No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
Drawing from an Indigenous Tradition? George Gilbert Scott’s First Design for Christchurch Cathedral, 1861-62
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
In 1861 Scott designed an innovative hybrid for Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand, combining a stone exterior with an independent wooden interior, at once expression of the primitive ruggedness of what he imagined to be the Maori wood tradition and an experimental response for this earthquake-prone colony.
Commissioning George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) to design a cathedral for the relatively new settlement at Christchurch, in the province of Canterbury, New Zealand, was an ambitious undertaking by a predominantly Anglican community that had been established only eleven years earlier. The cathedral, which was constructed between late 1864 and 1904, was a conventional stone building, designed by Scott and executed locally by B. W. Mountfort. However, in an unusually experimental move, Scott had earlier proposed a structure that incorporated a stone exterior with an interior frame made of a series of high piers of New Zealand native timber, each almost 50 feet tall. The dramatic interior of this proposal referenced a wide variety of timber- and church-building traditions; had it been constructed, its tall wooden structure would have been ‘unique amongst colonial cathedrals’. After examining previously discussed sources for his design, this paper speculates upon further influences, testing — in particular — Barry Bergdoll’s assertion that the design was an expression of the ‘primitive ruggedness’ that Scott imagined derived from Maori work in wood, examples of which had been known in Europe since the 1770s.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2010
References
Notes
1 Bergdoll, Barry, European Architecture 1750-1890 (Oxford, 2000), p. 197 Google Scholar.
2 Brown, Colin, Vision and Reality: Christchurch’s Cathedral in the Square (Christchurch, 2000), pp. 21–36 Google Scholar; Lochhead, Ian, A Dream of Spires: Benjamin Mountfort and the Gothic Revival (Christchurch, 1999), pp. 128–56 Google Scholar; McKenzie, Gordon, The History of Christchurch Cathedral, New Zealand (Christchurch, 1931), pp. 27–30 Google Scholar.
3 Lochhead, Ian, Unbuilt Christchurch (Christchurch, 1991), p. 3 Google Scholar.
4 FitzGerald to Lord Lyttelton, 28 August 1858, Lyttelton papers, Folder 23 item 487. Canterbury Museum, Christchurch; Richard Greenaway, ‘Henry Selfe Selfe and the Origin and Early Development of Canterbury’ (unpublished Master’s thesis, University of Canterbury, Christchurch, 1972), p. 227. Previous architectural writers on the cathedral design have not mentioned this proposed scheme from Hawkins.
5 Christchurch, Christchurch Anglican Cathedral Archives (hereafter ‘CADA’), PAR0015/10/2, (Cathedral Correspondence: Building), FitzGerald, ‘Christchurch Cathedral Appeal’, October 1858. FitzGerald may have known Hawkins through his earlier employment at the British Museum.
6 CADA, PAR0015/10/2, FitzGerald to Harper, 18 June 1859. The design was probably similar to that shown in Figs 5, 6 and 7.
7 CADA, PAR0015/10/2, FitzGerald to Harper, 18 June 1859.
8 Grapes, Rodney, Magnitude Eight Plus: New Zealand’s Biggest Earthquake (Wellington, 2000)Google Scholar; Skinner, Robin, ‘Understanding the Risk: Seismicity and Architectural Development in Nineteenth-Century New Zealand’, Fabrications, 19 (2009), pp. 123–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
9 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, 71-74.
10 CADA, PAR0015/10/2, FitzGerald to Harper, 14 August 1859.
11 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, Cathedral Commission Minute Book, 7 and 8 October 1859.
12 CADA, PAR0015/10/2, Harper to FitzGerald, 25 October 1859. Harper wrote, ‘Supposing it should consist of a Nave, arch aisle or aisles, it might not be deemed inexpedient or inappropriate to use either wood or iron instead of stone for the piers. If Mr Scott’s opinion should be in favour of iron you might yourself be able to give us some [indication] of its probable cost, freight included, and we might decide accordingly’.
