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‘The Disastrous Deformation of Butterfield’: Balliol College Chapel in the Twentieth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Peter Howell
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Extract

In his life of Ronald Knox Evelyn Waugh wrote that, when Knox went up to Balliol in 1906, the chapel ‘was stark new in its disastrous deformation of Butterfield’s original structure.’ Waugh’s date was wrong by thirty years, but the story of the ‘deformation’ is a complex one.

The original fourteenth-century chapel had been replaced with a new one in about 1522–36. Its most remarkable feature was its stained glass. It was refurnished in the 1630s, with panelling, a screen, two painted windows by Abraham van Linge, a wooden pulpit and a brass lectern. In 1685–89 new wainscoting, a ceiling with painted beams, and a black-and-white marble floor were provided. A. W. N. Pugin’s scheme of 1843 for rebuilding the college included a new chapel. The scheme came to nothing, chiefly because of the opposition of the Master, Richard Jenkyns.

Type
Section 6: Cathedrals, Abbeys, Churches and Chapels
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 283 - 292
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 Waugh, Evelyn, Ronald Knox (London, 1959), p. 95 Google Scholar.

2 Jones, John, Balliol College, 2nd edn (Oxford, 1997), pp. 47–50 Google Scholar.

3 Ibid., pp. 97-98.

4 Ibid., p. 129.

5 Ibid., pp. 194-96; Colvin, Howard, Unbuilt Oxford (New Haven & London, 1983), pp. 105-12Google Scholar.

6 T. G. Jackson, Report on Balliol College Chapel, 3 November 1911 (Balliol College Archives (hereafter BCA) MBP 317).

7 Jones, op. cit., p. 207; VCH Oxfordshire, 111 (London, 1954), p. 91.

8 Highfield, J. R. L., Oxoniensia, 24 (1959), p. 78 Google Scholar.

9 Butterfield himself described the colours of the stones as red and white (BCA: letter to R. Scott (Master), 27 August 1856), though both colours have toned down, to reddish brown and cream. ( Thompson, Paul, William Butterfield (London, 1971), p. 230 Google Scholar, calls them ‘purple-pink and buff’.) One critic was Freeman, E. A. (Proceedings of the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society (1860-64), p 169)Google Scholar; see also The Builder, 17 (1859), p. 402.

10 Bodleian Library, MS English Letters e.28, fol. 114.

11 For the history of this episode, see Jones, op. cit., pp. 238–40; Jackson, (ed.), Recollections of Thomas Graham Jackson 1835-1924 (Oxford, 1950), p. 273 Google Scholar; and the correspondence in BCA D.10.16.

12 On Morrison (1836-1921), see DNB; Mitchell, W. R., A Millionaire at Malham Tarn (Settle, 1990)Google Scholar; on his father see Gatty, Richard, Portrait of a Merchant Prince: James Morrison 1289-1857 (Northallerton, n.d. [1977])Google Scholar.

13 See Jackson, op. cit., pp. 252-53: Morrison answered, ‘Yes, that bump has always rankled in my mind.’ It enabled Jackson’s college, Wadham, to go head of the river.

14 BCA MBP 317. The Archives also contain three drawings for the chapel by Jackson. His Report also refers to his design for a new three-storey building on the east side of the Garden Quad, to contain twelve sets on two staircases, and a plan is attached. In June 1911 E. P. Warren had designed an L-shaped block for much the same site, to include a new Bursary as well as two staircases, but this was shelved when the chapel proposal was made. It was Warren who, in 1912-13, filled in the gap between the Basevi and Salvin buildings, on the west side of the quad, with a large new staircase.

