The British Style Debate 1840–1860

The lively debate about style among German architects in the 1820s, 1830s, and 1840s parallels a growing sense of disquiet evident among British architects during the same years. The debate in England, however, formed along somewhat different and generally less philosophical lines. Here institutions such as the Royal Academy and the Institute of British Architects (founded in 1834) represented the status quo and therefore became objects of attack, both from new institutions (London's Architectural Association and Henry Cole's Department of Practical Art) and from powerful individuals (Augustus Welby Pugin and John Ruskin). And the backdrop to the debate was of course Britain's advanced industrialization, which in 1851 resulted in the first international exhibition devoted to art and technology.

The Cambridge Camden Society, along with its polemical organ, The Ecclesiologist, was another of these institutional voices. The society had been founded in 1839 with thirty-eight members, but by 1843 it counted over seven hundred enthusiasts, including many leaders of the Anglican Church. The Ecclesiologist became a strident voice championing liturgical and architectural “truth.” It unequivocally opposed all competing styles for churches, once noting that the introduction “of a new style, whether Romanesque, Byzantine, or Eclectic, is to be earnestly deprecated,” as “Gothic architecture is, in the highest sense, the only Christian Architecture.”