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Recap: In Monday’s lecture, I presented the Crystal Palace of The Great Exhibition,
1851, to you as symptomatic of the conditions of the period to which architects in
London had to respond: a great mass of people who were the new subjects of
architecture; the decay of architectural quality in the built environment; and the rapid
development of science and technology.

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We can use these different aspects of architecture to determine its ‘style’ and
sometimes the period in which the building was designed. We can also use an
analysis of these different features to determine the motivations of the
architect/designer, and critically reflect on the success of their work—both in their
time and subsequently.

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This is a drawing by Joseph Gandy, a draughtsman and colleague of the architect Sir
John Soane. It shows a number of alternative schemes for Holy Trinity Church in
Marylebone, on the Euston Road.

There are 4 Gothic buildings, and 4 Classical buildings. We can tell the difference by
the way in which the buildings have been decorated:
Pointed Arches over openings (Gothic), or pediments and columns over openings
(Classical)
Flying buttresses and buttresses (Gothic) or columns and plain wall (Classical)
Castellated and Pinnacled (Gothic) or balustraded and topped with urns (Classical)

Here the ‘style’ of the architecture is treated as a ‘dress’. And the motifs of that dress
are appropriated from earlier forms of architecture: different kinds of ‘Gothic’ from
different periods in history, and different kinds of ‘Classical’ from different periods of
history.

This image suggests that, for an architect like Soane, ‘style’ is not a concern—either
Soane has no regard for style (it just doesn’t affect him), or he has ‘transcended’ it, it
is no longer something at stake for him (he is doing something else, perhaps with the

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space of the interior, or with the organisation of the building works).

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Why choose one style over another?

For some time, architectural styles had come to be treated in a similar fashion to
novels—styles told ‘stories’, specifically stories about the past.
Classical architecture told the story of antiquity—of Ancient Greece and Rome.
Gothic architecture told the story of medieval history—and became particularly
attractive for its association with Romance, courtly love, the honour and nobility of
knights and so on.

So, as well as having certain formal features we can spot, the Gothic had certain
historical associations. It signified, or represented, specific qualities of the past.

This use of ‘Gothic’ architecture, as a means to tell narratives or ‘stories’, was first
developed by a non-architect called Horace Walpole.

In 1777, Horace Walpole finally completed his thirty year building scheme in
Twickenham—Strawberry Hill House. The name of the house was as much a
confection as the building itself—a great celebration of Gothic, medieval, architecture
with irregular, asymmetric plan, a large incidental tower, one wing of stucco white

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walls against the bare stone of another, pointed arches for windows, buttresses
supporting the walls with pinnacles rising above the castellated roof line.

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Its interior, with fan vaults, walls of tracery and decorative carpets evoked a return to
medieval England. Here is the architectural historian John Summerson on Walpole:

‘His contribution [to architecture] consists in one thing only—that he discovered, or re-
discovered, a certain kind of literary pleasure—the pleasure of elaborating the appeal to
history by the imitation of historical monuments.’ Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530–
1830, p. 400.

What does Summerson mean when he says that Walpole discovered a ‘certain kind of literary
pleasure’ at Strawberry Hill? He means that Walpole promoted the study of the past, the
discovery of past forms of design—in architecture, furniture, fabrics, glassware, products of
all kinds—and the reproduction of those forms so as to evoke the past. Architecture and
design became a form of story-telling. Objects and architecture were deployed after Walpole
to say particular things about history. In one sense this is the origin of the ‘Gothic Revival’: a
return to and reproduction of the ‘Gothic’ of the past. And this approach continued until the
1830s.
But, as Barry Bergdoll suggests in the text you have been given to read, we can make a
distinction between what Walpole was doing and what later, Victorian, nineteenth century
Gothic Revivalists were doing.
For Walpole, and for architects like Sir John Soane, the ‘Gothic’ was but one style among
many to choose from, for Gothic Revivalists of the mid-nineteenth century, Gothic was the
only style—all other modes of architecture (such as Classical)—were to be absolutely
rejected. Gothic architecture no longer told ’a story’ among ‘many possible stories’. It was no
longer a question of ‘taste’. Gothic architecture became imperative and absolute.
This radical change in attitudes towards style in architecture, and the Gothic in particular,
occurs in the 1830s, and the key figure is Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin is so important,
and particularly his book Contrasts, published in 1836.
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The full title of the book is Contrasts: or a parallel between the noble edifices of the
middle ages, and corresponding buildings of the present day; shewing the present
decay of taste. And this is, indeed, what Pugin does: the book presents images of the
past in contrast to the present. The purpose is to show the superior qualities of the
architecture of the middle ages as compared with the present. He not only contrasts
Gothic architecture with Classical, but demonstrates the difference between the
Gothic of the past and the reproduction Gothic of the present.