13 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, ‘No answer having been received [on the Bishop’s 1859 request], the Bishop has again written to Mr FitzGerald since his return to N.Z., but has as yet received no answer’. Later, FitzGerald claimed that the request had been made in 1859: ‘Cathedral Commission’, Press, 15 February 1864, p. 2. In October 1861, the bishop indicated that if he could achieve a ‘good chancel’ for the present generation he would be pleased: CADA, BHOLB 1/p211, Harper to Stevens, 6 October 1861.
14 Scott’s staff were working on drawings in November: CADA, PAR0015/10/3 (Cathedral Correspondence: Architect), Henry Selfe Selfe to Harper, 26 November 1861.
15 Stevens to Harper, 18 January 1862; quoted in ‘Church Intelligence: Christchurch Cathedral’, Church Quarterly Paper, 1 (April 1862), p. 19; ‘Christchurch Cathedral’, Lyttelton Times, 10 May 1862, p. 4.
16 CADA, PAR0015/10/3, Scott to Harper, 24 February 1862.
17 Each column had a 2 ft deep stone base.
18 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, 7 May 1862.
19 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 134; CADA, PAR0015/10/3, Scott to Henry Jacobs, 25 June 1863.
20 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 134.
21 Scott, George Gilbert, Lectures on the Rise and Development of Medieval Architecture, 2 vols (London, 1879), 11, p. 9 Google Scholar.
22 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 134, 138-40. See also Mané, Jonathan, ‘Gilbert Scott’s Colonial Churches’, Australasian Victorian Studies Association, Conference Papers 1987, ed. Belcher, Margaret and Debenham, Helen (Christchurch, 1987), pp. 32–42 (p. 38)Google Scholar.
23 Lochhead, Dream, of Spires, pp. 59-62, 64-65; Scott, William, ‘On Wooden Churches’, Ecclesiologist, 9 (1848), pp. 14–27 Google Scholar.
24 Scott, ‘On Wooden Churches’, pp. 15, 16.
25 See also Mané, ‘Gilbert Scott’s Colonial Churches’, p. 38. Lochhead included other wooden churches including Carpenter’s unbuilt scheme for Tristan da Cunha and St Leonard’s, Ribbesford, Worcestershire. He specifically discussed these examples with respect to Mountfort’s work: Besford, Worcestershire; Mattingly and Hartley Westpall in Hampshire; Crowfield Suffolk; and an example from George Truefitt’s Designs for Country Churches (1850). Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 59, 68, 69, 70, 138. Scott may also have known those at Marton, Holmes Chapel and Baddiley in Cheshire and at Melverley, Shropshire.
26 Lochhead indirectly connected the Harmondsworth tithe barn to the 1850 scheme by stating that it was an example of the medieval models which Mountfort followed, and later cited it (or one like it) as a source of the first cathedral scheme: Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 68, 138.
27 Scott, George Gilbert, Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture (London, 1857), pp. 2–3 Google Scholar, 7, 130-34; Scott, Lectures, 1, pp. 21, 203, 262.
28 Lochhead Dream of Spires, pp. 138-39. He also associated aisled churches such as the one at Ribbesford to the first scheme.
29 ‘Ecclesiological Late Cambridge Camden Society’, Ecclesiologist, 11 (1850), pp. 248-52 (p. 248).
30 ‘New Churches: S.——, New Zealand’, Ecclesiologist, 11 (1850), pp. 262-63; Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 137-38.
31 ‘Money-market and City Intelligence’, Times, 25 May 1849, p. 8.
32 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 139.
33 ‘Parish Churches in New Zealand’, Ecclesiologist, 1 (1841), pp. 4-5.
34 ‘New Zealand’, Ecclesiologist, 1 (1841), p. 31. Previous writers have mistaken Salvin’s model as St Etienne at Caen.
