1 Pevsner, Nikolaus, ‘Scrape and Anti-Scrape’, in The Future of the Past: Attitudes to Conservation, 1147–1974, ed. Fawcett, Jane (New York, 1976), pp. 35–54Google Scholar; Frew, John, ‘Richard Gough, James Wyatt, and Late 18th-Century Preservation’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 38.4 (1979), pp. 366–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Milner, John, A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Antient Cathedrals (London, 1798)Google Scholar.

2 For the Bucklers, see also Geoffrey Tyack, ‘Buckler, John (1770–1851), artist and architect’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, oxforddnb.com/view/article/3863 (accessed on 21 July 2020).

3 These were brought together in Buckler, John Chessell, Views of the Cathedral Churches of England and Wales (London, 1822)Google Scholar.

4 See, principally, London, British Library [hereafter BL], Add MS 36356–443, Add MS 36979–80 and Add MS 37120–46. For an introduction to their vast collection, see Joshua Mardell, ‘The Buckler Topographical Collection: A Dynastical Reading’ (British Library, 2017), bl.uk/picturing-places/articles/a-dynastical-reading-of-the-buckler-topographical-collection (accessed on 14 July 2020).

5 BL, Add MS 36416, ff. 28–67.

6 Architect and Contract Reporter, 51 (1894), p. 44.

7 Charles Alban Buckler, Bucleriana: Notices of the Family of Buckler (London, 1886), [n.p.].

8 Catherine M. Antony, Father Reginald Buckler, O.P. (London, 1927), p. 4.

9 Lincolnshire Archives [catalogued under the former name Lincolnshire Archives Office, hereafter LAO], Dean and Chapter [hereafter D&C] Bj/1/19, Cathedral Chapter Accounts, 1857–58.

10 A continuation of a long-lasting family beneficence, Tomline's father, George Pretyman Tomline, as Bishop of Lincoln, having been a patron of John Buckler senior's antiquarian work and a distributor of his prints of the cathedral.

11 LAO, D&C Bj/1/19, Cathedral Chapter Accounts, 1857–58. These accounts include the last record of payment made to Willson.

12 Paul Waterhouse, rev. Helene Furjań, ‘Willson, Edward James (1787–1854)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, doi.org/10.1093/ref:odnb/29612 (accessed on 20 March 2020).

13 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), p. 801.

14 LAO, D&C Bj/1/18, Cathedral Chapter Accounts, 1827–28; LAO, D&C A/3/17, Cathedral Chapter Acts, 1830. My thanks to Nicholas Bennett for this information.

15 Stamford Mercury, 12 July 1861, p. 5.

16 LAO, D&C Bj/1/19, Cathedral Chapter Accounts, 1851–52/1859–60. My thanks to Carol Bennett for this information.

17 John Chessell Buckler, A Description and Defence of the Restorations of the Exterior of Lincoln Cathedral with a Comparative Examination of the Restorations of Other Cathedrals, Parish Churches, &c. (Oxford and Lincoln, 1866), pp. 19–20.

18 Nikolaus Pevsner and John Harris, The Buildings of England: Lincolnshire (New Haven and London, 2002), p. 462.

19 Historic England listing, ‘Cathedral Church of St Mary and Cloisters and Chapter House and Libraries’, historicengland.org.uk/listing/the-list/list-entry/1388680 (accessed on 2 August 2018).

20 Thomas Cocke, ‘Tact with Medieval Architecture: 18th-Century Cathedral Restoration at Lincoln’, Country Life, 162 (1977), pp. 1724–26 (p. 1725).

21 Cocke, ‘Tact with Medieval Architecture’, p. 1725.

22 BL, MS Add 36417, f. 91.

23 Thomas Cocke, ‘Lincoln Cathedral: The West Front and the Romanesque Reliefs — Post-Medieval Perceptions’, in The Lincoln Symposium Papers: The Romanesque Frieze and its Spectator, ed. Deborah Kahn (London, 1992), p. 164.

24 Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cambridgeshire (New Haven and London, 2014), p. 482.

