A typical church built in 1850 differed significantly from one erected in 1830: its various parts would be separately articulated; its chancel would be longer and raised on steps; its roofs more steeply pitched; entrance would probably be through a south porch; Gothic detailing would be more scholarly; galleries were unlikely, although appropriated pews would disappear only slowly. And by the mid-century, there were already ambitions to ‘improve’ churches carefully designed to accommodate late-Georgian auditory worship, or even demolish them and replace them with something more ‘correct’ and better suited to the new imperatives. It was around 1840 that there appeared the beginnings of a coordinated initiative that would profoundly alter the course of English church building and worship; very quickly the certainties of late-Georgian Anglicanism were being abandoned. This is therefore a convenient place to end this study, and in this chapter briefly explore that heady moment when the ‘new’ ideas began to move from the periphery to the centre of debate.

Was what happened around 1840 evolution or revolution? That change occurred through the 1840s is indisputable; the interesting question is how the change came about. Certainly there was a degree of revolution as the combined endeavours of the Cambridge Camden Society, the Oxford Movement and the publications of A.W.N. Pugin began to produce real revisions in the design and arrangement of churches.

The Cambridge Camden Society – whose members and supporters are often referred to as the Ecclesiologists – was formed late in 1839. It was an undergraduate group intent on pushing the Church of England in a Higher direction and introducing pre-Reformation architecture and internal arrangements to facilitate it. In a number of respects, it was building on the earlier theological debates within the Oxford Movement – whose followers were often referred to as the Tractarians – usually dated from 1833. Central to Oxford thinking was moving the Church away from being an arm of the state into something more spiritual and sacramental. Church building thus became part of a wider liturgical movement, with many Tractarian clergymen – or at least ones with Tractarian sympathies – taking a leading role in the restoration of an old church, or the building of a new one, especially from the early 1840s.