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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
One of the concerns of The Ecclesiologist from its very first edition, and one that was subsequently to reappear regularly in its pages, was the provision of church designs that would be appropriate for erection in the colonies. While subsequently the Cambridge Camden Society had much success in this direction, the outstanding artistic exports of the middle years of the nineteenth century were to sites rather closer to home: the designs — both executed and unexecuted — for great churches and cathedrals on the Continent of Europe by, among others, G. G. Scott senior, William Burges, E. W. Pugin and G. E. Street. Perhaps at no period in history was the Continent more ready to look to England for artistic inspiration, in contrast to a flow of ideas that more usually travelled in the opposite direction. It was ‘one of the very few artistic revolutions that began in this country and swept the world.’ Yet the starting point for the crown of European artistic leadership passing to England was a most unlikely one: in all probability the first nineteenth-century English architect to be employed at a Continental cathedral was Robert Dennis Chantrell (1793–1872), from Leeds. In 1839, in the very year that the Cambridge Camden Society came into existence, he was involved with the rebuilding of the roof of St Saviour’s Cathedral in Bruges following a fire that year; subsequently he repaired and considerably extended the tower and proposed other additions to the west end of the building.
1 The Ecclesiologist, 1 (November 1841), p. 4. It was also a central objective of The Ecclesiological, late Cambridge Camden, Society, Instrumenta Ecclesiastica (London, 1847).
2 Crook, J. M., ‘Benjamin Webb (1819-85) and Victorian Ecclesiology’, in Swanson, R. N. (ed.), The Church Retrospective (Woodbridge, 1997), p. 423–24Google Scholar. ‘Advice had been sent “to the Canadas, Bombay, Ceylon, Sierra Leone, the Mauritius, the Himalaya, Tasmania, Guinea, Australia and New Zealand, Newfoundland and Hong Kong”.’
3 See Scott, G. G., Personal and Professional Recollections (1879) (facsimile reprint, Stamford, 1995), p. 113 Google Scholar.
4 J. M. Crook, op. cit., p. 443.
5 Webster, C., R. D. Chantrell, Architect: His Life and Work in Leeds, 1818-1847, The Thoresby Society (Leeds, 1992), pp. 120-42Google Scholar.
6 Webster, C., The Life and Work of R. D. Chantrell, Architect, MPhil Thesis, University of York, 1985, pp. 310-16Google Scholar.
7 Archives of the Church Building Commission, Golcar (West Yorkshire) File.
8 The writer is grateful to Dr Geoff Brandwood for this information.
9 C. Webster (1992), op. cit., p. 76.
10 The Ecclesiologist, XI (1850), p. 174.
11 Koller, F., Annuaire des Familles Patriciennes de Belgique (Brussels, 1941), 11, pp. 68–70 Google Scholar. See also C. Webster (1992), op. cit., pp. 15-17. The exact location of Chantrell’s birth is not known, but he was baptized in Newington Parish Church, London.
12 C. Webster (1985), op. cit., p. 32.
13 Van den Abeele, A., ‘Entrepreneurs Brugeois au XIX siècle: George et William Chantrell’ in Bulletin Trimestriel du Crédit Communal de Belgique, 146 (October 1983), p. 240 Google Scholar.
14 Ibid., p. 244.
15 Ibid., p. 247.
16 Diocese of Bruges, Cathedral Archives, Resolutions of the Churchwardens 5/1/1840-31/12/1850, 7 July 1840. This and other quotations from the Cathedral Archives have been translated from the French by the authors.
17 Ex. inf. Luk De Vliegher, the current Cathedral Architect at Bruges.
18 A. Van den Abeele, op. cit., p. 248.
19 Archives de l’évêché de Bruges, archives de l’église Saint-Sauveur, S440.
20 A. Van den Abeele, op. cit., p. 248.
21 F. Koller, op. cit., p. 70.
22 See the letter from Félix de Muelenaere, quoted below.
23 State Archives, Bruges, Archives of the Province of West Flanders, 3rd Division, file 1242. This and other quotations from the Provincial Archives have been translated from the French by the authors.
24 Diocese of Bruges, Cathedral Archives, Resolutions of the Church-wardens 5/1/1840-31/12/1850, 7 July 1840.
25 Van den Abeele, A. and Webster, C., Architect Robert D. Chantrell en de Kathedraal van Brugge (Bruges, 1987), pp. 79–89 Google Scholar.
26 State Archives of Bruges, Archives of the Province of West Flanders, 3rd Division, file no. 385. Following a concordat of 1801, the maintenance of cathedrals became the responsibility of the provincial authorities.
27 Ibid.
28 Ibid.
29 Leeds Intelligencer, 30 October 1847. This article was almost certainly written by Chantrell.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 Ibid.
33 Ibid.
34 A drawing of this scheme, by Chantrell, is in the Groeninge Museum, Bruges, Steinmetz Cabinet, 0.26662.II.
35 The Ecclesiologist, XI (1850), p. 174.
36 White, J. M., The Cambridge Movement… (Cambridge, 1979), p. 134 Google Scholar.
37 The Cambridge Camden Society, A Few Words to Church Builders (Cambridge, 1844), p. 6 Google Scholar.
38 The Ecclesiologist, v (February 1846), pp. 48-53. See also Hersey, G. L., High Victorian Gothic: a Study in Assodationism (Baltimore & London, 1972), pp. 74–75 Google Scholar. An article entitled ‘The Use of Romanesque’ had appeared in The Ecclesiologist, 11 (June 1842), pp. 161–63.
39 J. M. Crook, op. cit., p. 436, quotes the following: James, T., ‘On the use of brick in ecclesiastical architecture’, Fourth Report of the Architectural Society of the Archdeaconry of Northampton (1847), pp. 25–37 Google Scholar, and B. Webb, , Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology (London, 1848)Google Scholar.