25 Sandall's testimony regarding the completion of this work is recorded in a letter by Buckler to the dean of 20 January 1861, published in Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 24.

26 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 214.

27 John Summerson, ‘Ruskin, Morris, and the “Anti-Scrape” Philosophy’, in Historic Preservation Today: Essays Presented to the Seminar on Preservation and Restoration (Charlottesville, VA, 1970), p. 27.

28 Stamford Mercury, 8 April 1859 and 5 July 1861; and quoted in the Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 223, emphasis in original.

29 Contributors to the Builder (18 August 1866, p. 618) stated that, once they had learned that a well-known architect was involved, they became reluctant to publish further criticisms. Their decision was criticised in the Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866, p. 283), which accused the Builder's contributors of having ‘sheltered themselves under the convenient assertion that the architect employed must know best’, emphasis in original.

30 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), p. 301.

31 Sandall quoted by Buckler in a letter to the dean of 20 January 1861, published in Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 24.

32 LAO, D&C Bj/1/20 (information from Carol Bennett). Even Pearson, when he succeeded Buckler at Lincoln, entrusted the restoration of the exterior of the Angel Choir to Robert Hague, who had joined Sandall as mason in 1865/66.

33 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 26; Chris Miele, ‘Their Interest and Habit: Professionalism and the Restoration of Medieval Churches, 1837–77’, in The Victorian Church: Architecture and Society, ed. Chris Brooks and Andrew Saint (Manchester, 1995), pp. 151–72 (p. 153).

34 Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 108–15.

35 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 109.

36 Letter from George Gilbert Scott to John Giffard Ward, 1 July 1859, in Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 9–12. In his reply to Scott of 22 July 1859, the dean wrote that he had communicated the letter to the parties concerned, which presumably explains how Buckler got hold of it (Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 12–13). According to Buckler, there were at least two further letters from Scott to the chapter, in December 1860 and on 29 September 1864, although neither was published by him. Buckler did, however, publish his (presumably unexpurgated) letter to the precentor responding to Scott's missive (Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 93–106) and Scott eventually published his September 1864 letter in the Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), pp. 294–95.

37 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 11. Pevsner and Harris (Lincolnshire, p. 468) wrote that the portal had been ‘over-restored’, but did not give details or speculate on the date of the restoration.

38 Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 9–10; Buckler added that John Carter and others had earlier opposed such an approach.

39 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 10; George Gilbert Scott, A Plea for the Faithful Restoration of Our Ancient Churches (Oxford, 1850), pp. 126–27.

40 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), pp. 291–92.

41 Chris Miele, ‘The Gothic Revival and Gothic Architecture: The Restoration of Medieval Churches in Victorian Britain’ (doctoral thesis, New York University, 1991), p. 25.

42 Miele, ‘Their Interest and Habit’, p. 159; Miles Glendinning, The Conservation Movement: A History of Architectural Preservation — Antiquity to Modernity (London, 2013), pp. 119–28; Martin Briggs, Goths and Vandals: A Study of the Destruction, Neglect, and Preservation of Historical Buildings in England (London, 1952), pp. 203–19.

43 Miele, ‘Their Interest and Habit’, p. 159.

44 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 256.

45 Miele, ‘Their Interest and Habit’, p. 159. Also Chris Miele, ‘Re-Presenting the Church Militant: The Camden Society, Church Restoration and the Gothic Sign’, in ‘A Church as It Should Be’: The Cambridge Camden Society and Its Influence, ed. Christopher Webster and John Elliot (Stamford, 2000), pp. 257–94 (p. 293); George Edmund Street, ‘Some Account of the Church of St Mary, Stone, near Dartford’, Archaeologia Cantiana, 3 (1860); Gentleman's Magazine, 209 (July 1860), p. 50.

46 The scandal was also reported in other publications such as the Irish Builder and Engineer.

47 Stamford Mercury, 8 April 1859.

48 Stamford Mercury, 28 June 1861.

49 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 246.

50 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 246.

51 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 247.

52 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 247.

53 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 228. Royal Institute of British Architects, General Advice to Promoters on the Restoration of Ancient Buildings (London, 1865).

54 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 223.

