Institute of Carpenters

Introduction

In Part 4 we looked at Horace Walpole and his creation, Strawberry Hill. In this Part we will, at first, fast forward 40-50 years and look at the work of the ‘bogey men’ of the Gothic Revival; William Beckford and James Wyatt. Beckford the megalomaniac client and Wyatt his unfortunate architect, in so far as he is associated with Beckford and his doomed creation; Fonthill Abbey.

In contrast to this we will then take in the master or ‘God of Gothic’ as Rosemary Hill called him, AWN Pugin. Who in a short life did more for British architecture than anyone else. We shall also look at the influence of The Camden Society and its publication the Ecclesiologist.

We have seen how Walpole put together an eclectic collection of architectural details and furnishing at Strawberry Hill. He eventually set up a small committee, which included the designer and fantasist Richard Bentley who blended Gothic with Rococo. My favourite design of Bentley’s is the ‘Gothic’ Chair he designed for Strawberry Hill. This cannot be called true Gothic because of its beautifully slim and elegant nature—it is a good example of Rococo with Gothic motifs, a Mannerist creation. See Photograph 5.1.

Fonthill and the Perils of Hubris

The gentle eccentricities of Strawberry Hill are controversial but enjoyable and often bring a smile to those studying them, but Beckford is another matter altogether; his Fonthill travesty started with the desire to build a summer house cum folly with the appearance of a Gothic ruin. Gothic ruins in the late 18th century were the in thing to have if you could afford one. They belonged to the ideal of the picturesque; the accepted way of making a scene be like a landscape picture where ruins formed an important part conveying a type of melancholy.

 

 

Then Gothic was the fashionable melancholy… with the help of a crumbling arch the admirer… could contemplate himself as a work of art. Indeed the reason lies in the very nature of Romanticism… Every Romantic style reflects the daydreams of its creators, some Utopia in which they live the life of the imagination… Only a Gothic ruin could inspire the chivalry of a crusader or the pious enthusiasm of a monk. (2)

Beckford so happened to be one of the richest men around, there was very little he could not afford, and this was his downfall. He engaged James Wyatt to design this summer house/folly, which was Wyatt’s misfortune. Wyatt was a competent architect, especially in the design of classical buildings, he also had had some experience, with varying success, with Gothic architecture. Neither Beckford nor Wyatt were antiquarians, especially not medievalists.

Fonthill in fact started out as ruin; but as Beckford was not happy about his father’s large classical building elsewhere on the same site, his ambition grew apace.

So in 1794 Beckford asked Wyatt to design him a ruined convent of which the chapel parlour, dormitory and part of a cloister alone should have survived. (3)

 

 

From this quote we can see what an artificially contrived concept Fonthill started out as—it got worse because In 1807 Beckford decided when the project was well on, to change use and have Fonthill as his country seat, in other words a Gothic stately home. The foundations had been laid to take bits of pretend ruins. Now these foundations were going to be expected to support a very tall buildings. The octagon tower that was built on this site reached a height of 275ft. The total height of the great hall was 120ft, the two wings were about 400ft long and 25ft wide. We can get just a rough idea of its proportions from a very ancient images referred to as Rutter’s Delineations of Fonthill. See Photographs 5.2 and 5.3.

These massive buildings were erected at great speed with teams of craftsmen working round the clock through all types of weather including deep frosts. The work was carried by the light of massive bonfires. It was estimated that some 500 to 600 workmen were working at one time.

Beckford lost interest after its completion and sold Fonthill to another eccentric John Farquar. Some few years later the clerk of works, for the tower and other work, lay on his deathbed. This clerk called Beckford to see him and confessed that the specified strengthening of the foundations of the tower had not been carried out. Beckford lost no time in informing Farquar of the possible dangerous state of the tower; to which Farquar replied that the house would probably last his life time!

He was mistaken. One night in the year 1825 the tower quietly subsided; and little trace of the huge structure now remains. (5)

It can be seen from above that the early days of the Gothic Revival were not entirely a triumph. Of course, many churches and farmhouses were built or altered in the Gothic style with varying degrees of success during the last half of the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

 

 

The “God” of Gothic

When we think of the mature Revival Gothic styles three names come to mind, two architects and one art critic. They are AWN Pugin, George Gilbert Scott and John Ruskin. Scott admitted his debt to Pugin, Ruskin denies any debt to Pugin, but he lied. The trouble between Ruskin and Pugin is that often encountered by men who come to similar conclusions, but by different means. AWN Pugin was a professional architect and by training a carpenter (specialising on theatre scenery and props,) The difference between him and Ruskin starts here, Ruskin was the son of a very wealthy sherry merchant and was short of nothing money could buy (except perhaps love and some degree of independence from his clinging mother and father). His place at Oxford was secured as a ‘gentleman’ scholar [money from father] so he did not need sit exams etc. His mother moved to digs in Oxford so she could still look after him. Pugin fell in love with an actress and had to get married. Ruskin’s marriage to Efie Grey was never consummated and was eventually annulled. Pugin had to earn money from about 15 or 16 years old. He also, later, new financial ruin. [I hope my working class background has not made me bias—but I prefer Pugin every time.]

