CHAPTER 10 - Notes

[219]. Despite the ‘correctness’ of Butterfield’s detailing, an idiosyncratic coarsening can be noted at St Augustine’s College in Canterbury and in other work by him done several years before All Saints’; yet, by contrast to other aspects of his mature style, his moulded detail remained conventional.

[220]. Since building Christ Church, Streatham, at the opening of the decade, Wild had been busy in Egypt. His curious St Mark’s, Alexandria, as Saracenic as his detractors accused the Streatham church of being, was unhappily never brought to completion. Designed in 1842, work was suspended for lack of funds in 1848 and Wild then returned to England.

[221]. Deane owed his knighthood to having been Mayor of Cork, not to his professional attainments. It would appear that Woodward did all the firm’s designing and, after his death in 1861, Deane’s son Thomas Newenham took over.

[222]. See Viollet-le-Duc, E.-E., Dictionnaire raisonné de l’architecture française du XIe au XVIe siècle, 10 vols., Paris, 1854-68.

[223]. See Mackail, J. W., The Life of William Morris, London, 1899.

[224]. Burges designed this in 1868 in his most archaeological and articulated French Gothic manner. Construction began only in 1893, long after Burges’s death, and the suave quality of the execution, so uncharacteristic of the still High Victorian date of the original design, is thereby explained; at best the design was singularly out of key with what Bodley had built.

[225]. Since this is a Catholic church, and by a man who knew French Gothic architecture well, it provides the fairest possible comparison with Viollet-le-Duc’s own new church of Saint-Denys-de-l’Estrée at St-Denis designed at almost precisely the same time (Plate [98]). Viollet-le-Duc is world-famous; Clutton is not generally considered even in England one of the leaders of his generation; yet the superiority of the Leamington church to the St-Denis church is very considerable indeed both inside and out.

[226]. See Harbron, D., ‘Thomas Harris’, Architectural Review, XCII (1942), 63-6, and Donner, P., ‘Harris Florilegium’, Architectural Review, XCIII (1943), 51-2.

[227]. This is spoilt externally by an unfortunate tower added by his son A. E. Street (1855-1938) in 1884-5.

[228]. See The National Memorial to H.R.H. the Prince Consort [London], 1873.

[229]. Scott’s aspirations for architecture, in general more sympathetic than what he built, will be found in his Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, Present and Future, London, 1858.

[230]. Although Woodward’s death occurred in the same year 1861 that this club was begun, it is possible, even probable, that the original design was his.

[231]. See Nesfield, W. E., Specimens of Mediaeval Architecture ... in France and Italy, London, 1862.

[232]. The intentions of the church builders in this decade are well presented in Micklethwaite, J. T., Modern Parish Churches, their Plan, Design, and Furnishing, London, 1874.

[233]. An extraordinary example of the use of Victorian Gothic for a somewhat unexpected purpose was Columbia Market by H. A. Darbishire (1839-1908) set down in 1866-8 among the grim housing blocks that he built for the philanthropist Angela Burdett-Coutts. See Wilson, F. M., ‘Ypres at Bethnal Green’, Architectural Review, XCVI (1944), 131-4.

[234]. Godwin’s active and distinguished Victorian Gothic period concluded with the building of two castles in Ireland, Dromore at Pallaskenny for the Earl of Limerick in 1867-9 and Glenbegh in 1868-71. Burges was with him in Ireland when he designed Dromore, and its decorations and furnishings rival in elaboration and exceed in elegance what Burges did for Lord Bute at Cardiff and Castell Coch in these years. A row with the client for Glenbegh, who complained of drastic leakage, in which Godwin’s then partner Crisp deserted him, did Godwin much harm professionally. He was still a relatively important figure in the Late Victorian seventies, but more as a decorator than as an architect (see Chapter [12]).