English Victorian Churches: Architecture, Faith and Revival
James Stevens Curl
John Hudson Publishing, £50, 240 pages
This handsome little book is an updating of Professor James Stevens Curl’s earlier 1995 work, The English Heritage Book of Victorian Churches. In those days he was restricted to mainly black and white plates. It is now lavishly illustrated with excellent colour photographs, many taken by the late lamented Geoff Brandwood.
The book is dedicated to Brandwood: “Friend, Colleague, Enthusiast, Ecclesiologist and Architectural Photographer with a discerning eye: Nam idem velle atque idem nolle, ea dedum firma amicitia est – to like and dislike the same things, that is truly real friendship.” It is one of the abiding griefs of my life that I was not able to accompany Geoff on his Victorian Society tour of “The Barnsley Biretta Belt”.
The book covers mainly (and rightly) Anglican churches from 1837 to 1901. It is in some ways a pessimistic threnody for an era that is past. It is impossible not to agree with the author that “mystery and numinousness have been discarded in favour of fatuous virtue-signalling, absurd attempts to introduce a language akin to street argot in order to ‘reach out’ to the masses (clearly it does no such thing) and 10th-rate ‘music’ that lowers rather than elevates the spirits”. He notes that in many areas churches have lost their congregations because non-Christians have moved in, and that the ascendant Evangelicals in the Church of England tend to care little for the historic furnishings of churches in their care.
One observation that I do not entirely agree with is this: “As we move into the third decade of the 21st century, it becomes more difficult to explore churches.” I think that the internet has made it much easier to discover when churches are open or, for instance, to ensure one coincides with the end of services. I also find Anglican vicars and churchwardens often touchingly willing to be helpful, if emailed in advance. I would not dare expect the same reaction from a probably much-overworked Catholic priest.
Curl inevitably acknowledges the Catholic convert AWN Pugin’s pivotal role in kickstarting the Gothic Revival with his espousal of Middle Pointed architecture. GG Scott said that the thunder of Pugin’s writing awakened him from his slumbers. It is noted that many of Pugin’s more ultramontane co-religionists failed to get the message about the superiority of Gothic architecture.
A very competent survey of the great Anglican Victorian architects takes in Scott, Butterfield, Street, Pearson, Bodley and Temple Moore – to name but a few. Curl observes that the Gothic tradition by no means ended with the death of Queen Victoria and briefly concludes his study of Anglican architects with the triumphant Gothic design by Warwick Pether of the upper stages of the crossing tower of St Edmundsbury Cathedral at the start of the 21st century.
Pugin’s contribution has been mentioned above although his work is regarded on the whole as disappointing, because of the lack of money, apart from Cheadle and Ramsgate. I suspect Curl of being that relatively rare creature, a High-Church Ulsterman, and not unduly sympathetic to Catholicism. He writes “Many RC divines felt the refined gentility of the Church of England was no way to reclaim souls: more effective were admonitory batterings to bring the sinful to repentance, and the exploitation of any means to bring sinners under the sanctifying drip of the Precious Blood.” It is a curious phraseology.
Weightman & Hadfield, Joseph Hansom, EW Pugin, JJ Scoles and HAK Gribble all get polite mentions. A section of its own is correctly devoted to John Francis Bentley, the admir- able architect of the Holy Rood, Watford and Westminster Cathedral. I disagree with Curl’s observation in connection with the Catholic Cathedral of St John the Baptist, Norwich, that “the overall impression is one of melancholy, perhaps because the optimism concerning the future of religion in England that was behind the whole concept faded long ago”. On a recent visit for Mass on Sunday I was much cheered up by the liturgy and the numbers there, in spite of the ghastly parking. The accompanying 2005 photograph incidentally does not reflect Russell Taylor’s commendable improvements to the sanctuary over the last 15 years.
However these are all minor quibbles. We should be grateful that Prof Curl and John Hudson Publishing have produced such an attractive book between them.
<em>Michael Hodges is the Herald’s architecture correspondent</em>
