The Englishness of Gothic: Theories and interpretations from William Gilpin to J. H. Parker

Architectural History

Volumn 45, Issue , 2002, Pages 304-346

  Bradley, Simon ^a  

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EID: 27144494515     PISSN: 0066622X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/1568787     Document Type: Article

References (166)

1. On the sources for Strawberry Hill see Michael McCarthy, The Origins of the Gothic Revival (New Haven, 1987), p. 80.
2. James Wyatt derived the Revelation Chamber at Fonthill from the mausoleum of King João I at Batalha, via James Murphy's Plans, Elevations, Sections and Views of the Church of Batalha in the Province of Estremadura in Portugal (London, 1795), which his patron William Beckford visited in 1794.
3. A handful of earlier nineteenth-century churches drew explicitly on continental models; for the most famous example, neo-Romanesque rather than neo-Gothic, see Neil Jackson, 'Christ Church, Streatham, and the Rise of Constructional Polychramy', Architectural History, 43 (2000), pp. 219-52.
4. See most recently Chris Brooks, The Gothic Revival (London, 1999), pp. 297-305
5. and J. Mordaunt Crook, 'Benjamin Webb (1819-85) and Victorian Ecclesiology', Studies in Church History, 33 (1997), pp. 423-57.
6. Acutely analyzed by Brooks, Gothic Revival, pp. 23-82.
7. J. Mordaunt Crook, John Carter and the Mind of the Gothic Revival, Society of Antiquaries, Occasional Papers XVII (London, 1995), p. 68, n. 28, lists some of the recent literature on English nationalism during the period.
8. The Builder's Magazine (London, 1774-78), part II, p. 64.
9. An argument still in evidence when the Houses of Parliament were rebuilt after 1834: see e.g. Col. J. R. Jackson, Observations ... on the New Houses of Parliament (London, 1837).
10. quoted in The Architectural Magazine, 4 (1837), p. 198.
11. On the new churches see M. H. Port, Six Hundred New Churches: a Study of the Church Building Commission, 1815-56, and its Church Building Activities (London, 1961).
12. For the religious associations of Gothic see Simon Bradley, 'The Roots of Ecclesiology: late Hanoverian attitudes to medieval churches', in Christopher Webster and John Elliott (eds), A Church as it Should Be (Stamford, Lines., 2000), pp. 22-28.
13. Threats to ancient buildings in the later 1820s and 1830s routinely raised the darkest political forebodings: see Simon Bradley, The Gothic Revival and the Church of England 1790-1840, (doctoral thesis, University of London, 1996), pp. 138-59.
14. Christopher Hussey, The Picturesque: Studies in a Point of View (London, 1927), p. 119.
15. William Gilpin, Observations Relative Chiefly to Picturesque Beauty, 2 vols (London, 1786), I, pp. 12-15.
16. Horace Walpole, who knew Gilpin and who seems to have urged publication on him, echoed this opinion concerning French Gothic in a letter to Joseph Cooper Walker, 21 December 1790 (W. S. Lewis (ed.), The Yale Edition of Horace Walpole's Correspondence, 47 vols (Yale, 1937-83), XXIX, p. 101, XLII, pp. 305-06).
17. Observations, i, p. 16;
18. cf. Christopher Wren, Parentalia (London, 1750), p. 297.
19. For the other well-established and opposing belief, that the style represented a corruption of classical architecture in the wake of the Gothic invasions, see Paul Frankl, The Gothic: literary sources and interpretations through eight centuries (Princeton, 1960), pp. 284-314.
20. Gilpin, Observations, I, p. 16.
21. J. M. Frew, 'Gothic is English: John Carter and the Revival of Gothic as England's National Style', Art Bulletin, 64 (1982), pp. 315-19;
22. John Milner, A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Antient Cathedrals (London, 1798), p. 51.
23. Dictionary of National Biography; see e.g. John Milner, The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2 vols (Winchester, 1798), I, p. 6.
24. Milner, Winchester, II, p. 153.
25. This part of the church is now generally dated later in the twelfth century: see Nikolaus Pevsner and David Lloyd, The Buildings of England: Hamphire and the Isle of Wight (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 707.
26. James Bentham, The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Ely (London, 1771), p. 37.
27. The Society of Antiquaries, Some Account of the Cathedral Church of Durham (London, 1801), p. 3.
28. Some such tradition seems to have survived into the nineteenth century, at least in Normandy: see e.g. Mrs Charles Stothard, Letters Written During a Tour Through Normandy, Brittany and other Parts of France (London, 1820), p. 21.