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Here, then, on the left, he shows the difference between a medieval Gothic chapel in
Yorkshire (bottom) and a nineteenth century chapel in London (top). He wants to
highlight the difference in terms of:
Decoration and care (the modern is mean, careless, and looks like it has been
assembled from parts, the older chapel is richly decorated, and ‘organic’ — it all looks
like one piece)
Materials (the modern is brick covered in stucco or plaster, the older buildings is
carved from stone)
Scale (the modern is small compared with other commercial buildings, the older
building is the largest in its area)
Relation to the environment (the modern is tucked into a small square, the older
imposes itself as the pinnacle of the landscape)

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Perhaps the most famous print from Contrasts is this image of the medieval town
contrasted with a contemporary town. Note, both are entirely fictional.
Contrast of styles
Contrast of relation of town and country
Contrast of building types
Contrast of social order (Church and Market)

So, in Pugin’s presentation, the ‘Gothic’ comes to stand in for a whole way of life, not
just a ‘dress’ as Soane had it. And that Gothic is part of a coherent, morally sound,
self-sufficient, non-commercial society.

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Had Pugin only provided books on architecture and Catholic church designs, his
influence may have been more restricted than it became.

But on16 October 1834 the Palace of Westminster—the building which contained the
House of Commons, the House of Lords, Westminster Hall and Law Courts on the
north bank of the Thames, west of the City of London: that is the heart of legislative
and executive power in Britain—burned to the ground.

This contemporary painting depicts the Palace in ruins by the river Thames.

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A commission rapidly announced a public competition. Of the six chosen for the
shortlist one entry was unanimously chosen: a design by the architect Charles Barry
and Pugin.

Barry, the principle architect of the Palace, was not a Revivalist in the manner of
Pugin—he was comfortable designing various medieval revival styles for chapels,
country houses and school buildings. But Barry had travelled to Italy and also
designed in an Italianate, Renaissance style.

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This is evident in the design he carried out, contemporary with the Palace, of the
Reform Club—a private members club in Pall Mall, based on Barry’s study of the
Palazzo (Palace) Farnese in Rome.

Classical motifs (pediments, entablature, etc.).

Strictly symmetrical.

A ‘closed’ building (it appears to be ‘framed’, cannot extend in any direction without
ruining the balance of the whole).

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We can see the influence of this classical interest, not in the appearance of the
Houses of Parliament, but in the plan: the utilisation of symmetry and axial planning
of the whole.

But Barry, with Pugin, conceived the Palace as a celebration of a particular kind of
Gothic architecture: the perpendicular style.

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As an example, I show here the high alter of Gloucester Cathedral.

This has been understood as a particularly ‘English’ development of Gothic

architecture,
with an emphasis on linear tracery
and a highly stylised grid of lines.
Distinction between the decoration and the mass of the building, which means that
the bulk of the building recedes and disappears.

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We can see the influence of this on Barry and Pugin’s design. The repetition of a fine
linear grid across the surface of the building, marked out in stone tracery.

Barry and Pugin’s triumph was to convince both the commissioners of the building
and the wider public that Gothic architecture was the style to represent the nation
state. Gothic architecture became the preferred style for a number of new civic—that
is governmental—buildings in London and across the United Kingdom, particularly in
the emerging northern industrial cities, such as Manchester and Liverpool.

