Christ Church, Streatham, and the Rise of Constructional Polychromy

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Christ Church, Streatham, and the Rise of Constructional PolychromyAuthor(s): Neil JacksonSource: Architectural History, Vol. 43 (2000), pp. 219-252Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568695 .

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Christ Church, Streatham,

and the Rise of

Constructional Polychromy by NEILJACKSON

In January 1929, John Summerson, then just twenty-five, wrote a pre-emptive article on James William Wild, 'An Early Modernist', for The Architects'Journal. The focus of the piece was Wild's 'unusually interesting' Christ Church, built at the top of Brixton Hill in Streatham, London, in 1840-42. Of this he said:

In considering this unusual building it must be borne in mind that it was finished some eight years before Butterfield's famous church in Margaret Street was begun, and that Ruskin's dogmas on polychromy did not appear in full till 'Stones of Venice' was finally launched in 185 I. At Margaret Street the use of different colours was regarded as a surprising innovation, but at Streatham Wild had already employed bricks of three colours to decorate the exterior of his church, and had contrived to give style and character to the design by the use of ingenious cornices and strings built up of these materials.1

Thus at this incipient moment in the study of Victorian architecture,2 one of its canons, that William Butterfield andJohn Ruskin were the progenitors of architectural

polychromy, was being questioned if not actually undermined. The writing reflects the current thinking of Harry Goodhart-Rendell and those in whose company Summerson moved: the previous summer Summerson and Roger and Peter Fleet- wood-Hesketh had visited and measured Ludwig Persius's Friedenkirche in Potsdam, Germany (i 845-48),3 and it was perhaps that church's Rundbogenstil and polychromatic appearance which had drawn Summerson to Wild's contemporaneous Christ Church at Streatham, which he also measured (Fig. I).4

More recent writers have returned to the subject of architectural polychromy, supporting the thesis that its development was neither a High Victorian nor a wholly British phenomenon, but rather an evolution of the Picturesque and the product of the archaeological and aesthetic interests of German and French, as well as some British, theorists and practitioners. In the introduction to the published text of his 1970 Harvard University PhD dissertation, Architectural Polychromy of the 183os, David van Zanten writes:

What began as a picturesque visualization of ancient Greek architectural polychromy with von Klenze, von Wagner, Kugler, von Stackelberg and Hittorff, became a dematerialized symphonic and universal vision in the minds of Semper andJones. In a sense each of these men



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 43: 2000

bricks to decorate the exterior walls nwa wall in advance of his time.

Fig. i. Christ Church, Streatham:James Wild, 1840-42. Plan drawn by John Summerson, as published in The Architects'Journal, 9January 1929 (British Architectural Library/RIBA, London)

saw the temples in a progressively larger mental vista. Von Klenze stood close to the buildings, concerned with the forms and mouldings which he perceived as articulated like the stark Greek mountains with touches of living color. Semper stood further back and - like Huyot in

Egypt -- saw the temple as a distant colored object reading against the sunny Mediterranean sky, vapory red with specks of green, purple and gold. Jones abstracted the experience and evoked a singing visual harmonic chord struck by all the vivid colors mixing at a great distance or in the mind. Jones' phantasmagoria, moreover, embraced the whole history of architecture and succeeded in producing nineteenth century buildings of their own sort.5

The importance to Britain of Owen Jones, as implied here, is demonstrated further by Michael Derby in his unpublished University of Reading PhD dissertation, Owen Jones and the Eastern Ideal (1974), and Jones's influence on Wild, whose sister Isabella Lucy Wild he married, and their common interest in Islamic architecture is further explored by Mark Crinson in Empire Building, Orientalism and Victorian Architecture.6 But Owen

Jones ended up, as J. Mordaunt Crook puts it in The Dilemma of Style, 'as an interior decorator at the Charing Cross Hotel',7 and Crook, in his discussion of polychromy, takes the story thence to Butterfield and to Ruskin.

In exploring the development of constructional polychromy in Britain and

demonstrating the importance of Christ Church, Streatham, this present essay certainly owes a debt to the observations made by earlier writers but suggests that, in addition to the connexions which they cite, there was a continuing interest in Italian medieval architecture which, as early as the i82os, raised the possibility of polychromatic

220



CONSTRUCTIONAL POLYCHROMY

construction; a reinvestigation, in the I830s, of the Elgin Marbles which heightened the debate on coloration; and the advancement of certain 'true principles' and notions of'reality' which, facilitated by developments in technology and changes in legislation, promoted and widened the use of brick in the I840s. And all this before Butterfield began his famous church in Margaret Street and Ruskin launched the The Stones of Venice.

In that important chapter from The Stones of Venice, The Nature of Gothic', published in 1853, Ruskin, in describing the Romanesque, had said, 'Its most perfect Lombardic type is the Duomo at Pisa.'8 One characteristic of that building and the adjacent Baptistry, Campanile and Campo Santo is the use of constructional polychromy. Indeed, Ruskin had already said, 'I cannot, therefore, consider architecture as in anywise perfect without colour.'9 But to the architect visiting Pisa fifty years earlier, the buildings would have appeared far less perfect.

Robert Smirke had arrived in Pisa in November 1803. In a letter written to his father in London on the 22nd of that month, he conceded that the Cathedral buildings had 'a striking effect', although, with the exception of the Campanile, they were Gothic and 'without much of the delicacy of the Gothic I have seen in England.' He continued by criticizing the interior of the Cathedral, finding it 'rather disagreeable to my Architectural Eyes' and noted 'The Singular Condition of the Campanile or falling tower ... [which] . . . appears particularly when close to it to be rather in a dangerous state.' These peculiarities, coupled with the churches being 'quite plain & uninteres- ting', led him to one conclusion: 'From this Circumstance I do not propose stopping here much longer.'10

Smirke remained long enough, however, to measure the Baptistry. When he read an 'Account of Some Remains of Gothic Architecture in Italy' to the Society of Antiquaries of London eighteen months later, on 2 May 1805, he referred to the Baptistry as 'a work which cannot perhaps be given as a specimen of correct taste', and noted, probably ironically, that the Campo Santo was 'generally considered by the Italians as one of their finest specimens of Gothic architecture.'11 Although he did not mention the presence of colour at all, his drawings published in Archaeologia the following year clearly indicate polychromatic banding on both buildings.12 What emanated from this, however, was not a debate on colour but an altercation as to whether the niches and pinnacles of the Baptistry had been part of the original design or a later addition. The respondent was Sir H. C. Englefield and his argument was based not upon the presence, but rather the absence of colour in those parts of the building: It may be observed that the bands of blue marble or stone which pass at regular intervals horizontally round the whole building are continued through the small columns, but they disappear in the pediments and pinnacles. It seems highly improbable that this ornament or mode of building should here only have been discontinued, (for it appears again behind and above the gables), had it been part of the original construction.13

Smirke replied, rather dismissively, that anybody who knew anything about construction would realize that to alternate coloured stones in such a fragile part of the building would lead to structural instability and, anyway, the profile of the Baptistry sans pinnacles was too absurd to consider.14 No further mention was made of the colour.

22I




In the ten years following Smirke's sojourn in Italy, virtually no British architects ventured there owing to the Napoleonic occupation. But with the peace came more architects, as Frank Salmon has commented in his study of British architects in Italy, than at any time in the later eighteenth century.15 Indeed, when Sydney Smirke reached Pisa in November 1824, twenty-one years after his older brother,16 he found that 'the English frequent it and consequently the charges at the Inn are so high that I mean to seek out for a week's private lodgings.'17 The older architects, like Joseph Woods (I776-1864), were surprised by what they saw; some of the younger, like Edward Cresy (I792-I858) and George Ledwell Taylor (1788-1873), were positively delighted, although Sydney Smirke (1798-1877) remained circumspect, writing to his sister, 'I am now at Pisa - a beautiful city but whether barren for me or not, I dont [sic] yet know. It bears every where [sic] marks of its ancient grand era but is now sadly depopulated.'18 In the event, Pisa gave him little, as he told his brother Robert, beyond a few drawings for his sketchbook: 'I just got what I cd find - a scanty gleaning, in all abt 26, of house fronts, ornaments & so forth - for I cd find nothing of construction.'19

Joseph Woods recorded his journey in a lively, two-volume account published in 1828 as Letters of an Architectfrom France, Italy and Greece. On 29 October 1816 he had arrived in Verona where he appears initially to have been a reluctant admirer of the Italian Gothic, attracted perhaps more by its scale and novelty than any intrinsic value which it might have held.20 Woods was a Classicist who had earlier that year issued the fourth supplement to Stuart and Revett's Antiquities of Athens, and duty seemed to compel him to look at the ancient (Roman) architecture and the modern (Renaissance) architecture. But in Verona he was distracted, being constantly drawn back to the medieval architecture of that city:21

my first visit was to the church of Sta. Anastasia; but here, among so many classic antiquities, I cannot begin with a description of the Gothic; though to confess the truth, none of the fragments of Roman art can claim much merit on the score of beauty ... Sta Anastasia, which, if the front were finished, would probably be the most perfect specimen in existence of the style of architecture to which it belongs.22 Yet he did not seem to notice, much less comment upon, the alternate courses of coloured marble which comprise the architrave of the great west door. Similarly, the banded stonework of the campanile at S. Zeno went unobserved although he did acknowledge that 'the most interesting example at Verona to the antiquary, as a specimen of the architecture of the depth of the middle ages, is the church of S. Zeno ... The front may be cited as a good example of the early architecture of this part of Italy . ..'23 Woods rarely commented upon the polychromy because, quite simply, he did not understand it. And in his ignorance, it would appear, he found it offensive. By December he had reached Siena where, amid the red brickwork of that city, the black and white stonework of the cathedral can hardly be ignored. The front was erected in 1284 ... it is ornamented with horizontal bands of black and white marble; and this disposition, which prevails through the building, is said to have been adopted because the banner of Siena is in black and white stripes; but the Italians are fond of stripes, and they frequently occur where no such explanation can be given ... The walls are striped internally, in the same manner as on the outside, but in the lower part this is not very offensive,

222




because the marble has there acquired a warm tinge, which does not extend equally to the upper part; however the effect is much softened by the painting and gilding of the vaults.24

By the time he arrived in Pisa in May I819, he had, even after thirty months in Italy, developed no affinity with the Italian polychromy.25 In Letter LIX, written on i8 May he said, 'We here meet with the style of architecture, which I believe is peculiar to this part of Italy',26 but makes no mention of the colour: he appears, like Smirke, to have ignored it.

How different was the reaction from Edward Cresy and George Ledwell Taylor! They arrived in Pisa in 1817 and the result of their observations were published twelve years later, in 1829, as Architecture of the Middle Ages illustrated by a view, plans, sections, elevations, and details of the Cathedral, Baptistry, Leaning Tower or Campanile, and Campo Santo, at Pisa.27 In this book, apparently for the first time, the polychromatic decoration of Italian Gothic buildings was actively promoted. Cresy and Taylor issued their study in two parts, presumably as a series of plates (numbered in Arabic) and also an accompanying text (where the plates are numbered in Roman). The bound volume at the Society of Antiquaries of London, presented by Taylor himself, contains no text, and some of the plates are missing. But those at the RIBA Library and the British Library are apparently complete in both instances. What is more, whereas the copy at

r. . - .. . ... the Society of Antiquaries shows the :f j W -

X *;, a- ^ presence of polychromy only as mono- ' X; .blji:~i..

