Victorian Architects – serie

This is the first biography of John Francis Bentley (1839-1902), best known as architect of Westminster Cathedral, since his daughter Winefride de l’Hôpital’s Westminster Cathedral and its Architect (1919). Bentley was born in Doncaster, Yorkshire, and went to London to work in the office of Henry Clutton, a distinguished High Victorian architect who became a Roman Catholic in 1856. Bentley also converted, and, after setting up his own practice in 1860, came to be widely recognised as the best Catholic architect of his time. He built comparatively few complete churches, but did extensive work in adding to and furnishing other architects’ churches. He had remarkable skill in the design of woodwork, metalwork, stained glass, and organ cases, all of which are covered in the book. His finest parish church is Holy Rood, Watford, but the climax of his career was the commission in 1894 to design Westminster Cathedral, which was almost complete when he died in 1902.

A.W.N. Pugin transformed the Gothic Revival from an architectural style into an international movement. He decorated and furnished the Houses of Parliament, creating one of the icons of modern British identity in the process. His church designs were vastly influential, and although he was staunchly Roman Catholic, he did much to set the aesthetic tone of modern Anglicanism. The house he designed for himself at Ramsgate transformed the Victorian Gothic villa, demonstrating the ways a thoroughly modern house could draw integral lessons from the Middle Ages. And although his whole ideal was woven around a conception of English identity, his influence was international. Architects in the United States, northern Europe, and across the British Empire followed his lead, drawing from elements of his aesthetic and ideals, and in doing so, altered the look and feel of the nineteenth-century city. Despite the popularity of Pugin’s work, this is the first single-volume overview of his architecture to be published since 1971. It summarises much new scholarship and provides a good introduction to his career as well as new insight for those who might already be familiar with it.

This is the first monograph of George Edmund Street, a prolific High Victorian architect of churches and other buildings, the best known of which is the Royal Courts of Justice (the Law Courts). He was born in Essex and, after being articled in Winchester, worked in the office of George Gilbert Scott before setting out on his own account. His earliest works were in Cornwall, but he went on to design many churches, parsonages and schools in Oxfordshire, Berkshire and Buckinghamshire, having been appointed Oxford diocesan architect. Moving to London opened up commissions far and wide, as far north as Aberdeenshire, and also abroad. He paid great attention to the fittings and furnishings of his churches, taking a particular detailed interest in stained glass and embroidery. He was renowned for always completing all his own drawings personally, to the frustration of his pupils and assistants, including Philip Webb and Norman Shaw, who successively became his chief assistant before branching out on their own. His early death at the age of 57 is often attributed to the strain of building the Law Courts, which were completed after his death.Geoff Brandwood, who died suddenly in November 2021, was the author of monographs on Sharpe, Paley & Austin and on Temple Moore. He was a former chairman of the Victorian Society.2024 marks the 200th anniversary of the birth of George Edmund Street.

The architect Edward William Godwin (1833-86) was described by Max Beerbohm as ‘the greatest of the aesthetes’. This and Godwin’s disdain for convention as the lover of Ellen Terry and friend of Oscar Wilde has helped to frame discussion of his buildings, furniture and decorative design. His early work as a Gothic Revivalist, the designer of Northampton Town Hall, is typically presented as an immature preamble to the striking simplicity of his 1870s studio-houses in Chelsea, including the White House for his friend Whistler. This book, the first to look at his ideas through the prism of his architecture, demonstrates rather the continuities throughout his career, that all his design work – buildings, journalism, furniture, textiles and theatre – is informed by a set of principles that although they evolved radically in their expression remained remarkably consistent throughout his life, and informed throughout by his reading of John Ruskin.. To illustrate it are many newly taken photographs by a leading architectural photographer, and drawings in the tradition of the Survey of London.

Part of a generation that came to prominence in the 1860s, the ‘rogue architects’ are a byword for Victorian Gothic at its most wayward and flamboyant. Their work ranges from town halls to country houses and from hotels to churches. It has drawn much attention, both from contemporary observers and 20th century commentators, such as Harry Goodhart-Rendel (who coined the term), Ian Nairn and John Summerson. But much about the rogues’ architecture – its inspiration, their aims, why they built where and how they did and why it caused such a stir – has been poorly understood until now. Based on extensive primary research and presenting a lot of material never published before, this book presents comprehensive studies of three of rogue architecture’s most important exponents – Robert Lewis Roumieu, Joseph Peacock and Bassett Keeling. Their careers, although all very different, provide valuable insights into a rich and complex episode in British architectural history. These studies are prefaced by an introductory chapter, which places them in context and looks at the numerous other architects who stand comparison with them, not only throughout Britain but also in France and America. It is handsomely illustrated with new photographs and archive material, including drawings from the RIBA Collection.

Matthew Digby Wyatt (1820-77) was a polymath – architect, administrator, designer, writer and connoisseur. From his role as project manager to the Great Exhibition of 1851 to his final years advising the South Kensington Museum on its collections, he played a key part in mid-Victorian developments in architecture, design and museum display. He worked with leading figures of his time, including I. K. Brunel, George Gilbert Scott, Herbert Minton and Henry Cole. Owen Jones was his lifelong friend.This is the first full-length study of Wyatt’s work. It includes detailed discussion of his work at the Crystal Palace (in Hyde Park and at Sydenham), at Paddington Station, and in the design of the India Office in Whitehall, now part of the Foreign Office. It also assesses his writings and book designs. All these achievements are set in the context of the shifting energies and debates of his age, to which he made a distinctive and enduring contribution.