But the Gothic is not, in fact, ‘naturally’ a national style. It may seem to us convincing:
‘Gothic’ architecture, particularly this perpendicular style, did develop in England, as
England emerged as a nation state through the middle-ages and early modern period.
In that sense, it may be natural to assume it as the ‘architecture’ of Englishness and
this is an argument used at the time and subsequently.

But the origin of the ‘Gothic’ lies in Northern France, first developed in Paris. And
‘Gothic’ architecture, as defined by a perpendicular style, is an architecture of the
Church, an architecture, that is, of the Roman Catholic Church—a church that had
been expressly rejected in the Reformation of the sixteenth century and the creation

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of the title of ‘Supreme Head of the Church of England’ for Henry VIII. And if the
perpendicular style was a ‘natural’ style of the English, how were the Welsh, Scottish,
and Irish subjects of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland to respond? Let
alone the very many subjects of the wider Commonwealth and Empire—in the West
Indies, India, Australia, and so on.

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 This was a live argument in the period—and if Barry and Pugin were successful with
the Palace, later architects of civic buildings in London were less so. The classic case
of contest of the appropriate style for national government occurred over the Foreign
and Commonwealth Office designed by George Gilbert Scott.

This is a drawing submitted to the open competition for a new Foreign Office. Scott
uses a kind of Gothic design, and argued for the validity of the design on the grounds
that Gothic was best representative of the nation. However, the Liberal government
of the period—and particularly Lord Palmerston, then Lord Chancellor and soon to
become Prime Minister—had his doubts. He rejected the design, and only accepted
Scott as architect once he submitted to radical alterations.

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The protracted argument between Scott and Palmerston resulted in a compromised
building, clearly not expressive of ‘Gothic’ of any kind but some kind of renaissance,
or classical building.

Now this debate over whether the building should be ‘Gothic’ or ‘Classical’ played out
in public as if it was a debate between ‘Liberal’ and ‘Tory’ political factions.

In British politics the ‘Tory’ party—or Conservative party—has always been

associated with the high church, the monarchy, and tradition. The Liberal Party with
commerce, progressivism and modernisation. Scott’s Gothic architecture was
associated with Toryism, and Palmerston, as a Liberal, was seen as wanting an
architecture untainted by those associations—a ‘Classical architecture’ was chosen
instead.

It wasn’t only George Gilbert Scott that suffered from public concerns over the use of
Gothic as necessarily representative of Englishness or Britishness.

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George Edmund Street, an architect who was highly successful throughout the mid-
nineteenth century in both championing and designing Gothic Revival architecture,
won an open competition to design a new complex of buildings—the Royal Courts of
Justice or Law Courts. Announced in 1866, the competition for the Law Courts
attracted only Gothic designs—for by 1866, the Gothic Revival Movement had
become the dominant style. And for many, Gothic appeared not only symbolically
appropriate for the largest common law courts in the country, but practical too.
Symbolic, because Britain maintained a common law juridical system which had
developed in the middle-ages, as opposed to continental constitutional system that
was based on Roman law; practical because a building of the scale and complexity of
the Law Courts suggested that a style which could be asymmetrical and not have to
conform to axial planning, would suit the requirements of a complex, central urban
site better.

In fact, whilst the Law Courts were completed according to Street’s design, it was
widely understood to have broken the architect: the use of Portland stone was
criticised for appearing monolithic, the scale of the project seemed to have escaped
the architect so that some details appeared fussy, others not considered at all. In the
end, the building was treated as a failure. It marked the end of the ‘Gothic’ as the

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principle style of civic buildings, and a turn to other modes of stylistic experiment.
The Gothic Revival as a ‘nationalist’ movement was unsustainable in practice—even if
it was maintained in the public imagination well into the twentieth century.

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We’re looking here at St James-the-Less, in Pimlico, designed and built under the
direction of Street between 1859–61, so nearly 10 years after All Saints Margaret
Street. It’s not the perfect photograph but it shows how this church is much more
open on its site than All Saints—it doesn’t have that very compressed feel that All
Saints produces, but opens out on all sides. It does, however, maintain all those
features: the large tower, the school, the vicarage, and main body of the church itself.
It also shares in the decoration that All Saints uses—of banded brick and stone—
called ‘constructional polychromy’, that is, the production of many colours (poly
chromy) by the basic building materials (constructional) rather than applied with
paint or other covering.
But it’s lighter than All Saints, both in the colour of the brick, which is more orange,
and the more extensive use of stone.

