Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuriesHitchcock, Henry-Russell
History
Architecture : $b nineteenth and twentieth centuries
Hitchcock, Henry-Russell
Architecture, Modern -- 19th century; Architecture, Modern -- 20th century
Bodley now made even more use of the decorative talents of Morris
and his associates than at St Michael’s, Brighton. His St
Martin’s-on-the-Cliff, Scarborough, completed in 1863, is a finer
church than either St Michael’s or All Saints’. Falling between them
in style as well as in date, this has less historical importance,
but it also was richly decorated by the Morris firm. At All Saints’
painted polychromy, but of a rather subtle order much superior to
most of that of the forties, entirely replaced permanent polychrome.
The brocade patterns stencilled on the walls seem almost to be
designs of Pugin strengthened in their outlines and their colours by
Morris. Although Bodley’s mature career as one of the two principal
Late Victorian church architects did not really get under way until
1870, Victorian Gothic was evidently coming full circle at All
Saints’, and the High Victorian phase was nearly over.
The other important new church of this period, St Saviour’s, Penn
Street, in the Hoxton district of the East End of London, was begun in
1865 by James Brooks (1825-1901). Unfortunately this was very badly
damaged in the blitz, and has since been demolished. St Saviour’s was of
brick and included some polychromy like Brooks’s slightly earlier East
End church, St Michael’s in Mark Street, Shoreditch, of 1863-5. But what
was really significant at St Saviour’s was the unified interior space,
ending like Clutton’s Leamington church and Pearson’s Vauxhall church in
London in a rounded apse (Plate 89B). Notable also were the Webb-like
quietness of the general composition and the straightforward handling of
the main structural elements. In another, happily unblitzed, church by
Brooks in the East End of London, St Chad’s, Nichols Square, in
Haggerston, which was begun in 1867, the same qualities can be seen in a
more mature state. Moreover, the rather plain windows and the simple
moulded brick trim are echoed at domestic scale on the nearby rectory.
The fine vessel of the interior of St Chad’s, with its simple nave
arcade of stone, clean red-brick walls, quietly structural wooden roof
over the nave, and brick-vaulted chancel, contrasts strikingly with the
hectic elaboration and dramatically vertical proportions of
Butterfield’s last London church of any great interest, St Augustine’s,
Queen’s Gate, of 1865-71. Two churches of the late sixties outside
London, All Saints’ at Babbacombe near Torquay, which was built in
1868-74, and the earlier mentioned St Augustine’s at Penarth, begun in
1866, are much more satisfactory examples of Butterfield’s middle
period.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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