verdict on Nash: ‘He had powers of fascination beyond happen because a remarkable turn of events any one I have met with’. effectively put paid to Wyatt’s active involvement at Bishop Horsley envisaged a thorough repair of St David’s. It seems extraordinary in retrospect, but the Cathedral that would ‘restore to its original in the Chapter put to one side the pressing beauty and grandeur ... one of the noblest matter of the cathedral’s stability and decided monuments that our island has to boast.’ Some instead to commission a new chapter house. This repairs were particularly pressing. For some years project had not been mooted before Nash appeared there had been concern about the settlement of the on the scene, but Nash was adept at making people tower and west front. John Calvert, a Swansea want new buildings. Nash obviously charmed the architect, had proposed pulling down the upper canons into accepting his proposals for a new parts of the west front ‘so low as the cathedral roof’ chapter house befitting their status, even though the to ease the loading. This was vandalism, but the least Chapter would have to borrow to pay for it. expensive way of preventing further movement, as Nash’s new chapter house was a significant and the architect pointed out in . The Chapter prominently-sited building, but it can be viewed only procrastinated, reluctant either to spend money or in one contemporary print and in a few drawings mutilate the cathedral. The dramatic fall of the west (Fig. ). The exacting mid-nineteenth-century end of Hereford Cathedral on Easter Monday cathedral historians, Jones and Freeman, considered provided the spur to action at St David’s. A striking the building not only difficult but also ‘unprofitable’ engraving of the ruined cathedral appeared in The to describe, ‘due to the taste of Mr Nash’, but a Gentleman’s Magazine , with the wounding description must be attempted here. Nash altered a suggestion that the Hereford collapse had occurred run-down workshop and schoolroom on the south because of capitular indolence. The Hereford side of the cathedral graveyard, creating from this Chapter circulated a letter of appeal to raise unpromising structure a gleaming Neo-gothic subscription for repairs. By sufficient funds had extravaganza. The chapter house was entered from accumulated for Wyatt to begin rebuilding the west the cathedral side by a Gothic porch, and principal end, though he did so according to an ‘improved’ and back stairs led to the main first-floor rooms design rather than reinstating the fallen front. Wyatt (public audit room and private chapter room), set employed a clerk of works, Joseph Potter of over ground-floor kitchen and cellar, and vaulted Lichfield, who had immediate oversight of the basement. Rough-casting covered the stone and works. Presumably it was expected that the brick-patched walls, and the plaster and stucco finish working relationship between surveyor and architect internally included vaulting (‘groins’) and mouldings.