' \ chromatic toning in the various elevations ? I: '. I.'i;!i~ii!!'"" and sections, the others have had the

: :i;i : '"' ' : -. roundels, voussoirs and spandrels shown - iT h in Plates 9 (details of the west front) and

? ........::,',,.> .......;.- , . $ , .E " **** ? ? . . . $? Te Fig.r~ : -"'?$??;=?g 2 (details of the south elevation) carefully

Cathl,. .. hand-coloured in deep, opaque, red and green (Fig. 2).28 Colour was at last being ? } ~ ~ zr >><> ....:.$.>#? X .,~.,.:...,=!,,~.,. ~~ .} ;l S S : T$' 2; ,,>,* .- . ......... :i.,noticed.

.. . "' :; :!55mCresy and Taylor, in fact, devote much . .........:.......: of their text to a discussion ofpolychromy.

'

. . They describe the use of colour on the

Ages .. .. . . . Archi l . e west front (Plate III):

The wall has five courses of blue marble, running horizontally through at the back of the columns; - that above the plinth mouldings is 9 inches deep; the others are 6 inches

.......... .$l:.: .. .....;.. ..... . deep, repeated over two unequal courses of

white marble.29

is - ~----They cite it again in their summary of the

south elevation (Plate IV): Fig. 2. Detailsfrom the south elevation of Pisa Cathedral, hand-coloured in red andgreen. Plate 11 The entire mass without the dome, as exhib- of Cresy and Taylor's Architecture of the Middle ited in this Plate, nearly approaches a triple Ages on Italy (1829) (British Architectural cube; and it will be perceived that the blue Library/RIBA, London) lines or courses are continued through the five

223




western divisions only, and are afterwards abruptly broken off, the walls beyond having received some repair after the injury they sustained by the fire.30

And in their description of the campanile (Plate XXV) they are almost apologetic, for

they failed to show the colour:

Two bands of blue marble run round the walls of these storys [sic], and should have been represented on the Plate. In the upper story ... the bands are more frequently repeated, and the arches more decorated.31

Not only do Cresy and Taylor describe the colour, but they also attempt to account for it, placing it in its historical context by referencing the coloration at S. Giovanni, Florence, 'the work of the twelfth century ... Arnolfo, about 1260, encrusted it with mosaics and coloured marbles', and S. Giovanni of Pistoja [sic], 'encrusted on the exterior with black and white marble courses, and columns and mosaics enrich the interior.'32 At Pisa, they observed, 'the incrustations or mosaics ... are formed with thin slabs of marble, bedded in cement. The design of some of them is very ingenious.'33 In their explanation of the colour they seek to justify it and in so doing take a noticeably progressive stance:

At the time the Cathedral at Pisa was executed, the Parthenon and other buildings at Athens remained in considerable perfection, and afforded a gorgeous display of colouring and gilding on their exterior as well as interior; which probably gave the notion of incrusting portions of the building with mosaics. During our journey through Greece in I819, we continually discovered ornaments painted on the most delicately cut mouldings; some very perfect specimens of which remained on the Parthenon. We cannot now say what the effect of colour might have been, when coupled with that architecture of which purity has hitherto been considered the peculiar characteristic. To produce splendour by such means has not generally been attributed to the Greeks; and the architect who should, in the present day, attempt such a union of the sister arts, would be condemned as most grossly departing from the noble simplicity of the ancients.34

This prescient comment by Cresy and Taylor shows the developing awareness of coloration, albeit in the context of Greek architecture: Woods' reaction to Pisa, on the other hand, was very much that of the older generation of Classicists. The fact that

Cresy and Taylor published The Architectural Antiquities of Rome in 1821-22, soon after their return from Italy, and waited a further seven years before issuing their study of Pisa, would indicate that there was really little general interest in Italian medieval architecture. For the antiquary, however, it was always intriguing; the Rev. William Gunn of Smallburgh introduced yet another paper on Pisa to the Society of Antiquaries of London in June I822. The author, coincidentally, was also called

Taylor, Arthur Taylor, and the paper was prepared in Rome in March I822.35 But

despite the detail of the architectural analysis, there was no comment upon the use of colour. Indeed, the more one searches books and papers of the I82os, '3os and early '40s for references to the use of polychromy, at least in Italian medieval architecture, the less they can be found.

This 'undeserved neglect with which the Italian Gothic had been treated'36 was commented upon by Robert Willis in 1835, in the Preface to his Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, Especially of Italy. But as Alexandrina Buchanan has recently noted in her University of London PhD dissertation, Robert Willis and the Rise

224




of Architectural History, 'his aim was higher than merely to fill a gap in contemporary literature. He was hoping to throw further light on what constituted the true nature of Gothic by examining an atypical variety of the style.'37 So perhaps he, like Woods, was attracted to the style by its novelty.

Willis and his new wife Mary Ann Humphrey had visited Italy on an extended honeymoon tour in 1832-33. What he saw did not altogether please him:

The inferiority of the Italian to all other Gothic styles is no where [sic] so manifest as in the exteriors ... The west fronts of the Christian Roman Churches appear to have had no architectural ornament ... and the lateral walls are of naked brick.38

Yet for Willis, the best treatment for naked brickwork was certainly not the use of bands of coloured bricks: a practice more destructive of architectural grandeur can hardly be conceived; yet the Italians are even now so enamoured of it, that in parts of their buildings where it has been omitted, the black stripes have actually been supplied with paint upon whitewash.39

But then it is hard to imagine that the author, writing the Preface on New Year's Day, 1835, in the stark, monochromatic setting of William Wilkins' Greek Ionic Downing College, Cambridge, would have been moved to respond to, far less comment upon, the warmth of the Italian polychromy.

Ironically, it was on Greek architecture, as intimated by Cresy and Taylor, rather than on medieval Italian churches, that the discussion of polychromy was to focus. This debate over the Greeks' use of colour was of continuing interest in Germany and France, but had largely bypassed Britain. Yet in 1836 a committee was set up at the nascent Institute of British Architects to examine the remains of coloration on the Elgin Marbles.40

The Polychrome Committee, as it was called, was appointed by a resolution passed at an Ordinary General Meeting of the IBA in December I836.41 Its membership was varied yet distinguished and Thomas Leverton Donaldson, founder, Secretary and Fellow of the Institute, was to keep its records.42 From Lord Elgin's original expedition there was William Richard Hamilton, Elgin's secretary who had supervised of the removal of the Marbles in Athens and had also rescued the Rosetta Stone from the French in Egypt following the Battle of Alexandria. There was Richard Westmacott RA, Professor of Sculpture at the Royal Academy, Charles Robert Cockerell RA, soon to take the Chair of Architecture there, and the painter, Charles Lock Eastlake ARA, later to be President of the Royal Academy. Dr Michael Faraday, the natural philosopher (physicist), who in 183 3 had read his 'New Laws of Electrical Conduction' before the Royal Society, was included, as were a further two architects and founding Fellows of the Institute, Samuel Angell and Joseph John Scoles. With perhaps the exception of Faraday they all shared a common interest in Greek architecture and sculpture. Cockerell, who had published the Temple ofJupiter at Agrigentum in 1830, issued, in the same year, a supplement to Stuart and Revett, Antiquities of Athens and other places in Greece, Sicily, etc.,43 to which Scoles and Donaldson contributed. Scoles had also helped Angell in his excavations in Sicily which led to the latter's Sculptured Metopes discovered amongst the Ruins of the Temples of the Ancient City of Selinus in Sicily in 1826, and it is possible that Donaldson, who had published A Collection of the Most

225




Approved Examples of Doorwaysfrom Ancient Buildings in Greece and Italy in 1833, was involved there too; Eastlake, similarly, had spent much time in Greece and later in Rome. And Westmacott, who was to be knighted later in 1837, went on to carve the pedimental sculpture representing the progress of civilization at the British Museum of which, from 1838, Hamilton, already Foreign Secretary to the Royal Society of Literature, was to be a Trustee.

In his 'Preliminary Observations ... On the Polychromy of Grecian Architecture', Donaldson noted that 'the researches of more recent travellers confirmed however the statement of those who had first alluded to the subject, and at length Monsieur Hittorff, Honorary & Corresponding Member of this Institute, in his admirable work upon Sicily, boldly adopted the system of Polychromatic architecture in all its fullness, and asserted that all the members of architecture were painted.'44 The 'more recent travellers', to whom Donaldson referred, would have included Donaldson himself, and a Mr Bracebridge who, in Athens in the winter of 1835-36, had dug up well- preserved fragments 'painted with the brightest red, blue, and yellow, or rather vermilion, ultramarine, and straw colour.'45 Meanwhile Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, co- author, with Ludwig Zanth, of L'Architecture moderne de la Sicilie46 in 1835, actually presented his polychromatic restoration of the Temple of Empedocles at Selinus, Sicily, to the IBA on 29 May i837.47 It was against this background that, eight weeks later, on 24 July, William Hamilton presented the Report of the Polychrome Committee to the IBA at the closing Ordinary Meeting of the Session, separating the sculpture from the architecture:

Upon consideration of all the facts contained in the preceding minutes it appears to the Committee that there remain no indications whatsoever of color [sic] artificially applied upon the surface of the Statues and bas reliefs, that is, upon the historical sculpture. That according to Dr. Faraday's opinion those portions of the marble, from which the tone and surface might be supposed to be the result of color [sic] applied thereon, are the original surface of the marble stained by the atmosphere, the presence of iron in the marble, or some such natural cause. That some of the Architectural fragments present indisputable traces of tone indicative of regular architectural ornaments, and that the outlines of such ornaments are distinctly traceable being marked with a sharp instrument upon the surface of the marble. The Committee cannot positively state from the appearance of the marble, that such tones have been produced by colour, as they think that none of the colour itself remains but that the indication of tone results from mere variation of surface. Judging however from the information contained in Mr. Bracebridge's communication, there appears no reason to doubt that color [sic] has been applied. This is confirmed by the portions of coatings brought from Athens by Mr. Donaldson, and analysed [sic] by Dr. Faraday who has detected frit or vitreous substance and carbonate of copper, mixed with wax and a fragrant gum. This analysis proves that the surface of the marble of the shafts of the columns of the Theseum and other parts of the edifices from which these specimens were taken, were covered with a colored [sic] coating. The Glass eyes also of the Ionic Capitals of the Tetrastyle Portico in the Acropolis at Athens, prove that various materials were employed by the Athenians in the decoration of the exterior of their marble Buildings.48

These 'various materials' were most apparent in the sculpture. The Polychrome Committee noticed that 'there is a constant repetition of small circular holes in the horses heads & manes and in one hand of each rider showing that there had been originally bridles & straps to the horses, either of metal, leather, or some other similar

226




substance'49 and that on the head of Minerva, 'the sockets of the eyes are hollow, and were evidently filled with metal or with colored stones, and holes remain in the upper part of the head, affording the presumption that there was originally a bronze helmet attached to the marble.' Here was the one possible exception to the rule that the figure sculpture and bas reliefs, in contrast to the architecture, remained unpainted, for 'The hair appears to have a red tint, which becomes distinctly apparent upon the application of water.'51

The most dismissive reaction to this conclusion came in 1840 from Alfred Bartholomew, soon to be briefly editor of The Builder, who wrote in his opinionated and surely eccentric Specifications for Practical Architecture, 'Of the Causes which have Brought Grecian Architecture into Disrepute in England.'52 In deploring 'the art of "Polychromy" . . . the author fearlessly asserts that he believes the best architects of Greece and of Ionia were incapable of any thing so trifling' and argues that 'the architects of the Parthenon, would have been as much offended by the "Polychromatic" defilement of their works, as would the great Chantrey, were one of his busts to be painted in colours and placed for a wig-block in a hairdresser's shop.'53 Bartholomew rants on in similar vein for four paragraphs, and concludes by imploring 'lovers of "Polychromy!" [to] disclaim a pursuit which can never elevate architecture ... sacrificing solid and reasonable research for the tinsel and minced glare of"Polychromy," can only afford the reputation of an useless architecturalpetit-maltre.'4