55 Writing as ‘An Architectural Antiquary’ in the Gentleman's Magazine in the 1830s, Buckler sustained the better-known polemics of his friend and mentor John Carter, who had adopted the alias ‘An Architect’. Buckler later took up a similar tone in the Gentleman's Magazine when adopting the nom de plume ‘The Minimist’. Many of Buckler's polemical writings are grouped in a folio titled ‘Printed Tracts on Architecture’ at BL, Add MS 27773.

56 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 290.

57 The Times, 17 August 1864. Another letter two days later (19 August) from the Rev. John C. Jackson entreats the editor ‘to do your best to stay the ravages that the ignorance of those employed on that most glorious building are inflicting upon it’.

58 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 292.

59 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 98. As Scott put it, ‘Mr. Buckler […] seems to have thought it expedient to act on Dr. Johnson's maxim, that you should never admit an opponent in an argument to be a respectable man’: Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 291.

60 Stamford Mercury, 6 January 1865, p. 27.

61 Stamford Mercury, 6 January 1865, p. 27.

62 Builder, 14 January 1865, p. 33.

63 Builder, 14 January 1865, p. 33.

64 See, for example, Building News, 10 March 1865, p. 175.

65 Building News, 17 March 1865, p. 175.

66 Stamford Mercury, 19 May 1865, p. 5.

67 Ecclesiologist, 23 (August 1865), p. 242.

68 Ecclesiologist, 23 (August 1865), p. 249.

69 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), pp. 298–300. Massingberd also confirmed that colonettes believed to be Norman had in fact been modern replacements made ‘some eighty or fifty years ago’ (p. 299). His letter is dated 26 June 1865, and so he benefited from seeing a report of the anniversary meeting in the Lincolnshire Chronicle.

70 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), pp. 299–300.

71 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), p. 300.

72 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), p. 300, emphasis in original.

73 Building News, 6 October 1865, p. 691.

74 Ecclesiologist, 23 (October 1865), p. 305.

75 Letter from George Edmund Street to the editor, 17 October 1865, printed in the Ecclesiologist, 23 (December 1865), pp. 319–24.

76 Ecclesiologist, 23 (December 1865), p. 323. As Street put it: ‘for myself I feel jealous of any removal of old work, but as long as it is of that which can be accurately reproduced by skillful masons, of course, such an objection is only a sentimental one’.

77 Ecclesiologist, 23 (December 1865), p. 323.

78 Ecclesiologist, 23 (December 1865), p. 323.

79 Ecclesiologist, 24 (December 1866), p. 370. In August, the Building News had declared that ‘we have had quite enough of this personal controversy’ (31 August 1866, p. 573). In the same journal the following summer (19 July 1867, p. 494), the Rev. John Jackson called out acts of ‘indignant remonstrance’ against Gloucester and Exeter cathedrals, arguing that although ‘Lincoln was the silliest instance of destruction […] it was by no means the most wicked’. The Illustrated London News reported on 19 October 1867 (p. 422) that the scraping of Lincoln's exterior stonework had completely ceased.

80 Carol Bennett, pers. comm., 19 July 2019.

81 Carol Bennett, pers. comm., 19 July 2019.

82 Carol Bennett, pers. comm., 19 July 2019; LAO, D&C Bj/1/19, Audit 1858–59; Stamford Mercury, 8 April 1859.

83 LAO, D&C A/3/18, Audit 1863.

84 Cocke, ‘Lincoln Cathedral’, p. 165. The removal of unspecified twelfth-century fabric from the jambs of the northern portal of the west front was, Buckler insisted, ‘kept within the utmost limit of absolute necessity’: Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 213.

85 Thomas Cocke, ‘James Essex, Cathedral Restorer’, Architectural History, 18 (1975), pp. 12–22 (p. 14).

86 Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 265 and 1.

