Historicizing Iron: Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills Pumping Station (1865-68)

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Historicizing Iron: Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills Pumping Station (1865-68)Author(s): Paul DobraszczykSource: Architectural History, Vol. 49 (2006), pp. 223-256Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40033824 .

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Historidzing Iron: Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills Pumping Station (1865-68) by PAUL DOBRASZCZYK

Victorian architects and architectural theorists made a clear distinction between 'building' and 'architecture'; for them, a building became architecture when historical references were invoked. The development of new constructive materials, in particular cast iron, directly challenged this perceived distinction. A new material possessed no history; how, therefore, could it be architectural? This paper will address this question by focusing on the treatment of cast iron in a particular building - the Abbey Mills pumping station, of 1865-68 (Fig. 3) - assessing, for the first time, the contribution of its architect Charles Driver (1832-1900). By also referring to Driver's published writings, this paper will assess how he sought, in this building, to invest cast iron with architectural, and therefore historical, meaning.

After briefly introducing Driver's architectural oeuvre, the first half of the paper will concentrate on his writings, assessing how he theorized cast iron as a material suitable for architectural treatment. By using principles derived from the influential architectural critic John Ruskin (1819-1900), Driver developed a serious, if eccentric, solution to the perceived lack of historical meaning in cast iron. The paper will assess how this approach both invested iron with historical validity and challenged conventional understandings of the division between engineering and architecture.

By proceeding to focus on the Abbey Mills pumping station, this paper will analyze the practical application of such theories. The profusion of decorative and structural cast iron at Abbey Mills confirms the extent to which Driver was able to work out his radical agenda. Through an analysis of his treatment of its ironwork, this paper will question conventional assessments of such projects, which view them as a form of regressive architectural dishonesty. Within this understanding, 'utilitarian' buildings, such as the Crystal Palace (1850-51), are praised as important precursors to the functional aesthetic of modernism, whereas the many attempts to combine utility and decoration in Victorian industrial buildings are cast as regressive forms of structural deceit.1 Sigfried Giedion went so far as to describe this kind of industrial historicism as a 'contaminating air',2 infecting buildings with a 'decorative sludge'.3 In contrast to these dismissive conclusions, the paper will suggest that Abbey Mills represents the application of a highly individual, yet unified, architectural programme intended to invest cast iron with precisely a history - and paradoxically a sense of modernity - that Giedion so assiduously denied: one that might lead us to question the latter 's dichotomous reading of the relationship between function and decoration.

223



224 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006

AN UNKNOWN VICTORIAN ARCHITECT?

The death of Charles Henry Driver on 27 October 1900 was noted in the architectural press in the form of several extensive obituaries.4 Celebrated as 'a man of very versatile talents'5 and 'a[n] ... authority on ornamental cast ironwork',6 Driver was recognized for both his architectural work and his engineering knowledge, the latter confirmed by his election to the Institution of Civil Engineers (hereafter ICE) as an associate member, on 12 February 1900/ Since his election to the Royal Institute of British Architects (hereafter RIBA) - as an associate in 1867,8 and as a fellow in 18729 - Driver had built up a significant architectural practice, based at offices in Parliament Street (1867-68) and then Victoria Street (from 1872) in Westminster, at that time the heartland of London's architectural and engineering community.10

Most of Driver's work as an architect, both before and after his election to the RIBA, was characterized by a close collaboration between himself and engineers. Such projects included numerous railway stations and bridges in England and later in Brazil, the largest of which is the celebrated 'Station of Light' in Sao Paulo (1897-1900); piers at Llandudno (1878), Nice, and Southend-on-Sea (1887-90); the aquarium and orangery at the Crystal Palace in Sydenham (1869-73; demolished),11 and the cast-iron central market in Chile's capital Santiago (1868-70).12 Among his works as sole architect are a public hall (1871, now the old fire station) and many shops and houses in Dorking;13 the Horton Infirmary in Banbury (1869-72)14 and the restoration and part-rebuilding of St Mary's Church in the nearby village of Warkworth (1868);15 the Ellesmere Memorial in Lancashire (1858);16 and Mark Masons' Hall, in Great Queen Street, London (c. 1870; demolished).17 Before he established his own practice as an independent architect, Driver is recorded in documents at the ICE as having 'assisted ... [the engineer] Joseph Bazalgette [from 1864 to 1866] ... in preparing designs for the masonry and landing stages and the ornamental masonry for the Thames Embankment, and for the pumping stations at Abbey Mills and Crossness'.18

Despite such a comprehensive listing of his projects in his obituaries and nomination papers, much of Driver's work as an architect remains unacknowledged by architectural historians. Born on 23 March 1832, Driver began his career as a draughtsman in the engineer's office of the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers, the administrative body then responsible for London's sanitation; at this time many would-be architects began their careers in this way, as surveyors or draughtsmen.19 In 1852, he took up a similar position with the engineering partnership of Liddell and Gordon; it was here that he worked on his first architectural projects, assisting them in the design of stations on the Leicester to Hitchin Railway, all of which were built in 1857 in an eclectic style mixing Norman and medieval Venetian elements and including elaborate cast-iron platform canopies.20 From i860 to 1863 he worked alongside Robert Jacomb Hood, engineer to the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway, designing stations on the Dorking to Leatherhead line,21 the terminus stations at Portsmouth22 and Tunbridge Wells,23 and all of the stations on the South London Line from London Bridge to Victoria, all built in equally eclectic styles mixing Renaissance and medieval motifs in polychromatic brick and stone with a highly-original treatment of cast iron.24 Driver's early architectural work developed from both his skills as a draughtsman and a close collaboration with engineers.



CHARLES DRIVER - THE ABBEY MILL PUMPING STATION 225

Throughout Driver's career, his consummate skill as a draughtsman is evident in the many watercolour views he produced of his architectural projects. These include: an unexecuted design 'for an interior of a collegiate church7, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1855;25 two views of the Crossness pumping station from 1864;26 a watercolour showing the Horton Infirmary, in 1872;27 and a depiction of the magnificent central station in Vienna, designed in collaboration with the architect Joseph Fogerty (fl. 1855-80), in 1882.28 Driver's versatility as both architect and artist did not go unrecognized in his lifetime, as is indicated in his obituaries. Nevertheless, because he often worked in collaboration with engineers, his significance as a Victorian architect, in relation to some of his more famous contemporaries, remains difficult to assess; in most of his projects, including his work for Bazalgette on the Abbey Mills pumping station, the profile of the engineer took precedence.

THE 'IRON PROBLEM'

The question of the validity, or otherwise, of iron in creating a new architectural style was perhaps the single most important issue confronting architects in the mid- Victorian period, especially after construction of the building by Joseph Paxton (1803-65) for the 1851 Great Exhibition in London, held in Hyde Park. The Crystal Palace, as it came to be known, not only thrust the question of iron architecture into the public sphere but also made a decisive impact on the way in which young architects like Driver would go on to attempt to solve the aesthetic problems posed by this new material.29 Throughout his career, and in common with most contemporaries in his field, Driver was faced with a crucial question as to how to combine traditional building materials with the new possibilities suggested by iron. This question manifested itself in many of his projects, from his early designs for the railway stations on the Leicester to Hitchin Railway in 1857, to the interior of the Abbey Mills pumping station, which was perhaps his most ambitious attempt to realize such a synthesis. Driver's own response to 'the iron problem' is explored here by framing it within the wider context of mid- Victorian architectural debate on this issue.

RUSKINIAN IRON

Many Victorian architects viewed the aesthetic quality of the Crystal Palace as a direct attack on the central tenets of architecture itself. For John Ruskin, their most eloquent spokesman, these offences centred on the question of 'truth' in architecture and on the problematic visual appearance of iron when used as a 'naked' structural or decorative material. According to Ruskin, iron offended the eye because of qualities inherent in its materiality; for him, the thin iron columns that supported the Crystal Palace did not appear massive in the manner of traditional materials such as brick or stone.30 It was, ironically, the characteristic strength of iron that went against Ruskin's emphasis on visible mass and strength in architecture; for him 'the principle of truth demanded that iron should be treated in accordance with its material properties, but the forms which resulted were not liked because they did not look solid'.31 When discussing the use of iron for decorative purposes, Ruskin was even more strident; he calls cast-iron or




machine-made ornament 'operative deceit7,32 condemning it as a 'lie ... an imposition, a vulgarity, an impertinence, and a sin'.33 Such strongly moralistic language stemmed from Ruskin's hatred of industrial society itself, with its division of labour and the resultant absence of handiwork in a mechanized production process.34 If Ruskin compared cast iron with the corrupting influence of an immoral person, it is because he objected to the very basis of the society that produced it.35

It would seem as if such a negative attitude towards iron would be unlikely to appeal to an architect like Driver, who from his very first projects was engaged in using iron in the new building types associated with it. Yet, in his architectural thinking, as voiced in papers presented to the RIBA and the Society of Mechanical and Civil Engineers (SMCE) in the 1870s, Driver engages with Ruskin's views and adopts many of his principles without compromising his embracing of iron as a valid constructive and decorative material. Two papers presented to the SMCE in 1874 and 1879 make liberal references to Ruskin's writings. In his 1874 paper, 'Engineering, its effects upon art', Driver, in defining 'What is art?', draws heavily on Ruskin's own definition in a lecture published as part of The Two Paths (1859).36 Using Ruskin's own words, Driver states that 'the real source of all inspiration in art (or design) is to be found in nature'37 and that art is distinguishable from mere 'manufacture' by the 'manifesting of human design and authority' (emphasis in the original).38