Bartholomew's concern was with the decline of English building, so he was more forgiving of the use ofpolychromy abroad, but no less derogatory: It weighs with the author little, that some Germans, perhaps for want of opportunity for shining in great and original architectural research like the Stuarts of Britain, should attempt to build up the false art of Poly-gewgawdery. We can suffer some extravagance to be mingled with the fineness of intellect which the Germans possess: and for the sake of genius which their romance, their drama, and their music exhibit, we can excuse them even when they approach the confines of insanity.55

Had he read Gottfried Semper's Vorldufige Bemerkungen uber bemalte Architectur und Plastik bei den Alten, published in 1834, Bartholomew might have found in the barbarian influence the reason for this apparent insanity. 'The principle of polychromy,' Semper explained, 'which had been common from the earliest times, remained dominant in the last period of the Roman Empire and even in the chaos of the barbarian invasions and destruction, when it survived and drew new life from the artistic traditions these barbarians had brought with them from their earlier places of residence.'56

A very similar but rather less eccentric rejection of polychromy appeared in Joseph Gwilt's Encyclopaedia of Architecture which, considering its size, was probably under preparation at the same time as Bartholomew's Specifications. Published in 1842, two years after the first edition of Specifications and four years before the second, it declared that 'Colour abstractly considered has very little to do with architectural beauty, which is founded, as is sculpture, on fine form.'57 In this Gwilt appears to be in agreement with Willis, whose rejection of polychromatic Italian Gothic was, as Buchanan contends, due to its lack of form and structural logic.58 Although Gwilt acknowledged that 'it is now clearly ascertained that it was the practice of the Greeks to paint the

227




Fig. 3. The Grange and St Augustine's, Ramsgate: A. W. N. Pugin, 1845-50. Constructional polychromy in both red and yellow brick, and in knappedflint and Whitby stone (George M. Garbutt and the Pugin Society)

whole of the inside and the outside of their temples in party colours'59 he suggested that, nevertheless, they were sensitive to that beauty of form for which their temples had historically been admired. In other words, that their habit of painting buildings, a fashion imported from Egypt, was just a ghastly mistake. His argument was as unmoving as his conclusion: The practice of painting the inside and outside of buildings has received the name of polychromatic architecture, and we shall here leave it to the consideration of the student as a curious and interesting circumstance, but certainly without a belief that it could add a charm to the stupendous simplicity and beauty of such a building as the Parthenon.60

Whereas Willis (1835) had investigated a Gothic problem, the Polychrome Committee at the IBA (1837), Bartholomew (1840 and 1846) and Gwilt (1842) all

spoke for classical architecture: and it was at exactly this time that Pugin's most important and polemical texts, Contrasts (1836 and 1841), True Principles (1841) and

Apology and Present State (both 1843) were published. Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin's contribution to the development of architec-

tural polychromy in Britain is a curious one. For whereas his constant criticism of classical architecture would have removed him from the debate on the coloration of Greek temples, his whole-hearted adoption of applied colour, as evidenced at St Giles', Cheadle (1842-46), would seem to have put him in the same camp.61 It is in his work that one becomes first aware of the difference between applied and constructional polychromy, a distinction hitherto pretty well ignored by all. For whereas Pugin would apply colour internally as decoration, not least in the stencilling

228




and the floor tiles, he did not use it externally, as structure, with perhaps two special exceptions, these being his own house and church, the Grange and St Augustine's, at Ramsgate (I845-50) (Fig. 3). In this tight complex of buildings, the yellow-brick house is banded with single courses of reds set four to six bricks apart while the church, faced with knapped Thanet flint, uses Whitby stone dressing to give the appearance of horizontal banding which is both gently colourful and structurally explicit. Internally, the Whitby stone's varying hues create, as John Newman has observed, 'wonderful modulations of colour'.63 When Pugin admonished his son Edward to 'watch the church, there shall not be a single "true principle" broken',64 he was reminding him that there was nothing about this building which was not necessary 'for convenience, construction, or propriety'.65 For the polychromy here is almost incidental and probably not intended as coloration: what it does demonstrate is structural integrity.

It was this revision of perception, brought about through the polemic of Pugin's writings, which, in Britain at least, encouraged the adoption, within the context of the Gothic Revival, of largely external, constructional polychromy. Coincident with this was the increasing interest in non-classical sources, particularly medieval Italian and Islamic or Arabic, evidenced through a number of publications of the I84os and 8 5os which were enhanced by the introduction of chromolithography.

In 1836, the same year as Pugin's Contrasts, Edward William Lane published An Account of the Manners and Customs of Modern Egyptians.66 Although he was not an architect, and not writing specifically for architects, Lane's book contained crisp if

. . somewhat mechanical illustrations which, as in his drawing of a mosque in Cairo, showed very clearly, although in

im I _ ^ v __|- l _-11 fS1 | line only, the alternating coloured stones

IJiM ̂ ; ^ i of the voussoirs and the banding of the u 3 3 =l U d.B spandrels and the wall above. Three years

e W 2 _ X g;. (BrXitishlater, in I839, the French Islamicist Pascal Coste published Architecture arabe ou monuments du Kaire showing the same mosque, 'la Mosquee El Moyed', in three plates of vibrant colour (Fig. 4).67 The

i;' ...... strength of these illustrations (Coste includes thirty colour plates in all showing both applied and constructional poly-

T-T.- - - _ -chromy) is startling and would have . .. ...... ..... attracted any aspiring polychromist not

l a--: put off by the pagan nature of the

Fig. 4. 'Vue de la Niche du Sanctuaire et de la Chaire de la Mosquee El Moyed': a

,jW ? 1i & chromolithographic plate showing the voussoirs of the near arches rendered alternately in red and yellow, and those beyond in blue and white. Plate IX/

..... XXVIII of Coste's Architecture arabe(l 839) (British Architectural Library/RIBA, London)

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architecture explicit in the interior and exterior 'vues' of mosques which comprised the majority of the colour plates.68

In contrast, monochrome orthographic projections and coloured details dominate in Owen Jones's first book on colour, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra,69 published in two folio volumes in 1842 and 1845. Each of the sixty colour plates deals with details - arches, windows, cornices, capitals, frets and so on: indeed, not a single full building is shown in colour. Although he makes no differentiation between applied and constructional polychromy, the use of colour was of great interest to Jones. Here he talks of applied colour: It may be remarked, that amongst the Arabs, the Egyptians, and the Greeks, the primitive colours, if not exclusively employed, were certainly nearly so, during the early periods of art; whilst during the decadence, the secondary colours became of more importance. Thus in Egypt, in the Pharonic [sic] temples, we find the primitive colours predominating; in the Ptolemaic temples, the secondary; also on the early Greek temples are found the primitive colours; whilst at Pompeii every variety of shade and tone was employed.70

The Alhambra folios were based upon drawings made byJones's friendJoules Goury who had worked on the Alhambra in 1834 but had died from cholera in Granada in August that year. The publication was not a financial success, despite a long list of subscribers. Some have already come into this story - Cresy and Taylor, Hamilton, Bartholomew, Willis and Pugin. There were also Ignatius Bonomi and James William Wild, and a number of classicists, Lewis and William Cubitt, Philip Hardwick, Peter Frederick Robinson, William Tite and Thomas Henry Wyatt; and the eclectic Scotsmen William Burn and David Bryce.

One other subscriber was Henry Gally Knight, listed inadvertently by Jones as Galley Knight. Coincident with the publication of The Alhambra, Gally Knight produced a similarly grand, two-volume folio entitled The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy, from the time of Constantine to the Fifteenth century. Although chromolithography played no part in the publication other than in the title page, designed by Owen Jones,71the monochromatic plates of Christian architecture showed clearly the use of structural polychromy. Yet Gally Knight made scant reference to this. Of San Zenone, Verona, he says 'the style of the building is Lombard. The front is of marble. The sides are constructed with alternate layers of marble and brick.'72 No mention is made of the heavily banded polychromy in the illustrated San Lorenzo at Genoa73 and, more surprisingly, Gally Knight, having declared that Sta Maria della Spina at Pisa 'is an architectural gem', adds quite mistakenly that 'the whole of the building is of white marble.'74 Volume 2, Plate XXXIII, shows it clearly with dark bands of colour and with the voussoirs picked out alternately (Fig. 5).

Thus it can be seen that, while the publications on Islamic architecture offered strong colour imagery, it was in the context of a pagan style. Italian Gothic architecture, on the other hand, was Christian and, although polychromatic, was depicted in monochrome75 and discussed (except by Cresy and Taylor) largely in terms of stylistic provenance. This resulted, in the early I84os, in the rather curious situation of the few new churches in the Lombardic style being monochrome, and polychromy only being admitted with Arabic overtones. Indeed, in the case of Thomas Henry Wyatt and David Brandon's parish church of St Mary and St Nicholas at Wilton, near

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,~fl~ __> ~~ ~~, ,l

MFig. 5. Sta Maria della Spina, Pisa: * ' '' : ".:...4 a...... m onochrom atic plate show ing

Salisbur;' (14-4) clu - no';horizontal coloured bandin and ire alternately coloured voussoirs. Plate

nev;eheless m oXXXIII ofH. Gally Knight's The But'p-~~~ o e t i e hEcclesiastical Architecture of

. Italy, vol. 2 (1 843) (British

pre~'~: '::"~t~' Architectural Library/RIBA, London)

Salisbury (I841-45), colour is not only eschewed but the building is effected in stone whereas the Italian precedents would have been brick.76 And in Lever Bridge, near Halgh in Lancashire, Edmund Sharpe's church of St Stephen (1842-45) was cast in moulded fire-clay, a material analogous to the terra cotta of the Italian examples but nevertheless monochromatic in hue. This was roundly criticized by The Ecclesiologist:

At first sight the critick is at a loss to know what it is which stamps the design as 'Modern.'... But on a closer inspection it will be seen that the chief characteristicks of the design are pretence and affected decoration. The whole secret is disclosed, when it its learnt that the church is built of fire-clay, cut in moulds ... Seriously we must protest against adopting such a material as cast clay for a church ... We abhor brick as a mean material; but there need be no sham about brick, and we should almost prefer the honest ugliness of a red-brick building to the yards and scores of cast mouldings and crockets which compose the still cheaper and not really more worthy offering to the glory of GOD.77

The problem which seems to emerge, in regard to churches, was not whether

polychromy was a possibility, but whether brick, the most obviously polychromatic of all constructional materials, was even appropriate for church building. This issue was addressed by the Rev. Thomas James, in a paper he gave 'On the Use of Brick in Ecclesiastical Architecture' to the Architectural Society of the Archdeaconry of Northampton at Oundle on I8 May I847. James, who had visited Italy six months earlier admitted that he 'had always connected brick and mortar with red meeting- houses and dingy three-windowed lodgings: - at best, with a church [such] as St

23I




James' [Piccadilly], or such a forlorn thoroughfare as Harley Street.'78 Clearly his trip to Italy had encouraged him to revise his opinions:

If we have a doubt, drawn from the poverty of our own brick buildings, that so rude and cheap a material is unsuited to the dignity and costliness becoming the House of God, we are soon convinced that this prejudice is unfounded, when we see the beauty into which this material has been wrought in Lombard architecture.79

James then draws attention to the medieval brick churches in England, citing Hull church, presumably Holy Trinity, but admits that 'it is to be acknowledged that the specimens of ecclesiastical brickwork in England are few and unimportant, and, perhaps, unsatisfactory at best. It is from Lombardy that we must draw its proved capabilities and its future development.'8 By way of example, he offers Sharpe's church at Lever Bridge, which was more to his liking than The Ecclesiologist's, and a new church at Brixton, which must be James Wild's Christ Church, Streatham. This, he thought, was 'a most successful specimen and deserves more notice than it has yet acquired.'81