87 Francis Hill, Victorian Lincoln (Cambridge, 1974), p. 267.

88 Hill, Victorian Lincoln, p. 267.

89 Hill, Victorian Lincoln, p. 284.

90 Nicholas Rank, pers. comm., 6 October 2016: ‘We do not have evidence of the “scraping” that Buckler was accused of. The medieval stones do show a considerable amount of tooling in places and we still have a lot of Roman cement [a hard render used for external walls since the turn of the nineteenth century] which predates Buckler and [which] would have been removed if he was too rigorous in his work. Unlike Durham where the faces of stones were cut back, we do not have any evidence that the stone face has been recessed. Where the main face of ashlar joins mouldings etc., the line of the stone appears true and correct. Lincoln limestone easily blackens in the atmosphere. We are cleaning the cathedral now and I guess that what Buckler was doing was much the same.’

91 Charles Alban Buckler, letter of 11 July 1865 headed ‘Restoration, Conservative and Destructive’, Gentleman's Magazine, 219 (August 1865), p. 214. Charles Alban Buckler's name appears once in the Chapter Accounts of 1857–58 (LAO D&C Bj/1/19), under ‘Sundry Payments’, where he is awarded £5 from the precentor for unknown services.

92 LAO, MISC DON 335–3, letter from John Chessell Buckler to William Dyke, n.d. (probably 26 March 1866).

93 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 1.

94 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. vi, emphasis in original.

95 LAO, MISC DON 335–2, letter from Buckler to Dyke, 26 March 1866, emphasis in original.

96 Building News, 24 August 1866, p. 557.

97 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 290.

98 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 284.

99 Merle Mowbray Bevington, The Saturday Review, 1855–1868: Representative Educated Opinion in Victorian England (New York, 1941). While the Review had ridiculed Scott's Italian Renaissance designs for the new Government Offices, loyalty to the architect led it ultimately to approve them.

100 Saturday Review, 22, 1 September 1866, p. 282.

101 Athenæum, 26 January 1867, p. 117.

102 Anti-Teapot Review, 11 (November 1866), pp. 225–26; Union Review, 4 (December 1866), pp. 674–76.

103 Arthur Reade, Tea and Tea-Drinking (London, 1884), p. 121.

104 Anti-Teapot Review, 11 (November 1866), p. 225.

105 Anti-Teapot Review, 1 (May 1864), p. 225.

106 Union Review, 4 (December 1866), pp. 675–76.

107 Pamela Z. Blum, The Salisbury Chapter-House and its Old Testament Cycle: An Archaeological and Iconographical Study (New Haven, 1978), p. 73.

108 Colin Amery and Dan Cruickshank, The Rape of Britain (London, 1975).

109 John Chessell Buckler, Observations on the Original Architecture of Saint Mary Magdalen College, Oxford (London, 1823).

110 Howard Colvin, Unbuilt Oxford (London, 1983), pp. 78–104; Robin Darwall-Smith, ‘The Demolition of the North Side of the Cloisters, or: Martin Routh the Dangerous Innovator’, Magdalen College Record (2005), pp. 96–108.

111 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 291, emphasis in original. Buckler must have been further vexed that Scott had been asked by the Lincoln Diocesan Architectural Society to design a new cathedral pulpit (1863–64).

112 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 19.

113 Gavin Stamp, ‘Sir Gilbert Scott: Eminent Victorian’, in Sir George Gilbert Scott 1811–1878: An Architect and his Influence, ed. Paul Barnwell, Geoffrey Tyack and William Whyte (Donington, 2014), pp. 1–21 (p. 2). George Gilbert Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections, ed. Gavin Stamp (Stamford, 1995), pp. 135–46. Gavin Stamp, ‘George Gilbert Scott and the Cambridge Camden Society’, in ‘A Church as it Should Be’, ed. Webster and Elliott, pp. 173–89.

114 The possibility of retaining the entire fabric is doubtful, however. According to Pevsner, the façade ‘had to be rebuilt entirely’: Nikolaus Pevsner, Yorkshire: The West Riding (Harmondsworth, 1967), p. 530.

115 John Chessell Buckler and Charles Buckler, Remarks upon Wayside Chapels with Observations on the Architecture and Present State of the Chantry on Wakefield Bridge (Oxford, 1843).

116 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 299.

117 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 299.

118 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 266.

