Lectures on the rise and development of medieval architecture; vol. 1

by Sir George Gilbert Scott

You will have gathered from incidental remarks as I have proceeded that I have not supposed you to limit your attention and study to architecture properly so called. Time does not allow me to go farther into the subject of collateral arts; but let me say that, as architecture unites all arts in one, so you must gather into her garner the spoils to be collected from the study of every art by which architecture may be ennobled and enriched.

I have said nothing in the course of the foregoing remarks as to the choice or preference you would have to exercise among specimens of different Mediæval periods and styles, but I have said enough to show that I do not suppose your studies of the old buildings in our own and neighbouring countries to be limited to one selected period, nor even to what can be strictly called Mediæval works, as much that is useful can be gathered (particularly in domestic work) from buildings of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. It is absolutely necessary, too, that you should understand and be familiar with all the varieties of our old architecture, because, though you may not follow them in your own works, you may be frequently called upon to restore them, though this reason is hardly necessary to lead you to master the whole range of Mediæval art.

Still, however, you cannot choose but follow more lovingly the works of the periods which most approve themselves to your minds as the days when art was the most vigorous, noble, and full of deep and true sentiment. For my own part, though I am less exclusive than many of my friends, I must confess that I find a difficulty in sketching, unless with a directly practical object, from works either so early as to be rude or so late as to be enervated. And while I beg you to make yourselves masters of the whole range, I am far from asking you to check the genial current of the soul by endeavouring to love all varieties alike, or to give equal attention to those which are and those which are not in harmony with your inner feelings.

I have dwelt much, in my earlier lectures, on the study of the vigorous and onward-striving works of the transition: and I confess that to me this is the most captivating period. I have already sufficiently indicated the leading examples of it, though you will find it interspersed with other styles all over the country. I think myself that no style is more calculated to excite a grandeur of sentiment, but none seems to me to have been so little studied from English examples, or rather, I should have said, from British examples, for it is as finely developed in Wales and in Scotland as it is in England. I have said a good deal about studying it as a historical phase of the style, but this, though necessary, is in point of fact a very secondary matter. You must much rather study it artistically, with reference to its intrinsic merits and its noble beauty, and morally, as illustrating the elevated sentiment and noble earnestness of those who, while pressing forward a new style of art, generated at every step such glorious productions.

I have said less, perhaps, and spoken with less enthusiasm of the fully-developed Early Pointed style, not from a lower appreciation of its merits, but because it seems rather a breathing-place—a point of attainment—in the march, than especially a point of noble pressing onward. Nor need I enumerate the special objects of study belonging to the period. They are sown broadcast over our own and neighbouring lands, and form the staple of our most magnificent, and a large proportion of our humble, Mediæval remains. No tour, however, is more prolific of instruction in this style than that of the northern abbeys, and this tour may be repeated again and again with ever fresh delight, and extended with great profit over the borders and far away into Scotland.

After this we come to another transition, and—the period of rest being at an end—we find again much of the same earnest striving as during the earlier transition. I would recommend a very special amount of study to be devoted to this style—for it is not reasonable to suppose that traceried windows are to be banished from our revival; and loving, as most of us do, the vigour of the earlier periods, this second transition—the connecting link between the earlier and the middle periods—offers most valuable material for our own developments: indeed, I cannot conceive of a more promising course of corrective training for those among us who have followed early and foreign work till it has grown into an actual mania, than to set themselves the task of following up, nolens volens, the minute study in all its details of a carefully selected series of work of this second English transition.

For such a course I would especially recommend the following examples:—

The greater part of Netley Abbey; all the eastern portions of Westminster Abbey; the eastern arm of Lincoln Cathedral;[85] the chapter-house[86] and cloisters at Salisbury; all that remains of Newstead Abbey; and the nave of Lichfield Cathedral. Of a period a shade later I would recommend the nave of St. Mary’s Abbey at York; the whole of Tintern Abbey; the chapter-houses at Southwell and at York, and the eastern parts at St. Albans. The two latter are, however, productions of the completed style rather than of the transition, and to give a list of objects of study in that style would be almost hopeless, for the country is filled with them. Nor do I admire so exclusively the earlier work as to exclude from the better half of our Mediæval range yet later specimens of the Middle Pointed. I cannot but think the gateways of St. Augustine’s at Canterbury, of Battle Abbey, and of that of Bury St. Edmund’s; the halls of Mayfield, Penshurst, and the lost hall at Worcester; the lost chapel and the still existing crypt of St. Stephen’s; the choir at Winchelsea; the Lady Chapel at Chichester; and a long list of other buildings of the earlier part of the fourteenth century, to be works claiming our high regard and admiration, and I consequently recommend them also to your careful study.

The very latest phase of the Decorated style is often weak, but I will not suppose you to be so much so as to be unable to sever its beauties from its faults, or to be in danger of condemning or admiring good and bad alike; and a yet more vigorous discretion is needed in studying from the works of the succeeding ages, though, all through, you will find not only objects of high intrinsic merit, but constant suggestions capable of being advantageously translated into a more vigorous style.[87]

A still more important subject I have as yet but incidentally touched upon. I refer to the practical character of your studies of ancient examples, as viewed in connection with the actual structural and mechanical qualities of the examples themselves, and the learning from ancient examples the principles of Mediæval construction and practical art, and their bearings upon our own constructive and practical operations. Thus, for example, you must give special and systematic study to the principles of vaulting as exemplified by Mediæval buildings. I have, in one of my lectures, recommended, as a prelude to such study, your reading Professor Willis’s paper on the subject in the Transactions of the Institute of British Architects and M. Viollet le Duc’s in his Dictionary. You will be the better prepared after this to work the subjects out for yourselves. It is a particularly difficult matter to study, both in its own nature and because the work is usually out of reach. You should watch for opportunities offered by scaffoldings being raised under vaultings, and make accurate measurements. You must study not only the lines and their setting out, but the stone cutting and jointing, and all kinds of practical questions, the very existence of which you cannot understand till you have given much attention to the subject. Then, when you have obtained a perfect insight into these questions, you will do well to consider whether there are or are not practical faults in the old work which we should do well to remedy. So in timber-work we should master the old system of construction, and then think how far it is perfect and where open to improvement, and also how far the old system as applied to oak is suited to our own constructions in fir, and what are the practical variations suggested by the material. And so on through stone-work, iron-work, brass-work (whether cast or wrought), lead-work, silver-work, and jewellery. You must not content yourselves with studying and sketching from the work as an architectural or decorative design, but must dissect and investigate it, and find out its construction, and how far that construction has modified or suggested its design, or how far this may result from not only the construction, but the nature of the material.