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Gilbert Scott and the Chapel of Exeter College, Oxford

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Geoffrey Tyack
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Extract

‘The greatest fa presto in architectural history’, as Paul Frankl called him — although there are plenty of other contenders for that dubious honour — Gilbert Scott occupies an ambiguous place in the history of English architecture. The sheer volume of his work, and its lack of stylistic consistency, disturbed his contemporaries and have continued to vex later writers. Yet the history of the Gothic Revival cannot be written without him, and through some of his buildings he helped shape its future course. Among these buildings was the chapel at Exeter College, Oxford, begun in 1856 and finished three years later. The survival of a substantial collection of drawings and correspondence in the college’s archives enables us to establish and reinterpret the significance of this magnificent and still somewhat under-appreciated building.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 50 , 2007 , pp. 125 - 148
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2007

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References

Notes

1 Frankl, Paul, The Gothic: Literary Sources and Interpretations through Eight Centuries (Princeton, 1960), p. 562.Google Scholar

2 The contract drawings are in the Victoria & Albert Museum: DD16-D481–85 (1908).

3 Victoria County History of Oxfordshire, ed. H. E. Salter and M. D. Lobel (Oxford, 1954), 3, pp. 107 and 115–16.

4 See the drawing of 1566 by Bereblock, John, reproduced in Queen Elizabeth’s Book of Oxford, ed. Durning, Louise (Oxford, 2006), p. 62.Google Scholar

5 Newman, John, ‘The Architectural Setting’, in History of the University of Oxford, ed. Tyacke, Nicholas, 8 vols (Oxford, 1997), 4, p. 144.Google Scholar

6 It was replaced by a new library in 1778: Stride, Exeter College (London, 1900), p. 195.

7 It is discussed in Vallance, Aymer, The Old Colleges of Oxford (London, 1912), pp. 25–27.Google Scholar

8 Stride, , Exeter College, p. 192.Google Scholar

9 Lamborn, Edmund A. Greening, ‘The Woodwork of Hakewill’s Chapel, Exeter College’, Notes & Queries, 187, 23 September 1944, pp. 137–38.Google Scholar See also Mowl, Timothy and Earnshaw, Brian, ‘Exiles from Oxford’, Country Life, 21 January 1982, pp. 168–69.Google Scholar The lectern and some brass memorial plaques from the previous Exeter College chapel were transferred to the present building.

10 Howell, Peter, ‘Oxford Architecture 1800–1914’, in History of the University of Oxford, ed. Brock, M. and Curthoys, M. (Oxford, 2000), 7, p. 732.Google Scholar For Underwood, see Colvin, Howard, Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840 (New Haven and London, 1995), pp. 1001–02.Google Scholar

11 Brock, and Curthoys, , History of Oxford University, 7, p. 123.Google Scholar There were 111 undergraduates in 1842, compared with 154 at Christ Church — numerically the largest college — 73 at Balliol and only 22 at New College.

12 Stride, , Exeter College, p. 162 Google Scholar; Topcliffe, Lorise, ‘From College Archives: Unbuilt Exeter’, Exeter College Register (1994), p. 18 Google Scholar; History of the University of Oxford, ed. Brock and Curthoys, 6 (Oxford, 1997), p. 232.

13 Boase, Charles W., Registrum Collegii Exoniensis (Oxford, 1894), pp. cxliii, cxlvi, 182 and 187 Google Scholar; James, Lionel, A Forgotten Genius: Seivell of St Columba’s and Radley (London, 1945), p. 27.Google Scholar Other Fellows included the historian J. A. Froude.

14 Mackail, John W., The Life of William Morris, 1 (London, 1911), pp. 32–33.Google Scholar

15 Exeter College muniments (hereafter ECM), A.I.11 (college order book), p. 170.

16 For example, at Iffley (Oxfordshire) and Barfreston (Kent).

17 ECM, E.V.5 (Old Chapel file).

18 Boase, Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, p. cliv.

19 ECM, E.V.5, letter file; ECM, A.I.11, p. 248. The other architects proposed by Rigaud were Hussey, P. C. Hardwick, Benjamin Ferrey, F. C. Penrose, the Exeter diocesan architect John Hayward, E. C. Hakewill, and also William Butterfield who was asked to send in designs but refused.