119 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 262

120 LAO, MISC DON 335–2, letter from Buckler to Dyke, 26 March 1865, emphasis in original.

121 Joshua Mardell, ‘Fidelis ad Mortem: John Chessell Buckler, an Oxford College Architect’, Oxoniensia, 83 (2018), pp. 73–92.

122 John William Mackail, The Life of William Morris (London, 1950), p. 301.

123 Noah Heringman, Sciences of Antiquity: Romantic Antiquarianism, Natural History, and Knowledge Work (Oxford, 2013), pp. 231–80. Joan Evans, A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), p. 214.

124 Oxford, Magdalen College Archive, John Chessell Buckler, ‘Rough Notes Concerning the History of the Hospital of St John the Baptist’ (facsimile of BL, Add MS 27963, 1858), p. 141.

125 Saturday Review, 1 September 1866, p. 282.

126 As recorded in the Ecclesiologist, 4 (June 1847), pp. 237–40.

127 Edward Augustus Freeman, An Essay on the Origin and Development of Window Tracery in England (Oxford and London, 1851), quoted in John Harvey, The Perpendicular Style, 1330–1485 (London, 1978), p. 20.

128 John Mason Neale, ‘An Account of the Late Restoration of St Nicholas, Old Shoreham, Sussex’, Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society, 1 (1839–41), pp. 28–40.

129 Geoffrey Tyack, ‘The Restoration of Iffley Parish Church’, Oxoniensia, 68 (2003), pp. 313–59.

130 The Collected Letters of William Morris, Volume IV: 1893–1896, ed. Norman Kelvin (Princeton, 1996), pp. 50–52, notes 2–12.

131 BL, Add MS 36415, ff. 42–52, n.d. (c. 1871).

132 Buckler's work at all four colleges is examined in detail in Mardell, ‘Fidelis ad Mortem’.

133 Oxford, Oriel College, FB 1 A1/1, J. C. Buckler, ‘Report of a Survey of the Present State of Oriel College, Oxford’, January 1852, p. 3.

134 Marvin Trachtenberg, Building-in-Time: From Giotto to Alberti and Modern Oblivion (New Haven and London, 2010); Manuel J. Martín-Hernández, ‘Time and Authenticity’, Future Anterior, 11 (2014), pp. 41–47.

135 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 225.

136 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 37.

137 Buckler, Description and Defence, pp. 84–85.

138 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 133.

139 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 76.

140 Worsley, Giles, Architectural Drawings of the Regency Period, 1790–1837 (London, 1991), p. 73Google Scholar.

141 John Ruskin, ‘Of Turnerian Topography’, Modern Painters, II, in The Works of John Ruskin: Volume 4, ed. Edward Tyas Cook and Alexander Wedderburn (London, 1906), pp. 27–47.

142 Munby, Julian, ‘J. C. Buckler, Tackley's Inn and Three Medieval Houses in Oxford’, Oxoniensia, 43 (1978), pp. 123–69Google Scholar.

143 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 225.

144 Buckler, Description and Defence, p. 245.

145 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), p. 103.

146 Quoted in the Ecclesiologist, 24 (December 1866), p. 370.

147 Ecclesiologist, 19 (August 1861), p. 237.

148 Stamp, ‘George Gilbert Scott and the Cambridge Camden Society’, p. 186.

149 Buckler, John Chessell and Buckler, Charles Alban, A History of the Architecture of the Abbey Church of St Alban (London, 1847)Google Scholar.

150 Ecclesiologist, 21 (August 1863), p. 224.

151 Stamp, ‘George Gilbert Scott and the Cambridge Camden Society’, p. 186.

152 Nicholas Rank, pers. comm., 6 October 2016.

153 Ecclesiologist, 24 (October 1866), pp. 302 and 291.

154 Quiney, Anthony, John Loughborough Pearson (New Haven and London, 1979), p. 128Google Scholar.

155 LAO, D&C A.3.18, p. 312, letter from John Chessell Buckler to the dean and chapter, recorded in the minutes, 18 July 1870.

156 Ecclesiologist, 24 (December 1866), p. 370.