By quoting Ruskin, Driver seeks to invest his own lecture with the weight of Ruskin's considerable authority. At the same time, however, he directly challenges Ruskin's negative views on mechanical reproduction and consequently the use of cast iron in architecture. Discussing 'the good that engineering has done to art',39 Driver argues that the reproduction of art by machines does not change the status of a work of art; rather it distributes its beauty to the many rather than the few. He cites the example of a gardener who disseminates a plant by making cuttings from a single source; for Driver 'the plant or flower has not changed, it is just as beautiful as ever, but instead of pleasing the few it pleases the many'.40 Such an argument, made against the perceived elitism of critics like Ruskin, prepares Driver's audience for his defence of cast iron, taken up more fully in a paper presented to the RIBA in 1875.41 In stark contrast to Ruskin, Driver views cast iron as 'good in itself',42 a 'valuable friend, equal indeed to most other building materials and superior to some; invaluable both for constructive and decorative purposes'.43 Using the analogy of the human body, Driver argues that iron should not be hidden from view by being encased in plaster, as Ruskin had suggested, but should be fully exposed to the eye:

for the flesh is not put on to hide skeleton merely, as the lath and plaster is put on to hide the iron. The skin and flesh and muscle perform most important and necessary functions ... but this is not the case as regards the lath and plaster casing to iron; strip it off and the building stands as well as ever.44 For Driver, acceptance of iron in its 'naked' form requires the retraining of the

observer: the 'eye may require some amount of Education before it becomes accustomed to the use of iron and its employment in connexion with other materials'.45 He asserts his hope that architects, with such education and a willingness to fully engage with iron, 'might produce designs for iron which though not perhaps in accordance with any existing particular style, shall yet harmonize, even perhaps by




contrast, with them'.46 By using examples drawn from nature, Driver attempts to argue the case for iron in almost Ruskinian terms; in his consistent use of iron alongside traditional building materials in his architectural work - in particular at Abbey Mills - Driver attempts to invest iron with the very principles that Ruskin put forward to justify his objection to it.

It is not known what Driver's audience of engineers in 1874 and 1879 would have made of his lengthy references to Ruskin' s writings, as the discussion that followed these lectures is not recorded.47 Nevertheless, that which accompanied his lecture to the RIBA in 1875 was published and presents an instructive example of how Driver's views on iron compare with wider debate on this issue.48 On that occasion his audience was made up of engineers, iron manufacturers, architects and architectural historians: a cross-section of the main parties involved in the debate on iron, which had been evident since the 1840s in similar discussions and in the pages of the architectural and engineering press.49 In this case, the architect Thomas Chatfield Clarke (1829-95) raised the fiercest objections to Driver's defence of cast iron, arguing, in terms that mirrored Ruskin' s, that the 'spider- work constructions' like the Crystal Palace had no beauty or sense of 'repose'.50 The engineer John Dixon countered Clarke's negativity, arguing, like Driver, that architects needed to be educated about the material qualities of iron before anything 'worthy' could be produced.51 It was, however, the iron manufacturers Walter Macfarlane (1817-85), Ewing Matheson and Francis Skidmore (1819-96) who responded most enthusiastically to Driver's passionate defence of cast iron; they all argued that architects needed educating about the manufacturing process in order to achieve the best results;52 Macfarlane went so far as to suggest that manufacturers were better equipped than architects to produce successful designs in cast iron.53 Also present in the audience were two architects who were more ambivalent in their response. George Aitchison (1825-1910), architect of Leighton House (1877-78), expressed pessimism about the possibility of cast-iron ornament ever being beautiful, not because it was immoral, but because iron was expensive, liable to rust, and functioned most successfully in a structural, rather than decorative, capacity.54 In the same manner, Robert Kerr (1823-1904) argued that 'it is not English architects who do not like iron, but the English climate that does not agree with it', the damp air of London being singled out as particularly unsuitable for iron construction.55 Not surprisingly, Driver brought the discussion to a close rather abruptly, giving thanks to all who contributed, but no doubt a little exasperated by the lack of consensus of opinion in his favour.

'the true architect': unifying architect and engineer Aitchison's pessimistic response to Driver's embracing of cast iron is surprising, given that he had earlier expressed more positive hopes for its use in architecture in a lecture he had delivered at the RIBA in 1864.56 Yet, by the time Driver presented his own paper in 1875, many of his fellow architects and theorists had given up hope of iron producing a new style of architecture suited to the Victorian age.57 Rather, Driver's optimism in this regard reflects the attitude of an earlier generation of designers: those associated with Sir Henry Cole (1808-82), known as the Cole Group, who had been




those most active in the rebuilding of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham in south London from 1852 to 1854.58 Among these, the architects Owen Jones (1809-74) and Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-77) nacl been the main spokesmen. For Jones and Wyatt the Crystal Palace was a powerful symbol of progress, suggesting the possibility that iron might produce an entirely new style of architecture in the future,59 reflecting the 'character of the age', that, according to Jones, was defined by a new 'religion of science, commerce and industry'.60 Jones's attempts, in the 1850s, to use iron in combination with other materials reflected his impulse to embrace this new religion.61 Wyatt was equally committed, publishing articles praising the qualities of iron,62 and experimenting with the creation of a new iron style in the interior of Paddington station (1852-54).63 At the heart of these experiments is the desired union of architecture and engineering where, according to the architectural historian James Fergusson (1808-86), 'the one [engineering] is the prose, the other [architecture] is the poetry of the art of building'.64 For Fergusson, there was 'no real line of demarcation between [these] two branches of the building profession', and a future new style lay in the hope 'that the engineers may become so influential as to free the Architects to adopt their principles'.65

Driver, in his published papers, shares these hopes, but is more guarded than Fergusson in any celebration of the influence of engineers on the architectural profession. Like most Victorian architects, Driver shared the belief that building and architecture were two distinct areas, architecture being mere building made 'artistic' chiefly through decoration.66 Whilst praising engineers for their 'honest construction', Driver sees the inability of engineers to think 'artistically' as resulting in 'chaos, as regards to Art'.67 The solution, for Driver, lies in 'Art' being '[the] master directing and guiding Engineering into the right paths' - that is, the reassertion of the primacy of architects over engineers in order to 'educate' engineering.68 The achievement of such a reconciliation of architects and engineers is seen to rest in a figure that Driver terms 'the true architect', who emerges out of his theoretical fusion of both professions.69

In order to illustrate his proposal more fully, Driver included, in his 1879 paper, a diagram (Fig. 1) showing the 'qualifications which the engineer and architect should have in common' with 'the true architect' (perhaps a self-portrait of Driver himself) having 'an equal measure of each'.70 The diagram - with 'the modern architect' on the left and 'the modern engineer' on the right - indicates, by means of horizontal lines, the different qualities pertaining to both, with the respective lengths of the lines corresponding to the measure of each quality. With eight qualifications, the modern architect is seen first and foremost as an artist with very little 'science', while the engineer, with his seven qualifications, is primarily a scientist with 'no art' whatsoever.71 The true architect mediates in all of these categories, and is represented by a strangely off-centre line in the middle of the diagram, with the qualifications of 'truth' and 'utility' providing the central axis around which the other characteristics happily coexist. Such an idealistic vision, expressed in this peculiarly lopsided diagram, represents Driver's highly individual solution to the problem of not only how to unite architectural and engineering practice but also how to synthesize Ruskin's theory of architectural 'virtues' with the Cole Group's embracing of engineering and the new architectural possibilities suggested by iron.




Fig. 1. 'The true architect', in Charles Driver, 'Engineering and Art', Transactions of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society (1879), p. 9 (Reproduced with permission of the British Library, London)

Driver's insistent emphasis on the fusion of the architectural and engineering professions and his synthesis of conflicting views on iron runs counter to the general tenor of the debate on iron in the 1870s, clearly demonstrated in the discussion that followed his lecture to the RIB A in 1875. In one exchange, the engineer John Dixon lamented the fact that architects had little knowledge of the material properties of cast iron, which resulted in designs that were not 'worthy ... of the profession',72 while the architect Thomas Chatfield Clarke responded by castigating the 'hideous monstrosities' erected by engineers, such as the new London Bridge (1824-31), designed by John Rennie (1761-1821) and built by his son.73 In the middle of Clarke's tirade, Dixon interrupted and angrily stated that 'Engineers do not profess to be architects'.74 Such arguments demonstrate the level of hostility that existed between both professions, which had intensified after the construction of the Crystal Palace in 1851 and must have seemed intractable by the 1870s. Driver's idealistic vision of the fusion of both professions and his synthesis of their opposing views, as expressed in 1879, is remarkable given such a situation, but more remarkable still was his ability to translate this vision into practice, to which I now turn in relation to his treatment of the ironwork in the Abbey Mills pumping station.