Christ Church, Streatham, where this essay began, is the one building for which James William Wild (1814-92) is properly remembered (Fig. 6).82 It is significant in that it brings together the polychromy of Owen Jones and the polemics of Pugin. Unlike his later St Martin's School in Long Acre, London ( 849, and now demolished) and his water tower in Grimsby docks (I852), both more strictly Italian Gothic, it is a fusion of ideas and stylistically eclectic. As Crinson, paraphrasing van Zanten, has said, it is 'Early Christian in plan, Italian Romanesque in composition, Ottoman in its bay elevations, and Alhambresque, Mamluk, Sevillan, and ancient Egyptian in its ornamentation.'83 That Wild, who had previously completed only two churches 84 and had apparently never travelled abroad,85 should produce such a cosmopolitan design can be explained by the circle in which he moved. His friends included Owen Jones with whom he shared a house in Argyle Place, just by Oxford Circus, and who soon married his sister Isabella, and Ignatius and Joseph Bomoni, also friends ofJones; it was Joseph with whom Wild travelled to Egypt in 1842 just after Christ Church was finished.86 Both Jones andJoseph, if not Ignatius, Bonomi had studied Italian Gothic and Islamic architecture in situ; Ignatius had built the Egyptian Marshall Mills in Leeds in 1838-40; and Wild, together with Ignatius, was to subscribe to Jones's publication of The Alhambra in 1842. Wild had recently served his articles under George Basevi who had also travelled in Italy, c. 1817,87 and towards the end of his tenure, at the time when Basevi won the competition for the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge,88 was probably involved with Basevi's rebuilding of St Andrew, Hove (I833-36), in what Pevsner calls a 'Neo-Norman and uninspired' style.89 Wild's obituary notes that 'on completing his articles, he was entrusted by his master with the designing and building of a country church',90 but 'uninspired' is perhaps how Wild's early churches could be described although the spires of Holy Trinity, Coates, Cambridgeshire, and St Cuthbert and St Mary, Barton, Yorkshire (both I840-4I), and the latter's massing, are suggestive of Christ Church, Streatham.

Wild received the commission for Christ Church, Streatham, on the recommenda- tion of the Rev. N. A. Soames, his patron at Holy Trinity, Greenwich, then just

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Fig. 6. Christ Church, Streatham:James Wild, 1840-42. Undated perspective viewfrom the south-east, drawn in pencil byJames Wild (V&A Picture Library)

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 43: 200ooo

completing. The Rev. Henry Blunt, Rector of Streatham and sponsor of the church, had, it seems, asked Soames what he thought of his architect. The response, written on 14 March I839, had been unequivocal in its support: He is a young man of very great talent and is honourable & agreeable to deal with, as he is clever. The work is being done in the best manner. There is but one opinion among parlyers [sic] of Church Architecture & builders, as to the merit of the design & of the workmanship ... He has given the greatest satisfaction to our committee & I have no doubt would do you justice, if you thought fit to send for him.91

Wild completed his first sketch designs for Blunt in February I840.92 Even at this early stage the austere, Italian Gothic nature of the design was apparent: It appears to me absolutely necessary that a church should have the appearance of solemnity & that the only means of attaining this attribute is - by severe simplicity in design and by avoiding the appearance of having attempted more than could be accomplished

The bell turret is placed as it was generally in very ancient churches. - a separate feature. This is seen constantly in Italy in the older examples -

I must beg to state that the design could be very greatly improved by additional height in the central compartment - by using the best facing bricks instead of common ones and by various enrichments in the interior -93

Nine weeks later, on I5 April, Blunt made his application to 'The Incorporated Society for Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels, London' (ICBS) for the erection of a new church.94 At the meeting of the Committee two days later, it was resolved that 50oo should be made available 'upon the condition that the Chapel shall contain I200 sittings, 600 of which shall be free and unappropriated for ever.'95 Although Blunt, as Rector of Streatham, had made the application, it was the Rev. Woodhouse Raven who was to be the incumbent of the new church and also the Honorary Secretary of the Building Committee.96 Raven was to prove to be a tenacious protagonist for his cause.

From the beginning it would appear that the cost of the church needed to be kept to a minimum since a large building was required. The population of the parish of Streatham had risen from 2,729 in I81I, to 3,616 in 1821, and to 5,o68 in 1831: in I840 it was estimated to be 6,ooo.97 The greater the population, the more was the need for sittings and thus the larger the potential funding from the ICBS. In fact, 50oo seems to be as much as the ICBS was giving to any new building at that time.98 The total building cost was projected to be 'f6,480, including the purchase of the site, fencing etc. etc.' and a tender had been received 'from a respectable responsible Builder John Thompson of Camberwell] for erecting the works (exclusive of fittings etc.) for the sum of? 4, I95'99 /3,96I had already been raised and another /5oo was expected from the Winchester Diocesan Church Accommodation Society (for Streatham was in the Diocese of Winchester);100 and a further 300o had also been secured from HM Commissioners for Building New Churches.101

Although funding was approved, the application to the ICBS soon ran into trouble when the plans were rejected on 30 April byJ. H. Good, Surveyor to both the ICBS and HM Commissioners, who ruled that, amongst other things, the pew seats were too small and the roof structure required tie beams.102 Raven flew to the defence of the scheme, saying that the ICBS had changed their regulations regarding the

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dimensions of pews after the designs had been drawn up and that the requirement of tie beams was just a pro forma ordinance and not relevant to the intended method of construction. The enlargement of the pews would have reduced the number of sittings by between I6 and 50, and thus the valuable income from pew rents;l03 similarly, he

argued that the addition of tie beams would increase the building costs by o50 to /60.104 Raven even included, in his letter, three pencil sketches showing different beam conditions, arguing that 'where the bearings being made horizontal at each end - the horizontal thrust no longer exists and the tie beam becomes only an incumbrance. This last is the plan on wh. the side Roofs of Streatham Chapel is constructed as will be seen from the accompanying detailed drawing.'105

Wild amended his drawings and although Good accepted the structural alterations, he still required the new dimensions for the seats to be adhered to.106 But he was overruled and Raven was allowed to use seating based upon the sizes required at the time the church was designed, rather than the then current regulations, resulting in a loss of I6 places.107 In the event, the church accommodated I,I76 persons, comprising 586 pews and 590 free seats, resulting in forgone pew rents on only 14 seats, which Raven more than covered by 'selling' 220 free places to the Governors of the St Anne's

Society's Schools, for the Children of the Society, in return for a donation of 3 I5 towards the building of the church.108

In the end, the church was not built to Good's requirements, and this caused Raven some concern since he thought he might forfeit his grants from both the ICBS and HM Commissioners. On I May 1842 Raven wrote to the ICBS announcing that 'The New Church in this Parish, for which your Committee made a Grant of 50oo, was finished and Consecrated November last.' However he went on to explain that the building deviated from the plans approved by the Committee

in the omission of the horizontal Tie-rods in the side or aisle Roofs, and in the substitution of curved Ties of Timber, in the Roof of the Nave, for the horizontal ties which had been shown in the Drawings: and I have no wish to conceal the fact, that Mr Good's sanction to this omission was requested prior to the sealing of the Drawings and that it was refused.

The motives which induced the Local Committee to allow of this departure from the sealed Plans were, in the case of the side Roofs, the consideration of the extreme unsightliness, as well as the utter uselessness of the horizontal Ties, and, in the case of the center [sic] Roof, the desire to improve the Architectural appearance and character of the Church by making the construction an ornamental as well as a useful feature in the Building. No consideration whatever would have moved the Committee to assent to a defective construction: but they were convinced of there being no necessity for the side Roof Ties, not only by the opinion and showing of Mr- Wild - (in whom they had every reason to place the greatest confidence) - but by the authority of other scientific men and writers upon the subject, and above all, by a most satisfactory experiment on a large and exaggerated scale, made by the Clerk of the Works and the Contractor upon the spot. The Ties of the center [sic] Roof consist of a curved beam, executed in three thicknesses of Timber, scarfed and strongly bolted together, forming an ample substitute and compensation for the omitted horizontal iron Tie. The same construction was employed by Sir Christopher Wren in the universally admired Roof of StJames' Church ... In conclusion, I beg to state that the above circumstances were yesterday laid before a Meeting of the Board of Her Majesty's Commissioners for Building Churches, when their Lordships were pleased to pardon the irregularity of our proceeding and

235




to confirm their previous Grant. A model of the Roof was submitted, and allowed to be explained by M" Wild to the Board, and I beg to say that the same model will be offered for the inspection of your Committee on Monday next, when Mr' Wild will be in attendance to give any further information that may be required on the subject.109

And Raven additionally admitted 'a few other alterations, of great service to the

Building and its uses, but which involve no point of construction ... [including] ...

Executing the exterior cornice in brick instead of wood [and] Carrying up the

Campanile Tower entirely in brick instead of covering it with a timber and slated roof.'110 Although the ICBS Board eventually accepted these variations,111 the Rev. W. J. Rodber, Secretary to the Metropolitan Society for Building Churches, wrote to Raven in no uncertain terms:

I am directed by the Board to express their extreme dissatisfaction at the wilful violation of the rules of this Society, and the breach of that agreement upon which the grant was accepted.112

HM Commissioners were equally incensed, Good, the Surveyor, writing indignantly to Raven

to inform you that the Board learn with great surprise and regret that, in the executions of the works, various deviations from the approved Plans, both with regard to construction and arrangement, have been made in the Chapel without the previous written sanction of the Board, therefore ... the sum granted by Her Majesty's Commissioners must be withheld until the chapel has been altered in conformity with the conditions of the grant.1l3

In the event, the HM Commissioners allowed Raven these departures from the

approved plans, but not without much talk of 'the very peculiar circumstances of the case' and 'the distinct understanding, that it shall not be drawn into a precedent in other cases'.114 And the ICBS did likewise, it having been reported at the Board, that Her Majesty's Commissioners for building additional Churches in populous places had seen reason, on the whole, to be satisfied of the safety of the construction of the roof as now executed, and feeling no desire to deprive the local Committe of that pecuniary assistance which has been offered, they have been pleased, under the circumstances, to order, that the Payment of the money shall be made, upon the production of the Certificate and the other papers required of 29th April 1840 communicating the grant.1

Raven did receive his ?50oo from the ICBS and 300o from HM Commissioners, but the church and land had cost 38,462 and he had to borrow, on the security of the pew rents, the final fI ,400.116

The changes to the design, as the building work progressed, had been done very much at Wild's instigation. He wrote a number of letters to Raven which contained comments like, 'It has been my constant endeavour from the beginning to improve it both in strength and in appearance. & I certainly have not spared my own time or expenses', 17 and 'if the church is not all that I could wish - I have done the best I can for it.'118. Wild was always trying to better his design but is so doing needed larger funds from Raven. Sometimes he almost despaired: The Italian tiling would give the true architectural character to the church, but the cost for our roofs would be about g900- more than the common slate or kI25- more than the Westmoreland - I fear the committee are not architectural enough for this - 119

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Wild's continual improvement of the design is apparent in the business of the cornice which was originally to be arched and made of timber, covered with mastic and six coats of paint (in preference to Keene's Cement which Wild thought was both more expensive and still untested).120 By early November 1840 the cornice was in place but, as Wild wrote to Raven, 'Your opinion of the cornice agrees exactly with my own,- it is certainly much too Egyptian - and the character is too massive for the constructive effect of the details of the Church. - at the same time I feel that the profile - that in the general form is the best that can be adopted - and I must arrange the decorative leaves [?] differently -.' Clearly, he was unsatisfied, continuing, 'I have ordered Foster [the clerk of works] to take it down in conformity with your suggestion - I shall have settled it by the end of the week - which will I find cause no delay -.'12 So the cornice was rebuilt, this time in brick, and on 28 February 1841 Wild wrote again to Raven:

