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Francis Goodwin’s ‘Domestic Architecture’ and two Cockermouth villas
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 July 2016
Extract
The Rev. William Gilpin, prophet of the Picturesque, visiting the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth in 1766 wrote enthusiastically of its charms:
Cockermouth is one of the pleasantest towns in the north of England. It lies in a sinuous extended vale; screened by that circular chain of mountains, Skiddaw and its compeers… but they do not hang over the vale, they are removed to a proper distance; and form a grand background to all the objects of it. The vale itself is beautiful; consisting of a great variety of ground, and here more adorned with wood than the scenes of the north commonly are. But its greatest ornaments are two rivers, and the ruins of a castle. The rivers [are] both rapid streams [and] at the confluence rises a peninsular knoll … upon this stands the ruin of the castle which is among the most magnificent in England. Besides the grand appearance they make on the spot they present an object in various parts of the vale, and dignify some very picturesque scenes.
Wordsworth had a special affection for his birthplace and later travellers and architectural writers right up to John Cornforth in 1982 have expressed a similar feeling for this market town, in spite of changes brought about through its closeness to industrial west Cumberland. This is the setting for two villas of the second quarter of the nineteenth century which have their origin in Francis Goodwin’s Domestic Architecture.
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- Research Article
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1985
References
Notes
1 Gilpin, William, Observations … Particularly the Highlands of Scotland (1789), II, 148–49 Google Scholar.
2 Country Life, 16 and 23 December 1982.
3 Francis Goodwin, Domestic Architecture, (1833). Volume 11 appeared in 1834 and the work was reissued with a supplement as Rural Architecture in 1835. There were posthumous editions in 1843 and 1850.
4 Domestic Architecture, p. viii.
5 Ibid., Design 8, preamble.
6 J. Loudon, The Architectural Magazine (1834–38), 1, 132–36. Leeds is thought to have written articles in the magazine including those hostile to Greek Revival architecture. Goodwin’s anonymous reviewer has little good to say of his Greek designs reserving his approval for the ‘Old English’ ones.
7 Ibid.
8 The map used was surveyed by Jonathan Stanwix in 1839 (Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle).
9 Borthwick Institute, York, Will of William Rudd.
10 When Wordsworth was raising subscriptions for a new church in Cockermouth Wilson offered £100. (Letters of W. andD. Wordsworth, 2nd edn vi, pt 3 (1982), 295, W. Wordsworth to Joshua Watson, 26 September 1836.
11 From his monumental inscription in All Saints church.
12 Bradbury, J. B., A History of Cockermouth (Isle of White, 1981), p. 183 Google Scholar. The Wilsons came from Belfast but Thomas was born in Cockermouth in 1791.
13 The tombstone of John Rudd, William’s brother, at Blyth, Notts, has only a cross botoné.
14 Porter, Directory of Whitehaven (1882).
15 Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: Cumberland and Westmorland (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 273 Google Scholar, where he is called Band. The carving is by Thomas and/or James Nelson of Carlisle ( Gunnis, R., Dictionary of British Sculptors, 1660–1851, n.d., p. 271 Google Scholar.
16 With John Weightman he designed the William Brown Library, Liverpool, in 1857. Pevsner, N., The Buildings of England: South Lancashire (Harmondsworth, 1969), p. 159 Google Scholar.
17 Askew, J., A Guide to Cockermouth (Cockermouth, 1866), p. 6 Google Scholar. John Foster’s plans for the market, opened in 1822, were published in the Architectural Magazine, 11 (1835), 129. It was a utilitarian structure with Ionic columns marking the entrances. Dent may well have subscribed to Loudon’s publication.
18 Recorded in a Minute Book for that year formerly at the bank. He built the gothic Methodist church in 1850 (Askew, op. cit. p. 5).