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Street was a member of the Ecclesiological Society, the same society that
commissioned Butterfield at All Saints, and who were intent on reintroducing
elements of the Catholic liturgy into Anglicanism. As a means to achieve this end, the
Ecclesiological Society produced a journal—the Ecclesiologist—in which the historical
forms of churches: their plans, elevations, organisation of functions (programme),
from across the Christian world were analysed. Proposals were then made as to how
contemporary churches could be similarly built.

It’s that mission that informed the plans of All Saints and St James the Less, with the
separation of Chancel from Nave, the introduction of the screen, and the highly
decorated altar.
What distinguishes Street’s architecture here at St James the Less is the way in which
he has borrowed liberally from Italian Gothic architecture, as opposed to Butterfield’s
interest in German Gothic—Street was studying in Italy when commissioned for St
James the Less, and many of the elements—strikingly the tower—borrow from
precedents in Northern Italy.

Here—in the ecclesiological movement—we are a long way from either the narrative
use of the Gothic of Walpole, or the nationalistic use of Gothic as used to justify the

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Houses of Parliament and other civic buildings. This is certainly a piece with Pugin’s
moral concerns–not a whole sale return to Catholicism, as Pugin sought, but certainly
a return to the practices and liturgy of Catholicism. It reintroduces the Gothic, not
because this reflects a specific national culture, but precisely to respond to the
cultural requirements of a super-national institution: the church.

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In 1849, John Ruskin published his Seven Lamps of Architecture. In that work, Ruskin set out the nature
of Gothic architecture, not as a collection of formal elements—of pointed arches, buttresses, and so
on—but as seven kinds of moral virtue—Sacrifice, Truth, Power, Beauty, Life, Memory, and Obedience.
In the work, Ruskin presents a large range of architectural precedents from across Europe, and in each
case derives a particular virtue of human will in relation to nature. To take one example—the Lamp of
Sacrifice—Ruskin identifies the function of a building—whether devotional, memorial, civil, military, or
domestic—the material of a building—whether stone, brick, or timber—or the ornamentation of a
building as all concerned first with ‘sacrifice’: of action, possessions, and time. Ruskin argues that for
building to achieve the status of architecture it necessarily requires evidence and expression of the
sacrifice of the human spirit. To quote Ruskin:
‘God never forgets any work or labour of love […] the arts will never flourish until they have been
primarily devoted to that service […] the impulse to which I refer, would be, humanly speaking,
certain; and would naturally result from obedience to the two great conditions enforced by the Spirit
of Sacrifice, first, that we should in everything do our best; and, secondly, that we should consider
increase of apparent labour as an increase of beauty in the building.’
Now this is one of the ‘Lamps’ and there are six others, which I shan’t go into. But they all share
Ruskin’s particular world view of God and nature: that nature is God’s will, and that art is not distinct
from nature, but encompassed by it, in so far as art is expressive of human will. Ruskin is always
looking at the extent to which human will is expressed in any work of art or architecture. Usually, that
necessarily requires that evidence of human design is wrought directly into the material—that is,
Ruskin is concerned with the carving of stone, the blowing of glass, the setting of jewels, the
hammering of iron—not the carved stone as such, or the blown glass as such: it is in the making that
the will is expressed.

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 Now, there is very little evidence that Ruskin was in close contact with the Ecclesiologists, or that
Butterfield or Street were influenced by Ruskin. But in expressing the values and meaning of the
Gothic in these moral terms, Ruskin extends and develops Pugin’s early statements in Contrasts on the
moral and ethical, rather than aesthetic, of architecture. But he also opens up the Gothic Revival to
some unresolvable contradictions. We can see these best expressed in a building not in London but in
Oxford.