29. Joan Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956) p. 214;
30. Walter Scott, Ivanhoe (1819), ch. 44.
31. See also Peter J. Bowler, The Invention of Progress: the Victorians and the Past (Oxford, 1989), pp. 22-23.
32. Warton found the Saracen theory plausible and considered that the Gothic style appeared on the Continent first, though he was unable to identify any datable Moorish buildings that might have inspired its creators (Essays on Gothic Architecture (London, 1800), pp. 109-15).
33. Quarterly Review, 4 (1809), p. 143;
34. Richard Mant, Church Architecture Considered (Belfast, 1843), p. iv.
35. The importance of the Essays has long been recognized: see Kenneth Clark, The Gothic Revival (London, 1928), 1964 edn, p. 60.
36. Essays (London, 1800), pp. iii, viii, xi-xxiv.
37. William Wilkins, 'An Account of the Prior's Chapel at Ely', Archaeologia, XIV (1803), pp. 106-08;
38. Samuel Beazley, 'An Essay on the Rise and Progress of Gothic Architecture', pp. 29, 40-43
39. in Essays of the London Architectural Society (London, 1808);
40. The Beauties of England and Wales, 18 vols (London, 1801-16, various authors), IV (1803), pp. 418-19, VI (1805), pp. 109-12, both by E. W. Brayley, XIII part I (1813), p. 232
41. by Joseph Nightingale; Millers, A Description of the Cathedral Church of Ely (London, 1807), pp. 15-16, 31.
42. On Wilkins see also R. W. Liscombe, William Wilkins 1779-1839 (London, 1980), p. 21.
43. Nightingale and Millers both also accepted the usage of 'English' for the style, following Carter's linguistic analogy. The counter-argument of Robert Smirke, that Italy had priority in the style, was shot down by Sir Henry Englefield, a member of the Carter-Milner axis: see their papers in Archaeologia, XV (1806), pp. 363-72.
44. John Britton, The Architectural Antiquities of Great Britain, 5 vols (London, 1807-26), I (1807), Malmesbury Abbey section, p. 3;
45. James Dallaway, Anecdotes of the Arts in England (London, 1800), pp. 9-14
46. Observations on English Architecture (London, 1806), p. 14.
47. Cf. John Carter's statement that Milner's theory 'now gains ground in general belief, in The Itineraries of Archbishop Baldwin, ed. Sir Richard Colt Hoare (London, 1806)
48. reprinted in John Carter, The Progress of Architecture (London, 1830), pp. 10-11.
49. On the antiquarian publisher John Britton see J. Mordaunt Crook, 'John Britton and the Genesis of the Gothic Revival', in Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing Presented to Nikolaus Pevsner, ed. John Summerson (Harmondsworth, 1968), pp. 98-119.
50. Aberdeen, a philhellene, confessed to finding the subject 'not in itself very generally interesting' (G. D. Whittington, An Historical Survey of the Ecclesiastical Antiquities of France (London, 1809), p. xiv).
51. Whittington, Historical Survey, pp. 87, 108.
52. and Francis Price, A Series of Particular and Useful Observations upon that Admirable Structure, the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (London, 1753), passim.
53. Nikolaus Pevsner, Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1972), pp. 19-20;
54. Frankl, The Gothic, pp. 498-99;
55. Gentleman's Magazine, 79 (1809), pp. 523-26, 627-30, 929-31.
56. See F.C. Husenbeth, The Life of the Right Rev. John Milner D.D. (Dublin, 1862), p. 189.
57. Milner, Treatise, pp. 85-88, 133.
58. Quarterly Review, II (1809), p. 141;
59. H. and H. C. Shine, The Quarterly Review under Gifford: Identification of Contributors 1809-1824 (Chapel Hill, 1949).
60. William Mitford, Principles of Design in Architecture (London, 1809/10), pp. 110, 295. The first, anonymous edition seems not to have appeared until 1810, with the footnote already included; editions of 1819 and 1824 were published under Mitford's own name.
61. William Dodsworth, An Historical Account of the Episcopal See and Cathedral Church or Sarum or Salisbury (Salisbury, 1814), p. 126.
62. William Haggitt, Two Letters to a Fellow of the Society of Antiquities on the Subject of Gothic Architecture (London, 1813), pp. 21-22; compare with n. 27, above.
63. Haggitt, Two Letters, p. 59.
64. Evans, Society of Antiquaries, pp. 219-20.
65. Quarterly Review, VI (1811), pp. 67-70;
66. Shine, The Quarterly Review under Gifford.
67. The chapter house at York is now thought to have been begun c. 1275 (Nikolaus Pevsner and David Neave, The Buildings of England: Yorkshire: York and the East Riding (London, 1995), p. 134).
