There are several reasons why the Gothic Revival was able in England, and almost only in England, to pass into a new and creative phase around 1850. One was certainly the ethical emphasis of its doctrines, an emphasis more sympathetic to Victorians than to most Europeans of this period, but not without its appeal on the Continent towards the end of the century. Another reason was the informality, not to say the amateurishness, of architectural education in Britain, encouraging personal discipleship and the cultivation of individual expression rather than providing for the continuation of an academic tradition. Related to this is the private character of architectural practice in England as compared to its more public responsibilities and controls on the Continent. The desirable professional positions in France, and to almost the same degree in many other European countries, were those offered by the sovereign or the State. But after the time of Soane and Nash official employment ceased to carry either prestige or opportunity in England, the Houses of Parliament notwithstanding—it was not Barry’s work there but his clubs and mansions that established his high professional reputation. As in the eighteenth century, a social and aesthetic _élite_ still provided both critical esteem and the most desirable commissions for Victorian architects; by 1850 a large part of that _élite_ was very church-minded and thoroughly Gothicized. Not until the mid sixties was there any significant change; even then those responsible for this change, both the architects and their patrons, had all been brought up in the churchly Gothic Revival tradition. The High Victorian Gothic opened with the building of a London church. All Saints’, Margaret Street, designed in 1849, largely completed externally by 1852, and consecrated in 1859, was the result of no imperial fiat, like the Votivkirche in Vienna or the big churches of the sixties in Paris, nor did it occupy like them an isolated site approached by wide new boulevards. Intended as a ‘model’ church by its sponsors, the Ecclesiological Society, and financed by private individuals, All Saints’ is set in a minor West End street at the rear of a restricted court flanked by a clergy house and a school (Plate 6A). But for its tower, the tallest feature of the mid-century London skyline, it would have been hard to find; but once found, it could never be ignored.