35 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 134.
36 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 140.
37 ‘Colonial Church Architecture, Chapter VI [sic]: Cathedral, S. John’s, Newfoundland’, Ecclesiologist, 8 (1848), pp. 274–79 (p. 277)Google Scholar.
38 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. 140.
39 Scott described Stevens as ‘perhaps the most valued friend I have had’: Scott, George Gilbert, Personal and Professional Recollections, ed. Stamp, Gavin (Stamford, 1995), p. 156 Google Scholar.
40 Scott, Recollections, pp. 154-55.
41 CADA, PAR0015/10/2, FitzGerald to Harper, 18 June 1859.
42 [FitzGerald], ‘Wood Stone and Iron’, Press, 29 November 1862, pp. 2-3 (p. 3). FitzGerald talked with someone (Stevens or Scott?) about the church at Lower Peover, which he misspelled in an editorial as ‘Beovoir’ adding, ‘Wood is the material of some of the noblest roofs in Europe’ (my emphasis): [FitzGerald], ‘The Cathedral’, Press, 25 October 1862, p. 1. Although FitzGerald and Scott conversed, FitzGerald gave no indication that he understood the reasoning behind the architect’s first scheme, writing, ‘Whatever may have been Mr. Scott’s reason for adopting wooden rather than stone columns, it is certain’: [FitzGerald], ‘The Cathedral’, Press, 18 March 1863, p. 1.
43 Lucas, Arthur, A History of Bradfield College (Oxford, 1900), p. 52 Google Scholar. Elsewhere, Scott refers to this Peterborough barn and others at Glastonbury, Harmondsworth and Ely: Scott, Remarks, p. 133.
44 Kempthorne, Ren, ‘Selwyn’s Samson: Sampson Kempthorne’, Journeyings, 10.2 (November 1997) pp. 27–37 (p. 30)Google Scholar.
45 Scott, Recollections, pp. 76-77, 78, 81, 444; in 1852, Kempthorne wrote to J. J. Scoles describing his colonial life and asking to be remembered to William Railton and Benjamin Ferrey: Mace, Angela, Architecture in Manuscript 1601-1996 (London, 1998), p. 223 Google Scholar. Kempthorne visited London in 1847-49: Kempthorne, ‘Selwyn’s Samson’, p. 34.
46 ‘S. Matthew’s, Auckland’, Ecclesiologist, 19 (1858), pp. 91-92 (p. 91).
47 Mundy, Godfrey, Our Antipodes, 2 vols (London, 1852), 11, p. 75 Google Scholar; [Frederick Lush], F. L., ‘New Zealand’, The Builder, 15 (1857), p. 483 Google Scholar.
48 ‘S. Matthew’s, Auckland’, p. 92.
49 Paul, Robert, Letters from Canterbury, New Zealand (London, 1857), p. 61 Google Scholar.
50 Scott’s design for the cathedral at St John’s, Newfoundland was not included in this publication. Beresford Hope was on friendly terms with Scott in the late 1850s and he may have made useful observations on the design of the first cathedral scheme for Christchurch.
51 Bergdoll, European Architecture, p. 197.
52 Bergdoll read an early draft of Lochhead’s manuscript: Lochhead, Dream of Spires, p. x.
53 Jackson, Thomas Graham, Recollections: the Life and Travels of a Victorian Architect (London, 2006), p. 57 Google Scholar. This description is in accord with the process suggested by comparison of Figs 5, 6 and 7.
54 Burgon, John, ‘Introduction’, in Scott, Recollections, pp. ix–xx (pp. xix–xx)Google Scholar. Scott edited his wife’s posthumous collection of prayers: Scott, Caroline, Family Prayers, ed. Scott, G. G. (London, 1873)Google Scholar.
55 Given Thomas Scott’s involvement with the CMS, we can reasonably assume that prayers for missionaries were included in the hour-long family prayer sessions said during annual family visits to his grandfather’s home: Scott, Recollections, pp. 27-28.