THE ABBEY MILLS PUMPING STATION

The four principal pumping stations of London's main drainage system - at Deptford (1859-62), Crossness (1862-65), Abbey Mills (1865-68), and Pimlico (known as the Western pumping station; 1870-74) - were, and still are, vital components of London's main drainage system, largely built in the 1860s (Fig. 2) and masterminded by the engineer Joseph Bazalgette (1819-91). Located at strategic points within Bazalgette's



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new system of sewers that intercepted London's waste before it reached the River Thames, these pumping stations raised sewage intercepted from low-lying areas of London to allow it to drain by gravitation into outfalls located outside the city limits. Abbey Mills (Fig. 4; 1865-68) was the last pumping station to be constructed in the first phase of the main drainage project, in the 1860s. It is also architecturally the most extravagant, both inside and out. The first, at Deptford on the south side of the Thames, is a simple, restrained and classical building, the internal cast iron railings being similarly treated. Crossness, also on the south side of the river, marked a dramatic shift in intention; a stylistically eclectic building, clearly designed to impress, the engine- house included a cathedral-like main entrance, a striking campanile-like chimney (now demolished), and elaborate interior decorative ironwork, the centrepiece of which is the central octagonal structure in a mixture of wrought and cast iron. The later and smaller pumping station at Pimlico marks a return to the restrained classical style seen at Deptford. The design features seen at Crossness are continued and developed at Abbey Mills; the decorative octagon is transformed into the building's most striking architectural feature and the internal ironwork is both more unified and more lavishly ornate than at Crossness. The original twin ventilation chimneys, richly ornamented and standing 212 feet high, gave this building a prominence that has consistently attracted public attention; today it still provides a focus for introducing the public to Bazalgette's system.75

When The Illustrated London News depicted Abbey Mills on the occasion of its opening in 1868 (Fig. 3) it showed two dramatically different views of the building: one depicting the flamboyant exterior (top half of page), with its polychromatic facades in a medieval Venetian style, Mansard roof, striking central lantern, and Moorish chimneys; the other the interior (lower half of the page) showing the extraordinary decorative ironwork and parts of the enormous steam engines housed therein (seen in the left and right foreground). One reason for such a dramatic contrast between exterior and interior lies in building regulations that were introduced in London in 1855, which actively discouraged exposed - that is external - cast-iron construction, on the basis of its perceived risk as a fire hazard and the danger of oxidization and decay.76 Another reason, however, relates to the character of pumping stations themselves, a character shared with other new building types in the Victorian period. Railway stations, markets, factories and warehouses all required large, undivided internal spaces that were only achievable through a structural use of iron, which was much stronger in compression than any traditional building material; by contrast, because iron provided the main internal structural support, the exterior of these buildings allowed for a more conventional stylistic treatment in traditional building materials. The engine-houses of pumping stations are a case in point; if the gigantic steam engines housed in the interior spaces needed large undivided spaces both to accommodate their bulk and to allow easy access to their constituent parts, then the exterior - a decorative shell or more properly a 'house' - could be treated very differently without compromising the building's engineering function. Nevertheless, the interior of Abbey Mills (Fig. 3; lower engraving) is clearly much more than simply a 'functional' space made possible by the structural use of iron; it is also extravagantly and, at first glance, unnecessarily, embellished with elaborate decoration. This illustration does not reveal the reasons for




Fig. 3. Page layout, The Illustrated London News, 25 August 1868, p. 161 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)




such decorative flamboyance and how it relates to the building's functional requirements; the rest of this paper will offer possible answers to these questions. First, it will investigate how Bazalgette - as the engineer - viewed Abbey Mills; and second, it will assess what kind of meaning Driver - as the architect - may have intended in his treatment of the decorative ironwork, and how this might relate to his theorization of the same, as outlined in his papers mentioned above.

FUNCTIONAL IRON

The most comprehensive and influential description of Abbey Mills is that by Bazalgette himself,77 who wrote an account of the building that was distributed to the visitors who attended the opening ceremony on 31 July 1868.78 Bazalgette's description is highly detailed, concentrating on the functional aspects of Abbey Mills, which he viewed as not only the most important of the four main drainage pumping stations but also 'the largest establishment of its kind in existence',79 costing an estimated £269,620 (£212,000 for the buildings and £57,620 for the machinery).80 Bazalgette's account describes the seven-acre site (Fig. 4), which is divided up into two portions by the northern outfall sewer 'which passes diagonally across it on an embankment'.81 South- east of the embankment is the engine-house with its adjoining boiler-houses (one of which is extant), workshop and chimneys (demolished in 1940). Other buildings on the site included a coal-store, a wharf for landing coals and a house for the superintendent of the site (extant). North-east of the embankment are the workmen's cottages and a reservoir for water supply to the boilers.82

The remainder of Bazalgette's account focuses on the engine-house, that is, the building that housed the pumping engines and associated machinery. The plan of the engine-house - in the form of a Greek cross (clearly seen on the centre-left of Fig. 4) - was tailored to accommodate the eight enormous cast iron beam-engines, each of 142 horsepower with 37-foot beams and cylinders of 4 feet 6 inches in diameter. These engines, replaced by electric counterparts in 1933, were originally 'arranged in pairs, each arm of the building containing one pair placed parallel to each lengthwise of the arms ... [with] the cylinders ... arranged symmetrically round the centre of the building under the dome'.83 Bazalgette proceeds to describe the spaces of the building largely in terms of their engineering function, a description that corresponds closely with several of the 52 drawings produced in Bazalgette's office for the building's contractor, William Webster, in 1865.84 Drawing number 8 (Fig. 5), a longitudinal section through the engine-house, provides a case in point; according to Bazalgette's description, the four storeys of the engine-house - two below and two above ground - are arranged so as to accommodate the engines and associated machinery, shown on the left-hand side of the drawing in the two above-ground storeys. The incoming low-level sewer conveys its contents to underground wells, shown in the lowest storey, where they are then lifted by rectangular cast-iron pipes into the sewage pumps. From the pumps the sewage is 'forced through cast-iron cylinders 6 feet in diameter, running along the centre of three of the arms of the building' (one of which is shown in the left side of the drawing, along the line marked 'Ordnance') 'into an air vessel in the centre of the building'.85 From there the sewage is lifted into a cast-iron cylinder (shown on the right




Fig. 4. 'Abbey Mills pumping station, buildings, site of intended works/ Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)', drawing no. 1 (Photograph from original held at TWA)

of the drawing, just above the line marked 'Datum'), which is 'carried from the engine- house through the yard into the outfall sewer'.86

Whilst Bazalgette's description of Abbey Mills is precise in its detail, it tells us very little about either the appearance of, or the reasons for, the lavish ornamental ironwork (seen in the centre of the engine-house and in the upper storey in Fig. 5), which




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obviously added enormous cost to the project; Bazalgette's account also makes no mention of Driver's contribution, a fact that, until very recently, has led most historians to ascribe the design to Bazalgette himself.87 Such assessments have been partly redressed by the much-delayed attribution of the design to Driver in the recently published revised edition of Pevsner's Buildings of England series for east London.88 However, neither this nor Bazalgette's account tell us anything about where, in terms of the design, Bazalgette's responsibility ended and Driver's began.89 From the tone of Bazalgette's account, which focuses on the engineering function of the ironwork, one might be led to assume that Bazalgette set down the operational requirements of the building, designing only those parts that related directly to this, while Driver provided the decorative embellishments (given that this was his area of expertise). I adhere to this assumption in my discussion of the ironwork below; but within that discussion it will become clear that differentiating the 'decorative' and 'functional' elements of the ironwork at Abbey Mills is less straightforward than Bazalgette's account suggests; in fact, both tend to fuse into one another. This may confirm the extent of Driver's synthesizing ambition, as voiced in his papers; it also raises many questions - perhaps ultimately unanswerable, given the lack of documentary sources - about the precise nature of the collaboration between architect and engineer.

The following discussion of the treatment of the ironwork at Abbey consists of five sections, focusing respectively on different decorative design features: the lantern; the octagon; the columns; the spandrels, brackets and railings. The final section then explores the relationship between these decorative features and the utilitarian ironwork they embellish. My discussion will also draw on Driver's opinions on the treatment of iron and on the affinity between architecture and engineering, as outlined in his papers, as well as in his architectural schemes concurrent with Abbey Mills.

LANTERN

The most striking feature of Abbey Mills - and one that links exterior and interior - is the ornate dome, or lantern, that spans the crossing at the centre of the engine-house (Fig. 6a). Constructed from a mixture of pre-fabricated cast and wrought iron and timber, and painted to harmonize with the stone and brick exterior, the lantern presents a formidable array of possible precedents. Architectural historians have variously described it as a 'dome like that of an Eastern Orthodox church',90 a 'Byzantine cupola',91 'a Slavic dome',92 or 'almost Russian in appearance'.93 Despite the superficial resemblance of Abbey Mills to a Byzantine church (mainly on account of its Greek-cross plan), this range of non-specific examples fails to take seriously the presence of a coherent decorative programme in the building. The following discussion of the lantern centres on the possibility of more specific models for its design.

The iron components of the lantern were manufactured off-site at an unidentified foundry chosen by the contractor, William Webster, at some stage during the construction of the engine-house, between 1865 and 1868.94 From January to May 1868 the various components of the lantern were delivered to the site, then hoisted and bolted in place.95 The lantern is a highly intricate attempt to combine the use of iron with recognizable decorative forms. It consists of four wrought-iron ribs supporting a




Fig. 6. a: Abbey Mills pumping station, lantern. Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)' ', drawing no. 15 (Photograph from original held at TWA); b: Anon., 'General view of the Abbey Mills pumping station.' Wood-engraved print. The Illustrated London News, 25 August 1868, p. 161 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford); c: 'Proposed University Museum, Oxford: Messrs. Deane and Woodward, architects/ Wood-engraved print. The Builder, 7 July 1855, p. 319 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford); d: Abbott's Kitchen, Glastonbury Abbey, general view (Author's photograph)




steeply-pitched octagonal slate roof, on top of which is a composite of eight windows mirroring the forms seen in the door and dormer windows; above this there is a double-pitched slate roof supported on cast-iron and wooden ribs and topped by a highly ornamental finial and wind-vane, with cast-iron decorative cresting at mid- height. The double-pitched Mansard form of the roof mirrors that of the engine-house as well as the stone caps of the four turrets that flank the lantern.

