The 1790s began with a series of heroic ecclesiastical designs, bold in planning and assertively Classical. The best of them were monumental, reflecting the highest standards of ambition from both architects and their patrons. However, this golden age of church building was short-lived, curtailed by the wars with France that began in 1793 and lasted 22 years. Retrenchment was not immediate, but few ambitious schemes were started after about 1795 and the pace of building certainly slowed. Confidence, funding and sometimes materials were all in short supply.

Nevertheless, the beginning of the nineteenth century witnessed the erection of some interesting churches and even the humblest of them offer valuable insights into what might be considered ‘church-like’, while the more ambitious ones make useful contributions to our understanding of the stylistic debate. Significantly, most of the churches erected in the first two decades of the new century were a succession of self-contained projects, a situation fundamentally different to the 1790s, 1820s or 1830s: in the 1790s, a series of imaginative pattern books stimulated architectural ideas and gave a degree of coherence to the various initiatives; the 1820s were dominated by the ideas emanating from the Commissioners; and the 1830s had a range of professional and lay journals which enabled ideas to be shared and debated. But during the French wars there were no unifying endeavours and few mechanisms for the exchange of ideas. However, there were two initiatives to build a group of churches in a specific region: the Lincolnshire Fens and Simonburn in remote Northumberland. Both are examined later in this chapter. The background for them is revealing and both contribute powerfully to our understanding of the motivation that might surround late-Georgian church building.

Wartime church building

An interesting aspect of early nineteenth-century church designs is that, despite the radical plans of many of the early 1790s Classical schemes that might have been expected to influence designers in the following decades, by the early 1800s there was a discernible return to traditional layouts and a growing, but often tacit, belief that Gothic – not Classicism – was the ideal style for churches. This stylistic shift was certainly not initially a coordinated movement.