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Questioning a Late Victorian “Dyad”: Preservationism, Demolitionism, and the City of London Churches, 1860–1904

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 April 2014

Abstract

Between 1841 and 1904, fourteen of Sir Christopher Wren's City of London churches, accounting for over a third of the City's forty Wrens, were demolished. But for certain deficiencies in the legislation enabling City church demolition, the toll would have been much higher. At one point during the late 1860s, well over half of all City churches had been selected for demolition. City church demolition was the most focused and yet also the most sustained episode of Victorian “vandalism,” and it therefore offers a uniquely appropriate case study through which to draw larger conclusions about late Victorian attitudes to the relative merits of historic preservation and development. The debates surrounding the demolition of Wren's City churches suggest that many advocates of historic building demolition were not, as William Morris would have us believe, “utilitarian philistines.” Nor, for that matter, were all preservationists motivated by heritage concerns.

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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies 2014 

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References

1 The Times, 17 April 1878.

2 Public appreciation of the City churches can be gauged by the recent proliferation of guidebooks and guided tours of the City churches. For recent guidebooks, see, for instance, Tucker, Tony, Visitor's Guide to the City of London Churches (London, 2009)Google Scholar; Miller, Stephen, London's City Churches: See the Scorch Marks of the Fire, or Visit and Alter by Henry Moore (London, 2011)Google Scholar; Hatts, Leigh, London City Churches (London, 2003)Google Scholar.

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7 See, for instance, Cobb, Gerald, “The Vanished Churches of the City of London,” History 2 (March 1952)Google Scholar. Cobb's essay characterizes the advocates of church demolition as “uncivilized” vandals while describing Morris and his fellow preservationists as “visionaries,” and holds out hope that “modern vandalism will make no further inroads.”

8 One finds Jerry White, in his otherwise excellent history of Victorian London, claiming that Wren's churches were “complacently sacrificed in the name of mammon . . . [and] given over to the moneychangers.” White, Jerry, London in the Nineteenth Century: A Human Awful Wonder of God (London, 2007), 41Google Scholar.

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15 While many residents were forced from the City by the street improvements and railroad demolition, others were displaced by landlords intent on profiting from rapidly increasing City land values, which grew by roughly 200 percent between 1850 and 1880. See Ball and Sunderland, An Economic History of London, 1800–1914, 362.

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21 For centuries, the church buildings, towers, and steeples had been both important navigational landmarks and sites of memorialization that organized spatial conceptualizations of London. Stow's Survey of London, for instance, was structured around a perambulation within and between the City churches. See Archer, Ian, “The Arts and Acts of Memorialization in Early-Modern London,” in Imagining Early-Modern London: Perceptions and Portrayals of the City from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. Merritt, J. F. (Cambridge, 2001)Google Scholar. The street views, and sounds, of the City churches quite literally mapped the City of London for its inhabitants. The popular definition of a cockney as anyone born within sounding distance of the Bow bells is merely one illustration of this. For an early articulation of this definition, see Minsheu, John, Ductor in Linguas (London, 1617)Google Scholar.

22 Lawrence Weaver, “London's Leaded Steeples, II,” Burlington Magazine 10 (1907): 301.

23 For the particular findings of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, see Snell, K. D. M. and Ell, Paul S., Rival Jerusalems: The Geography of Victorian Religion (Cambridge, 2000)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 For the scandals of the 1850s, see Owen, David, “The City Parochial Charities: The ‘Dead Hand’ in late Victorian London,” Journal of British Studies 1, no. 2 (1962)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Report of the Select Committee on Spiritual Destitution (1858), Parliamentary Papers (hereafter PP), 296.

25 For the precise terms of the legislation, see An Act to Make Better Provision for the Union of Contiguous Benefices in Cities, Towns, and Boroughs, 23 & 24 Vic. C. 142.