I beg to enclose the bills of all the extra work ordered and erected up to the present time ... I fear that I shall be blamed for ordering much of the extra work without the previous sanction of a committee - but I feel quite sure that if the details are examined by those really interested in this church - the alterations will be found of the greatest advantage . . . That I might be able to carry out my design perfectly and uniformly throughout I have adopted in this building the most simple and severe architecture ... The details are especaly [sic] highly finished throughout, - and instead of a wooden cornice it is now elaborately carved in the same solid material as the church is itself built in . .122

Wild's perseverance with the design of the church was only possible because of Raven's accommodating attitude. Indeed, as has been shown, this got Raven into a considerable amount of difficulty. But Wild was appreciative, writing in March 1841 with one more request, 'I am very anxious to give this last noble finish to a design in which thanks to you I have not yet been stinted - I must trust you in this.' 123

This account of the building of Christ Church is necessary for it demonstrates a number of things: that economy was a major consideration; that Wild was very much the designer; and that aesthetic considerations played a considerable part. Economy would account for the initial choice of brick for the church and eventual substitution of the brick for timber in the cornice, as well as for the introduction, some time after February, 1841, of the square-pyramid brick roof to the tower.124 This followed

changes in brick duty introduced 1839 (discussed below) which made moulded bricks, such as Wild finally used in the cornice, much more affordable. The benefits of such economy were not missed by William Boutcher writing in The Builder in 1848: The decoration is procured at a comparatively trifling cost, and the position of every brick seems to have been determined after attentive consideration . . . The campanile at Streatham is covered with bricks laid in a diamond-shaped pattern, relieved by bricks of a different colour, and the effect is good ... The whole church is evidence of what good effect may be produced with a small outlay, judiciously employed.125

The polychromy, nevertheless, is restricted in its use: the cavetto, frieze and dentil moulding of the cornice are accented in red brick, and the pyramid roof in serried zig- zags; similarly, the voussoirs of the three great arches on the west front, and the voussoirs of the aisle, clerestorey and apse windows, are picked out in polychromatic brickwork, although these last represent a later development of the design.126 Van

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Zanten suggests that the coloration of the voussoirs in the three west arches is derived from Coste's Architecture arabe (which it is, but indirectly) and in so doing mis-identifies them as -a-b-a-b-a-b-c-b-c-b-c-b-a- 127 when they are, in fact, -a-b-a-b-a-b-c-b-c-b-a- and -a-b-a-b-c-b-a- over the central arch and the two smaller side arches respectively. The pattern comprises red bricks (a) and glazed yellow bricks (c) separated evenly by yellow stock bricks (b) and appears clearly in Wild's west elevation of the church signed and dated 1841 (Fig. 7).128 The result of the syncopated rhythm is that the keystone of the central arch is the middle one of three reds (a), while that of the side arches (and the recessed west door and the two flanking gallery doors) is the stock brick set between the two reds (b). But Arabic they are, despite the Italianate appearance of the church and campanile, for the inner and outer radii are described from different centres thus accentuating the curve; and the setting of the central and side arches within recessed rectangular frames, and the application of angle shafts to the arrises of all three openings is equally Islamic.

Christ Church is redolent of foreign architectures but Wild had not yet, it seems, been abroad. He was obviously not working in a vacuum and the influence of his friends, Jones and the Bonomis, and of the various publications to which he would have had access, cannot be ignored. The sources of some of the features can almost be identified:129 the main west archway suggests Owen Jones's Alhambra drawing of the 'Puerta Principal 6 de Justica'130 and the 'rose' window above, with its Levantine star, recalls the lattice-work of the 'Puerta de la Sala de los Abencerrages'131 or the 'Sala de las dos Hermanes' through which, asJones said, 'the dark eyed beauties of the Hareem viewed the splendid fetes in the hall below.'132 Alternatively, the six-pointed stars in Coste's 'Details de la Mosquee Teyloun'133 could be the provenance for the lattice- work. This 'rose' window, perhaps one of the church's most derivative features, was (together with the ornamented window heads at the ends of the galleries) the special gift of Wild himself, and the stained glass was given by Raven.134 Thus every indication from the documentation is that the church, as an architectural commission and a design process, was Wild's own, even ifJones and Bonomi were looking over his shoulder as he designed and redesigned: that is how architects work. Both Wild's and Raven's correspondence make repeated reference to Wild's authority, and Wild, together with Raven and three parishioners of Streatham, signed the completion certificate for the ICBS in I842.135 Although the certificate is not dated, it is accompanied by Raven's letter of 15 June in which he says 'I regret that since Mr. Wild have [sic] been lately so much engaged, I have not hitherto been able to procure the Plans necessary to be forwarded with the Certificate for the payment of the money.'136 The plans, once forwarded, bore Wild's signature and the date I842.137 Thus the assertion that Jones 'took over as architect at Christ Church while Wild set off on his travels'138 is not strictly true, although Jones certainly devised the interior decoration scheme, completed in I85I, and was involved with the provision of, amongst other things, the organ.139

To allocate precedents to every stylistic turn at Christ Church is but an academic exercise, if perhaps an instructive one. For Wild, as Crinson has pointed out, preferred to be eclectively inventive:

238




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Library)~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~;: :~?(

239




I object in the first place to the adopting [of] any style - this word style as the meaning attached to it seems to me to be the chief source of all our architectural failures.l40

What Summerson recognized about Christ Church in 1929 as 'Modernist', was not what we today would identify as 'Moder Movement', but rather something stylistically ahistorical. It was 'Modern' in the sense implied by T. L. Donaldson, by then Professor of Architecture at University College, London, when he asked, at the

opening meeting of the Architectural Association in 1847, 'are we to have an architecture of our period, a distinct, individual, palpable style of the Igth century?'"41 It was a 'Modernism' derived from the polemics of Pugin and the fundamental

importance of his 'true principles', which was soon to be re-interpreted, despite his disclamation of any Puginian influence,142 by Ruskin in The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture (1849) and more stridently in The Stones of Venice (i851 and 1853), specifically in 'The Nature of Gothic' from volume ii. In its use of constructional polychromy, Wild's Christ Church not only anticipates Pugin's 'true principles' but also strongly presages Ruskin's recommendations in both its form and in the effect of its polychromatic decoration. Ruskin, it should be recalled, lived close by at Denmark Hill 143 and might have had the campanile in mind when writing 'The Lamp of Power' as he did later while discussing 'Superimposition' in The Stones of Venice (vol. I). Here, in a chapter on 'The Wall Veil and Shaft', he said:

The church of Christchurch, Streatham, lately built, though spoiled by many grievous errors, (the ironwork in the campanile being the grossest), yet affords the inhabitants of the district a means of obtaining some idea of the variety of effects which are possible with no other material than brick.144

Some time between May and September I842 Wild departed for Cairo, together with Joseph Bonomi, as part of Richard Lepsius's expedition.145 There he remained over five years, designing the Anglican church of St Mark in Alexandria, a building not immediately different from Christ Church but more elaborate and Islamic.146 Owen Jones continued in England, publishing The Alhambra in I842 and 1845 and

helping his former master, Lewis Vulliamy, with All Saints, Ennismore Gardens, Knightsbridge. Of this The Ecclesiologist observed in 1849: The apse, which serves as sanctuary, has been polychromatized by Mr Owen Jones, and, we need not add, greatly improved by this adornment. We hail this as another proof of triumph of the principle of decorative colour.147

But Jones's greatest success was to come two years later when he was appointed Superintendent of Works for the Great Exhibition of 185 I, for this provided him with the opportunity to demonstrate his use of applied colour on the vast palette of the Crystal Palace; but that must remain the subject of a later discussion.

The Rev. Thomas James, who in 1847 had drawn attention to Christ Church, was, like Wild, unenthusiastic about stylistic correctness. Although he 'would not wish to see a Lombard Church erected in a village in a county abounding in stone', he said, 'yet I cannot think that for a Church in a place like Birkenhead or Birmingham, or in a new railroad-town, it is somewhat too much of archaeological pedantry to go on making ten-times repeated copies of our medieval Churches.'148 The previous year Bartholomew, writing on 'the excellence of Materials, which the English Architect

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has in modern times at his disposal', in the second edition of his Specifications, had noted 'the improvements in rail-roads and navigation' and that 'we have such an improvement in the making and burning of bricks, that they are sometimes, and always may be, more durable than those of any former period, and even more durable than most kinds of stone.'149 Such advancements in technology - transportation and manufacturing - allowed James to comment on the use of bricks by the railway companies, citing a 'new engine-house lately finished at the New Cross station of the Brighton line ... [where] ... a tall round chimney, which would otherwise have been an eyesore, has gained great architectural beauty, by a bold coil of red and black bricks running spirally from the bottom to the top of a round yellow shaft.'"50 A few weeks later The Builder reported that the Clock Tower and Engine-House at Epsom, Surrey (also on the Brighton Line?), was to be built of red and white bricks. 'The polychromatic effect of the materials and general proportions promise to make it a conspicuous and agreeable object','51 The Builder said, but the design, by Butler and Hodge of London, was frankly curious. The common factor in these examples is, of course, the railways and, as they began to move building materials cheaply around the country, initially for their own infrastructure, so they enabled bricks of different clays to be bonded course by course into the same building. Thus Suffolk bricks or Ipswich whites found their way to Surrey.

If there was a deterrent to the transportation of brick for building, it would have been felt most strongly in stone-building regions, for quarried stone, unlike brick, was not subject to taxation. There was no need to pay to import a building material already subject to excise duty when a local material was available and free of tax: but if duty was already being paid, railway companies could import materials for their own use at no real cost. Thus the new station opened by the Great Western Railway at Bath Spa (1840) was of stone, whereas that built by William Tite for the Midland Railway at Beeston near Nottingham (I847) was of a yellow brick, unusual in an otherwise red- brick neighbourhood.

The I839 Duties on Brick Act 152 had repealed all such previous legislation and had introduced a flat tax of 5s. Iod. per thousand for bricks not exceeding I5o cubic inches, irrespective of quality. If this size was exceeded, the tax was Ios., and this higher duty was also charged on ornamental bricks. As Edward Dobson commented in 1850 in his Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks,

The new Act is a great boon to the public as well as to the trade, as, in consequence of the removal of the restrictions on shape, bricks may be made to any required pattern; and moulded bricks for cornices, plinths, string courses &c., can be manufactured at a moderate price.'53

The eventual repeal of brick tax in I850154 liberated the brick-making industry and allowed the manufacturing process to suddenly advance with the introduction of steam-drying, wire-cutting and the continuous and tunnel kilns.'55 The 1868 Architects', Engineers' and Building Trades' Directory listed 54 brick and tile makers and 49 brick and tile merchants in London. The result, at least in the housing market, can be seen in the greater use of bricks through the reintroduction of features like the bay window.l56 And where brickwork could be done in one colour, it could as well be done in two or more.