19 Pevsner, Cumberland and Westmorland, p. 109. The other is Wordsworth House, mid-eighteenth-century.
20 On visiting Goodwin’s gaol at Derby when building in 1825. Quoted in Crook, J. M., The Greek Revival (1972), p. 126 Google Scholar.
21 Summerson, J., Architecture in Britain, 1530–1830, 4th ed. (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 310 Google Scholar.
22 Cockerell in Crook, loc. cit.
23 Plans 1824, completed 1826. G. T. Lawley, A History of Bilston (Bilston, 1893), pp. 178, 180.
24 Ibid. p. 127. The money came from Queen Anne’s Bounty. The house is rendered.
25 Hitchcock, H-R., Early Victorian Architecture (1954), 11, 33 Google Scholar. The plate was coloured only in later editions.
26 Country Life, 6 October 1977, p. 915, fig. 4.
27 Tuscan Villa in nearby Workington is said to be by the same builder as Grecian Villa. In spite of its name it is a gabled Tudor house with bizarre details very much in Goodwin’s style. Built before 1847 when John Guy lived there. (Mannex & Whellan, History, Gazetteer & Directory of Cumberland (Beverley, 1847)), p. 147.
28 An attribution repeated by Pevsner (Cumberland and Westmorland, p. 109).
29 Colvin, H., Dictionary of British Architects, 1600–1840 (1978), p. 741 Google Scholar, His last domestic work was the completion of Stafford House, 1835–38 (ibid., p. 746). However Sydney Smirke worked in Cumberland, e.g. extending his elder brother’s Edmond Castle (1824–26) in 1844–48. (Designs at the castle.).
30 An unusual feature used also in Design 6.
31 Goodwin probably derived this detail from the balustrades of late sixteenth-century houses, e.g. Moreton Corbet, Salop (1579), Heath Old Hall, Yorks., and Barlborough Hall, Derbyshire (both 1580s).
32 There is a detached crenellated round tower at this side of the house.
33 Goodwin recommended neither Greek nor Gothic for the Lakes but Italianate. On the hill above Grecian Villa its balconied façade facing the mountains stands Holmewood, a towered asymmetrical Italian villa which fulfills many of the requirements of the text of Design 13. It was built as late as 1866 for Joseph Brown by an unknown architect. The earliest Italianate building in the Lakes was probably the Royal Hotel, Bowness, enlarged and remodelled in 1839 by George Webster for the visit of Queen Adelaide in 1840.
34 The pattern of the cast-iron gallery railing occurs elsewhere in the area at e.g. Leeds, Woodhouse House, and Wakefield, St John’s North.
35 Colvin, op. cit., p. 353.
36 John Clark’s design was chosen ( Linstrum, D., West Yorkshire, Architects and Architecture (1978), p. 332 Google Scholar). For Goodwin’s involvement with work for the Church Commissioners in Leeds see Architectural History, 1 (1958), 61–72.
37 Colvin, loc. cit.
38 The building survives, much altered. The pilastered apsed façade to Kirkgate was rebuilt to a rectangular plan and the Piccadilly front refenestrated in the nineteenth century when two storeys were converted to three.
39 The anonymous author of A Series of Picturesque Views of Castles and Country Houses in Yorkshire (Bradford, 1885), n.p., states that the façade was reconstructed in 1862 when it was bought by a Mr Anderton, but this must refer to the attached wing with its Frenchy pavilion roof. No architects are recorded.
40 Ibid.
41 Goodwin’s assistant, John King, was last noted in 1829 as an exhibitor at the RA (Colvin, op. cit., p. 495). J. King was practising as an architect in Bradford about 1840 (Piggot’s National and Commercial Directory, 1841). This is probably no more than coincidence and no buildings by him seem to be recorded. Goodwin’s influence in Bradford can be seen in the warehouses facing the Public Rooms in Piccadilly by James Richardby, 1830–34 (Linstrum, op. cit., p. 383) and in Perkin and Backhouse’s now demolished Mechanics’ Institute, 1839–40.
42 See note 17 above.