1 M. H. Port, Six Hundred New Churches (1961). Port quotes (p. 9) the Memorial drawn up by J. Bowdler for the Prime Minister in 1815:‘… the danger to which the Constitution of this Country both in Church and State is exposed from the want of places of public worship, particularly for persons of the middle and lower classes.’ Clarke, B. F. L., in Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century (1969 ed.), p. 21 Google Scholar, quotes a similar cautionary statement from the British Critic of 1836, concerning the need for churches in decrepit towns:‘… places of ungodliness, profligacy, intemperance, improvidence turbulence, filth, riot, sulleness, ferocity, desperation, disease… [conducive to] the destruction of physical, mental, moral and spiritual health.’ The date of this article might suggest that the Parliamentary Act for New Churches was not altogether successful in raising moral or social standards.

2 The specimen designs remaining at the Church Commissioners were discovered through the kind assistance of Mr Robinson and Mr Melling of the Church Commissioners’ Records Department.

3 Church Commissioners Muniment, Surveyor's Report Book, Vol. iv, p. 57.

4 Surveyor's Report Book, Vol.iv, p.46. This earlier reference was to a later meeting between Good and Pennethorne, 9 June 1834:

‘Having seen Mr Pennethorne on the Subject of Mr. Nash's charge for Designs for Churches furnished for the use of the Commissioners, in the year 1818 I beg to report.

‘That Mr. Pennethorne is not prepared to make any reduction for Mr. Nash's Charge for these Drawings, &c nor to give any information with reference to the same beyond what is stated in Mr. Nash's letter to the Board. Mr. Pennethorne considers that £500 – for Ten Designs, by a [sic] Architect of Mr. Nash’s emminence is a very moderate charge.’

5 Church Commissioners Muniment, File 21744, Part I. Two letters from Smirke:

(1) Dated Albany, 14 March 1818, stating that his basic model was the parish church at Hackney, of 9,000ft and accommodating 2,000 persons at an estimated cost of £26,000.

(2) Dated Albany, 16 November 1818, presenting an estimate of £25,000 for a church to hold 1,400 people based on St Andrew, Holborn.

6 Soane Museum Drawings, dr. 15, No. 13, set 8. These sectional elevations were for Holy Trinity, Marylebone, and St Peter, Walworth ( Dorothy, Stroud, The Architecture of Sir John Soane, 1961, pp. 131–132 Google Scholar).

7 RIBA Library. The Ledger (p. 101) has a record of expenses for designs for All Souls, Langham Place.

8 Soane, , Memoirs (privately printed, 1835), p. 42 Google Scholar. Soane claimed that the estimate presented by Smirke was similar to his own, whereas those of Nash ‘… did not exceed £12,000’.

9 See the Index of Specimen Designs by Nash; he managed to estimate his most ornamental design (Fig. 27) at the extraordinarily low figure of £12,330. The design was much simplified for All Souls, Langham Place, where the estimate submitted to the Commissioners amounted to £18,500 (Church Commissioners Muniment, File 20559, pt2/6).

10 Port, , op. cit., p. 53 Google Scholar. The letter was dated 23 August 1819. Jenner was Secretary to the Church Commissioners.

11 Port, , op. cit., p.39, 3 April 1818Google Scholar.

12 Note 5, above; Port, , op. cit., p.61 Google Scholar.

13 Downes, K., Hawksmoor (1959), pl. 68bGoogle Scholar.

14 Seckler, E. F., Wren and His Place in European Architecture (1954), pl. 28a, 10a, 9a, 25, 2a and 2b respectivelyGoogle Scholar. The octagonal tower with applied pinnacles at the top (Fig.29b) may derive from Hawksmoor's St George in the East (Downes, op. cit. pl. 55b).

15 Unlike Wren, Nash, Soane and Smirke were not faced by the problems of confined sites. St Mary, Wyndham Place, was designed by Smirke to seal the vista from the lower end of Bryanston Square, while the position of All Souls, Langham Place, clearly encouraged Nash to utilize the circular movement of the steeple in Fig. 27 to link Portland Place with Regent Street. Moreover these sites did not so much create difficulties as offer opportunities for Picturesque architecture.