Octagonal forms are common in the history of architecture, being widely used in the design of towers, tombs and domes from the ancient world to the Enlightenment.96 From the early-nineteenth century onwards, octagonal forms were also used in new building types, particularly markets97 and glasshouses,98 buildings that also represent the first attempts to create architectural forms in iron and glass. In relation to Abbey Mills, the most recent and influential attempt to combine historical forms with modern materials was the University Museum in Oxford (1855-60), by Benjamin Woodward and Thomas Deane (1792-1871) but permeated with a great deal of influence from Ruskin." Significantly, in relation to the Abbey Mills lantern, one of the most original and striking features of the University Museum is the octagonal laboratory (Fig. 6c), set apart from the main building, and directly modelled on the fourteenth-century Abbott's Kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey (Fig. 6d).100 The octagonal design of the laboratory, with its steeply-pitched slate roofs and lantern was purportedly the result of practical considerations, that is, to ensure that 'all noxious operations are removed from the principle pile'.101 The following section discusses, in turn, possible links between Glastonbury Abbey and the Abbott's Kitchen there, the University Museum laboratory at Oxford, and the Abbey Mills lantern.

Glastonbury Abbey was, in Victorian Britain, directly associated with the origins of British Christianity and also regarded as an important site of royal burials; most famously, it was the purported burial site for King Arthur and Guinevere.102 Consequently, it was viewed as a site of foremost national importance, according to one Victorian guidebook, 'the rise and fountain of all religion in Britain'.103 The modelling of the University Museum laboratory directly on the Abbott's Kitchen - the most complete remains of Glastonbury Abbey - represented the transformation of a medieval building into one that could accommodate the requirements of modern science and technology.104 The main drainage pumping stations, in terms of their design, would have required a similar direct relationship between historical models and modern technology (in this case the large-scale pumping machinery). In this regard, the Abbott's Kitchen at Glastonbury, in the light of its successful adaptation in the Oxford Museum laboratory, would have seemed an appropriate model for their design.

In relation to Abbey Mills, there is another important factor that would have reinforced the appropriateness of the Abbott's Kitchen as a model. The pumping station was built on part of the site of another ancient abbey in West Ham, the Abbey of Stratford-Langthorne, largely destroyed in the reign of Henry VIII.105 A description of the Abbey of Stratford-Langthorne, published in 1863 by the local vicar, the Reverend R. N. Clutterbuck, indicated that there was also a large church on the old abbey site, of cruciform plan like Abbey Mills (albeit in the form of a Latin rather than Greek cross), which by then consisted only of a few ruined arches, supposedly embedded in the walls of the nearby Adam and Eve public house.106 Indeed, in 1897




Edward Walford located this ancient abbey in direct relation to the Abbey Mills pumping station, commenting that the latter occupied 'about seven acres of the ground once covered by Stratford Abbey'.107 It would seem that, largely thanks to the propagandizing of the Reverend Clutterbuck, the fragmentary remains of the ancient abbey were well known amongst the local population in the 1860s and thereafter.108 This lends weight to the possibility that Driver, given his high degree of visual literacy, was aware of proximity of the ruined Abbey of Stratford-Langthorne to the pumping station and consequently was able to justify the references to Glastonbury Abbey in the design of the lantern on associational grounds. In short, with the variety of associational possibilities outlined above - the name of the pumping station and its location on part of the site of the ruined Abbey of Stratford-Langthorne and the interconnecting links between the University Museum laboratory in Oxford and the Abbott's Kitchen at Glastonbury Abbey - it is possible that the octagonal form of the laboratory and its original precedent suggested pertinent models for the both the form and function of the lantern at Abbey Mills.

The original double lantern of the Abbott's Kitchen (Fig. 6d), with its three-level pitched roof, compares closely, in terms of its geometry, proportions and function, with the lantern at Abbey Mills (Fig. 6b). The four turrets that flank the Abbey Mills lantern also resemble the compositional arrangement of the reconstructed 'chimneys' in the laboratory of the University Museum, Oxford. Furthermore, the Abbey Mills lantern was altered during construction, increasing its resemblance to the Abbott's Kitchen. The changes made are clearly illustrated by comparing Figure 6b (the finished building as shown in 1868) with Figure 6a (the original design depicted in the 1865 contract drawings). For some unknown reason, the height of the lantern was increased during construction; it was raised up on vertical iron plates with a section of pitched roof added above the level specified in the contract. The vertical plates were then covered in slates and ornamented with a zigzag stencilled pattern. The addition of ornamental cast-iron gargoyles (for drainage) also adds a medieval character to the lantern, one not proposed in the original contract (Fig. 6a).

The most convincing evidence for the validity of this comparison is the perceived fusion of function and form in these kitchen structures, explicitly drawn upon in contemporaneous commentary on the University Museum laboratory. Despite the fact that its ventilating function is never explicitly stated by Bazalgette, the lantern at Abbey Mills - with its symbolic associations with medieval kitchens, its position in the centre of the building surrounded by the sixteen louvered dormer windows in the roof (explicitly for ventilation purposes),109 and the alterations made during construction -

suggests that its function was both to draw up the fumes generated by the engines inside the building and to bring in a copious amount of light. These twin tenets of ventilation and light were key principles not only in the design of the University Museum laboratory in Oxford but also in the wider sphere of sanitary improvement in the mid-Victorian period;110 the functional and symbolic role of the lantern, made clearer in the alterations carried out during its construction, closely articulates these principles.

The arguments made in this section for a specific model for the Abbey Mills lantern presuppose the input of a literate architect familiar with both the properties of iron and



24o ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006

relevant precedents for its octagonal form. If the suggested model for the lantern is correct, it points to Driver's high level of visual literacy in selecting appropriate historical precedents for its design; it also demonstrates his controlled synthesis of both these precedents and original forms, as well as traditional and new architectural materials: themes that set the scene for his treatment of cast iron in the interior spaces of the building.

OCTAGON

Directly beneath the lantern in the interior of Abbey Mills is a striking octagonal arrangement of twelve ornamental cast-iron columns and entablatures, filling the central area of the building on the ground floor (Fig. 7a). This octagonal structure is developed from a similar feature employed at Crossness, but it also follows the precedents set by the interior spaces of certain market halls and glasshouses.111 The structure supports both the packing floor - now removed, but originally consisting of a gallery on the intermediate level between the ground and first floor - and the beam floor above: a larger, galleried space with ornamental cast-iron railings throughout framing the openings for the beams of each of the eight engines. The internal octagon functions both as a structural support for the different levels of the building above and also as a showpiece for the ornamental possibilities of cast iron. To contemporaneous commentators, the octagon - enhanced by the raised stars in the arches, the massive columns and the Greek-cross plan of the building - strongly resembled the interior of a Byzantine church.112 It is not known whether Bazalgette or Driver specified the cruciform plan of the building; the former would have viewed such a plan-shape as ideally suited to housing the eight steam-engines; the latter would have understood the explicit connexion between the Greek-cross plan and popular notions of the Byzantine. Nevertheless, the fact that some commentators clearly ascribed a Byzantine character to the building generates questions about a possible correspondence in intention, even if that intention, and its originator, cannot be specified. The remainder of this section will assess the validity of such a hypothetical intention on Driver's part.

The developing interest in and popularity of Byzantine, or early Christian, art in the Victorian period has been recently reappraised by J. B. Bullen.113 He suggests that mid- Victorian interest in Byzantine architecture was, on the one hand, indicative of a general trend amongst architects in the 1860s towards stylistic eclecticism stimulated by an increasing knowledge of the history of art and, on the other, based on the particular associations generated by the Byzantine itself. For Ruskin, the Byzantine style, particularly as seen in Venice, at once represented a transition from the classical to the Gothic style114 and a fusion of western and eastern forms.115 Likewise, Jones argued that in Byzantine art 'various schools have combined to form its peculiar characteristics',116 including Celtic, Lombard, and Arabic elements.117 This popular notion of the Byzantine as a hybrid and transitional form - a synthesis of multifarious elements - would have appealed to architects like Driver who were searching for a way of accommodating the new forms generated by iron with traditional materials such as brick and stone. It also generated a breadth of interpretations as to what exactly constituted the Byzantine, as is revealed most clearly in features of the Byzantine and




Fig. 7. a: Abbey Mills pumping station, engine-house, interior, centre pillars and entablature, elevation. Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Engines (1864.)', drawing no. 12 (Photograph from original held at TWA); b: 'Elevation ofthefagade of the Byzantine Court', in Matthew Digby Wyatt and John Burley Waring, The Byzantine and Romanesque Court in the Crystal Palace (London, 1854), p. 52 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)




Romanesque Court (Fig. 7b), designed by Matthew Digby Wyatt and Charles Fowler (1791-1867) as one of a series of architectural courts in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham (1852-54). Wyatt's description of the court emphasizes the hybrid quality of the Byzantine and also its source in the Greek-cross plan.118 The court itself consisted of a bewildering array of casts, drawn from Germany, Italy and Britain, and reflecting 'a particularly eccentric view of the Byzantine style'.119 From the mid-i85os onwards it was also one of the most accessible representations of the Byzantine, widely known amongst both public and professionals alike.

The octagonal arcaded structure in the centre of the interior of Abbey Mills corresponds closely with the Byzantine Court in both its appearance and in its eccentric fusion of different elements. The round arches, decorated with rope moulds and stars, the entablatures punctured by naturalistic ornament, and the massive, richly ornamented columns mirror the forms used in the Byzantine Court. The popular sense of the Byzantine as a transitional style is also reflected in Driver's opinions on iron: for him, iron was 'Byzantine' in that it suggested the possibility of a new style of architecture, so that the perceived transitional nature of the historical Byzantine offered a valid precedent. Therefore, the appropriation of the Byzantine in the interior of Abbey Mills - whether intentional or otherwise - can be seen to have a dual function: first, to produce forms suggestive of a new style; and second, to propagate iron as a material fit for 'noble' architectural treatment. Both of these aims relate strongly to Driver's passionate defence of the artistic potential of iron, as seen in his papers, and its key role in the development of a new style of architecture.

