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‘Proceeding like Guy Faux’: the Antiquarian Investigation of St Stephen's Chapel Westminster, 1790–1837

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 October 2016

Rosemary Hill
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Abstract

St Stephen's Chapel Westminster is one of Europe's great lost buildings. An elaborate palatine chapel, work on it began in 1292 and continued until at least 1363. After 1546 it became the House of Commons and was so obscured by successive alterations that the original building had passed out of living memory by the late eighteenth century. It was then that it attracted the interest of a number of antiquaries who recorded it in the years up to and after the fire of 1834. In 1837 it was demolished. The antiquaries’ accounts provide the only records of the chapel's appearance and construction and have been much used in studies of the medieval building. This article, however, considers them as a body of work in their own right, one that casts light not only on St Stephen's but on the changing attitudes of the Romantic age towards history and the medieval past in the years which saw the transformation of the Gothic Revival and the birth of the modern idea of conservation.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 59 , 2016 , pp. 253 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © The Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2016 

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References

NOTES

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5 Their publications will be discussed individually in context. In chronological order they are: Some Account of the Collegiate Chapel of St Stephen, Westminster, text by John Topham, plates by John Carter and James Basire, published by the Society of Antiquaries (1795); Antiquities of Westminster, by J.T. Smith and John Sidney Hawkins (1807); Some Account of the Collegiate Chapel of St Stephen, Westminster, an expanded edition of the publication of 1795 with additional text by Henry Englefield and plates by Richard Smirke and John Nixon (1811); Description of the Cosmoramic and Dioramic Delineations of the Ancient Palace of Westminster and St Stephen's Chapel, Now the House of Commons, by Adam Lee (1831); The History of the Ancient Palace and Late Houses of Parliament at Westminster, by John Britton and Edward Brayley (1836); The Architectural Antiquities of the Collegiate Chapel of St Stephen Westminster, by Frederick Mackenzie (1844).

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18 Ibid., p. 8.

19 Hugh Trevor-Roper, The Romantic Movement and the Study of History (London, 1969) is the most important account of this shift in historic understanding.

20 Frew, ‘An Aspect of the Early Gothic Revival’, p. 175, n. 8.

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32 Gentleman's Magazine, 73/1 (1803), pp. 106–07.

33 Carter gives details of his difficulties in his autobiography: London, King's College, Leathes Collection 7/4, MS volume ‘Occurrences in the life, and memorandums relating to the professional Persuits [sic] of J.C. F.A.S. [sic] Architect’, unnumbered pages.

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35 Milner, John, A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Antient Cathedrals as Exemplified in the Cathedral of Salisbury (London, 1798)Google Scholar relates the circumstances.

36 Commons Journals, 44 (1788–89): quoted in J. Mordaunt Crook and M.H. Port, The History of the King's Works [hereafter King's Works], VI, p. 512.

37 ‘Occurrences’ as above n. 33.

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39 John Carter, Gentleman's Magazine (1807), p. 133.

40 John Carter, Gentleman's Magazine (1804), p. 799.

41 J.T. Smith, Gentleman's Magazine, (1803), p. 118.

42 J.T. Smith, Antiquities of Westminster (London, 1807), p. vi.

43 Quoted in, Wroth, W.W., ‘Hawkins, John Sidney (bap. 1758, d. 1842)’, revised by Riddell, Richard, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Ed. Matthew, H. C. G. and Harrison, Brian (Oxford: OUP, 2004)Google Scholar. Online ed. Ed. Lawrence Goldman. Oct. 2009 (accessed 22 April 2016).

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45 Topham, Account, p. 4.

46 Smith, Antiquities, p. 155.

47 Ibid., p. 144. Arthur Onslow (1691–1768), a figure then well within living memory, served as Speaker from 1728 until 1761, the longest tenure of the office to date.

48 Ibid., p. 30.

49 Ibid., p. 106.

50 Ibid., p. 225.

51 Ibid., p. 7.

52 Ibid., p. 23.

53 Ibid., p. ix.

54 Ibid., dedication.

55 Ibid., p. iv.

56 Scott, Walter, The Lay of the Last Minstrel (Edinburgh, 1805)Google Scholar, Canto II, xi.

57 Ibid., Canto II, vii.

58 Gentleman's Magazine (1800), 2 p. 814.

59 J.T. Smith, Gentleman's Magazine (1800), 2, p. 814.

60 Ibid. (1803), 1, p. 119.

61 Ibid. (1807), 1, p. 426.

62 Topham, John, Some Account of the Collegiate Chapel of St Stephen, Westminster (London, 1795 [–1811])Google Scholar, ‘Description of the additional plates of St Stephen's chapel by Sir H C Englefield, bart. President’, p. 11.

63 Ibid.

64 Ibid., p. 12.

65 Ibid., p. 13.

66 Ibid., p. 21.

67 London, Society of Antiquaries, MS 677, Hudson Gurney, ‘Journal of a tour through France … 1802–3’ f. 12.

68 Gentleman's Magazine (1804), 2, p. 735.

69 Ibid.

70 Ibid. (1807), 1, p. 532.

71 Ibid.

72 Ibid. (1807), 1, p. 533.

73 Ibid. (1807), 1, p. 214.

74 Quoted in ibid.

75 Quoted in King's Works, VI, p. 519.

76 The Times, 26 July 1805.

77 Clark, Kenneth, The Gothic Revival (London, 1928), p. 102 Google Scholar.

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79 Pugin, A.C. and Willson, E.J., Specimens of Gothic Architecture Selected From Various Ancient Edifices in England, 2 vols, (London, 1821 and 1823)Google Scholar, I, title page.

80 Ibid., II, p. 15.

81 A.C. Pugin, Specimens, I, Preface.

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83 Lee, Adam, Description of the Cosmoramic and Dioramic Delineations of the Ancient Palace of Westminster and St Stephen's Chapel, Now the House of Commons (London, 1831), p. viiGoogle Scholar.

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85 Those that survive in the Museum of London are discussed in Galinou, Mireille, ‘Adam Lee's drawings of St Stephen's Chapel, Westminster. Antiquarianism and Showmanship in early 19th-century London’, London and Middlesex Archaeological Society Transactions, 34 (1983) pp. 231–44Google Scholar.

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87 The English Spy (Westmacott and Cruikshank), ‘The Collective Wisdom; or Sights and Sketches in the Chapel of St Stephen’ (London, 1824), p. 1.

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89 Ibid., p. 7.

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93 For a full account of the depictions of the ruins after the fire see Walker, ‘The Palace of Westminster After the Fire of 1834’.

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95 Ibid., p. xv.

96 Ibid., pp. 425–26.

97 Ibid., p. 452.

98 Ibid., p. v.

99 Ibid., p. 459.

100 London, Parliamentary Archives, ARC/PRO/WORK11 26 6.

101 Ibid.

102 Ibid.

103 Mackenzie, Frederick, The Architectural Antiquities of the Collegiate Chapel of St Stephen Westminster, (London, 1844)Google Scholar.

104 Ibid., p. vii. Elmes, James, Memoirs of the Life and Work of Sir Christopher Wren (London, 1823)Google Scholar.

105 Ibid., p. vi.

106 Ibid., p. 28.