26 Bishop Blomfield bluntly summarized these aims in 1854: “[I]n any case where it can be clearly shown that a church is not required, it may be advantageously removed to a place where it is.” John Bull, 16 January 1854, 22. Blomfield's view was informed by the advocacy of Charles Hume, rector of St. Michael, Wood Street. See Hume, Charles, Proposals for Supplying the Suburbs of London with some of the Churches not required in the City (London, 1853), 2124, 43Google Scholar; Hume, Charles, Papers in Connection with a Plan for Removing Some of the City Churches to Places within the Metropolitan District, where Church Accommodation is Required (London, 1853), esp. 1013Google Scholar. Hume's advocacy was similarly crucial to Bishop Tait's later support. See Charles Hume to Tait, 19 January 1857, Tait papers 105/149, Lambeth Palace Archives (hereafter Lambeth); Hume to Tait, 25 March 1857, Tait papers 105/326, Lambeth; Hume to Tait, 11 April 1857, Tait papers 105/396, Lambeth.

27 Pevsner, Nikolaus's London: The City Churches (London, 1998)Google Scholar remains the best guide to City church architecture. Huelin, Gordon's Vanished Churches of the City of London (London, 1996)Google Scholar also touches on the physical characteristics of the demolished churches.

28 Partington, C. F., National History and Views of London and its Environs (London, 1834), 138–39Google Scholar.

29 Builder, 27 November 1875.

30 Report from the Select Committee on the Union of Benefices Bill (1873), PP.

31 A Bill Intituled an Act to Amend an Act Passed in the Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth Years of Her Majesty's Reign, Intituled “An Act to Make Better Provision for the Union of Contiguous Benefices in Cities, Towns, and Boroughs” (1872) House of Commons State Papers, VI. 443 (229); A Bill to Amend an Act Passed in the Twenty-Third and Twenty-Fourth Years of Her Majesty's Reign, Intituled “An Act to Make Better Provision for the Union of Contiguous Benefices in Cities, Towns, and Boroughs” (1883), House of Commons State Papers, X.477 (183).

32 Vallance, Aymer, “Mr. Arthur H. Mackmurdo and the Century Guild,” Studio 16 (1899): 183–92Google Scholar.

33 Mackmurdo, A. H., Wren's City Churches (London, 1883), 22, 25Google Scholar.

34 Ibid., 26–32. Mackmurdo attributed this modern inattention to the “family characteristic” to the philistinism and narrow individualism of his age. Ibid., vii–viii.

35 W. Niven, London City Churches Destroyed, viii.

36 Athenaeum, 21 April 1888, 505.

37 C. Kagen Paul, “The Proper Use of the City Churches,” Nineteenth Century (March 1880): 486–87, 492.

38 Daniell, A. E., The London City Churches (London, 1898), 7Google Scholar.

39 Graphic, 13 August 1897.

40 Builder, 21 April 1877.

41 Builder, 27 November 1875.

42 Citizen, 4 July 1879.

43 City Press, 15 September 1860.

44 Report from the Select Committee on the Union of Benefices Bill (1873), PP, 484. This anxiety was shared by parliamentarians such as Ralph Bernal Osborne. See Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., 8 August 1860, cols. 911, 917–18.

45 See, for instance, the letter from “Eastcheap” that claims “the Chinaman may indeed spurn the Christian religion if he sees such people dishonouring the graves of our ancestors.” City Press, 5 September 1878.

46 City Press, 6 October 1860.

47 Graphic, 26 June 1880; Daily News, 21 March 1884.

48 The Times, 29 September 1884.

49 The City Church and Churchyard Protection Society, To the Right Honourable and Right Revered the Lord Bishop of London (London, 1883), 8Google Scholar.

50 City Press, 18 August 1860. The 1851 Census of Religious Worship, and a host of later privately conducted surveys, found that many City Sunday services drew fewer than ten congregants. For the particular findings of the 1851 Census of Religious Worship, see Snell and Ell, Rival Jerusalems.

51 City Press, 22 September 1860; City Press, 29 September 1860.

52 Daily News, 19 February 1861.

53 Hansard Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., 8 August, 1860, cols. 896–98, 904, 910.

54 The Times, 20 April 1872.

55 Daily News, 21 March 1884.

56 John Bull, 26 December 1885.

57 Citizen, 27 September 1878.

58 John Plummer to John Jackson, 6 November 1883, Fulham Papers (hereafter FP), Jackson 45/91, Lambeth.

59 Henry Wright to Archbishop Edward Benson, 6 June 1883, Benson 2/174, Lambeth; Wright to Benson, 12 July 1883, Benson 2/177, Lambeth.

