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Out of Africa: G. F. Bodley, William White, and the Anglican Mission Church of St Philip, Grahamstown, 1857–67
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
The Anglican mission church of St Philip, Grahamstown, is to this day a relatively little-known building (Fig. i). Erected at the height of Anglican missionary fervour in the 1860s, it is at first sight a small, nondescript structure the likes of which could be found throughout South Africa — indeed, the entire British empire — during the nineteenth century. On closer inspection, however, St Philip’s reveals itself to be anything but ordinary. It is one of very few buildings of its type remaining in South Africa that is entirely original in its design and almost completely unaltered in its condition. Although a number of noteworthy Anglican churches in the region survive from this period (especially those by Sophia Gray), many have been restored and/or extended. St Philip’s, however, remains today virtually the same as it was when consecrated over 140 years ago.
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References
Notes
1 Sophia Gray, or ‘Sophy’ as she was known, was the wife of the first Anglican bishop of Cape Town, Robert Gray (1809–72). The most complete study of the architectural career of Sophia Gray to date is Desmond Martin’s ‘The Churches of Bishop Robert Gray & Mrs Sophia Gray: An Historical and Architectural Overview’ (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Cape Town, 2002). See also Langham-Carter, R. R., ‘South Africa’s First Woman Architect’, Architect and Builder (March 1967), pp. 14–18 Google Scholar; Gutsche, Thelma, The Bishop’s Lady (Cape Town, 1970)Google Scholar; and Martin, D., The Bishop’s Churches: The Churches of Anglican Bishop Robert Gray (Cape Town, 2005)Google Scholar.
2 O’Connor, Daniel et al., Three Centuries of Mission: The United Society for the Propagation of the Gospel iyoi-2000 (London, 2000), pp. 47–84 Google Scholar. The Colonial Bishoprics Fund, established in 1841, was a major initiative in the renewal of Anglican missionary activity overseas during the nineteenth century. It was endowed initially by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) and the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge (SPCK) who gave £7,500 and £10,000 respectively. See C. F. Pascoe, Two Hundred Years of the S.P.G. … (London, 1901), p. 753. In the year 1860, for example, the SPG received over £116,000 for distribution to colonial clergy and related causes, and had 422 missionaries on its books (Report of the Incorporated Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, For the Year 1860 (London, 1860)).
3 The Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture (later the Oxford Architectural and Historical Society) also saw its role as assisting in the promotion of correct church architecture in Britain’s colonies. See Rules and Proceedings (Oxford Society for Promoting the Study of Gothic Architecture) (Oxford, 1840–58).
4 At a particularly low point in its career as an organization, the Ecclesiological Society even went so far as to declare that ‘the more we are repudiated at home, the more prized by us are our colonial relations’ (The Ecclesiologist (hereafter Eccl.), 5:26 (Oct. 1847), p. 86). For scholarship on colonial ecclesiology, see Margaret Alington, Frederick Thatcher and St. Paul’s: An Ecclesiological Study (Wellington, 1965); Phoebe Stanton, The Gothic Revival & American Church Architecture: An Episode in Taste, 1840–1856 (Baltimore, 1968); Joan Kerr, Our Great Victorian Architect Edmund Thomas Blacket, 1817–1883 (Sydney, 1983); Ian Lochhead, A Dream of Spires: Benjamin Mountfort and the Gothic Revival (Canterbury, 1999); Brian Andrews, Creating A Gothic Paradise: Pugin at the Antipodes (Hobart, 2002); and Jonathan N. Mané, ‘Gilbert Scott’s Colonial Churches’, in Conference Papers 1987 (Australasian Victorian Studies Association), ed. M. Belcher and H. Debenham, pp. 31–42; Peter Coffman, ‘St. John’s Anglican Cathedral and the Beginnings of Ecclesiological Gothic in Newfoundland’, Journal of the Society for the Study of Architecture in Canada, 31:1 (2006), pp. 3–22.
5 There was a very brief account of St Philip’s published in 1960 entitled St. Philip’s Church, Grahamstown. This publication was only a few pages long. See Cory Library (Rhodes University, Grahamstown), MS 16 811–12; see also Crozier, R. D., St Bartholomew’s, Grahamstown: ‘The Church on Settlers’ Hill’ (Grahamstown, 1985), pp. 7–8.Google Scholar
6 Gray was also accompanied by William Abiah Newman, perhaps the most Tractarian of all those who followed him to South Africa. He took responsibility for editing the High Church South African Church Magazine and Ecclesiastical Review (begun in 1850), for which Merriman and White wrote on matters regarding architecture.