COLUMNS

An examination of the columns that make up the most striking part of the octagonal structure (Fig. 8a) provides more specific evidence of Driver's ambitions with regard to cast iron. The columns are composed of distinct castings bolted together: the octagonal masonry base is linked to the cylindrical cast-iron shaft by means of an intervening subsidiary base of square-plan; the lower splayed part of the cylindrical shaft also continues this sense of transition; and the elaborate capitals are separately cast and bolted onto the shaft. Encouraged by Ruskin's promotion of the use of decorative spurs on column bases,120 this method of smoothly linking different geometric forms was a popular device employed by contemporaneous architects such as William Butterfield (1814-1900) to imbue columns with an immediately visual sense of structural strength and unity.121 The unnecessary thickness of the columns at Abbey Mills (in terms of what was required for their structural function) also suggests an attempt to imbue iron with a reinforced sense of visible strength. These thick columns counteract Ruskin's objection to the inadequate sense of visible strength that he saw in the thin iron columns of the Crystal Palace.122

The column capitals also indicate a familiarity, on Driver's part, with ideas of Ruskinian virtue. The lower part of the capital is based on the Greek motif of the Acanthus leaf, albeit rigidly conventionalized; while the upper part, with its distinctive reversed lilies set within a spiral formation, is probably an attempt to imitate the capitals of the Doges Palace at Venice, illustrated in The Builder in 1851.123 Ruskin




Fig. 8. a: Abbey Mills pumping station, engine-house, interior, column in octagon. Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)', drawing no. 35 (Photograph from original held at TWA); b: Crossness pumping station, 1862-65, engine-house, interior, column in octagon (Author's photograph); c: 'Iron lamp, recently set up in Holborn: designed by Mr. Chas. H. Driver/ Wood- engraved print. The Builder, 25 August 1868, p. 604 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford); d: Battersea Park railway station, 1866, column supporting platform canopy (Author's photograph); e: Battersea Park railway station, 1866, booking hall, interior columns (Author's photograph)




described the Doges Palace as 'the central building of the World', being a synthesis of 'the Roman, the Lombard, and Arab' styles.124 The elevated status of these capitals, as well as their hybrid quality (both pointed out by Ruskin), serves, paradoxically, to imbue the cast-iron capitals of the Abbey Mills columns with a form of Ruskinian virtue. This explicit attempt to 'Ruskinize' the cast-iron columns - by enhancing the visual expression of their strength and enriching them with naturalistic motifs - corresponds with the arguments outlined in Driver's papers, ones that call for just such a treatment of cast iron.

Further evidence is provided by the treatment of columns in Driver's other architectural projects. The cast-iron columns in the interior of the engine-house at Crossness (Fig. 8b) employ a similar pier-base, as well as elaborate foliated capitals, the latter derived from the columns used at Victoria Station (1860-61), the terminus building for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway,125 on which he had worked. The cast-iron columns used by Driver in his stations for the same railway company show a similar highly individual treatment (Fig. 8d), with a complex variety of geometric forms in their shafts and bases. Those used in the booking hall at Battersea Park station (Fig. 8e) are arranged in an arched formation not dissimilar to that seen in the octagon in the interior of Abbey Mills, while their elaborately splayed bases and foliated capitals and paintwork feigning marble also mirror the eccentric features of the individual columns in the octagon.126 The formal possibilities of iron columns was exploited most fully by Driver in his design for an elaborate gas lamp, erected in Holborn in August 1868 at the boundary between the Cities of Westminster and London (Fig. 8c).127 With its octagonal cast-iron base - similar to a stone pier-base used by Butterfield in his restoration of Mapledurham Church (1862-64) - and foliated caps rising to a central column of clustered shafts with a crested and foliated capital, this lamp lavishly displays the decorative potential of cast iron, drawing on Ruskinian notions of beauty and strength. The eccentric treatment of the columns in the interior of Abbey Mills corresponds closely with Driver's consistent attempts to produce new forms from cast iron and to elevate its prosaic status by an ornamental treatment paradoxically derived from Ruskinian principles and confirmed in his papers.

SPANDRELS, BRACKETS AND RAILINGS

Driver also exploits the decorative potential of iron in the spandrels and brackets seen throughout the internal space. All these are primarily structural features: the spandrels provide lateral support for the roof girders while the brackets support the beam gallery. The triangular space within the spandrel, however, is also used as an opportunity for decorative enrichment, in both the lower part of the roof structure (Fig. 9a) and in the supporting brackets (Fig. 9b). With their arboreal motifs and serpentine forms, the brackets and spandrels once again embody Ruskin's definitions of noble ornament. For Ruskin, all good ornamentation was 'arborescent', in that 'one class' of ornament should 'branch out of another' establishing a simple, obvious relationship of parts to the whole.128 In his sole attempt to apply this theory to iron, Ruskin designed a spandrel for the interior of the University Museum in Oxford, with highly naturalistic horse chestnut leaves and nuts forming the principal motifs (Fig. 9c). The spandrel was




Fig. 9. a: Abbey Mills pumping station, engine- house, interior, cast-iron spandrel in roof girder. Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)', drawing no. 37 (Photograph from original held at TWA); b: Abbey Mills pumping station, engine-house, interior, cast-iron bracket supporting grille floor. Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)', drawing no. 37 {Photograph from original held at TWA); c: John Ruskin, design for an wrought iron spandrel for the interior court of the University Museum, Oxford, c. 2855, in Henry Acland and John Ruskin, The Oxford Museum (London, 1996; original 1859), p. 89 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford); d: Wellingborough railway station, Northamptonshire, 1857, cast-iron spandrel supporting platform canopy (Author's photograph)




acceptable to Ruskin only because it was made of wrought iron and was handmade, not machine-made, and was therefore, according to his principles, capable of noble treatment. Unfortunately the spandrels, together with the rest of the ironwork, had to be modified due to their structural weakness.129

From the start of his career, Driver employed iron in spandrels in a very different way. Using only cast iron, his spandrels at Wellingborough station (1857; Fig. gd), consisted of vine leaves set within a conventionalized arabesque form, showing a much greater unity of form and function than did Ruskin' s equivalent attempt. The spandrels used by Driver in the London Bridge train shed (c. 1866; Fig. 10a) are more geometric in character, while those at Leatherhead station (c. 1867; Fig. 10b) are highly individual and florid (and repeated in all of his stations for the South London Line). The profuse decoration of the spandrels and brackets at Abbey Mills, with both vine leaves and conventionalized flowers set in geometric serpentine forms, mirrors Driver's earlier treatment of these features. Such an approach followed Ruskin' s dictum that all ornament should flow from a common source in a 'branching' arrangement, a point reiterated by Driver himself in his 1875 paper to the RIBA.130 But Driver's approach also draws on similar advice offered by Owen Jones in The Grammar of Ornament (1856) and demonstrated practically in Jones's iron buildings of the 1850s, in particular his design for a shop front in 1850 (Fig. 10c).131 Jones, like Ruskin, called for ornament that flowed 'out of a parent stem',132 but, unlike Ruskin, argued that it should be set within a 'geometrical construction'.133 The decorative treatment of the spandrels can be seen to represent an attempt to unify these divergent views. Part of the reason for a conventionalized treatment of cast iron lay in its peculiar properties as a material and in the logistics of the casting process; but another part relates to Driver's awareness of divergent theoretical points of view and his impetus towards the synthesis of both. The spandrels in the interior of Abbey Mills, fusing form and function, point once again to Driver's overarching aim of synthesis: bringing together the respective poles of engineering and art.

The interior of Abbey Mills displays perhaps the largest number of different cast- iron forms in any of Driver's projects, including - in addition to those already outlined above - repeated motifs of roses, cones and leaves; spiral columns with foliated bases and caps in the railings of the beam gallery (Fig. 11a); striking roundels containing the coats of arms of the Cities of London, Westminster, Colchester and Guildford, and of the Counties of Essex and Kent (the main sponsors of the main drainage system) surrounded by extravagant lilies (Fig. 11b);134 and the stiff-leaf forms of the original railings of the packing floor, now demolished (Fig. 11c). The sheer abundance of natural forms in the interior - whether in the octagon, on the iron columns, or on the spandrels, brackets and railings - suggests the possibility that Driver might be positing a more direct correlation between sewage and natural abundance. In a lecture given to the SMCE on 19 December 1878, Driver summed up recent developments in engineering practice, drawing particular attention to the subjects of water supply and sanitation. Surprisingly, Driver calls into question the design of Bazalgette's main drainage system, which he viewed as making impossible the recycling of the London sewage as an agricultural fertilizer.135 Enthusiasm for sewage utilization was common in mid-Victorian Britain and was consistently put forward as a solution to the problem




Fig. 10. a: London Bridge railway station, c. 1866 , train shed, cast-iron spandrel supporting roof truss (Author's photograph); b: Leatherhead railway station, 1865-67, cast-iron spandrel supporting entrance canopy (Author's photograph); c: design for a shop front of Mr Chappell's house in Bond Street, London, 1850, in The Journal of Design and Manufactures, 4 (September 1850), p. 13 (Reproduced with permission of the Bodleian Library, University of Oxford)




Fig. 11. a: Abbey Mills pumping station, 1865-68, engine-house, interior, railings in first-floor gallery (Photograph with permission of Quintin Lake)', b: Abbey Mills pumping station, 1865-68, engine-house, interior, railings in first-floor gallery (Author's photograph); c: Abbey Mills pumping station, engine-house, interior, railings in packing floor (demolished). Lithographed print in TWA, Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)' , drawing no. 35 (Photograph from original held at TWA)




of human waste disposal.136 By 1878, however, following the failure of many high- profile schemes that intended to recycle London's sewage, most enthusiasts had given up hope of ever achieving this.137 The fact that Driver continued to assert the recycling imperative at this moment suggests that for him this was a long-held view. Consequently, the abundance of natural forms in the decoration of Abbey Mills, designed some ten years earlier, and their inclusion of agricultural as well as horticultural examples may suggest a more direct and personal association between this abundant naturalism and the possible agricultural usefulness of the vast amounts of sewage that passed through the pumps every day. It might even be suggested that the interior of Abbey Mills proposes not only a new style for architecture, uniting the fragmentary disciplines of engineering and art, but also a new way of living for a new civilization, based on the unification of man and his wastes.