60 Morning Post, 9, 10, 11 February 1883.

61 Builder, 22 February 1879, 213; The City Church and Churchyard Protection Society, To the Right Honourable and Right Revered the Lord Bishop of London, 6; italics in original.

62 Daily News, 21 March 1884.

63 The Times, 23 April 1878.

64 Henry Wright to William Morris, 24 May 1882, S[ociety for the] P[rotection of] A[ncient] B[uildings] archive, folder titled “City churches, 1920–1922.”

65 Citizen, 4 April 1879.

66 For a taste of this statistical evidence, see the findings of the “Census of Congregations of the City Churches and Chapels,” reported in St. James's Gazette, 13 June 1881.

67 The City Church and Churchyard Protection Society, To the Right Honourable and Right Revered the Lord Bishop of London (London, 1883), 8; The Times, 24 June 1881.

68 Littell's Living Age 161 (1884): 508–09Google Scholar; Daily News, 21 March 1884.

69 Citizen, 18 July 1879 and 26 July 1879; City Church and Churchyard Protection Society, To the Right Honourable and Right Revered the Lord Bishop of London, 5–6.

70 City Press, 10 March 1860. See also Freshfield, Edwin, Remarks upon the Bill for Amending the Union of Benefices Act, 1860 (London, 1883), 23, 8–9Google Scholar.

71 R. W. Church to Archbishop Edward Benson, 7 February 1882, Benson 2/171, Lambeth.

72 Peek, H. W., A Scheme for the Demolition of three City Churches, Proposed by Sir H.W. Peek, Bart., MP, and the Correspondence Consequent Thereon (London, 1878), 67Google Scholar.

73 Graphic, 26 June 1880; Builder, 17 May 1879. The latter view was echoed by the Church and Churchyard Protection Society, which in 1880 complained of an “age which is above all things utilitarian.” See The Times, 24 June 1880. It is worth noting that neither the Graphic nor the Builder was entirely without sympathy for the “utilitarian party.”

74 Echo, 1 January 1881.

75 The Times, 5 December 1878. See also 27 April 1878 and 25 April 1872 for similarly utilitarian arguments based on congregation size. For a series of letters to the editor of the City Press that advocate competing demolition schemes based wholly on attendance figures, see Peek, A Scheme for the Demolition of Three Churches (London, 1878).

76 The Times, 23 August 1860.

77 Clarke, Henry William, The City Churches (London, 1898), 14Google Scholar.

78 Ibid., 19, 20.

79 Ibid., 18.

80 Owen, “The City Parochial Charities,” esp. 118, 120.

81 The Times, 17 June 1869, 10. See also Trevelyan's longer essay “The City Parochial endowments,” Social Science (1870–71): 437–51. It is noteworthy that a Times editorial of 26 January 1870 enthusiastically endorsed Trevelyan's suggestion that extensive church demolition should accompany reform of the parochial charities. The debate over the use of the City parochial charities became less contentious after 1883, when the City London Parochial Charities Act divested 107 of the City's 112 parishes of charity administration.

82 Henry Peek to Bishop Jackson, 11 January 1880, FP, Jackson 29/279, Lambeth.

83 P. G. Hill to Archbishop Jackson, [n.d.] June 1870, FP, Jackson 23/10, Lambeth.

84 Citizen, 30 August 1878. Peek alleged that in 1876 the select vestry voted an extra £200 payment for Trower (on top of his annual salary of £416) out of the charity funds. Peek challenged this misuse of the funds, and successfully applied to the Charity commissioners to have it blocked. See Peek, The Attorney General's Jurisdiction over Charities, a Curious Experience (London, 1885), 68Google Scholar.

85 Report of the Select Committee on the Union of Benefices Bill (1873), PP, 195, 223–26. Interestingly, the demolition of a further church (St. Mary, Woolnoth) had been blocked by its vestry on account of the church's “historical recollections” and artistic merit. Bernal characterized such considerations as inadequate and “less important motives.” Ibid., 203. Tait himself strongly agreed with Bernal on the question of vestry corruption, noting in a letter to Henry Peek that “the City vestry has now lost its identity, and become a reminiscence of the past, with no representative beyond the vestry clerk.” Archbishop Tait to Henry Peek, 19 August 1881, Tait 285/82, Lambeth.

