Conventional construction of stone or firstclass brick for walls, and timber for roof members covered in slate or tile continued to be widely used in church building through this period. However, these materials were often augmented, or occasionally entirely replaced, by new constructional techniques that involved materials which, if not entirely new, were certainly developed to be more useful, or cheaper, or both. In the true spirit of the Enlightenment, there was a willingness among ecclesiastical architects to explore these ‘new’ materials and the latest building techniques, especially where financial savings could be made. However, in examining these progressive trends in the context of church building, the frequent demands for the observation of ‘tradition’ in terms of style and layout should not be forgotten.

The constructional context

There is no evidence that, for most late-Georgian architects, securing an ecclesiastical commission would have been seen as philosophically different from designing (say) a market or merchants’ exchange as was the case for the Victorians. However, in constructional terms, a new church often involved almost unique challenges, for instance, the design of roof trusses capable of spanning an arcade-less nave. Both St Pancras (Fig. 4.2) and St Marylebone (see Fig. 8.14) have an internal width of around 62 feet and the unsupported roof trusses were exceptionally wide for any building in this period, religious or secular. By way of contrast, those over the nave of Wren's St Paul's are a little more than 40 feet. In Cheltenham, the minor architect Edward Jenkins designed St James (1825), but got into difficulties with the roof and had to call in the more experienced J. B. Papworth to engineer the wide trusses.

Providing sound foundations for a substantial tower presented problems rarely encountered in other building types and, in the case of a Gothic design, an architect needed to specify decorative features capable of being carved or moulded by whatever talent was available locally and within budget.

Church building in this period can usefully be seen in the wider context of construction and engineering, especially the building of docks, warehouses and bridges, where the combined talents of engineers, contractors and material suppliers – as well as architects – produced structures undreamed of a generation earlier. In these the sheer scale of the undertaking and the constructional innovations were a source of wonder both within and outside the profession.