56 Stamp, Gavin, ‘Sir Gilbert Scott’s Recollections’, Architectural History, 19 (1976), pp. 54–73 (p. 54)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
57 London, RIBA Drawings and Archives Collection, ScGGS/3/1, G. G. Scott, ‘Recollections’ manuscript, pp. 121-23. The handwritten text varies a little from the published versions: Scott, Recollections, pp. 33-34. Nicholas Broughton was deeply committed to the CMS in New Zealand, maintaining correspondence with missionaries and dispatching children’s clothing. In 1832, a convert took the name ‘Paratene’, which is a transliteration of ‘Broughton’, in his honour. The tattooed chiefs, meanwhile, could have been Tuai and Titere in 1818; or Hongi Hika and Waikato, who visited Britain with the CMS missionary Thomas Kendall in 1820.
58 This was discussed at the meeting where Scott as elected a member: ‘Report of the Twenty-Fourth meeting of the Cambridge Camden Society 7 February 1842’, Ecdesiologist, 1 (1842), pp. 49-52 (pp. 49, 51). See also Stamp, Gavin, ‘George Gilbert Scott and the Cambridge Camden Society’, in ‘The Church as it Should Be’: the Cambridge Camden Society and its Influence, ed. Webster, Christopher and Elliot, John (Stamford, 2000), pp. 173–89 Google Scholar.
59 ‘Natives Assembled to Celebrate the Lord’s Supper at Orona, Taupo, New Zealand’, Ecdesiologist, 4 (March 1845), n.p.
60 ‘I got the plans for a Maori-built Church from Woodyer’: Abraham, C. J., Abraham’s journal conveying the period before leaving England, and the voyage out (c. 23 February 1850, pp. 19–20)Google Scholar. MS Papers 0257-3, C. J. Abraham papers, Alexander Turnbull Library, Wellington.
61 ‘S.——, Otago, New Zealand’, Ecclesiologist, 12 (1851), p. 233.
62 ‘S.——, Otago, New Zealand’. Hugall may have followed an inaccurate summary of J. E. Millard’s paper to the Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture on appropriate colonial church design. This misreported Millard to say that where there was no existing national style, then colonial churches should follow the tradition of the indigenous native architecture in their principal features, but with the details ‘Christianized’: ‘Oxford Architectural Society’, Ecdesiologist, 4 (1845), p. 174.
63 Flaxman, John, Lectures on Sculpture (London, 1874), pp. 169–70 Google Scholar.
64 ‘and yet, even amongst different savage races, there is index afforded in their wigwams or their wattas [carved Maori storehouses] of their capacity for refinement in taste’: [FitzGerald], ‘Architecture’, Press, 19 April 1862, pp. 1-2 (p. 2). See also, FitzGerald’s call for the scholarly study of Maori art: FitzGerald, James Edward, The Nature of Art (Wellington, 1868), p. 8 Google Scholar.
65 Scott, Remarks, p. 77.
66 George French Angas’s 1846 exhibition, the Great Exhibition, and the Paris Exhibition of 1855.
67 He compared metropolitan slums to be ‘more barbarous and less fitted for human habitations than the wigwam of the Indian or the tent of the gipsy’: Scott, Remarks, p. 184.
68 Scott, Lectures, 1, p. 362.
69 Treadwell, Sarah, Rangiatea Revisited (Wellington, 2008) p. 15 Google ScholarPubMed.
70 Ramsden, Eric, Rangiatea: the Story of the Otaki Church its First Pastor and its People (Wellington, 1951)Google Scholar; Taepa, Hohepa, The Rangiatea Story (Levin, 1966)Google Scholar.