16 ‘Rectangular shapes,’ wrote Smirke, ‘[are] the component materials of every modern work.’ For analyses of his rationalist architectural theory, and its criticism by Soane, c.f. Crook, J. Mordaunt, ‘Architect of the Rectangular: a reassessment of Sir Robert Smirke’, Country Life cxli (1967), pp.846–848 Google Scholar; ‘Sir Robert Smirke: a centenary florilegium’, Architectural Review cxlii (1967), pp.208–210 Google Scholar; and ‘A Vanished Theatrical Masterpiece: Smirke's Covent Garden Theatre’, Country Life Annual 1970, pp. 102–105.Google Scholar

17 ‘An Ionic is an Ionic,’ Nash told Elmes, ‘and he did not care which one his draughtsmen used’ ( Bolton, A. T., The Architecture of Robert and James Adam ii, 1922, 46, n. 2Google Scholar).

18 For the European ‘Rundbogenstil’ see Hitchcock, H.-R., Architecture: 19th and 20th centuries (1958), p. 27.Google Scholar

19 Clarke, , op. cit., p. 5.Google Scholar

20 Nash remarked on this arrangement in the note to the plan of the Gothic church with a Greek cross ground plan (Fig. 29b), see List of Specimen Designs. The altar positions of the first two church designs (Figs. 27 and 28a) are traditional. Nash may have been aware of the wooden models of churches, probably by Hawksmoor, then housed at Westminster Abbey. T.L. Donaldson and C.R. Cockerell copied them. One circular plan with six entrances may have inspired the octagonal Gothic design by Nash (Fig. 29a). See Architectural Review cvii (1950), pp. 189–191.Google Scholar

21 Port, , op. cit., p.61 Google Scholar; Crook, ‘Smirke Florilegium’, loc.cit.

22 Sir John Summerson, Introduction to Davis, T., The Architecture of John Nash (1906).Google Scholar Summerson refers to the possible influence of Ledoux's publication, L'Architecture considerée sous le rapport de I'Art, upon the town plans of Nash which crystallized in the Regent's Park scheme.

23 Nash provided four staircase turrets in three of his designs (Figs. 27, 29b and 30a) and eight for his octagonal Gothic church (Fig. 29a).

24 Davis, T., op. cit., pl. 171.Google Scholar

25 Summerson, J., Nash (1949 ed.), p.271.Google Scholar

26 Crook, J. Mordaunt, The Greek Revival (1968), p. 42 and pl. 18.Google Scholar

27 Church Commissioners Muniment. Files relating to the churches of the First and Second Parliamentary Grants.

28 Church Commissioners Muniment, File 20559, pt2/6. Nash wrote from Dover Street, 9 September 1823, supporting the use of stone for the spire of All Souls, Langham Place, instead of shingling, claiming wrongly that it would involve no increased expenditure. This argument was surely used to retain the effect of the spire design in Fig. 27:‘… the shingles may impress the mind that they were really shingles and of course fastened to Timber work, which however picturesque the shingling might appear yet it could not fail to convey the impression that it was less substantial and permanent than a spire constructed with stone…’ Soane, on the other hand, apparently reduced the proportions of the Greek steeple type illustrated in his specimen drawing of medieval and classical churches (Fig. 35a). The Church Commissioners File on St John, Bethnal Green (15159 pt 2/3) includes a critical letter from a Joseph Merceron, 9 June 1827, which records ‘Murmurs and complaints in every quarter,… with regard to the steeple which has really mortified and disappointed the expectations of almost every individual…’ See Memoirs, in which Soane wrote that the steeple had been reduced in the design ‘to keep the expense within the limits prescribed by H.M. Commissioners’.

29 An earlier version of Smirke's steeple appeared in Riou's, Stephen Grecian Orders of Architecture Delineated and Explained (1768).Google Scholar

30 Port, , op.cit., p.48.Google Scholar

31 Church Commissioners Muniment, File 18247. These three specifications were submitted in July 1823.

32 Gomme, A. & Walker, D., The Architecture of Glasgow (1968), pp. 128–129, n.2.Google Scholar