 

 

Ruskin emphasis was on decoration and ornament whereas Pugin’s was on the structure. In fact as quoted in Part 1 of this series;
The two great rules for design are these: that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction, or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building. (7)

To list the architectural achievements of Pugin would use up all the space allocated for this article. But if we just consider one great project; Charles Barry’s (later Sir Charles) Houses of Parliament. It was Barry’s management and diplomacy that won the contract, and the overall plan was his. But the Gothic detailing was Pugin’s. He designed everything from the decoration on the outside, the windows and doors and of course Stephen’s Tower which houses Big Ben. Indoors he designed all the seating, wall covering, metalwork, the decoration of the roof and floor. In fact almost every detail. He did this while still working on projects for his own customers. See Photographs 5.4, 5.5 and 5.6 for just some of the work in the houses of parliament—all carried out in perfect Gothic style. Where no decoration was need, as in his chairs for both houses, he uses honest heavy Gothic principles.

The Ecclesiologists

The greatest number of churches and chapels were built in the early nineteenth century than any other period. In the late eighteenth century two acts of parliament removed some of the restrictions on Roman Catholics in the UK and another act giving them even more freedom was passed in the early years of the nineteenth century. Because of this the Roman Catholic Church was able to build churches and cathedrals in Britain openly for the first time since the Reformation.

 

 

Pugin’s conversion to Catholicism did much to decide the nature of these new RC churches, which were mainly Gothic in style.

In the eighteenth century the Church of England had slipped into an emotionless way of worship, avoiding all enthusiasm and excitement in the Divine Services. It had become less fashionable to worship regularly in the Established Church. Into this dull and unexciting religion two movements brought about dramatic changes; firstly the Evangelical Revival led by John Wesley and George Whitfield. This produced two outcomes; the evangelical wing of the Church of England and Methodism. The second movement occurred in the middle of the nineteenth century and involved an emphasis on the Apostolic Succession, the Mass and the veneration of the Virgin Mary and other saints, this was the Oxford or Tractarian Movement whose most famous leader was John Newman, who eventually moved over to the Roman Catholic Church. The Oxford movement help develop the High Anglican or Anglo-Catholic wing of the Church of England.

 

Both the Evangelical Revival and the Oxford movement brought excitement and enthusiasm into the once dull Church of England.

Together with an enlivened worship was the moving of vast numbers of people from rural to urban setting. The Industrial Revolution changed the demographics of the country, especially in England. The growing number of people in towns and cities called for new churches, either the creation of new parishes or subsidiary churches in existing parishes, these additional churches were placed away from the main parish church to enable people who lived a good distance away could attend these nearer small churches. These additional and subsidiary churches were called chapels of ease.

The third wave of church building was that of the none-conformist churches; Methodist churches in several forms together with Baptist churches and Congregational or independent churches, some of the later being Unitarian churches. All these noneconformist churches were popularly called “chapels”.

Both the Roman Catholic and Church of England churches favored Gothic as a style, and some of the Non-conformist churches also show, to a lesser degree, a debt to the Gothic style.

An organization was set up in Cambridge to discuss and advocate good church design, and needless to say, this involved the Gothic Style. The founders of this movement, J M Neale and Benjamin Webb, who were undergraduates at Trinity College, formed what became the Cambridge Camden Society in 1839. This movement became controversial and contentious, but it cannot be denied that it became the society whose approval most church builders sought above all else. The journal of this society was called the Ecclesiologist, and the title ‘ecclesiologists’ became the term to describe people who studied church building and church furnishing, and they nearly always appeared as advocates of the Gothic style.

The ecclesiologists had a disproportionate influence in respect to their actual size of membership. Like all enthusiasts, they often went too far in criticism of proposed churches. Some anonymous wit said of them that they saw the most serious sin in church design was to follow their own advice of the previous year. This is because they were always changing what they considered correct, and church designers and builders became wary of their changing opinions. Thousands of nineteenth-century churches and chapels, with all their furniture and fittings, can be seen as illustrations of these influences. The three sub-styles of Gothic from the medieval period—Early English, Decorated, and Perpendicular—were all used in nineteenth-century Gothic architecture, but the middle style, the Decorated, became the most common in churches. Some of these nineteenth-century Gothic churches followed the medieval pattern conscientiously, while others were just classical buildings with Gothic windows and other details.

Conclusion

After studying these influences and their effect on mid-Victorian architecture, we need to think about where this led architecture and furniture design. In my concluding Part 6, I shall show how the Arts and Crafts movement, Art Nouveau and its associated Art Furniture movement, and the Modernist movement all grew out of Gothic architecture.

I hope to ask and answer the question: What of Gothic architecture and design today? Has it any relevance today? Ruskin and Morris are still influencing design, but often conflicting practices are put forward as following these same principles. Their influence on the Conservation Movement will also be looked at briefly.

These factors and many, many more will be explored in my next series of contributions to Cutting Edge, where I hope to look at the wider field of Design and the Carpenter and Joiner.

The late Dr. Brian Hodgson, Ph.D, LCGI, FIOC, FFB, MIMWoodT, AIMMM (MIWSc) | North West

1 Paul Atterbury Ed., AWN Pugin Master of Gothic Revival, New Haven and London, Yale University Press, 1995, p. 228.

2 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival, London, John Murray, 1962 edition, p. 48.

3 Ibid. p. 87.

4 Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival, John Murray, 1963 ed, facing page 84.

5 Ibid. p. 89.

6 Ibid facing page 85.

7 A W N Pugin, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture, London, John Weale, 1841, p. 2.

8 Paul Atterbury Ed., Pugin Master of Gothic Revival, 1995, p. 322.

9 Paul Atterbury Ed., AWN Pugin Master of Gothic Revival, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1995, p. 325.

10 Ibid, p. 326.

This article first appeared in the June 2015 issue of Cutting Edge. As part of the IOC membership, IOC members receive quarterly editions of Cutting Edge magazine and access to all back issues online.

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