71 Brown, Deidre, ‘The Maori Response to Gothic Architecture’, Architectural History, 43 (2000), pp. 253–70 (pp. 256–57)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
72 ‘The Timber for the building was carefully selected from the Forest and brought a distance of several miles — the ridge pole, which is made of one solid Totara Tree 86 feet long, was brought a distance of 12 Miles.’
73 ‘New Zealand: Native Church at Otaki: Christchurch, Canterbury Colony’, Illustrated London News, 22 (1853), pp. 268-69 (p. 268).
74 ‘Recent Intelligence: New-Zealand Mission’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, 1 (1849), pp. 6-7 (p. 7); ‘New Zealand Mission’, Proceedings of the CMS (1849-50), pp. 176-93 (pp. 190-91); ‘Letters and Journals of Missionaries: The Otaki and Wanganui Districts of New Zealand’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, 1 (1850), pp. 350-60 (p. 357); Smith, William Mein, ‘Report on Cook’s Strait’, New Zealand Journal, 10 (1850), pp. 36–37 (p. 36)Google Scholar; ‘The Rev. J.F. Lloyd’s Visit to Otaki’, New Zealand Journal, 10 (1850), pp. 145-47 (pp. 145-46); ‘New Zealand as a Field for Emigration’, New Zealand Journal, 11 (1851), pp. 469-71 (p. 469).
75 Josenhans, Joseph, Illustrations of Missionary Scenes: an Offering to Youth, 2 vols (Mainz, 1856), 1, pl. XIII Google Scholar; ‘Interior of the Church at Otaki, New Zealand’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, 5 (1854), p. 266; ‘Interior of the Church at Otaki, New Zealand’, Church Missionary Register, 42 (1854), p. 526; Scenes and Incidents of Missionary Labour (London, 1860), frontispiece. See also Treadwell, Sarah, ‘European Representations of the Architecture of Rangiatea’ (unpublished doctoral thesis, University of Auckland, 1995 Google Scholar).
76 Arnold, Thomas, ‘Reminiscences of New Zealand’, Fraser’s Magazine, 64 (1861), pp. 246–56 (pp. 251–52)Google Scholar.
77 Cf. Scott, Remarks, pp. 131-33.
78 In the late 1840s, the Revds Richard Taylor and J. F. Lloyd referred to the church as ‘noble’: ‘Recent Intelligence: New-Zealand Mission’; ‘New Zealand Mission’, p. 190; ‘Letters and Journals of Missionaries’; ‘The Rev. J.F. Lloyd’s visit to Otaki’, p. 145. The text on the lithograph referred to ‘a noble specimen of Native workmanship’. Another CMS church at Manutuke with a central row of timber columns was illustrated and described as ‘a noble church’: ‘Brief Reviews of the Past History of the Different Missions’, Church Missionary Intelligencer, 3 (1852) pp. 40-48 (p. 48). See also Josenhans, , Illustrations of Missionary Scenes, 1, p. 15 Google Scholar.
79 ‘New Zealand: Native Church at Otaki’. Raupo is bullrush (Typha orientalis).
80 ‘The sentiment and tone of thought of the designer will always influence the design, and the first step, I am convinced towards producing noble architecture, is to cultivate a corresponding tone of thought and feeling’ (his emphasis): Scott, Remarks, pp. 143-44.
81 Cole, Work of Sir Gilbert Scott, pp. 113-14.
82 Scott, Remarks, p. 154.
83 For example, St Catherine’s Church, at Honfleur, Calvados.
84 This is Bergdoll’s phrase (n. 1 above).
85 ‘Church Intelligence’, p. 19.