15 When this was suggested to Butterfield, he threatened to resign (letter to R. Scott, 12 June 1854).

16 T. G. Jackson to the Master, 27 November 1911 (BCA D.10.16, C.6). It is interesting to recall that in 1897-98 Jackson built a new nave with aisles on to Rugby School chapel: ‘Butterfield was an old man and retiring from practice, and he wrote very kindly to say that he was pleased with my appointment as his successor’ (Jackson, Recollections, p. 249; see also Rhoades, H. T., A Handbook to Rugby School Chapel (Rugby, 1913). p. 13)Google Scholar.

17 Jackson, op. cit., p. 273.

18 The Times, 31 October 1911. In a letter to the Master of 30 November, Morrison mistakenly refers to ‘Sir Aston Webb and Mr. Basil Champneys’ and denounces Admiralty Arch as ‘a poor design’.

19 This correspondence is also in BCA D.10.16. One cannot help thinking that Bell must have meant ‘would have appeared to be’.

20 Mackail had been a fellow of Balliol, and until 1911 was Professor of Poetry.

21 Correspondence, bill and receipt in BCA MBP 317.

22 Arnold wrote a booklet, The Glass in Balliol College Chapel, at the Master’s request. On Arnold see Hugh Arnold: An account of the special meeting held March 31, 1916 by the Art Workers Guild (he was killed in action in 1915).

23 VCH, tom, cit., p. 91 n. 5. In BCA D.10.4-5 are a letter from M. & A. O’Connor to the Revd Henry Wall of 21 September 1857, and their bill of 16 September.

24 VCH, tom, cit., p. 92 & n. 19; Thompson, op. cit. (n. 9 above), p. 463.

25 BCA MBP 317 (another copy of the typed version is in MBP 46).

26 In a letter to the Master of 28 February 1857 Butterfield said that these were ‘out of the question’ for the new chapel. On them see Jackson, D. W., Balliol College Annual Record (1980), pp. 77–78 Google Scholar.

27 Potter’s bill is in BCA D.10.4-5.

28 The only documentation for this episode consists of the seven drawings, together with drafts of letters from A. L. Smith to the Bursar, and from A. W. Pickard-Cambridge to Burnet, both of 4 July 1916; and one letter from Frampton to the Bursar of June 1915. These are in BCA MBP 317. A brief note made by the then Bursar in 1923 (MBP 46) refers to Burnet’s report of 1916 ‘on stonework &c’, and also to ‘Burnet-18’; but these do not appear to have survived.

29 By an interesting coincidence Frampton had also executed a statue of Edward VI for Morrison and Jackson’s chapel at Giggleswick (1901). Other works for Jackson included the statues on the spire of St Mary the Virgin, Oxford (1892-96) and the St George for Radley College war memorial (1904).

30 Quoted in the letter from Smith to the Bursar.

31 One of these was shown at the Royal Scottish Academy in 1920, but must surely date from some time earlier.

32 BCA MBP 317.

33 Copies of Jewson’s report are in BCA MBP 46 & 317.

34 Ibid., 46 (report, specification &c).

35 See n. 14 above.

36 Balliol College Record, November 1924-October 1925, p. 17. See also BCA MBP 46.

37 The Builder, 17 (1859), p. 402; see also Building News 3 (1857), pp. 5-6.

38 A MS note on Lethaby’s report in MBP 46, beside his reference to the reredos gable, says ‘Removed in 1928’.

39 Jackson, D. W., Balliol College Annual Record (1980), pp. 76–77 Google Scholar.

40 This drawing, and the others referred to here, are in BCA.

41 For these works see Balliol College Record (1937), p. 5; BCA MDP 46.

42 Drawing in BCA.

43 Balliol College Record (1937), p. 5; BCA MBP 46.

44 VCH, tom. cit. (n. 7 above), p. 92.

45 A photograph of Butterfield’s interior, looking east, is reproduced in Thompson, op. cit., p. 240; for another, see Davis, H. W. C., revised Davis, R. H. C., A History of Balliol College (Oxford, 1963), after p. 68 Google Scholar. The view looking west does not seem to have been published before; it dates from before the installation of the Henry Willis organ.