86 Report of the Select Committee on the Union of Benefices Bill (1873), PP, 289–92, 332.

87 The Times, 9 August 1860. During the second half of the nineteenth century, the term “sentimentalist” was frequently used as a both a euphemism and a prefix for “ritualist” and “high church.” The ex-Tractarian J. A. Froude, for instance, often claimed sentimentality as a core characteristic of ritualism. See, for example, Froude, James Anthony, Short Studies on Great Subjects (London, 1977), 37Google Scholar. See also, Fraser's Magazine 7 (January–June 1873): 291.

88 City Press, 1 September 1860.

89 In fact, according to one critic of church removal, the fund's agitation for more extensive demolition had alienated some “influential persons, both of the laity and of the clergy, [who] regard the scheme in question as one of Spoilation and Sacrilege.” See, FP Jackson 23/10. For the fund's agenda, see Tait, Archibald Campbell, Bishop of London's fund: A sermon preached at St. James, Piccadilly on Monday, May 27, 1867, to the clergy supported by the fund and their lay assistants (London, 1867)Google Scholar. The Times, 23 February 1882. Between 1863 and 1893, the fund collected nearly £1 million and financed the construction of over 150 churches in deprived metropolitan districts. See, Review of the Churches 4 (April–September 1893): 69–70.

90 The Times, 4 November 1881.

91 Kingsley, Charles, “Civilized barbarism: Preached for the Bishop of London's Fund, at St. John's Church, Notting Hill, June 1866,” in The Water of Life and Other Sermons (London, 1867), 291316Google Scholar.

92 There is a large and growing literature on late Victorian sensationalist urban social reportage. For some of the best recent work, see McLaughlin, Joseph, Writing the Urban Jungle: Reading Empire in London from Doyle to Eliot (Charlottesville, 2000)Google Scholar; Koven, Seth, Slumming: Sexual and Social Politics in Victorian London (Princeton, 2006)Google Scholar; Brydon, T. R. C., “Charles Booth, Charity Control, and the London Churches, 1897–1903,” Historian 68, no. 3 (August 2006)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Driver, Felix, Geography Militant: Cultures of Exploration and Empire (London, 2001)Google Scholar.

93 Carlile, Wilson, Retrospect and prospect: What is the Church Army social scheme? (London, 1891), 1213Google Scholar.

94 Wilson Carlile (rector of St. Mary at Hill) to the churchwardens of St. Dunstan's in the East, 28 September 1893, Benson 127/ 226, Lambeth.

95 Citizen, 18 July and 15 August 1879. In fact, Bacon went so far as to claim that all the City churches could be demolished without the slightest harm to Wren's reputation, so long as St. Paul's remained, whereas the failure to provide spiritual guidance in areas of destitution would be catastrophic. James Bacon to Bishop Jackson, 11 June 1879, FP Jackson 45/3, Lambeth.

96 James Bacon to Bishop Jackson, 11 June 1879, FP Jackson 45, Lambeth; Citizen, 1 August 1879.

97 Peek, Henry, The Churches of Billingsgate and Tower street and more (London, 1878), 6872Google Scholar. In fact, the society membership was not uniformly ritualist. Moreover, the society's secretary, Henry Wright, was a strong antiritualist. Nonetheless, the society did count a number of ritualists among its membership. The High Church dean of St. Paul's, Henry Perry Liddon, for instance, was a vice president.

98 Citizen, 1 August 1879.

99 Henry Peeke to Archbishop Benson, 4 May 1891, Benson 95/150, Lambeth.

100 Clarke, Henry William, Romanism without the Pope in the Church of England (Beckenham, 1899)Google Scholar.

101 Daily Telegraph, 4 July 1881.

102 FP Jackson 45/100-389, Lambeth. See also, Citizen, 17 January 1879.

103 Robert Gregory to Archbishop Benson, 4 May 1891, Benson 95/148, Lambeth.

104 See, for instance, Copy of all minutes, papers, and letters of and to the ecclesiastical commissioners, and of schemes and orders in council respecting the union of the rectory of St. James Garlickhithe, with the rectory of St. Michael Queenhithe, with Holy Trinity-the-Less, in the city of London (1865), House of Commons Papers, XLI. 361 (190), 14, where the Benefice Commission decides that St. James, Garlickhithe, will be the parish church of the united benefice because it is considered to be “handsomer” than St. Michael, Queenhithe.