The profusion of iron forms that Driver generated in the interior of Abbey Mills can be put into perspective through comparison with important examples designed by others in his field. Driver himself acknowledged, in 1875,138 that his approach to cast iron was very different from the influential precedents set by Matthew Digby Wyatt at Paddington Station (1852-54) and by Francis Skidmore in the interior of the University Museum, Oxford (1855-60), both of which attempted to generate entirely new decorative forms out of iron.139 Instead, Driver's predominantly historicist approach to cast iron reflects a change in taste in the 1860s, which now emphasized a synthesis of iron with more traditional building materials, such as brick and stone.140 Both Francis Fowke's (1823-65) buildings for the International Exhibition of 1862 and George Gilbert Scott's (1811-78) Midland Hotel (1865-74) were important contemporaneous architectural projects that used iron alongside brick and stone, Fowke's interior ironwork also using similarly 'Byzantine' forms to those seen in the octagon at Abbey Mills.141 The singularity of Driver's treatment of the ironwork at Abbey Mills lies not only in the sheer range of forms that he produces - far more than Fowke had attempted in 1862 - but also in the way in which his approach directly corresponds to that stated in his papers: a correspondence that cannot be said to exist between Scott's writing and practice in relation to iron.142 The ironwork at Abbey Mills demonstrates the extent to which Driver was aware of, and able to employ, the fullest range of historicist and hybrid forms then possible in cast iron, demonstrated most dramatically in the catalogues of iron manufacturers like Walter Macfarlane, who attended Driver's lecture in 1875 and worked closely with him on many of his projects concurrent with Abbey Mills.143

conclusion: decoration and function The foregoing discussion of the ironwork at Abbey Mills has focused on the elements that can be termed 'decorative' (the parts assumed to have been designed by Driver); yet these are only constituent parts of a greater whole. The contract drawing showing the interior of Abbey Mills (Fig. 5) clearly shows that a more utilitarian approach is adopted for the components of the roof trusses (top of image), the steam engines (left), and the sewers below ground (centre left). This may have been partly the result of time and cost limits, and partly due to the engineering function of these elements, which




would have been compromised by the addition of decorative elements; but it was also partly a consequence of Driver's emphasis on synthesis. If, in his papers, he expressed the hope that architects might produce a style for iron that would 'harmonize, even perhaps by contrast' with other building materials, then perhaps this apparent disjunction between decoration and function might be another facet of his synthesizing ambition.144 If so, what can we say about the relationship between the decorative and functional ironwork in the interior of Abbey Mills?

Historians of the Modern Movement, such as Sigfried Giedion, have focused on the progressive and perceived proto-Modernist qualities of a utilitarian use of iron in the mid-Victorian period, castigating any attempts to decorate iron as a form of regressive historicism (a failure of nerve on the part of the architect or engineer). In relation to Abbey Mills, Bazalgette's account of the building, with its concentration on the utilitarian aspects of the ironwork, seems to provide a justification for such views; yet it also conceals the important contribution of Driver, and consequently any aesthetic considerations involved in the design process. It has been precisely the aim of this paper to uncover those considerations, albeit - given the lack of concrete documentation as to the extent of Driver's role - within a largely speculative framework.

What is clear from Driver's papers, and from the treatment of the ironwork at Abbey Mills, is that he viewed utility as a primary problem in relation to iron, and its decoration as a modern solution to this problem. For Driver, and many others in his field, utility possessed no meaning in itself, that is, lacked any aesthetic quality required to make it 'architectural'.145 For Driver, a synthesis - by contrast or otherwise - of utility and decoration was ̂ n important part of both his theorizing and his architectural treatment of iron. Thisvis clearly demonstrated both in his papers and in the ironwork at Abbey Mills. In effect, Driver creates a hybrid or transitional iron style that synthesizes a host of contrasting elements: first, a sense of Ruskinian nobility; second, opposing views on naturalism and conventionalism in architectural ornament; third, personal and historical forms within a 'Byzantine' sense of transition and hybridism; and fourth, the seemingly intractable poles of engineering and architecture. Paradoxically, such hybridism also breaks down any sense of a dichotomous relationship between decoration and utility, as proposed by Bazalgette and, later, so vehemently stressed by Giedion. In my discussion of the ironwork at Abbey Mills, I stressed that the lantern, octagon, columns, spandrels, brackets and railings possess both a utilitarian and symbolic function; form and function are fused together in a controlled, if eccentric, form of synthesis. In the interior of Abbey Mills, Driver, acting as the self-defined 'true architect', clearly demonstrates that both contrast and synthesis were to be key elements in any modern treatment of iron. This being the case, how might such a treatment challenge conventional understandings of what constitutes modernity in design?

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS This paper forms part of doctoral research into the planning, construction and reception of London's main drainage system completed in March 2006, and generously supported by




Jonathan Vickers bursaries in 2003 and 2004. I am grateful to Barrie Bullen, Paul Davies, John Elliott and Chris Pierce for their invaluable comments on earlier drafts of this paper. Thanks also to Robin Winters for allowing me unrestricted access to Abbey Mills and archival material located there and to Quintin Lake for permission to use his photographs of the building. For information on Charles Driver I am particularly grateful to Bryce Caller, Roddy Dewe, Nick Driver, Paul Driver, Michael Dunmow, Joseph Mordaunt Crook and Lucy Porten.

ILLUSTRATIONS

All illustrations, unless otherwise stated, are reproduced with permission of Thames Water pic.

NOTES

1 See Sigfried Giedion, Space, Time and Architecture: the Growth of a New Tradition (Cambridge, Mass., 1941), pp. 184-90; and Nikolaus Pevsner, Pioneers of Modern Design: from William Morris to Walter Gropius, 3rd edn (Harmondsworth, i960; original 1936), pp. 132-34. 2 Sigfried Giedion, Building in France, Building in Iron, Building in Ferro-Concrete (Leipzig, 1928; Eng. trans., J. Duncan Berry: Santa Monica, 1995), p. 99. 3 Giedion, Building in France, p. 132. 4 Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 7, 10 November 1900, p. 22; 'Obituary: Mr. C. H. Driver', The Builder, 10 November 1900, pp. 423-24; and Minutes of Proceedings of the Institute of Civil Engineers (hereafter MPICE), 143 (1900), pp. 341-42. Driver was survived by his wife Caroline (nee Kempster; b. 1837) and his six children: Margaret (b. 1862), Charles (b. 1863), Harry (b. 1865), Amy (b. 1867), Walter (b. 1870) and Ernest (b. 1872). I am grateful to Michael Dunmow for this information, obtained from the 1881 census records. 5 The Builder, 10 November 1900, p. 423. 6 MPICE, 143 (1900), p. 341. 7 'Candidate Circulars', session 15 (1900), pp. 6-7, no. 238 (Institution of Civil Engineers, London (hereafter ICE)). 8 'RIBA Nomination Papers A', 4 (24 January 1867), p. 37 (British Architectural Library, London (hereafter BAL)). 9 'RIBA Nomination Papers F', 4 (19 January 1872), p. 114 (BAL). 10 Alison Felstead, Jonathan Franklin and Leslie Pinfield, Directory of British Architects, 1834-1914, 2 vols (London, 1993), 1, pp. 562-63. 11 Jan Piggott, Palace of the People: the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, 1854-1936 (London, 2004), p. 128. For Driver's opinions on the design of aquaria, see 'Aquaria and their Construction', The Builder, 4 March 1876, pp. 212-13, aRd 11 March 1876, pp. 243-44. 12 See 'New Market for Santiago', The Architect, 3 April 1869, pp. 179-80. On the Santiago market also see M. S. Higgs, 'Iron Architecture in Britain and America (1706-1880), with Special Reference to the Development of the Portable Building' (doctoral thesis, University of Edinburgh, 1972), p. 85. Photographs of the market held at the BAL show that the building was prefabricated in England and reassembled in Santiago from 1870 to 1872. 13 Nikolaus Pevsner, Bridget Cherry and Ian Nairn, Buildings of England: Surrey (New Haven and London, 2002), p. 196. 14 Nikolaus Pevsner and Jennifer Sherwood, Buildings of England: Oxfordshire (Harmondsworth, 1979), p. 438; and 'The Horton Infirmary, Banbury', The Builder, 10 August 1872, p. 625. On the history of the Horton Infirmary, see Mary Cheney, The Horton General Hospital, a Record of 100 Years of Service, 1872-1972 (Banbury, 1972); Malcolm Graham and Laurence Wates, Banbury: Past and Present (Stroud, 1999), p. 95; and William Potts, A History of Banbury: the Story of the Development of a County Town (Banbury, 1978), pp. 301-03. 15 Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, Buildings of England: Northamptonshire (Harmondsworth, 1973), p. 444. 16 'The Ellesmere Memorial, Worsley, Lancashire', The Builder, 6 November 1858, p. 746. 17 MPICE, 143 (1900), p. 342. 18 'Candidate Circulars', session 15 (1900), p. 6, no. 238 (ICE).