24I




But despite this, Boutcher, in The Builder, saw no future for brickwork in church architecture, claiming that 'the ecclesiastic, having by an Oxford patent galvanized the dead bones of Catholicity, digs up her Gothic shroud, and avers that, with all its grave- begotten uncleanness, to be our national fabric',l57 and brickwork, he felt, could never reproduce Gothic architecture. So eighteen months later, in April 1850, he would have been surprised to read in the ecclesiastics' own journal, The Ecclesiologist, an uncritical notice of Butterfield's plans for a new church in Margaret Street, London:

The founders and the architect of this church are anxious to make it a practical example of what we are very anxious to see tested, viz., constructional polychrome. The material of the building, and of the appended clergy and chorister-houses is to be red and black brick, arranged in patterns, with stone windows and bonding in the church. Internally there is to be a use of coloured marble, which was of course impossible in the middle ages.5

As shown in their 1844 review of St Stephen, Lever Bridge, The Ecclesiologist, speaking for the newly-formed (in I839) and increasingly influential Cambridge Camden Society, did not initially favour brick for church building, seeing it as a mean but nevertheless honest material. In 1841, in the very first issue of the magazine, they had viciously attacked St Andrew the Less, Cambridge, on many grounds, including 'the startling contrast of the red brick and the white quoins of dressed ashlar', declaring that 'there are many arrangements and details in this church which, on every other ground are quite indefensible, even on the score of cheapness.'159 This prejudice reflected the early thinking of the Society which had been expressed in their 1841 guidebook, A Few Words to Church Builders:

Brick ought on no account to be used: white certainly is worse than red, and red than black: but to settle the precedency in such miserable materials is worse than useless.'60

Even though the problem was probably as much to do with the design of the church as with the material, such an attack alarmed a number of dons who, led by Robert Willis, wrote to complain to the Committee, not least of 'the flippant tone in which this paper is written [which] appears to us singularly offensive.' This encouraged The Ecclesiologist to declare that the 'style of architecture and plan of internal arrangement should have been after some approved ancient model','62 an attitude which characterized much of their subsequent thinking (as evidenced in A Few Words to Church Builders) and led to their eventual promotion of All Saints', Margaret Street. Coincidentally, in the same issue they had opined that Christ Church at Streatham was 'so utterly unlike every other ecclesiastical building, that it is by no means easy to describe', and concluded that it was Moorish which, not surprisingly, served to 'express only the spirit of a false religion'.l63 Thus, despite the benefits of its polychromy, Christ Church could never serve as an exemplar.

For The Ecclesiologist to support the building of All Saints', Margaret Street, as a brick church, indicated not so much a change but a consolidation of position. The Ecclesiologist believed in what they termed 'reality'164 in architecture which was no more than a Puginian emphasis on truth: and Butterfield was one of their 'Architects Approved'.'65 Furthermore, the congregation had in 1847 agreed to let the Society (re)build All Saints' as their model church; the church's principal patron, Alexander Beresford-Hope, was a founding member and from 1843 Chairman of the Society;

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and Benjamin Webb, a co-founder (with John Mason Neale) of the Society, had published, as recently as 1848, his own observations of Italian architecture as Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology, or Church Notes in Belgium, Germany and Italy.

To an architect writing today, Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology is a curious book. Webb, who had by now been ordained and was serving as a curate at Brasted in Kent, dedicated the book to Beresford Hope and Neale 'in acknowledgement of their services to Ecclesiastical Science'.166 So not surprisingly there is much reference to the High Church orders and rituals which he much admired, including an account of how he managed, during the High Mass on the Feast of the Assumption on I5 August 1845, to purchase a ticket to sit within two yards of the Patriarch's throne at St Mark's in Venice,167 where 'no language could adequately describe the singular effect produced by the extreme gorgeousness of the ornamentation of the interior.'168 The book is thorough inasmuch as Webb clearly visited a great number of churches, but his observations often seem less architectural than emotive. Churches are always described from the inside outwards which suggests that it was the atmosphere and the nature of the place which he sought first rather than the planning, elevations, construction or materials, points with which contemporary architects, such as G. E. Street, would have started. 69 In a text which is almost 600 pages long there are but a handful of line drawings and few of them are architectural (although they were prepared for the engraver by his friend William Butterfield):170 but as the title implies, the book is more about Ecclesiology or liturgical science than building.

In his bibliography Webb cites Gally Knight and Willis171 and is often led back to the churches they had visited. Although his observation is keener on occasions, rarely does he appear to be moved by the polychromy. In Pisa, Webb visited Sta Maria della Spina and noted, with greater perception than Gally Knight, that it is 'built of black and white marble (in alternating courses) . . . [with] . . . alternate voussoirs of black and white marble' (Fig. 5).172 At the cathedral, he saw that 'the whole of the interior of the church is cased with white marble, striped horizontally with narrow bands of black marble.'173 Only two pages later does he go outside to find that 'externally the Duomo is built of white marble, striped with black in the west front, and is raised on a magnificent platform, reached all round by steps',174 but surprisingly he makes no mention here of the Baptistry, Campanile or Campo Santo, suggesting that what went on inside the cathedral was of more interest than what could be found outside. At Siena, his lukewarm reaction to the coloration was not unlike Joseph Woods' over thirty years earlier:

The Duomo is a very remarkable building ... The internal effect however is very solemn ... and this in spite of the whole interior, piers and all, being built of alternate horizontal courses of black and white marble.175

The flooring, however, he found quite distasteful:

The whole floor is most remarkably ornamented with large pictorial designs executed in white and black marbles interlaid. The subjects are very odd; for example, Hermes Trismegistus and the Sybils. The designs are now much worn. The idea must be condemned because the immediate effect of the perspective designs is confusing and ugly: the spectator must be at a distance, and a considerable height, in order to be able to appreciate the subjects.176

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Eventually he goes outside: 'It is also of white marble, with black horizontal bands'.177 It is worth considering Webb's Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology at length because

in terms of this present study it drew together two dominant themes, Italian architecture and ecclesiology. Although Willis, Gally Knight et al. wrote about Italian medieval architecture with varying degrees of comprehensiveness and accuracy, theirs probably reached a far smaller readership than Webb's book which must have ridden on the back of the forceful and immensely popular moral crusade which The Ecclesiologist, and the Ecclesiological Society itself, generated. Even ifWebb was largely unresponsive to polychromy, except when at St Mark's in Venice, where the high theatre of Roman Catholic ritual seems to have transfixed him,178 he must have established a link, in readers' minds, between Italian medieval architecture and the possibilities of the new Anglo-Catholic Gothic architecture for the second half of the nineteenth century. Whereas his predecessors who had written on the same subject archaeologically had rendered it arcane, Webb, by his enthusiasm and emotional response, made it accessible and possibly even inspirational.

But it was John Ruskin, more than anyone else, who opened up the mysteries of medieval art to a national readership. Although wordy, contradictory and frequently digressive, his writing captivated the architectural debate as the century passed its mid- point. Ruskin did not solicit friends and was taken to task by The Ecclesiologist in their review of the first volume of The Stones of Venice: In noticing, somewhat tardily perhaps, Mr. Ruskin's new work, we shall best consult our own interests, as well as our readers', by abstaining from any lengthened discussion of the continual abuse of the Church of Rome, and, by implication, of the Church of England, in its Catholic aspect, or of the attack upon Mr. Pugin himself, which disfigure this otherwise charming volume. We adopted a similar course in reviewing the 'Seven Lamps of Architecture,' and have seen no cause to regret our reserve.79

Although apparently at variance, the pedagogy of Ruskin, Pugin and the Ecclesiolo- gical Society found common ground in All Saints', Margaret Street. In its extended review of The Stones of Venice, The Ecclesiologist had commended Ruskin for his 'remarks on the difference between construction and ornament, and on the proper nature of the latter'.180 In contrast to the applied polychromy of the Greeks, as evolved

by Owen Jones at the contemporaneous Crystal Palace which, according to van Zanten, 'evoked a singing visual harmonic chord struck by all the colors mixing at a

great distance', the constructional polychromy advocated by Ruskin was to correspond with Nature:

Our building, if it is well composed, is one thing, and is to be coloured as Nature would colour one thing ... Let it be visibly independent of form. Never paint a column with vertical lines, but always cross it. Never give separate mouldings separate colours (I know this is heresy, but I never shrink from any conclusions, however contrary to human authority, to which I am led by observance of natural principles); and in sculptured ornaments do not paint the leaves or figures (I cannot help the Elgin frieze) of one colour and their ground of another, but vary both the ground and the figures with the same harmony ... An animal is mottled on its breast and back, rarely on its paws or about its eyes; so put your variegation boldly on the flat wall and broad shaft, but be shy of it in the capital and moulding; in all cases it is a safe rule to simplify colour when form is rich, and vice versa; and I think it would be well in general to carve all capitals and graceful ornaments in white marble, and so leave them.181

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Fig. 8. All Saints', Margaret Street: William Butterfield,

, 1849-59. Exterior, showing the use of constructional polychromy

Such could have been a specification for All Saints', Margaret Street for, as The Builder recorded, 'the buildings are faced with red bricks, having the arches, string- courses, &c. strongly marked by black bricks, which are also used to produce ornamental forms elsewhere ... The dressings of the church externally are of Yorkshire stone, from near Whitby' (Fig. 8).182 What All Saints' offered was something quite antithetical to the Greeks' use of applied polychromy, where the triglyphs would have stood out from the metopes and the dentils, one from the next. Its message was different: no colour, no building.

When the church was eventually finished in 1859, The Ecclesiologist wrote, 'There has been no church built since the revival of ecclesiastical architecture among us in which we have been more intimately concerned or more deeply interested than in

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this.'183 Yet the intervening decade had witnessed many disagreements and public rows over the church, as Paul Thompson, writing in Architectural History, has recorded.184 But that decade, which shall be the focus of the concluding part of this discussion, also saw the publication of Street's Brick and Marble, the Crimea Memorial Church competition and The Ecclesiologist's lively 'Whitewash and Yellow Dab' debate.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

I am grateful to Ms Catriona Blaker, the Rev. Christopher Ivory, Dr Roderick O'Donnell, Dr Alan Powers, Mr Frank Salmon, and Lady Alexandra Wedgwood for their advice; to the staff of the British Library, the British Architectural Library (RIBA), Lambeth Palace Library, the London Metropolitan Archives, the Society of Antiquaries of London Library, and the Victoria and Albert Museum Prints and Drawings Collection, for their assistance; and to the editor for his support and encouragement.

NOTES

I J. N. Summerson, 'An Early Modernist. James Wild and his Work', The Architects'Journal (9 January 1929), p. 58. This was Summerson's second article and his first for The Architects'Journal. It is ironic that Summerson should eventually succeed Wild as Curator of the SirJohn Soane's Museum. 2 The modern study of Victorian architecture probably started with Kenneth Clark's The Gothic Revival

(1928). 3 I am grateful to Dr Alan Powers for these observations onJohn Summerson's early career. 4 See Summerson, 'Early Modernist', p. 57. 5 David van Zanten, Architectural Polychromy of the 183os (New York and London, 1977), pp. 34-35. 6 Mark Crinson, Empire Building, Orientalism and Victorian Architecture (London and New York, 1996). See also, Mark Crinson, 'Leading into Captivity: James Wild and his work in Egypt', The Georgian GroupJournal (1995), pp. 51-64. 7 J. Mordaunt Crook, The Dilemma of Style. Architectural Ideasfrom the Picturesque to the Post-Modern (Chicago, 1987), p. 124. 8 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 3 vols (Orpington, 1851, 1853, 1853), ii, chap. VI, para. LXXXIX. 9 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps ofArchitecture (Orpington, I849), chap. IV, para. XXXV. io Robert Smirke to his father, Pisa, 22 November 1803, Smirke Papers, British Architectural Library (RIBA). 11 Robert Smirke, 'Account of Some Remains of Gothic Architecture in Italy and Sicily', Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, xv (I806), pp. 364, 365. 12 Ibid., plates XXI and XXII. 13 Sir H. C. Englefield, 'Observations on the preceding Paper respecting the remains of Gothic Architecture in Italy &c.', Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, xv (1806), p. 370. 14 Interestingly, this is a conclusion with which Cresy and Taylor (discussed below) appear to disagree, implying that the upper storey was of a later date. See below, Cresy and Taylor, Architecture, p. 43. 15 Frank Salmon, 'British Architects, Italian Fine Arts Academies, and the Foundation of the R.I.B.A., 1816-43', Architectural History, 39 (1996), p. 78. I6 Sydney Smirke was seventeen years younger than his brother Robert (178I-1867). Both were to win the

Royal Gold Medal for Architecture. 17 Sydney Smirke to his sister Mary, Pisa, Io November 1824, Smirke Papers, British Architectural Library (RIBA). 18 Ibid. 19 Sydney Smirke to his brother Robert, Pistoia, 26 November 1824, Smirke Papers, British Architectural Library (RIBA). Why Smirke should underline 'construction' is intriguing: perhaps he meant nothing more than construction details. 20 That it was novel is perhaps apparent from his comment that, in describing the Veronese architecture of the middle ages, he felt the need for 'a convenient term; the word Gothic having been appropriated to the

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modification of the pointed style, which prevails in our own country.' See Joseph Woods, Letters of an Architect

from France, Italy and Greece, 2 vols (London, 1828), I, p. 235. 2I For example, 'One more church and I have done with the Gothic architecture of Verona ... Before

turning to the modem architecture of Verona, I must just mention to you the three principal tombs of the

Scaligers.' Ibid., pp. 235, 236. 22 Ibid., pp. 225-27. 23 Ibid., p. 229.

