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The Un-Englishness of G. E. Street’s church of St James-the-Less

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Neil Jackson
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Extract

Charles Eastlake, in writing A History of the Gothic Revival, said of St James-the-Less, Westminster:

Here the whole character of the building, whether we regard its plan, its distinctive features, its external or internal decoration is eminently un-English.

No one British building by George Edmund Street displays such an amount of Continental influence, and it can be regarded as representing the high water mark of Street’s adaptation and incorporation of features and forms derived from Continental precedents.

In September 1850, only eight years before work started on St James-the-Less, Street had crossed the English Channel for the first time. In ten days he saw Paris, Chartres, Alenҫon, Caen, Rouen and Amiens, and developed an enthusiasm for foreign travel which he retained throughout his life. Thereafter his annual tours were always well planned and hastily conducted, a great number of buildings being seen in a very short time. Thus each year Street would go, ‘sketchbook in hand, with some ancient town or thrice noble cathedral set before him as his goal’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 23 , 1980 , pp. 86 - 94
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1980

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References

Notes

1 Eastlake, C. L., A History oj the Gothic Revival (1872), p. 321 Google Scholar.

2 Street, G. E., Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages; Notes of a Tour in the North of Italy (1855), p. viii Google Scholar.

3 Street, G. E., ‘The True Principles of Architecture and the Possibility of Development’, The Ecclesiologist, xiii (1852), p. 250 Google Scholar.

4 Ibid., p. 249.

5 Street, G. E., ‘Architectural notes in France I’, TheEcclesiologist, xix (1858), p. 362 Google Scholar.

6 Street, G. E., ‘Architectural notes in France V’, The Ecclesiologist, xx (1859), p. 340 Google Scholar.

7 Brick and Marble, p. xiv.

8 Ibid., p. 267. All Saints, Boyne Hill, Maidenhead, Berkshire (1854), was the first building in which can be seen a noticeable amount of Italian influence; the most obvious single feature being the originally freestanding tower or campanile. Designs for the Adderley Park Institute, Birmingham (1854), the Lille Cathedral competition (1855), the Crimea Memorial Church (1856) and St Dionis Backchurch, London (1857) were to display a more general Continental influence.

9 ‘The True Principles’, p. 249.

10 Brick and Marble, pp. 276–77.

11 Ibid., p. 277.

12 Cook, E. T. and Wedderburn, A. (Editors), The Complete Works of John Ruskin (London 1903) viii, p. 107 Google Scholar.

13 Brick and Marble, p. 263.

14 Ibid., p. 263.

15 Street, G. E., ‘An Architect’s Tour to Munster and Soest’, The Ecclesiologist, xvi (1855), p. 364 Google Scholar.

16 Street, G. E., ‘On Italian Pointed Architecture’, The Ecclesiologist, xxiii (1862), p. 5 Google Scholar.

17 Brick and Marble, p. 185 illus. facing.

18 A good example of this is the Palazzo Vecchio, Florence, which Street would have seen in 1857.

19 Brick and Marble, p. 104.

20 Ibid., p. 186.

21 Ibid., p. 196

22 See Ruskin, viii, pl. xii. Here Ruskin illustrates louvres from the cathedral at Abbeville. Street would, have been very familiar with this book, The Seven Tamps of Architecture.

23 Brick and Marble, p. 184 illus. facing.

24 Ibid., p. 183.

25 ‘All the illustrations which I have given are engraved from my own drawings on the wood from my sketches made on the spot.’ See Brick and Marble, pp. xv–xvi Google Scholar.

26 Ibid., p. 154 illus. facing p. 153.

27 Ibid., p. 160.

28 See The Ecclesiologist, xi, 1850, pp. 227–33Google Scholar.

29 ‘The True Principles’, p. 257.

30 ‘Architectural notes in France 1’, p. 369.

31 Ibid.

32 Brick and Marble, illus. facing p. 75.

33 Anon, The Ecclesiologist, xx (1859), p. 135 Google Scholar.

34 ‘On Italian Pointed Architecture’, p. 7.

35 See Brick and Marble, illus. facing p. 20 and p. 28 for cloisters.

36 ‘On Italian Pointed Architecture’, p. 7. It is possible that Street’s minor adaptation of the S Gregorio cloister at St James-the-Less was a trial for the more impressive version in the porch at Howsham.

37 RIBA Drawing No. Street (20) sketchbook for 1861, ii, p. 69. Street thought highly of the wrought ironwork in Spanish churches. See Street, G. E.: Gothic Architecture in Spain, ii. Edited by King, G. G. (London 1914), pp. 67–68 Google Scholar.

38 Brick and Marble, p. 86, illus. p. 91.

39 ‘The True Principles’, p. 260.

40 Brick and Marble (second edition 1874), p. 372.

41 Ibid., pp. 373–74.

42 See Brick and Marble, p. 63 illus. for Coccaglio, p. 162 illus. for Venice and p. 272 illus. for Mantua.

43 See Street, G. E., ‘Mr Street on German Pointed Architecture’, The Ecclesiologist, xviii (1817), p. 168 Google Scholar.

44 ’Architectural Notes in France V, p. 334.

45 Street, G. E., ‘On Colour as Applied to Architecture’. A paper read at the Annual General Meeting of the Worcester Diocesan Architectural Society (26 September 1855), Associated Architectural Societies Reports and Papers, 01(1854–1855), p. 355 Google Scholar.

46 Ibid., p. 364.

47 See Summerson, J., Victorian Architecture, Four Studies in Evaluation (New York and London 1970), p. 70 Google Scholar.

48 Brick and Marble, p. 77.

49 Ibid., p. 78.

50 Ibid., pp. 258–59.

51 Ibid., p. 259.

52 Ibid., p. 256.

53 Street, G. E., ‘On the Proper Characteristics of a Town Church’, The Ecclesiologist, xi (1850), p. 232 Google Scholar.

54 Street, A. E., A Memoir of George Edmund Street, R.A. (London 1888), p. 87 Google Scholar.

55 Street, G. E., ‘On Italian Pointed Architecture’, The Ecclesiologist, xxii (1861), p. 363 Google Scholar.