19 Peter Booker, A History of Engineering Drawing (London, 1979), pp. 133-34; and Dale Porter, The Thames Embankment: Environment, Technology, and Society in Victorian London (London, 1998), p. 173. 20 Gordon Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings: an Oxford Gazetteer of Structures and Sites (Oxford, 2003), pp. 65, 265, 275 and 279-80. Many of these stations, all of which were built in 1857, still survive: Southill and Cardington stations in Bedfordshire are now private houses; Oakley station, and its adjoining goods shed and office, is a commercial property; Wellingborough and its adjoining buildings are still in use as a station and have been recently restored; Kettering is also in still in use as a station and retains its original ironwork by Driver but the building is much altered; Glendon, Rushton, and Desborough stations in Northamptonshire are private houses. 21 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, pp. 106-07, aRd 'The Leatherhead and Dorking Railway', The Illustrated London News, 24 August 1867, pp. 201-02. The overtly ornamental stations on this section of the Leatherhead to Horsham line - Leatherhead, West Humble (or Boxhill), and Dorking - were designed to appease the local landowner, Thomas Grissell (1801-74), who did not want the new railway to spoil the natural beauty of this part of the North Downs. 22 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, p. 81. Portsmouth Station, built in 1866 and still extant, was a shared terminus for the London, Brighton and South Coast Railway and the London and South Western Railway. 23 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, p. 103; and John Newman, West Kent and the Weald (London, 2000), p. 582. Tunbridge Wells station (west) was built in 1866 and is still extant. 24 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, pp. 9-10, 17, 20, 27 and 40; Vic Mitchell and Keith Smith, South London Line (Midhurst, 1994); and Nikolaus Pevsner and Bridget Cherry, London 2: South (London, 2001), pp. 625 and 673. Built from 1865 to 1867, the extant artefacts are the stations at Grosvenor Road, Battersea Park, Denmark Hill and Peckham Rye, and the London Bridge viaduct and train shed. 25 Algernon Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a Complete Dictionary of Contributors and their Work from its Foundation in 1769 to 1904, 8 vols (London, 1905), 11, p. 370, entry 1211. 26 'Metropolitan Board of Works, Minutes of Proceedings' (hereafter MBW Minutes), 3 November 1865, p. 1177, s. 4 (London Metropolitan Archives (hereafter LMA)). Driver was paid £35 for these watercolours. One is located in the lecture room at the Crossness pumping station, while the other is probably in the office of the chief executive of Thames Water pic. 27 Graham and Wates, Banbury, p. 95. 28 The Central Station of the Vienna Circular Elevated Railway', The Builder, 28 January 1882, pp. 100-01. 29 Of the innumerable sources on the Crystal Palace the most important are Jeffrey Auerbach, The Great Exhibition of 1851: a Nation on Display (New Haven and London, 1999); Patrick Beaver, The Crystal Palace, 1851-1936: a Portrait of Victorian Enterprise (Chichester, 1986); and Hermione Hobhouse, The Crystal Palace and the Great Exhibition: Art, Science and Productive History: a History of the Royal Commission for the Exhibition of 1851 (London, 2002). A review of the historical literature on the Great Exhibition can be found in Louise Purbrick (ed.), The Great Exhibition of 1851: New Interdisciplinary Essays (Manchester, 2001), pp. 1-25. 30 See Michael Brooks, John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture (London and New Brunswick, 1989), pp. 101-02. 31 Stefan Muthesius, The High Victorian Movement in Architecture 1850-1870 (London and Boston, 1972), p. 197. 32 John Ruskin, The Seven Lamps of Architecture, 2nd edn (Orpington, 1849), p. 53. 33 Ibid., p. 54. 34 Ibid., pp. 55-56. 35 Ibid., p. 37. 36 John Ruskin, The Two Paths (London, 1904), pp. 54-87. The five lectures included in The Two Paths were originally delivered in 1858 to 1859, in London, Manchester, Bradford, and Tunbridge Wells. 37 Charles Driver, 'Engineering, its Effects upon Art', Transactions of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society (1874), p. 5. 38 Ibid., p. 5. 39 Ibid., p. 10. 40 Ibid., p. 11. 41 Charles Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', RIBA Transactions First Series, 25 (1875), pp. 165-83. 42 Driver, 'Engineering, its Effects upon Art', p. 11. 43 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', p. 166.




44 Ibid., p. 167. 45 Ibid., p. 168. 46 Ibid., p. 168. 47 Driver, 'Engineering, its Effects upon Art', p. 13; and Charles Driver, 'Engineering and Art', Transactions of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society (1879), p. 8. 48 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', pp. 173-82. 49 Those who contributed to the discussion were: the architects George Aitchison (1825-1910), Thomas Chatfield Clarke (1829-95), Charles Fowler Jnr. (c. 1823-1903) and Professor Robert Kerr (1823-1904); the engineers John Dixon and Alexander Payne (1845-1916); the architectural writer Charles Eastlake (1833-1906); and the iron manufacturers Ewing Matheson, Francis Skidmore (1819-96) and Walter Macfarlane (1817-85). 50 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', p. 180. 51 Ibid., p. 179. 52 Ibid., pp. 175, 176 and 180. 53 Ibid., p. 180. 54 Ibid., pp. 178-79. ^ Ibid., p. 182. 56 George Aitchison, 'On Iron as a Building Material', RIBA Transactions First Series, 14 (1864), pp. 97-107. ^y Higgs, 'Iron Architecture in Britain and America', p. 109. 58 On the Crystal Palace at Sydenham, see Piggott, Palace of the People. 59 Matthew Digby Wyatt, 'Iron- work and the Principles of its Treatment', Journal of Design and Manufactures, 4 (21; 1850), pp. 77-78. 60 Owen Jones, Lectures on the Decorative Arts (London, 1862), p. 22. 61 For a discussion of Jones's attitude towards iron, see Michael Darby and David van Zanten, 'Owen Jones's Iron Buildings of the 1850' s', Architectura, 4 (1974), pp. 53~75- 62 See Wyatt, 'Iron-work and the Principles of its Treatment', and also Wyatt s Metal-work and its Artistic Design (London, 1852). 63 On Paddington station, see Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, pp. 46-48; Steven Brindle, Paddington Station. Its History and Architecture (London, 2004); Joseph Mordaunt Crook, The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post-Modern (London, 1989), p. 114; Henry-Russell Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture in Britain, 2 vols (New Haven, 1954), 1, pp. 559-61; Edgar Jones, Industrial Architecture in Britain, 1750-1939 (London, 1985), p. 82; and Stefan Muthesius, 'The "Iron Problem" in the 1850s', Architectural History, 13 (1970), p. 58. Contemporaneous sources include 'The Paddington Station of the Great Western Railway', The Builder, 3 June 1854, P- 29°/ anc* 'The Paddington Station of the Great Western Railway', 17 June 1854, p. 322. 64 James Fergusson, The Illustrated Handbook of Architecture: being a Concise and Popular Account of the Different Styles of Architecture Prevailing in all Ages and Cultures, 2 vols (1855), 1, p. xxxix. 65 James Fergusson, History of the Modern Styles of Architecture (London, 1862), p. 474. 66 Driver, 'Engineering and Art', p. 6. 67 Ibid., p. 5. 68 Ibid., pp. 5-6; and Driver, 'Engineering, its Effects upon Art', p. 12. 69 Driver, 'Engineering and Art', pp. 7 and 9, and 'Engineering, its Effects upon Art', pp. 12-13. 70 Driver, 'Engineering and Art', p. 9. 71 Ibid., p. 9. 72 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material , p. 179. 73 Ibid., p. 180. 74 Ibid., p. 180. y^ The chimneys were removed in 1940, reputedly to prevent their use as navigation aids by German bombers, but more likely for the safety of the pumping station in the event of an air attack. Thames Water

pic's annual 'Open Sewers Week' uses Abbey Mills as a focal point for both a sewer visit and a lecture on the

history (and future) of London's sanitary development. 76 Crook, The Dilemma of Style, p. 124; and Gavin Stamp, Cast Iron: Architecture and Ornament, Function and

Fantasy (London, 1985), p. 14. jj Joseph Bazalgette, A Short Descriptive Account of the Thames Embankment and of the Abbey Mills Pumping Station (London, 1868), pp. 4-9.