68. See e.g. Whitaker, The History and Antiquities of the Archdeaconry of Craven (London, 1805). The 1835 edition of Milner's Treatise is described as the third, but I can trace no printing between 1811 and 1835; it may therefore be that Milner's chapter in Rees's Cyclopaedia was the notional first edition.
69. The Repository of Arts, Commerce, Manufactures, Fashions and Politics, 1st series, 9 (1813), pp. 107, 338;
70. Benjamin Holdich, The History of Crowland Abbey, Digested from the Materials Collected by Mr Gough (Stamford, 1816), pp. 164-65, 176;
71. W. Hawkes Smith, An Outline of Architecture: Grecian, Roman and Gothic (Birmingham, 1816), pp. 22-24.
72. The last preferred Milner's theory to the proposition by Sir James Hall that Gothic arose from stone imitations of ancient bentwood mission churches: another argument, however fantastic, consistent with an English or British origin (Sir James Hall, An Essay on the Origin and Principles of Gothic Architecture, from the Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, 1797).
73. Hall restated his ideas in An Essay on tlie Origin, History and Principles of Gothic Architecture (London, 1813), see especially pp. 110-25;
74. Smith's reference is to a more widely disseminated source, the commendatory end-note to Walter Scott's verse romance The Lay of the Last Minstrel, on the description of Melrose Abbey (London, 1805, p. 233).
75. John Kendall, An Elucidation of the Principles of English Architecture, usually denominated Gothic (London, 1818), pp. 7-8.
76. Thomas Rickman, An Attempt to Discriminate the Styles of English Architecture (London, 1817), p. 37.
77. Rickman, An Attempt, p. 38.
78. J. Norris Brewer, An Introduction to ... the 'Beauties of England and Wales' (London, 1818), pp. 442-43, 476.
79. Quarterly Review, 25 (1821), pp. 133-46;
80. Gentleman's Magazine, 91 (1821), part I pp. 223-24;
81. Carlos was still arguing Milner's case ten years later: see Gentleman's Magazine, 100 (1830), part I, pp. 581-82, 101 (1831), part I, p. 299. On Cohen see also n. 93, below.
82. Pevsner, Architectural Writers, pp. 20-21.
83. George Saunders, 'Observations on the Origin of Gothic Architecture', Archaeologia, 17 (1814), pp. 1-29.
84. William Gunn, An Inquiry into the Origin and Influence of Gothic Architecture (London, 1819), p. 35;
85. Rowley Lascelles, The Heraldic Origin of Gothic Architecture (London, 1820).
86. By 1819 the French coinage roman and German romanisch were already current: see David B. Brownlee, 'Neugriechisch/Néo-Grec: the German vocabulary of French Romantic architecture', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 50 (1991), pp. 18-21.
87. Georg Moller, Denkmäler der deutschen Baukunst (Darmstadt, 1815-21), translated as An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Gothic Architecture, traced in and deduced from the ancient edifices of Germany (London, 1824).
88. Moller, Essay, pp. 68-69, 80-81.
89. A. C. Pugin and E. J. Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, Selected from Various Antient Edifices in England, 2 vols (London, 1821-23), I (1821), pp. xv-xvii, 11 (1823), pp. x, xvii.
90. Thomas Hope, An Historical Essay on Architecture (London, 1835), p. 399; pp. 370-78 put the case for the German origin of Gothic. Hope's own preferences were of course for the classical styles.
91. Britton, Architectural Antiquities, v, p. 67. Britton's account of the style treats it as developing under its own internal momentum, illustrated exclusively by native examples (pp. 103-81).
92. John Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Metropolitical Church of Canterbury (London, 1822), p. 54;
93. John Britton and A. C. Pugin, Specimens of the Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (London, 1828), p. iii.
94. Britton's Dictionary of the Architecture and Archaeology of the Middle Ages (London, 1838), p. 22, merely refers the reader back to his survey of 1826.
95. J. S. Memes, A History of Painting, Sculpture and Architecture, Constable's Miscellany 39 (Edinburgh, 1829), pp. 326-31;
96. Thomas Bell, An Essay on the Origin and Progress of Gothic Architecture (Dublin, 1829), p. 88.
97. A. C. Pugin and E. J. Willson, Examples of Gothic Architecture, Selected from Various Ancient Edifices in England, 3 vols (London, 1831-38), I (1831), p. xiii.