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This is the exterior of the Oxford University Museum of Natural History, designed by
the Irish architects Thomas Deane and Benjamin Woodward in 1855 under the direct
influence of Ruskin. They have modelled the main body of the building on Ruskin’s
studies of northern Italian Gothic architecture—incorporating features from Venetian
architecture in particular.

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An annexe building, on the other hand, is a direct copy of the Abbey Kitchen of
Glastonbury Abbey, destroyed in the Dissolution of the Monasteries under Henry VIII.
So, Deane and Woodward have used a range of Gothic models and precedents, not a
strict antiquarian one.

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But they went further than any other architects of the period in following Ruskin,
employing O’Shea and Whelan, a firm of stone masons from Ireland, to hand carve
the ornamentation over the openings of the building. They also consulted the
geologist John Phillips to select stones, representative of the different rock
formations found across the British Isles, to construct the building. The building was
to be a ‘lamp of sacrifice’ and also a celebration of nature itself.

The resulting work caused some outrage among the conservative elements of the
University. The first building dedicated to scientific as opposed to theological enquiry
(yes, Oxford University was that slow in engaging the enlightenment) was using the
work of Ruskin to conceive a building as potent as a church.

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In reaction, the new Keble College foundation commissioned William Butterfield to
design, in brick, a strictly theological college. The College was named after John
Keble, one of the founding members of the Oxford Movement, contributing to the
wider Ecclesiastical Society. Here, then, were two Gothic Revival buildings, opposing
one another—the first a celebration of natural science in Venetian Gothic, the second
a reaction to modernity and return to theology, in a modern Gothic.

Both are highly contradictory. Perhaps the Natural History Museum more so. There
are features I haven’t mentioned.
A careful eye will notice that the exterior remains incomplete—the carving was never
finished, the University unable (or unwilling) to fund the cost of highly skilled
craftsmen. Ruskin’s project was, perhaps, Utopian—impossible in the world of
nineteenth century industrial capital. And perhaps it was unnecessary. The most
spectacular part of the Museum is the interior.

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In which are displayed the bones of dinosaurs, under a canopy of industrial iron and
glass, with gas lamps suspended from the ceiling. The Natural History Museum is
filled with references to geology and evolutionary change—the extraordinary new
discoveries of science in the nineteenth century. And this informs Ruskin and other
Gothic revivalists’s understanding of architecture—architecture, for the first time, was
understood to be something that ‘evolves’ with human nature: where there is
powerful, strong architecture, there is a powerful, strong society; where there is
mean, degraded architecture, there is a mean, degraded society. Yet, how might the
recovery and restoration of a ‘past’ architecture (the Gothic of the middle-ages) fit
with the modern nineteenth century of industry and commerce?

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The Gothic Revival appears, then, to be led by at least three dominant cultural pursuits—nationalism,
moralism, and science. And in following those pursuits, the Gothic Revival appears to produce
competing tendencies—looking backward, looking forward, reactionary, revolutionary, pessimistic,
optimistic.

To make sense of all these competing tendencies in the Gothic Revival movement I think it best to
consider it as containing three antinomies—that is, three contradictions that the language of the
Revival movement can raise as concerns, but is unable to resolve.

The first concerns the exploration of the architecture of the past: at first, the Gothic Revival appears to
be about finding and then reproducing a specific architecture of the middle ages. But because this is a
self-conscious projection into the past (of a better age than the present) it can only ever look
‘backward’ whilst in fact trying to construct a modern architecture—a new style, nothing to do with
the past at all.

The second concerns the question of ‘nature’: again, at first it appears to be concerned with
establishing the absolute, or certain nature of architecture and human beings–whether divine or not.
But it soon becomes a project for discovering an ever changing ‘nature’—nature becomes unfixed, and
evolutionary.

Finally, there is the concern over the design of architecture: at first it is about how architecture
appears, what form it takes, and how this affects or reflects society. But it becomes, particularly under
Ruskin’s influence, not about the form of architecture, but the way that architecture is produced.

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It is that final antinomy—between form and process as reflective of or consequential upon society—
that the next group of architects we will investigate are concerned.

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All these historians are cited in the ‘Further Reading’ for the lecture and seminar in
Week 3 of the Handbook—please do use that reading for your essays.

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