78 MBW Minutes, 24 July 1868, p. 956, s. 1, and 7 May 1869, pp. 558-61, s. 18; and MBW/2320: 'Engineer's Annual Reports', 10 June 1868, pp. 5-9, and 5 May 1869, pp. 5-9 (all in LMA). 79 MBW/2320: 'Engineer's Annual Reports', 10 June 1868, p. 5 (LMA). 80 MBW Minutes, 4 December 1868, p. 1304, s. 10, 23 September 1864, p. 905, s. 1, and 25 June 1869, pp. 733-33, s. 8 (LMA). The enormous cost of Abbey Mills (£269,620) may be compared with the Horton Hospital: around £6,200 (The Builder, 10 August 1872, p. 625). 81 Bazalgette, A Short Descriptive Account, p. 5. 82 Ibid., p. 5. 83 Ibid., p. 7. 84 Works-as-executed Collection: 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Contract Drawings, Buildings (1865)' (Thames Water Archive, London (hereafter TWA)). 85 Bazalgette, A Short Descriptive Account, p. 8. 86 Ibid., p. 8. 87 See Colin Amery and Gavin Stamp, Victorian Buildings in London, 1837-1887: an Illustrated Guide (London, 1980), p. 83; James Steven Curl, Victorian Architecture: its Practical Aspects (Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 95; and Roger Dixon and Stefan Muthesius, Victorian Architecture (London, 1985), p. 116. Amery and Stamp cite Bazalgette and his assistant engineer Edmund Cooper as the architects of Abbey Mills; Curl, Dixon and Muthesius ascribe the building solely to Bazalgette. 88 Bridget Cherry, Charles O'Brien and Nikolaus Pevsner, London 5: East (London and New Haven, 2005), pp. 49, 229-30 and pl. 66. 89 Other relevant documentary sources also yield little information as to Driver's role. The MBW Minutes show that some payments were made from Bazalgette to Driver: on 10 May 1867 he was paid £42 for 'professional services, re. Abbey Mills Pumping Station' as well as £97 for work undertaken during the last two weeks in April; neither, however, give any specific information on Driver's contribution to the design. In addition, no original contract drawings for Abbey Mills survive and there is no record in the MBW Minutes of any debate on the style or cost of the proposed decoration of the building. 90 Ann Saunders, The Art and Architecture of London: an Illustrated Guide (Oxford, 1988), p. 310. 91 Curl, Victorian Architecture, p. 95. 92 Aubrey Wilson, London's Industrial Heritage (Newton Abbot, 1967), p. 36. 93 Nikolaus Pevsner and Enid Radcliffe, Buildings of England: Essex (Harmonds worth, 1965), p. 275; and Amery and Stamp, Victorian Buildings in London, p. 83. 94 The absence of information about the manufacturers of the lantern is due both to the lack of an extant specification for Abbey Mills and to the constant over-painting of the ironwork, such as to obscure any foundry markings. 95 MBW/ 2120: 'Engineer's Monthly Reports, 2 January-i May 1868' (LMA). 96 Some representative examples are: the Tower of the Winds in Athens, built in the first century bc; early Byzantine churches in Ravenna, such as San Vitale (c. 540-49); Romanesque towers and domes; Gothic cathedral chapter-houses and towers, such as that at Ely (fourteenth century); and post-medieval buildings, such as an octagonal garden pavilion (1718) added to Orleans House in Twickenham by the architect James Gibbs (1682-1754). 97 Kenneth Carls and James Schmeichen, The British Market Hall: a Social and Architectural History (London and New Haven, 1999), pp. 254-55, 293- Both the new market hall at Swindon (1854) and the flamboyant Kirkgate Market in Bradford (1872-78) included octagonal pavilions. 98 Georg Kohlmaier and Barna von Sartory, Houses of Glass: a Nineteenth-Century Building Type (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 180-83, 234~36, 284-86 and 301-02. Octagonal glasshouses included the Schadowstrasse Aquarium in Berlin (1869, demolished), the Old Palm House in Edinburgh (i860), Sefton Park Palm House in Liverpool (1896) and the Temperate House (1859-63) in the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew, London. 99 On the University Museum, Oxford, see Henry Acland and John Ruskin, The Oxford Museum (London, 1996; 1st edn, 1859); Eve Blau, Ruskinian Gothic: the Architecture of Deane and Woodward, 1845-61 (Princeton, 1982), pp. 48-81; Brooks, John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture, pp. 113 and 117-34; Crook, The Dilemma of Style, pp. 78-79; and Dixon and Muthesius, Victorian Architecture, pp. 159-60. 100 Acland and Ruskin, The Oxford Museum, pp. 38-39. 101 Ibid., p. 38.




102 James Williamson, Glastonbury Abbey: its History and Ruins (Wells, 1858), pp. 8 and 49-50. One legend, recounted by Williamson, states that Joseph of Arimathea - one of those held to have buried the body of Jesus - brought the holy grail to Glastonbury and planted the holy thorn there, thus leading to the foundation of the Abbey in the first century (pp. 11 and 29). 103 Ibid., p. 5. 104 Blau, Ruskinian Gothic, p. 49. 105 For a comprehensive description of the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary, Stratford, see Bruno Barber et ah, The Cistercian Abbey of St Mary Stratford Langthorne, Essex (London, 2004). Remains of the Abbey were uncovered between 1991 and 1993, during the excavations for the Jubilee Line Extension. 106 R. H. Clutterbuck, 'Some Account of the Abbey of West Ham, Otherwise Stratford Langthorne7, Transactions of the Essex Archaeological Society, 2 (1863), p. 117. 107 Edward Walford, Greater Eondon: a Narrative of its History, its People, and its Places, 2 vols (London, 1897), 1, p. 507. 108 Ibid., pp. 503-04. 109 'Abbey Mills Pumping Station, Specification of and for the Engine & Boiler Houses, Coal Vaults, Dwelling Houses, River Wall, Sewers, &c. (1865)', p. 31, clause 71 (TWA, Works-as-executed Collection). 110 This was exemplified by the 'pavilion principle', introduced in the 1850s by the architect Henry Currey (1820-1900), who was one of those nominating Driver for RIBA membership in 1872. Currey designed hospitals, such as St Thomas's (1868-71), according to this principle, which connected sanitation and ventilation in the form of airy pavilions (Felstead, Franklin and Pinfield, Directory of British Architects, 1, pp. 228-29). 111 On octagonal markets, see Carls and Schmeichen, The British Market Hall, pp. 254-55 aRd 293; on octagonal glasshouses Kohlmaier and Sartory, Houses of Glass, pp. 180-83, 234~3^r 284-86 and 301-02. 112 Wilson, Eondon' 's Industrial Heritage, p. 36. On 8 August 1868, The South Eondon Press referred to the octagon at Abbey Mills as providing a 'tinge of Byzantine glamour' to the building (p. 6). 113 J. B. Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered: the Byzantine Revival in Europe and America (London and New York, 2003).

114 John Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 3 vols (London, 1851-53), 11 (1853), p. 151. 115 Ruskin, The Stones o/Venice, I (1851), pp. 13-17 and 21. 116 Owen Jones, The Grammar of Ornament (London, 1856), p. 51. 117 Ibid., pp. 52-53. 118 Matthew Digby Wyatt and John Burley Waring, The Byzantine and Romanesque Court in the Crystal Palace (London, 1854), p. 15. On the architectural courts at the Crystal Palace, see Barrie Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered: the Byzantine Revival in Europe and America (London and New York, 2003), pp. 131-35; Samuel Phillips, Guide to the Crystal Palace and Park (London, 1854); and Piggott, Palace of the People, pp. 102-04. 119 Bullen, Byzantium Rediscovered, p. 133. 120 Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1 (1851), pp. 274, 278-81. 121 Paul Thompson, William Butterfield (London, 1971), p. 288. 122 Muthesius, The High Victorian Movement, p. 197. 123 'Capitals: Ducal Palace, Venice', The Builder, 27 December 1851, p. 815. 124 Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1 (1851), p. 17. 125 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, pp. 59-60; and A Record of the Progress of Modern Engineering 1863, ed. William Humber (London, 1863), pp. 3-15. 126 Biddle, Britain's Historic Railway Buildings, pp. 9-10. 127 'New Lamp Lately Erected in Holborn', The Builder, 15 August 1868, p. 603. 128 Ruskin, The Stones of Venice, 1 (1851), p. 245. 129 On Ruskin's design for the spandrel, see Acland and Ruskin, The Oxford Museum, p. 88; Blau, Ruskinian Gothic, pp. 61-62; and Higgs, 'Iron Architecture in Britain and America', pp. 59-60. The revised design was illustrated in The Builder, 7 July 1855, p. 318. 130 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', p. 173. 131 Darby and van Zanten, 'Owen Jones's Iron Buildings', pp. 57-63. 132 Jones, The Grammar of Ornament, p. 5, Proposition 2 . 133 Ibid., p. 5, 'Proposition 8'. 134 Peter Guillery, '"Abbey Mills : Report by the Royal Commission on Historic Monuments of England (unpublished report, Royal Commission on Historic Monuments of England, 1995), p. 3.




135 Charles Driver, 'Presidential Address', Minutes of Proceedings of the Civil and Mechanical Engineers' Society, 522, 19 December 1879, pp. 6-7. 136 On the interest in sewage utilization in the nineteenth century, see Nicholas Goddard, 'Nineteenth- century Recycling: the Victorians and the Agricultural Utilisation of Sewage', History Today, 31 (1991), pp. 32-36; Stephen Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victorian Metropolis (Stroud, 1999), pp. 108-23; Christopher Hamlin, 'Providence and Putrefaction: Victorian Sanitarians and the Natural Theology of Health and Disease', in Energy & Entropy: Science and Culture in Victorian Britain, ed. Patrick Brantlinger (Bloomington, 1989), pp. 92-123; John Sheail, 'Town Wastes, Agricultural Sustainability and Victorian Sewage', Urban History, 23 (1996), pp. 189-210; and Raymond Smith and Nicholas Young, 'Sewers Past and Present', History Today, 43 (1993), pp. 8-10. 137 See Halliday, The Great Stink of London, pp. 108-23. 138 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', pp. 175 and 182. 139 On Wyatt's contribution to the design of Paddington Station, see Brindle, Paddington Station, pp. 36-48. On Skidmore's ironwork in the interior of the University Museum, Oxford, see Acland and Ruskin, The Oxford Museum, pp. 20-22, and Blau, Ruskinian Gothic, pp. 61-64. 140 Muthesius, The High Victorian Movement, p. 202. 141 On the buildings for the International Exhibition of 1862, see Some Account of the Buildings Designed by Francis Fowke, Capt. R. E.for the International Exhibition of 1862, and Future Decennial Exhibitions of the Works of Art and Industry (London, 1862). On the Midland Hotel, see Jack Simmons and Robert Thorne, St Pancras Station (London, 2003), pp. 56-89. 142 Crook, The Dilemma of Style, p. 115. 143 See for example Walter Macfarlane, Examples Book of Macfarlane' s Castings (Glasgow, 1874). Included in this catalogue are several of Driver's own designs: a lamp erected in Holborn, London in 1868 (pp. 34-35); iron railings used at Battersea Park station in 1866 (pp. 50-51); cresting used at Portsmouth station in 1866 (p. 7); and columns used at Battersea Park and Denmark Hill stations in 1866 and at Leatherhead station in 1867 (pp. 50-51). 144 Driver, 'On Iron as a Constructive Material', p. 168. 145 See Carls and Schmeichen, The British Market Hall, pp. 51-53.



Documents

Historicizing Iron: Charles Driver and the Abbey Mills Pumping Station (1865-68)