20 Vallance, , Old Colleges of Oxford, p. 26.Google Scholar

21 The Builder, 17, 2 July 1859, p. 440.

22 Colvin, Howard, Unbuilt Oxford (New Haven and London, 1983), pp. 108–11.Google Scholar

23 Newman, John, The Buildings of England: West Kent and the Weald (Harmondsworth, 1976), pp. 352–53 Google Scholar; Allibone, Jill, Anthony Salvin: Pioneer of the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1988), pp. 115–16.Google Scholar Salvin also carried out work at Trinity College, Cambridge, and Balliol College, Oxford.

24 Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Hampshire (Harmondsworth, 1967).Google Scholar He may have been a pupil of Underwood: information from David Sturdy, to whom I am indebted for other information about Harrison.

25 Cole, David, The Work of Sir Gilbert Scott (London, 1980), pp. 15–16 and 21–23.Google Scholar

26 ECM, O.II.3–6.

27 ECM, O.II.7–11.

28 ECM, O.II.12–15.

29 ECM, E.V.5 (New Chapel 2 file).

30 ECM, A. I.11, pp. 272 and 297–98.

31 Scott, G. G., Personal and Professional Recollections (London, 1879 Google Scholar; ed. Gavin Stamp, Stamford, 1995), p. 112. He, by contrast, saw himself as the architect of ‘the multitude’.

32 ECM, A.I.11, p. 333.

33 Ibid., p. 335.

34 St Luke, Chelsea, by James Savage (1820–24), is vaulted throughout in stone, but stone vaults in English churches remained very rare until the 1860s.

35 Scott, , Recollections, pp. 113–15.Google ScholarPubMed

36 Pevsner, N., Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1972), pp. 18–20 and 36–44 Google Scholar; Frankl, , The Gothic, pp. 498–99.Google Scholar

37 Scott, , Recollections, p. 155 Google ScholarPubMed; Cole, , Work of Sir Gilbert Scott, pp. 42–43.Google Scholar Stevens was the founder of Bradfield College, where Scott designed the earliest buildings, and his daughter married Scott’s son John Oldrid Scott.

38 See the account of the rebuilding by John Oldrid Scott printed in Blackie, J., Bradfield 1850–1975 (Bradfield, 1976). p. 5.Google Scholar

39 Scott, , Recollections, pp. 146–47, 155–5, and 202.Google ScholarPubMed Subsequent excursions took him to Denis, S., Reims, and Metz, : Fisher, Geoffrey, Stamp, Gavin and others, Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects: the Scott Family (London, 1981), pp. 80 and 85.Google Scholar

40 Scott, Gilbert, Lectures on the Rise and Development of Medieval Architecture (London, 1879), p. 212.Google Scholar For Scott’s travels in France, see Stamp, Gavin, ‘In Search of the Byzantine: George Gilbert Scott’s Diary of an Architectural Tour in France in 1862’, Architectural History, 46 (2003), pp. 189–228.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Branner, Robert, St Louis and the Court Style (London, 1965), pp. 61–70 and 93.Google Scholar

42 Le Clerc, Percy, ‘The College Chapel’, Exeter College Register (1996), pp. 45–50.Google Scholar For Chaalis, see Branner, , St Louis, pp. 53–54 Google Scholar, and Aubert, Marcel, L’Architecture Cistercienne en Prance, 2 (Paris, 1947), p. 149.Google Scholar

43 See Ruskin’s own list of approved styles in The Seven Lamps of Architecture (London, 1849), three of which are Italian and the fourth ‘the English earliest decorated … perhaps enriched by some mingling of decorative elements from the exquisite decorated Gothic of France’ ((Everyman edn, London and New York, 1907), p. 213).

44 Muthesius, Stefan, The High Victorian Movement in Architecture 1850–1870 (London, 1972), pp. 93–99 and 117–19.Google Scholar

45 Here too Street was runner-up to Burges, though the church was eventually built to Street’s designs in 1863–68: see Crook, Joseph Mordaunt, William Burges and the High Victorian Dream (London, 1981), pp. 175–76 Google Scholar; Crinson, Mark, Empire Building (London and New York, 1996), pp. 136–66.Google Scholar

46 Work began on Street’s St Philip and St James, Oxford, in 1860, and on Burges’s Cathedral of St Finbar, Cork, in 1863.