86 The expression ‘single tree’ appeared in conjunction with Rangiatea in a Wellington newspaper and may have been written by its architecturally trained editor, Stokes, Robert: ‘Otaki Church’, New Zealand Spectator, 20 March 1852, p. 3 Google Scholar. A year later, a young surveyor repeated this expression in an account of his experiences in New Zealand: Rochfort, John, Adventures of a Surveyor in New Zealand and the Australian Cold Diggings (London, 1853), p. 27.Google Scholar Earlier, another surveyor had referred to the ridge pole of the roof as a ‘single piece of timber eighty feet long’, while a churchman referred to ‘one magnificent piece of totara wood’ and ‘three huge pillars’: Smith, William Mein, ‘Report on Cook’s Strait’, Wellington Independent, 29 September 1849, pp. 2–3 Google Scholar; Lloyd, Revd J. F., letter, New Zealand Spectator, 3 November 1849, p. 2 Google Scholar. Those accounts were reprinted in London (n. 74 above). The text of the c. 1852-53 lithograph, the CMS publications of 1854 and Josenhans’ Illustrations of Missionary Scenes referred to the ridge-pole as a ‘solid totara-tree’.
87 In December 1843 Selwyn had described Waikanae church (the forerunner to Rangiatea), ‘It is about seventy feet long by forty. The ridge pole, hewn from a single tree’: Selwyn, George, New Zealand. Part III (London, 1846), p. 3 Google Scholar. See also [FitzGerald], , ‘The Cathedral’, Press, 18 March 1863, p. 1 Google Scholar; Purchas, Henry, Bishop Harper and the Canterbury Settlement (Christchurch, 1909), pp. 195–95 Google Scholar. European observers described a tall 50 ft high Maori wooden-framed hakari (feast) stage in 1849 as made of ‘poles’, ‘spars’ and ‘scaffolding’, with some comparing a Gothic cathedral, or the Houses of Parliament: Treadwell, Sarah, ‘Categorical Weavings: European Representations of Hakari Architecture’, in Voyages and Beaches: Pacific Encounters, 1769-1840, ed. Calder, Alex et al. (Honolulu, 1999), pp. 265–84 (pp. 269, 270)Google Scholar.
88 The CADA holds a drawing that Scott prepared in the 1870s (when resumption of the then-stalled cathedral project was being discussed) which shows the stone and wood options alongside one another.
89 I am grateful to Michael Austin for this suggestion.
90 Mark Crinson described some British projects in India, which were influenced by William Burges’ Crimean Memorial Church design, as being ‘discretely open to non-western allusions’. These included Scott’s University Senate Hall, Bombay (1875): Crinson, Mark, Empire Building: Orientalism and the Victorian Other (London, 1996), pp. 150–51 Google Scholar.
91 Personal communication, Peter Hibbard, 21 February 2010.
92 ‘The Cathedral (Trinity Church), Shanghai’, Illustrated London News, 68 (1877), pp. 229-30.
93 CADA, PAR0015/10/3 Jacobs to Scott, 10 April 1863.
94 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, 8 June 1863.
95 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, 13 August 1863. W. H. Kenrick at Harewood Forest offered to provide the long lengths in Black Beech (northofagus solandri). Auckland contractors submitted the other three complete tenders. Twentieth-century writers have usually stated that the required timber was difficult to transport.
96 CADA, PAR0015/16/1, 8 and 13 August 1863.
97 CADA, PAR0015/10/3, Scott to Jacobs, 24 June 1863, and Stevens to Jacobs, 23 June 1863; CADA, PAR0015/16/1, 27 August 1863.
98 ‘It is well known that a large number of subscribers [to the Cathedral Fund] have expressed their regret that timber should have been chosen as the material for the columns and interior generally’: Editorial, Lyttelton Times, 18 February 1864, p. 4.
99 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 130-34; Brown, Vision and Reality, pp. 26-30.
100 Lochhead, Dream of Spires, pp. 141-56; Brown, Vision and Reality, pp. 30-34, 46-68.
101 ‘Anglo-Catholic’ [nom de plume], ‘Church and School Buildings’, Church Chronicle for the Dioceses of Sydney, Newcastle and Goulburn, 1 (1866), p. 69. See also Mané, ‘Gilbert Scott’s Colonial Churches’, p. 39.