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Extra Illustrations of Pugin Buildings in T. H. King’s Les vrais principes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Roderick O’Donnell
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Extract

The publication at Bruges in 1850 of Les Vrais principes de l’architecture ogivale ou chrétienne by the English Catholic convert and Bruges resident Thomas Henry King (1822–92) has always been considered an epoch-making event in the Gothic Revival in Belgium. Its English reputation on the other hand is merely that of a pirated edition of Pugin’s works such as The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841) and The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England (1841– 42). But it contains extra interpolated illustrations, some signed by Pugin’s Catholic rival Charles Francis Hansom; others, unsigned, arq presumably by King. A close study of certain of the unsigned extra illustrations points to a Puginian source; these are the subject of this paper.

Type
Section 3: Drawings and Designs
Information
Architectural History , Volume 44 , 2001 , pp. 57 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2001

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References

Notes

1 King, T. H., Les vrais principes de l’architecture ogivale ou chrétienne . . . renamie et développé d’après le texte . . . de A. W. Pugin (Bruges and Paris, 1850)Google Scholar.

2 van Beirvelt, Lori, ‘The English Colony in Bruges and its influence on the Gothic Revival in Flanders’, in de Maeyer, Jan & Verpoest, Luc (eds), Gothic Revival: Religion, Architecture and Style in Western Europe 1815–1914 (Leuven, 2000), pp. 99–104 Google Scholar.

3 For Les vrais principes, see Margaret, Belcher, A. W. N. Pugin, a Critical Bibliography (1994), pp. 64–65 Google Scholar; she does not identify the plates.

4 Alexandra, Wedgwood, Catalogue of the Drawings Collections of the Victoria and Albert Museum: A. W. N. Pugin and the Pugin Family (1985): Pugin’s diary, 1849, p. 98 Google Scholar n. 24.

5 King, op. cit., between pp. 178 & 179.

6 Ibid., between pp. 182 & 183.

7 Usk, Catholic church of St Francis Xavier (1847): see Kelly, B. W., English Catholic Missions (1907), p. 408 Google Scholar; also Newman, J., The Buildings of Wales: Gwent/Monmouthshire (2000), pp. 587–88Google Scholar.

8 Buckland, Catholic church of St George (1846): see Kelly, op. cit., p. 107; also Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Berkshire (1966), p. 105 Google Scholar. Pugin’s friend Dr Daniel Rock was priest here 1840-53.

9 Bishop George Hilary Brown (1786-1856), vicar apostolic 1840, first Catholic bishop of Liverpool, 1850–56. See Wedgwood, op. cit., pp. 60 & 93 n. 33: Pugin’s diary, 12 September 1845.

10 A. W. N. Pugin, ‘To the Editor of the Ecclesiologist’, The Tablet, 31 January 1846; ‘The Artistic Merit of Mr. Pugin’, The Ecclesiologist, 5 January 1846, pp. 10-16. See also O’Donnell, R., ‘“. . . blink [him] by silence”: the Cambridge Camden Society and A. W. N. Pugin’, in Webster, C. & Elliott, J. (eds), A Church as it should be’: the Cambridge Camden Society and the Victorian Church (Stamford, 2000), pp. 98–120 Google Scholar (114-16).

11 Catholic church of Our Lady of the Annunciation, Bishop Eton, Woolton Road, Liverpool. For E. W. Pugin’s rebuilding, see The Catholic Directory (1858), pp. 79-81; Drew, G. F., Bishop Eton and its Shrine (Liverpool, 1951)Google Scholar; also Pevsner, , The Buildings of England: South Lancashire (1969), p. 215 Google Scholar.

12 Such as the window of St Edward, with stonework tracery, now in the Lady Chapel and the Lady altar with its floor tiles, and the Mensa, but not the reredos of the memorial altar in the epistle aisle.

13 Now St Joseph’s Home.

14 ‘A prospect of the convent of Our Lady of Mercy, Birmingham’, The Present State, pl. [12] following p. 108.

15 Ibid., loc. cit.: ‘A prospect of Saint Maries convent at Liverpool’.

16 To add to the confusion the college takes its name from the next-door village of Ratcliffe-on-the-Wreake.

17 See Claude Leetham, I.C., Luigi Gentile, Sower of the Second Spring (1965).

18 See Leetham, , Ratdiffe College 1847-1947 (Leicester, 1950), pp. 11–35 Google Scholar.

19 See Howard, Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford (1983), pp. 105-12Google Scholar.

20 Lady Mary [Anne] Arundell (1787-1845) became a Catholic in 1810 and married James Everard, tenth Lord Arundell of Wardour.

21 Leetham, Ratdiffe College, p. 35, where C. F. Hansom (1816-92) is confused with his brother Joseph Aloysius.

22 Cuthbert Welby Pugin was an early pupil: see Wedgwood, op. cit., pp. 69 (Pugin’s diary, 15 October 1850) & 98 n. 20.

23 For the Ramsgate 1849 perspective see Atterbury, P. & Wainwright, C. (eds), Pugin: a Gothic Passion (1994), p. 59, pl. 105 Google Scholar; also O’Donnell, review of Libby Horner & Gail Hunter, A Flint Seaside Church, in True Principies, Newsletter of the Pugin Society, vol. 1, no. 10, Summer 2000, pp. 15-17.

24 Leetham, Ratcliffe College, pp. 11–22, 32, 35. The contractor was George Myers, and drawings for the chapel survive in the Myers family album ( private collection).

25 Benjamin, Ferrey, Recollections of Augustus N. Welby Pugin and his father Augustus Pugin . . . (1862), p. 133 Google Scholar.

26 Lady Wedgwood now accepts the attribution of the bird’s-eye scheme to Pugin on the basis of a photocopy sent to her by Margaret Belcher of a letter at the Rosminian archives, Stresa, Italy, dated 26 April 1846 (ASIC, AG.63 607; also 021460), from the Rosminian Provincial, Fr. John Baptist Pagani (1806-60) to Fr. Luigi Gentile (1801-48). It is written in English, with a lithograph vignette of the bird’s-eye identical with T. H. King’s and the inscription ‘Ratcliffe College, near Loughborough, Leicestershire’ (Alexandra Wedgwood to this writer, 19 July 2000).

27 Leetham, Ratcliffe College, p. 35. The novitiate was moved to Rugby in 1852, where a large range by Pugin’s builder George Myers was erected, possibly with C. F. Hansom as architect. It is now part of Bishop Wulstan High School.

28 A large refectory and kitchen wing was added, c. 1900, by the architect William Young.

29 The Present State, pl. [7], following p. 96: ‘St. Bernard’s Monastery of Cistercians, Leicestershire’.

30 Ibid., pl. [13], following p. 110: ‘St. Gregory’s Priory, Downside, as designed to be erected’.

31 O’Donnell, , ‘Pugin’s Designs for Downside’, The Burlington Magazine, 123 (April 1981), pp. 230-33Google Scholar.

32 Count Jean-Baptiste Béthune (1820-94), the Belgian Gothic Revival leader, architect of the Maredsous monastery (1873-91).

33 Edward Pugin’s chapel was floored in for use as classrooms, etc., in 1962 and replaced by an incongruous Byzantine church by E. Bower Norris (Fig. 5). For a description of the present state of the college, see Pevsner & Williamson, E., The Buildings of England: Leicestershire and Rutland, 2nd edn (1984), pp. 359–61Google Scholar.