105 Peek, A Scheme, 4. It should be noted that Peek mischaracterized the church as Wren's work. Although the tower and spire were designed by Wren, the body of the church was rebuilt in 1817 by David Laing.

106 See, for instance, Benson 114/76–77, Lambeth; Benson 114/81, Lambeth; Benson 114/85, Lambeth; Benson 114/88, Lambeth; Benson 114/97, Lambeth. See also, Copy of scheme for uniting the benefice (being a rectory) of All Hallows, Lombard-Street, in the city of London, with the benefice (being a rectory) of St. Benet, Gracechurch, with St. Leonard, Eastcheap, in the said city of London, and for the other purposes thereinafter mentioned (1864) House of Commons Papers, XLIV.397, (311), 4.

107 The Times, 9 August 1860.

108 Hansard, 3rd ser. 26 April 1860, cols. 112–13; the City Press echoed this argument. See, City Press, 1 September 1860.

109 Taylor, Sydney, Speech of Sir Sydney Taylor, A.M. Barrister at Law, before the Court of Common Council, Respecting the Intended Demolition of the Church of St. Clement Eastchurch and other City Churches (London, 1834), 68Google Scholar. It is worth noting that Taylor's opposition to the scheme was likely prompted by self-interest rather than an appreciation of the metropolitan picturesque. Taylor was, after all, legal council to the parish of St. Clement. See Gentleman's Magazine, January and February 1834, 29–32, 50–51, and 154–56, for kindred criticisms.

110 Gentleman's Magazine, June 1834, 601–02. Blomfield characterized the proposal as proposal as a “reckless . . . obnoxious . . . ill-digested, ill-considerate, and wanton” act of spoliation. Gentleman's Magazine, June 1834, 598–600. On the back of this defense, Blomfield was memorably portrayed in McLean's Monthly Sheet of Caricatures as a divine protector of the churches against a wicked and self-interested cabal of aldermen and common councilmen. Blomfield's defense of the churches was such that, when the influential architectural journalist George Godwin published his own paen to the City churches in 1839, he dedicated it to the Bishop on account of the “unwearied zeal and diligence you have uniformly displayed in preserving ancient specimens of ecclesiastical architecture.” George Godwin, The Churches of London: A History and Description of the Ecclesiastical Edifices of the Metropolis (London, 1839), iv.

111 City of London Churches Commission, Report of the City of London Churches Commission (London, 1919)Google Scholar.

112 Observer, 16 May 1920.

113 Manchester Dispatch, 10 May 1920.

114 The Times, 21 May 1920. See also Morning Post, 17 May 1920.

115 Westminster Gazette, 8 May 1920.

116 For a taste of the recent debates over the relationship between “modernity” and Victorian Studies, see Anderson, Amanda, “Victorian Studies and the Two Modernities,” Victorian Studies 47 (2005): 195203CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Vernon, James's response, “Historians and the Victorian Studies Question,” Victorian Studies 47 (2005): 272–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Alborn, Timothy L., “Were the Victorians Ever Modern?” Journal of Victorian Culture 11 (2006): 154–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

117 In the view of one prominent social historian, this “post-Victorian age” runs right through the 1960s. See Harris, Jose, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain, 1870–1914 (Oxford, 1993)Google Scholar. Price, Richard has offered a complementary analysis in his British Society, 1680–1880: Dynamism, Containment and Change (Cambridge, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beyond social historians such as Harris and Price, this view has also appealed to intellectual historians and literary scholars. Francis O'Gorman, for instance, has commented on the “widespread sense, not uncontested, that the last two decades of the nineteenth century were a departure in literary historical terms,” and Stephen Kern has characterized the 1883 publication of Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustra as a crucial breaking point with Victorian thought. See O'Gorman, Francis, “Partly Anonymous? Literary-Historical Reflections on Richard Price's British Society, 1680–1880,” Journal of Victorian Culture 11, no. 2 (2006): 160–67Google Scholar, and Kern, Stephen, “When Did the Victorian Period End? Relativity, Sexuality, and Narrative,” Journal of Victorian Culture 11, no. 2 (2006): 326–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

118 See Inwood, Stephen, City of Cities: The Birth of Modern London (London, 2005), 457–62Google Scholar.