98. J. C. Buckler, Views of the Cathedral Churches of England and Wales (London, 1822), preface;
99. Thomas Cromwell, A History and Description of the Ancient Town of Colchester (London, 1825), pp. 216-17;
100. Archibald McLellan, An Essay on the Cathedral Church of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1833), p. 13.
101. The Crypt, 1 (1827), between pp. 89 and 229, 2 (1828), pp. 71-78.
102. Architectural Magazine, 1 (1834), p. 345. Extracts from Milner's History of Winchester remained the standard guidebooks to the cathedral and to St Cross Hospital until at least c. 1840, so the theory may have found unwary converts even in Victorian times.
103. On the Architectural Society see H. M. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects, 1600-1840, 3rd edn (New Haven and London, 1996), pp. 42-43.
104. RIBA, MS AS1/2 ('Essay on the Study of Gothic Architecture', 1833), pp. 8, 39-40.
105. Institute of British Architects, Address and Regulations (1835), pp. 55-56;
106. papers addressed to the RIBA by Charles Fowler and Ambrose Poynter, 1838-39, RIBA, MS Sp.3/4, p. 1, and RIBA Transactions, 2 (1842), pp. 74-80.
107. See Frank Salmon, Building on Ruins: the rediscovery of Rome and English architecture (Aldershot, 2000), p. 145.
108. [John Chessell Buckler], Observations on the Original Architecture of Saint Mary Magdalen College, Oxford (London, 1823), p. 3;
109. H. Bloxam, The Principles of Gothic Architecture, Elucidated by Question and Answer (London, 1829), p. 12;
110. Gentleman's Magazine, 98 (1828), part II p. 520.
111. The Dictionary of National Biography identifies Carlos as the magazine's chief reviewer of such books in 1828-48, but only from c. 1830 did these appear in any quantity: see The Nichols File of the Gentleman's Magazine, ed. James M. Kuist (Wisconsin, 1982).
112. Edinburgh Review, 49 (1829), pp. 435-36.
113. The Crypt, new series, 1 (1829), pp. 241-46.
114. George Wightwick, The Palace of Architecture: a Romance of Art and History (London, 1840), p. 140.
115. Britton and Pugin, Architectural Antiquities of Normandy, p. xiv.
116. 'Four Letters on the Ecclesiastical Architecture of France', Archaeologia, 25 (1834), pp. 159-87;
117. reprinted in Rickman, An Attempt, 4th edn (1835), and later editions.
118. William Whewell, Architectural Notes on German Churches (London, 1830), p. 73.
119. On Whewell see Carla Yanni, 'On Nature and Nomenclature: William Whewell and the Production of Architectural Knowledge in Early Victorian Britain', Architectural History, 40 (1997), pp. 204-21.
120. Whewell, Architectural Notes, 2nd edn (1835), pp. 224-31.
121. Whewell, Architectural Notes (1830 edn), pp. 7-8, 15.
122. Whewell, Architectural Notes, 3rd edn (1842), preface pp. xiv-xv;
123. Compare Rickman's table of differences between classical and Gothic in An Attempt (1817 edn), pp. 110-11.
124. Robert Willis, Remarks on the Architecture of the Middle Ages, especially of Italy (London, 1835), pp. iv-v, 155, 183.
125. On Willis see Alex Buchanan, 'The Science of Rubbish: Robert Willis and the Contribution of Architectural History', in Gothic and the Gothic Revival: Papers from the 26th Annual Symposium of the Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain, 1997, ed. Frank Salmon (1998), pp. 25-33.
126. Willis, Remarks, p. 140.
127. Gentleman's Magazine, new series, 4 (1835), pp. 153, 291; cf. n. 51, above.
128. Gentleman's Magazine, new series, 8 (1837), p. 164.
129. reviewing instalments of John Sell Cotman and Dawson Turner, Architectural Antiquities of Normandy (London, 1819-22);
130. cf. his similar sentiments in Quarterly Review 36 (1826), pp. 316-18.
131. (see Andrew Hemingway, 'Cotman's Architectural Antiquities of Normandy: some Amendments to Kitson's account', Walpole Society, 46 (1976-78), pp. 164-85).
132. Dawson Turner, An Account of a Tour in Normandy, 2 vols (London, 1820), I, pp. 137, 187, II, p. 17. Cohen married Dawson Turner's daughter in 1823, adopting the surname Palgrave.
133. Joseph Woods, Letters of an Architect, from France, Italy and Greece, 2 vols (London, 1828), I, pp. 27-28. The references are to Ennio Quirino Visconti (1751-1818) and Aubin-Louis Millin de Grandmaison (1759-1818). Woods' travels took place in 1816-18.
