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James Essex, cathedral restorer

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Thomas H. Cocke
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Extract

The eighteenth-century church establishment was unromantic about religion. The efforts of its divines, from Archbishop Tillotson onwards, were devoted to proving the good sense and practical virtues of Christianity, not probing its mysteries. The huge medieval churches it had inherited were almost embarrassing in their unsuitability to the worship of that time. Wren had summed up the requirements for a cathedral - ‘a Quire, Consistory, Chapter House, Library, Preaching-auditory’

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 18 , 1975 , pp. 12 - 22
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1975

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References

Notes

1 Wren, C., Parentalia (1750, reprint Farnborough 1965), p. 274.Google Scholar

2 In a letter to Mann of 16 July 1755, Walpole, H. (ed. Lewis, W. S.), Correspondence, xx (1960), p.485.Google Scholar

3 Bentham, J., History and Antiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely… from 673-1771(1771), p.43, n. 1Google Scholar. One should set against this Gray’s advice to Bentham that he should qualify his praise with ‘a little reflection on the rage of repairing, beautifying, whitewashing, painting and gilding and (above all) the mixture of Greek (or Roman) ornaments in Gothic edifices. This well-meant fury has been and will be little less fatal… than the reformation and the civil wars’. Correspondence(ed. Toynbee, P. & Whibley, L.), ii (1935), p. 862.Google Scholar

4 Unfortunately the bishop’s death, his executors’ pusillanimity and Pearson the glazier’s indolence prevented the completion of the window.

5 BM Add. MSS6762,6765.

6 Essex, J. (ed. Fawcett, W. M.), Journal of a Tour through Part of Flanders and France in August 1773 (1888), Introduction p. xxxii.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., p.xxiii.

8 BM Add. MS 5842, p.352.

9 Walpole, H. (ed. Lewis, W. S.), Correspondence, ii (1937), p. 26.Google Scholar

10 Archaeologia, vi (paper delivered in 1781), p. 163.

11 Miss Corinne Wilson tells me that Essex also made a survey of Winchester Cathedral at the same time, preserved in a volume ‘Surveyors Reports 1775-1816’ in the cathedral library.

12 BM Add. MS6769.

13 Anon., Ely Cathedral as it is and as it was - a brief history and description(1846), p. 9.Google Scholar

14 BM Add. MS5842, p.350.

15 A collection of the surviving evidence can be found in St John Hope, W., ‘Quire Screens in English Churches’;, Archaeologia, lxviii (1917), pl. ix, pp. 85–87.Google Scholar

16 Stewart, D., ‘James Essex’, Architectural Review, cviii (1950), p. 318.Google Scholar

17 Walpole, H. (ed. Lewis, W. S.), Correspondence, i (1937), p. 214.Google Scholar

18 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/13.

19 BM Add. MS6761, pp.72 et seq.

20 BM Add. MS6772, if.271 et seq.

21 BM Add. MS6772, f.282r

22 BM Add. MS6772, f.282v.

23 Venables, Precentor, ‘Architectural History of Lincoln Cathedral’, Archaeological Journal, xl (1883), p.413, n.2.Google Scholar

24 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/13.

25 Venables, , op. cit., p.414, n. 1.Google Scholar

26 PRO, State Papers Domestic 35, Vol.63, No.51.

27 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/13.

28 The west towers still had their wooden and lead spires whose attempted removal, on Gibbs’s advice, in 1727 had provoked riots.

29 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/13.

30 Lincolnshire Notes & Queries, ix (1907), pp.72–73, 83.Google Scholar

31 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/13.

32 Buckler, J. C., Description and Defence of Restorations on the Exterior of Lincoln Cathedral (1866), p. 83.Google Scholar

33 BM Add. MS 6772, f. 267.

34 Vetusta Monumenta(1781), p.4 of notes to pls X & XI.

35 Bedford Record Office L/30/9.

36 BM Add. MS6762, f.16v.

37 Nichols, J., Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century(1814), viii, p. 607.Google Scholar

38 Essex’s notes show that England was, to say the least, no worse than the Continent in the care of medieval buildings. The cathedral at Antwerp had windows blocked or missing their tracery, while at Courtrai they were still (1773) using marble and stucco to hide the Gothic church behind a classical guise.

39 Buckler, , op. cit., pp. 258–259.Google Scholar