24 Ibid., p. 315. 25 Between October I816 and June I8 9, Woods visited, sometimes more than once, Milan, Bologna, Verona, Venice, Florence, Siena, Rome, Ostia, Perugia, Cortona, Arezzo, Modena, Parma, Mantua, Ferrara, Ravenna, Macerata, Naples, Bari, Athens, Malta, Syracuse, Catania, Taormina, Messina, Palermo, Agrigen- tum, Segesta, Pompeii, Paestum, Salerno, Assisi, Pisa, Lucca, Carrara, Genoa, and Turin. 26 Woods, Letters, I, p. 393. 27 I am grateful to Mr Frank Salmon of the University of Manchester for bringing this book, and the

application of colour in some copies of it, to my attention. 28 Edward Cresy and George Ledwell Taylor, Architecture of the Middle Ages illustrated by a view, plans, sections, elevations, and details of the Cathedral, Baptistry, Leaning Tower or Campanile, and Campo Santo, at Pisa ...

(London, 1829), Plates 9. , 9.2, 9.3, lib, IIc, and iId. 29 Ibid., p. i5.

30 Ibid., p. i8. 31 Ibid., p. 54. 32 Ibid., p. 3I.

33 Ibid., pp. 26-27.

34 Ibid., p. 27. 35 Arthur Taylor, 'Remarks on the Gothic Ornaments of the Duomo, Battistero, and Campo Santo, of Pisa', Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, xx (1824), pp. 537-52. 36 Robert Willis, Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, Especially of Italy (Cambridge, 1835), p. iii. 37 Alexandrina Buchanan, 'Robert Willis and the Rise of Architectural History' (doctoral thesis, University of London, 1995), p. 46. 38 Willis, Remarks, p. 140. 39 Willis, Remarks, p. 12 n. 40 The Charter of the Institute was laid before the members by the Secretary, T. L. Donaldson, on 6 February I837. Papers Read 1835-49, British Architectural Library (RIBA). For more on Donaldson and the establishment of the IBA, see Salmon, 'British Architects', pp. 78-80. 41 See the small red pocket-book in which Donaldson noted the membership and proceedings of the Committee. Papers Read 1835-49, British Architectural Library (RIBA), Ig(n). 42 For Donaldson, see Sandra Blutman, 'The Father of the Profession', R.I.B.A. Journal (December 1967), pp. 542-44. For the rest of the Committee see Colvin's Biographical Dictionary of British Architects and the

Dictionary of National Biography. 43 James Stuart and Nicholas Revett, Antiquities ofAthens, 4 vols, 1754 ff. 44 Papers Read 1835-49, British Architectural Library (RIBA), no. 12, p. I; also no. 13. 45 Quoted in OwenJones, An Apologyfor the Colouring of the Greek Court in the Crystal Palace (London, 1854), P. 9. 46 Jacques-Ignace Hittorff, also known as Jakob Ignaz Hittorff, and Karl Ludwig Wilhelm von Zanth were pupils of Charles Percier in Paris and had travelled together in Italy and Sicily in I823-24. Hittorff was elected an Honorary Corresponding Member of the IBA on 25 May 1835, and Zanth on 3 December 1838. See Salmon, 'British Architects', p. 113 n. 133 and pp. Ioo-oI. 47 See Salmon, 'British Architects', p. 96. Salmon also says that Hittorffwas in London to examine the Elgin Marbles for a second time. See p. I I I n. IoI. 48 'Report of the Committee appointed to examine the Elgin Marbles in order to ascertain whether any evidences remain as to the employment of color [sic] in the decoration of the Architecture or Sculpture', Papers Read 1835-49, British Architectural Library (RIBA), no. I8, pp. I7-19. See also Donaldson's notebook, loc. cit. 49 Ibid., no; 18, p. 20.

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50 Ibid., no. I8, p. 21.

51 Ibid., no. I8, p. 2ov.

52 Alfred Bartholomew, Specificationsfor Practical Architecture, preceded by an essay on the Decline of Excellence in the Structure and in the Science of Modern English Buildings; with a Proposal of Remediesfor Those Defects, 2nd edn (London, 1846), chap. LXXXIV. 53 Ibid., para. 683. 54 Ibid., para. 689. 55 Ibid., para. 685. 'The Stuarts of Britain' is a reference to Stuart and Revett. 56 Gottfried Semper, Vorldufige Bemerkungen iber bemalte Architectur und Plastik bei den Alten (Altona, 1834), p. I5. I am grateful to Professor Dick Geary of the University of Nottingham for his translation from the German.

57 Joseph Gwilt, Encyclopaedia of Architecture, Historical, Theoretical and Practical (London, 1842), p. 678, para. 2511.

58 See Buchanan, 'Willis', p. 40. 59 Gwilt, Encyclopaedia, p. 678, para. 2512. 60 Ibid., p. 678, para. 2512. 6I Stefan Muthesius suggests, in The High Victorian Movement in Architecture 1850-1870 (London and Boston, 1972, pp. 20 and 214 n. go), that Pugin used colour reluctantly and that the coloration at Cheadle was the result of Lord Shrewsbury's insistence. Roderick O'Donnell, writing more recently, argues otherwise, quoting Pugin (1844) thus: 'I am half frantic with delight. I have seen such churches with the painting and gilding near

perfect!!!!' See Roderick O'Donnell, 'Pugin as a Church Architect', in Paul Atterbury and Clive Wainwright (eds), Pugin. A Gothic Passion (New Haven and London, 1994), pp. 74-76. 62 I am grateful to Dr Roderick O'Donnell of English Heritage for alerting me to the use of structural

polychromy at the Grange, and to Ms Catriona Blaker, Hon. Secretary of the Pugin Society, for visiting the

Grange and inspecting the brickwork for me.

63 John Newman, 'St. Augustine's, Ramsgate, as a Kentish church', from the transcript of a lecture given to the Pugin Society in October 1996, p. 4. Newman argues in this paper that the knapped flint and stone or brick banding are very much a Kentish tradition. I am grateful to Ms. Catriona Blaker for bringing this paper to my attention.

64 Alexandra Wedgwood (ed.), '"Pugin in his home." A memoir byJ. H. Powell', Architectural History, 31 (1988), p. I94. 65 A. W. N. Pugin, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841), p. I. 66 See Crinson, Empire Building, pp. 28-31. 67 Pascal Coste, Architecture arabe ou monuments du Kaire, mesures et dessines, de 1818 a 1825 (Paris, 1839), colour

plates X, XI and XII. 68 Uncoloured line drawings, on the other hand, did examine details of the buildings. See, for example, plate III, 'D&tails de la Mosquee Teyloun.' 69 Owen Jones, Plans, Elevations, Sections and Details of the Alhambra:from drawings taken on the spot in 1834 by the late M. oules Goury and in 1834 and 1837 by OwenJones, Archt., 2 vols (London, 1842, 1845). The plates seem to have been issued separately, and perhaps singly, between 1837 and I845. 70 Ibid., I, plate XXXVIII.

71 See Nikolaus Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1972), p. 67, n. 22.

72 Henry Gally Knight, The Ecclesiastical Architecture of Italy,from the time of Constantine to the Fifteenth century, 2 vols (London, 1842, 1844), ii, plate V, n.p. 73 Ibid., ii, plate XXXII, n.p. 74 Ibid., ii, plate XXXIII, n.p. 75 Even if this was for reasons of economy, it nevertheless means that those who had not see the buildings in situ had no real conception of their coloration. 76 Crook (Dilemma, p. 280 n. 12) suggests that 'possible models for [the] Wilton church are San Michele, Pavia (T Hope, An Historical Essay on Architecture, 1835) and Santo Carcere, Catania (H Gaily Knight, Saracenic and Norman Remains, I 840, pl. x).' Some of the forms of the Wilton church appeared in T. H. Wyatt's album of travel sketches now in the Yale Center for British Art, New Haven, Connecticut. 77 The Ecclesiologist (February 1844), pp. 86-87.

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78 Thomas James, 'On the Use of Brick in Ecclesiastical Architecture', Fourth Report of the Architectural Society of the Archdeaconry of Northampton (Northampton, 1847), p. 25.

79 Ibid., p. 26. 80 Ibid., p. 29. 8I Ibid., p. 36. 82 For Wild, see Crinson, Empire Building, pp. 98-107; Summerson, 'Early Modernist', pp. 57-62; van

Zanten, Architectural Polychromy, pp. 344-51; and Wild's obituary by C Purdon Clarke, 'James W. Wild', R.I.B.A.Journal (30 March 1892), pp. 275-76. 83 Crinson, Empire Building, p. 98. See also van Zanten, Architectural Polychromy, pp. 345-48. 84 These two churches were All Saints, Botley, Hampshire (1836) and Holy Trinity, Greenwich, Kent

(I838-39). On 14 March 1839 the Rev. N. A. Soames wrote that Wild 'is now building a Church at

Southampton & another in the Isle of Wight' (London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/I7/I43); and on 3 September I840 Wild writes that he has to go down to the Isle of Wight for a committee meeting (London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/I7/I45). This church would be St Stephen, Newport, dated by Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd as 1844 (Hampshire and the Isle of Wight, Harmondsworth, 1967, p. 750).

Wild's obituary (Purdon Clarke, 'Wild', p. 276) says that 'before he was twenty-six [ie. 1840] he had built six churches.' These could include St Lawrence, Southampton, I839-42. dem.; St Cuthbert and St Mary, Barton, Yorkshire, I840-4I; Holy Trinity, Coates, Cambridgeshire, I840-4I; and St Paul, Valetta, Malta, 1839. All the churches, except perhaps Valetta, were in the Norman or Early English style. However Nikolaus Pevsner attributes Barton to Ignatius Bonomi (Yorkshire, The North Riding, Harmondsworth, 1978, p. 72),

although engravings for Barton (and Coates), crediting Wild as architect, are held in the Prints and Drawings Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum (94.J.24). 85 There is no indication of Wild's having travelled abroad before he went to Egypt in 1842. The point, however, is inconclusive. There are a quantity of drawings made by Wild of the Alhambra and of the Alcazan in Seville retained in the Prints and Drawings Collection at the Victoria and Albert Museum (94.J.25) which are all, apparently, undated. Could he have visited Spain in 1839 or early I840, perhaps at the instigation of Owen Jones? His studies of lattice-work (E 3927-I938) and doorways (E 3908-1938, E 39I0-I938) at the Alcazan, could provide a precedent for the 'rose' window at Christ Church, Streatham. 86 Van Zanten says Wild and Jones shared a house between 1846 and I848, and Jones married Isabella Wild in 1848. See van Zanten, Architectural Polychromy, pp. 215-I6 and 349. Crinson, drawing upon Derby, has

Jones and Wild sharing a house in I84I, Jones marrying Isabella Wild in 1842, and Wild returning from Egypt in I847. See Crinson, Empire Building, pp. 98, I07 and 247 n. 2. In March 1839, Soames gives Wild's address as 35 Albermarle Street, London (London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/143). In 1840-42, Wild was

writing from 130 Piccadilly, London. See London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/I39-I5I, etc. 87 See Salmon, 'British Architects', p. 83. 88 In 1835 Basevi won the competition for the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, which established him as a

leading Classicist. 89 Ian Naim and Nikolaus Pevsner, Sussex (Harmondsworth, 1965), p. 429.