134. Pugin and Willson, Examples, I, p. xii.
135. See Georg Germann, The Gothic Revival in Europe and Britain: Sources, Influences and Ideas (London, 1972), pp. 73ff. for the growth of continental Gothic scholarship.
136. British Critic, 4th series, 27 (1840), pp. 337-53.
137. The Ecclesiologist was more generous: see Chris Miele, 'Victorian Internationalism and the Victorian View of Monument Care on the Continent', in Gothic Revival: Religion, Architecture and Style in Western Europe 1815-1914, Proceedings of the Leuven Colloquium, 7-10 November 1997, ed. Jan De Maeyer and Luc Verpoest (Leuven, 2000), pp. 211-22 (pp. 213-18).
138. For parallel legislation in the United Kingdom see Timothy Champion, 'Protecting the Monuments: archaeological legislation from the 1882 Act to PPG 16', in Michael Hunter (ed.), Preserving the Past: the rise of heritage in modern Britain (Stroud, 1996), pp. 38-56.
139. John Medley, Elementary Remarks on Church Architecture (Exeter, 1841), p. 28;
140. Frederick J. Francis, A Series of Original Designs for Churches and Chapels (London, 1841), pp. vi-vii.
141. J. L. Petit, Remarks on Church Architecture, 2 vols (London, 1841), I, p. 13, II, p. 81.
142. See Roderick O'Donnell, 'Pugin as a Church Architect', in Pugin: a Gothic Passion, ed. Paul Atterbury and Clive Wainwright (London, 1994), pp. 63-89 (p. 72);
143. also Alexandra Wedgwood, 'A. W. Pugin's Tours in Northern Europe', in Gothic Revival, Proceedings of the Leuven Colloquium, pp. 93-98
144. and Timothy Brittain-Catlin, 'A. W. N. Pugin and Nodier's Normandy', in True Principles: the voice of the Pugin Society, 2/iii (2001), pp. 3-6.
145. A. W. N. Pugin, Details of Antient Timber Houses (London, 1836), pl. XXII. Conversely, the first edition of Contrasts included examples from Ypres and Rouen, of which only the former was repeated in the second, 1841 edition.
146. A. W. N. Pugin, An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture (London, 1843), pp. 37, 46-47.
147. A. W. N. Pugin, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (London, 1841), p. 55.
148. Pugin, Apology, p. 20.
149. A Few Hints on the Practical Study of Ecclesiastical Antiquities, 1st edn (London, 1839), p. 8;
150. on its authorship see James F. White, The Cambridge Movement: the Ecclesiologists and the Gothic Revival (Cambridge, 1962), p. 237.
151. The Ecclesiologist, 1 (1841) p. 92;
152. cf. Petit, Remarks, II, p. 33.
153. For the Society's general hostility to foreign models at this period see White, Cambridge Movement, p. 123.
154. Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture, Report (Hilary Term, 1842), p. 8, by J. P. Harrison of Christ Church. The usage of three 'orders' for English Gothic looks back to Milner.
155. British Critic, 4th series, 28 (1840), p. 490.
156. For Mozley's architectural activities see his Reminiscences, Chiefly of Oriel College and the Oxford Movement, 2 vols (London, 1882).
157. Henry-Russell Hitchcock in 'High Victorian Gothic', in Victorian Studies, 1 (1957), p. 48.
158. Michael J. Lewis, The Politics of the German Gothic Revival: August Reichensperger (Cambridge, Mass., 1993), pp. 75-85.
159. Lewis, German Gothic Revival, p. 78.
160. The pre-eminence of Cologne in his account of the German Gothic Revival is however contested by Karen David-Sirocko, 'Anglo-German interconnexions during the Gothic Revival: a case study from the work of Georg Gottlob Ungewitter (1820-64)', Architectural History, 41 (1998), pp. 153-78.
161. See Odile Boucher-Rivalain, 'Attitudes to Gothic in French architectural writings of the 1840s', Architectural History, 41 (1998), pp. 145-52.
162. It is significant that Scott himself subscribed to the idea that Gothic emerged independently in France, England and Germany, recognizing the dependence of Germany on France only in 1847 (George Gilbert Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections (London, 1879), pp. 125, 146-47).
163. J. H. Parker, An Introduction to Gothic Architecture (Oxford, 1849), p. 102.
164. Ian Toplis, The Foreign Office: an Architectural History (London and New York, 1987), pp. 83-84.
165. J. H. Parker, A.B.C. of Gothic Architecture, p. 5;
166. cf. his paper 'On the English Origin of Gothic Architecture', Archaeologia, 43 (1871), pp. 73-96.