Pugin.—Early in the century John Britton and Thomas Rickman had published an illustrated work on “Cathedral Antiquities and the Gothic Style,” which went through many editions. They prepared the way for the influence of Augustus W. N. Pugin (1812-1852), who stood forth as a veritable apostle of the Gothic. For he supplied passion to the movement, so that it represented no shallow fad but, for the time being, a conviction that the characteristic tradition of the English must be the mediæval style. And to the realisation of it he brought a knowledge of detail and ornament, gained from many years spent in measurements and drawings of Gothic buildings; while for the purpose of reproducing the spirit of the originals he established and trained a school of craftsmen. He was, in fact, the pioneer of the later Arts and Crafts Movement. He became a convert to Roman Catholicism and his most important ecclesiastical work was expended on Roman Catholic churches and monasteries.
Houses of Parliament.—When the commission for the New Houses of Parliament was given to Sir Charles Barry with the proviso that the style must be Gothic, Pugin was associated with him as chief designer of the exterior details and interior decorative work.
The style selected by the authorities, under the unfortunate impression that it should correspond with the adjacent Henry VII’s Chapel, was the Tudor Gothic, or late Perpendicular Style, so that the façades in their lineal repetition present a certain stiffness and monotony. This effect, however, is offset by the grandiose scale of the vast building and the picturesque sky-line of towers and spires and turrets. Of these the two dominating features are the lantern over the octagonal central hall, the richly decorated Victoria Tower marking the ceremonial entrance of the sovereign to the House of Lords, and the Clock Tower, which stands at the Commons’ end, proclaiming its simple purpose as a clock tower and, when the summit-light is burning, the fact that the House is sitting.
But the grandest feature of Barry’s conception is the plan, accommodated to the site of the still-existing Westminster Hall. Notwithstanding the cell-like complexity of its innumerable units, the whole presents an organic completeness of comparative simplicity, so adapted to the functions demanded, that it has served more or less closely as a model for many other buildings, notably for the Parliament House in Budapest.
The merit both of the plan and of the façades is emphasised by contrast with the New Law Courts, designed by G. E. Street (1824-1881). Here the zeal for archæological revival ran ahead of reasonable adaptation. So the exterior presents a congeries of mediæval details that have little or no relation to the internal necessities, with the admitted result that the interior is inconvenient, while its one fine feature, the great vaulted Hall, is rendered useless by not being on the same floor as the Courts.
Street was a pupil of Sir Gilbert Scott (1810-1877), under whose influence the Gothic revival reached its full flood. He, too was an archæological enthusiast, with a preference for the Early Decorated style, and his numerous churches are frankly reproductions, as near as possible, of Mediæval architecture.
On the other hand, a freer adaptation of the Gothic to modern needs and feeling appears in William Butterfield (1814-1900); for example, in the design of Keble College, Oxford, All Saints, Margaret Street, London, and his little church at Babbacombe in Devonshire. Other independent Gothicists were J. L. Pearson, architect of Truro Cathedral and eight London churches; James Brooks, who successfully employed brick in ecclesiastical design, and Alfred Waterhouse. The last has proved himself a master of plan in adapting the Gothic to secular buildings, two of his most important designs being the Law Courts and Town Hall, Manchester.
FRANCE
A characteristically French independence distinguishes the few churches in which the influence of the Gothic revival may be traced. The most essentially Gothic church of the period is S. Clotilde, Paris, designed by Theodore Ballin, who, however, in his later work, La Trinité, exhibits a remarkably interesting blend of Renaissance details with Gothic feeling. But the tendency in French ecclesiastical architecture was rather toward Byzantine, a movement which culminated in the great church of Sacré Cœur on Montmartre, erected by Paul Abadia (1774-1812).