90 Purdon Clarke, 'Wild', p. 276. 9I London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/I7/I43. 92 Van Zanten, however, suggests that Wild began the design in 1838. (Architectural Polychromy, pp. 345, 348) He says (p. 345) that 'Three preliminary sketches for the church's facade survive in the Victoria and Albert Museum, one of which is dated 1838.' These presumably are the three sketch elevations, sans tower, in the Museum's Department of Prints and Drawings, nos E 3644-1938, E 3655-1938 and E 3646-1938 (94.J.24). I could not see any date on these drawings and, in any case, Soames's letter to Blunt (London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI / 7/143) would render such an early start highly unlikely. 93 Letter from Wild to Blunt, Io February 1840, London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/I7/139. 94 The Incorporated Church Building Society, ICBS 2698, fols I-2, Lambeth Palace Library. 95 Minute Book of the Incorporated Societyfor Promoting the Enlargement, Building and Repairing of Churches and Chapels, ICBS Minute Books, vol. Io, p. 28, Lambeth Palace Library. 96 Raven's appointment as incumbent of Christ Church was confirmed on I2 March 1840. See London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/i7/61-63. 97 ICBS 2698, fols 1-2.

98 See ICBS Minute Books, vol. Io, for other awards made at that time.

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99 ICBS 2698, fols I-2. For the building contract, dated 27 August 1840, see London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/8I. The contract was for /45 8I I7s. 6d. IOO By i January 1839, Blunt had already raised almost J1,250 through subscriptions, with him andJ. G. Fuller promising kIoo each. See London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/153. See also John Payne, Brenda Hargreaves, Christopher Ivory, Christ Church Streatham. A History and Guide, 3rd edn (Streatham, 1999), P. 5. ioi ICBS 2698, fol. 27. 102 ICBS 2698, fol. 3. 103 ICBS 2698, fol. 5. Wild had, in fact, designed Christ Church using the same seating dimensions as at

Holy Trinity, Greenwich, 34 x 20 inches for pews and 27 x 18 inches for free seats. The regulations at the time Christ Church was designed required 34 x 20 inches and 30 x 18 inches respectively. To conform to this meant a loss of 16 seats. The new regulations, brought in after Christ Church was designed, required both pews and free seats to be 35 x 20 inches, resulting in a loss of 50 seats. The measurements are pew-back to pew-back, by seat width. For further correspondence and accounts regarding pews and pew rents, see London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/3 / I-6.

104 ICBS 2698, fol. 8.

I05 Ibid. Io6 See Good's Reports of gJune and 24June 1840, ICBS 2698, fols II and 17. 107 There is a handwritten comment in the margin of Good's Report of 9 June 1840 saying 'Boards have allowed a smaller space for sittings, in this case.' See ICBS 2698, fol. I. This was minuted by the Board at the Committee meeting of I8 May 1840. See ICBS Minute Books, vol. IO, p. 54. Io8 See ICBS 2698, fols 14, 15, 29. Io9 ICBS 2698, fol. 23. Copy letter at London Metropolitan Archives, P95/CTCI/I7/I35. A very similar letter had been written to HM Commissioners on I5 December 1841, London Metropolitan Archives P95/ CTCI/I7/I36. I o Ibid. I I I The ICBS authorized the release of the J5oo grant on 20 May 1842. See also ICBS Minute Books, vol.

I, p. Io8, and letter from Rodber to Raven, 20 May 1842, London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/ 137. 112 London Metropolitan Archives, P95/CTCI/17/I37. 113 Letter from Good to Raven, 12 January 1842, London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/17/133. 114 ICBS 2698, fol. 27. 115 London Metropolitan Archives, P95/CTCI/17/137. I 6 ICBS 2698, fol. 23. I17 Letter from Wild to Raven, 28 February 184I. London Metrolopitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/148. 118 Letter from Wild to Raven, Thursday 12 May 1841, London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/ 144. I 9 Letter from Wild to Raven, 3 March 1841, London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/I7/15I. 120 Letter from Wild to Raven, 25 September 1840, London Metropolitan Archive P95/CTCI/17/14o. A west elevation (no. III) showing the arched timber cornice is one of seven drawings at the church. They all bear the label 'James William Wild Archt April 9th 1840 130 Piccadilly' and are numbered I to VIII (IV is

missing). This date would be when the drawings were completed. They were subsequently sealed by the ICBS and HM Commissioners and signed by W. J. Rodber (probably for the ICBS), John Thompson (the builder), John Labouchere (Treasurer to the Fund), and S. J. Blunt (Churchwarden). It is likely that these were also used as contractual drawings as part of a building contract dated 27 August I840 between Thompson, Labouchere, Samuel Jasper Blunt andJoseph Hartnell (Churchwarden). London Metropolitan Archives P95/ CTCI/I7/8I. 121 Letter from Wild to Raven, 12 November 1840, London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/17/141. 122 London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/17/I48. 123 Wild is here asking for Italian tiles. Letter from Wild to Raven, 17 March 1841, London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/I49. 124 Wild wrote: 'I wish also that the roof of the Campanile should be built in solid brickwork ornamented like the rest of the church in colored [sic] patterns. - The appearance would be much better than the slate - and it would never require repair --'. See London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/I48.

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125 Wm Boutcher, 'On brickwork', The Builder (2 September 1848), p. 423. 126 On 25 September 1840 Wild obtained prices for 'extra guaged and colored [sic] arches, to the upper side & apse windows'. London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/17/140. 127 Van Zanten, Architectural Polychromy, p. 350. 128 E 3647-1938 (A-244) Prints and Drawings Collection, Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Van Zanten (Architectural Polychromy, p. 347 and plate 129) confusingly dates this drawing as 1840. 129 The following sources are my analysis: van Zanten (Architectural Polychromy, pp. 345-48) suggests others. 130 Jones, Alhambra, I, plate I. 131 Ibid., plate XXXIII. 132 Ibid., plate XX.

133 Coste, Architecture arabe, plate III. 134 Streatham New Church. Arrangements for Consecration and Appropriation of Pews, London Metropolitan Archives P95/CTCI/I7/I67. 135 ICBS 2698, fols 33-34. 136 ICBS 2698, fol. 31. 137 ICBS 2698. 138 Payne, Christ Church, p. 7. 139 See van Zanten, Architectural Polychromy, p. 348, and Payne, Christ Church, p. 13. In a letter to me dated 8 March 2000, the Rev. Christopher Ivory, Vicar of Christ Church, says, 'Jones was clearly paid as architect in connection with the project for the finishing of the church (decorating, heating, ventilating and provision of an organ). It seems unlikely that Jones was picked out of the blue for this. It does suggest that the people concerned knew of his involvement earlier on.' 140 Wild to Wood, 14 December 1841, Borthwick Institute of Historical Research (Hickleton Papers), York, A2.42.5, quoted in Crinson, Empire Building, p. 99. 141 Quoted inJohn Summerson, Heavenly Mansions and Other Essays on Architecture (London, 1949), p. I95. 142 In their review of the second volume of The Stones of Venice, The Ecclesiologists said: 'We must express our regret also that, in this volume as before, Mr. Ruskin takes no notice of the efforts and successes of other architectural writers and thinkers in the same field. He has often been anticipated in many of the principles he lays down, and the arguments by which he enforces them: and we do not think his work would have been less influential, had its general readers been made to understand that the author did not stand quite alone, nor even foremost in point of time, in his onslaughts on many of the false principles of the day.' The Ecclesiologist (December 1853), p. 415. 143 The Preface of The Stones of Venice, I, is signed 'Denmark Hill, February, 185 I.'

144 Ruskin, Stones, i, chap. XXVI, para. IV. 145 On 26 May 1842, Wild signed the receipt for his fifth fee instalment (50o). The two last receipts dated 17 September 1842 (5So) and 7 January 1843 (/65) were signed for him, in his absence, by Margt. Wild [sic]. Wild's total fee for Christ Church was 3340 plus _2 2s. od. expenses. London Metropolitan Archives P95/ CTCI/I7/25. 146 See The Builder (5 September 1846), pp. 421, 426. 147 'All Saints, Knightsbridge', The Ecclesiologist (August 1849), p. 64. 148 James, 'Use of Brick', p. 35. 149 Bartholomew, Specifications, para. 32. 150 James, 'Use of Brick', p. 36. 151 The Builder(I8 September 1847), p. 447. 152 2 & 3 Vict. cap. 24.

153 Edward Dobson, A Rudimentary Treatise on the Manufacture of Bricks and Tiles... (London, I850), part I, p. 8. 154 I2 and 13 Vict cap. 9. 155 See Marian Bowley, Innovations in Building Materials, An Economic Study (Cambridge, 1966), part 2, p. 64. 156 See Neil Jackson, 'Views with a Room: taxation and the return of the bay window to the third rate speculative houses of nineteenth-century London', Construction History, 8 (1992), pp. 55-67. 157 Boutcher, 'On brickwork', p. 424. 158 'All Saints, Margaret Street, London', The Ecclesiologist (April I850), pp. 432-33. 159 The Ecclesiologist (November 1841), p. I I.

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I60 Cambridge Camden Society, A Few Words to Church Builders (Cambridge, 1841), p. 9, para. 15. I6I The Ecclesiologist (December 1841), p. 25. 162 Ibid., p. 27.

163 Ibid., p. 20.

164 Pevsner, Architectural Writers, p. 127. Pevsner here references A Few Words to Church Builders, p. 5, but the reference appears to be incorrect.

I65 The Ecclesiologist, Index, 3 (1844), n.p. Butterfield is listed in the Index under 'Architects Approved' on account of his new church at Coalpit Heath (reviewed on p. 113). R. C. Carpenter and Benjamin Ferrey are also listed under 'Architects Approved', but Charles Barry and Edward Blore are amongst those 'Architects Condemned'. 166 Rev. Benjamin Webb, Sketches of Continental Ecclesiology, or Church Notes in Belgium, Germany, and Italy (London, 1848), p. v. 167 Ibid., p. 274. 168 Ibid., p. 269. 169 See George Edmond Street, Brick and Marble in the Middle Ages, Notes of a Tour in the North of Italy (London, I855). 170 Webb, Sketches, p. xiv.

171 Ibid., p. xviii.

172 Ibid., p. 362. 173 Ibid., p. 354. 174 Ibid., p. 256. 175 Ibid., p. 381. 176 Ibid., p. 382. 177 Ibid., p. 383. 178 Of St Mark's Webb wrote: 'Porphyry, jasper, serpentine and alabaster, verde, and rose antique, and a hundred others, give a truly eastern magnificence; to which art has lent its magic in every conceivable branch.'

Ibid., p. 269. 179 The Ecclesiologist (August I851), p. 275. I80 The Ecclesiologist (October i851), p. 348. 181 Ruskin, Seven Lamps, chap. IV, para. XXXVI. 182 'All Saints' Church, Margaret-Street, Cavendish-Square', The Builder (22January 1853), p. 56. 183 'All Saints', Margaret Street', The Ecclesiologist (June 1859), p. 184. 184 Paul Thompson, 'All Saints' Church, Margaret Street, Reconsidered', Architectural History, 8 (1965), pp. 73-87.

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Documents

Christ Church, Streatham, and the Rise of Constructional Polychromy