47 ECM, E.V.5, letter of 25 May 1847 (New Chapel 2 file).

48 ECM, A.II.19.

49 Illustrated London News, 26 March 1859; ECM, A.I.11, pp. 342–43.

50 The Builder, 12, 5 August 1854, p. 417.

51 ECM, E.V.5; Law, Brian R., Building Oxford’s Heritage: Symm & Company from 1815 (Oxford, 1998), pp. 43–47.Google Scholar

52 Victoria & Albert Museum, DD16-D482–1908.

53 ECM, E.V.5, letters of 11 April 1854 and 5 February 1861 (New Chapel 2 file); The Builder, 17, 29 October 1859, p. 711; Gentleman’s Magazine, 1 (1860), p. 246.

54 Sherwood, J. and Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth, 1974), p. 225.Google Scholar

55 ECM, E.V.5, ‘Sermon preached in the New Chapel of Exeter College, Oxford, 30 October 1859’.

56 History of the University of Oxford, ed. Brock and Curthoys, 7, p. 123. There were 180 undergraduates, compared to 145 at Christ Church and Balliol and 75 at New College.

57 Boase, , Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, p. clxix.Google Scholar

58 ECM, A.I.11, pp. 353 and 360; Boase, , Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, pp. cliv–clv.Google Scholar The Library contract was for £2,988, that for the Broad Street range £4,587, both with Symm’s firm.

59 ECM, A.II.19, fol. 249.

60 Boase, , Registrum Collegii Exoniensis, p. civ Google Scholar; Stride, , Exeter College, p. 198.Google Scholar

61 ECM, E.V.5; Building News, 5, 28 October 1859, p. 969.

62 The Builder, 17, 2 July 1859, p. 440.

63 ECM, E.V.5., letter of 20 May 1847 (New Chapel 2 file).

64 Bony, Jean, The English Decorated Style (Oxford, 1979), p. 37 Google Scholar, suggested that it might have been consciously modelled on the Sainte-Chapelle.

65 Eastlake, Charles L., History of the Gothic Revival (London, 1872 Google Scholar; ed. Crook, Joseph Mordaunt, Leicester, 1970), p. 294.Google Scholar

66 Proceedings of the Oxford Architectural Society, new series, 1 (1860–64), pp. 171–72.

67 The decision not to adopt constructional polychromy came from the Fellows: The Builder, 17, 2 July 1859, p. 440. It was one of the aspects of the building criticized in the generally favourable review in The Ecclesiologist, 22 (1861), pp. 22–24.

68 Building News, 5, 28 October 1859, p. 969; ECM, E.V.5 (file on Scott’s New Chapel: later additions).

69 Alfred Bell was one of Scott’s pupils.

70 Scott, , Recollections, pp. 215–16.Google ScholarPubMed

71 Kipling ‘executed some of the modelling’: Craig, J., ‘John Lockwood Kipling: the Formative Years’, Kipling Journal (December 1974), pp. 5–7.Google Scholar For Philip, and for the other craftsmen involved in the chapel, see Appendix 3 of the 1995 edition of Scott’s Recollections.

72 ECM, E.V.5 (file on Scott’s New Chapel: later additions).

73 The spire — which looks as if it was modelled on that at Exeter chapel — was not built until 1865: Cherry, Bridget and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: London, 3 (Harmondsworth, 1991), p. 266.Google Scholar

74 The first designs for Lancing College, by Carpenter’s father, R. C. Carpenter, went back to 1848: see Nairn, Ian and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England: Sussex (Harmondsworth, 1965), pp. 256–58 Google Scholar; Eastlake, , History of the Gothic Revival, plate facing p. 224 Google Scholar, and Appendix, no. 115. R. C. Carpenter died in 1855.

75 E.g. St George, Doncaster (1853–58) and All Souls, Haley Hill, Halifax (1856–59).

76 See, for instance, Kelham Hall, Nottinghamshire (1858–61) and his first designs for the Government Offices in Whitehall.

77 Mackail, , Life of Morris, 1, p. 340.Google Scholar

78 Clarke, Basil F. L., Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century (London and New York, 1938 Google Scholar; reprint Newton Abbot, 1969), p. 172.