Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword by Barry Orford
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note on Illustrations
- 1 An Introduction to Denominations and Victorian Churches
- 2 Architecture, Antiquarianism, and Styles
- 3 The Religious Atmosphere in the 1830s and 1840s
- 4 Recusants, Goths, Converts, Ultramontanes, and Controversies
- 5 The Anglican Revival
- 6 The Search for an Ideal
- 7 Church Architecture of the 1850s, 1860s, and Early 1870s
- 8 The Late Victorian Anglican Church in Several Manifestations
- 9 Non-Anglican Buildings for Religious Observance
- 10 Epilogue
- Select Glossary
- Select Bibliography
- Index
4 - Recusants, Goths, Converts, Ultramontanes, and Controversies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 June 2023
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- Foreword by Barry Orford
- Preface and Acknowledgements
- Note on Illustrations
- 1 An Introduction to Denominations and Victorian Churches
- 2 Architecture, Antiquarianism, and Styles
- 3 The Religious Atmosphere in the 1830s and 1840s
- 4 Recusants, Goths, Converts, Ultramontanes, and Controversies
- 5 The Anglican Revival
- 6 The Search for an Ideal
- 7 Church Architecture of the 1850s, 1860s, and Early 1870s
- 8 The Late Victorian Anglican Church in Several Manifestations
- 9 Non-Anglican Buildings for Religious Observance
- 10 Epilogue
- Select Glossary
- Select Bibliography
- Index
Summary
The waste of time, of energy, and printer’s ink, involved by endless discussions on the respective merits of Mediæval and Renaissance architecture during twenty years, can only be realised by those who have studied the current art literature of that period.
Charles Locke Eastlake (1836–1906): A History of the Gothic Revival(London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1872), 333.Vitruvius would spew if he beheld the works of those who glory in calling him master.
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–52): An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England(London: John Weale, 1843), 5.Introduction
English mediæval parish churches and cathedrals were largely Gothic, and Roman Catholicism had been practised therein, but since the 16th-century break with Rome, adherents to the old faith had had a very difficult time in these islands. Several plots, from those against Queen Elizabeth to the 1798 Irish Rebellion, all caused Roman Catholicism to be viewed with suspicion by a largely ‘Protestant’ nation. As the years passed, however, the Gothic connection with Roman Catholicism passed from common memory.
Gothic had enjoyed a certain notoriety in the 18th century, but began to be more fashionable when it was given the royal imprimatur at Carlton House (1807) and Windsor Castle (from 1824). As far as an appreciation of it as a serious style was concerned, the foundations had already been laid by writers such as Milner, Carter, Britton, A.C. Pugin, and Rickman, and as the 19th century progressed, publications based on meticulous surveys and analyses of real mediæval work appeared, completely superseding 18th-century whimsical, fanciful Gothick.
Then John Keble, defender of Anglicanism by recovering its historical links with the pre-Reformation Church, the Caroline High Churchmen, and Sacramentalism, in his Lectures on Poetry, given 1832–41, later (1844) published in Oxford by J.H. Parker as De Poeticæ vi Medica, described Gothic as the most beautiful of all architectural styles, and by far the most in harmony with the mysteries of religion (Lecture 3).
In October 1834 the old Palace of Westminster was destroyed by fire, and with it the work of ‘The Destroyer’ Wyatt. Young Pugin was overjoyed. With this momentous conflagration the principles of Georgian Picturesque also went up in smoke, and on the site arose the new, Gothic Revival Palace of Westminster, won in competition by Charles Barry with whom A.W.N. Pugin was to collaborate on much of the detail.
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- English Victorian ChurchesArchitecture, Faith, and Revival, pp. 35 - 60Publisher: Boydell & BrewerPrint publication year: 2022