7 Whibley, Pauline M., Merriman of Grahamstown (Cape Town, 1982), p. 24.Google Scholar
8 While at Balliol White would no doubt have encountered W. G. Ward (1812–82) and Frederick Oakeley (1802–80), both of whom were among the most trenchant and influential of Tractarians in Oxford at the time ( Chadwick, Owen, The Victorian Church, part 1 (London, 1966), pp. 199–201)Google Scholar.
9 For example, when William White was working out his designs for the bishop’s diocesan college in Cape Town, he was told by Henry Master to go and see William Sewell for advice on designing correct school buildings. Sewell was one of the founders and third Warden (1853–61) of St Peter’s College (now Radley College), which was held up as a new and improved model of Anglican education (letter from H. M. White to W. White, 27 April 1849, in the unpublished correspondence of H. M. White, Bishop’s College Archive, Cape Town). H. M. White’s association with Sewell (and W. B. Heathcote, second Warden of Radley) is affirmed in Gray’s biography (C. Gray, Life of Robert Gray, Bishop of Cape Town and Metropolitan of Africa, 2 vols (London, 1876), I, p. 211).
10 Whibley, Merriman of Grahamstown, p. 6. While at Oxford Merriman also became close friends with W. E. Gladstone, who himself had begun turning towards Tractarianism by the late 1830s. Although Gladstone finally entered the public domain of politics, Merriman remained good friends with him for life.
11 Merriman had attended the consecration of St Augustine’s College chapel in 1848, just prior to his departure for South Africa (Moberly was also in attendance). This places Merriman very much at the centre of official efforts on the part of the Church of England to supply adequately trained clergy for the colonies ( Maclear, G. F., S. Augustine’s Canterbury: Its Rise, Ruin, and Restoration (London, 1888), p. 52)Google Scholar. A number of the trainee priests who came over to South Africa in the late 1850s and 1860s were educated at St Augustine’s, including Stephen Mnyakama, Samuel Cox, William Dodd and Jonas Ntsiko.
12 Many among the Colonial Bishopric Fund’s first cohort of bishops were men of at least moderate Tractarian persuasion, including G. A. Selwyn (New Zealand), John Medley (Fredericton), John Feild (Newfoundland), Augustus Short (Adelaide), and F. R. Nixon (Tasmania).
13 For example, ‘While English, French, and German societies, of various denominations, are sending out their Missionaries’, wrote one disgruntled Cape resident in 1846, ‘our own Church does worse than nothing’ (‘Cape of Good Hope’, Colonial Church Chronicle, 2 (Jan. 1849), p. 244).
14 Exactly what plans the Grays took to South Africa is not known. From time to time, however, they mention in their writings plans by English architects, including William Butterfield, G. G. Scott, Henry Woodyer and possibly J. L. Pearson (for Gray’s diary entries, see Church in the Colonies: Diocese of Cape Town (London, 1849), p. 20). It is also known that Butterfield was involved in the completion of St Saviour’s, Claremont, as a memorial to Sophia, in 1872. For further information on Butterfield in South Africa, see ‘Note on William Butterfield — R. R. Langham-Carter’, William Cullen Library (University of the Witwatersrand), Church of the Province of South Africa (CPSA) Archive: AB1668f. It has also been suggested by Langham-Carter that a design was supplied by Henry Woodyer, a friend of the Grays, for the Armstrong Memorial Chapel in Grahamstown ( Langham-Carter, R. R., ‘A “Reconstruction” of the Armstrong Chapel, Grahamstown’, Architect and Builder (South Africa), 31:12 (1981), pp. 22–23)Google Scholar. One of the objectives of the Oxford Architectural Society in publishing accurate drawings of churches in and around Oxford was to supply clergymen working abroad with cheap but correct models. The Grays took at least one of these publications with them to South Africa, a copy of Henry J. Underwood’s design for Littlemore Church (1840), which remains in the Diocesan Archives at George.
15 Gray, C., The Life of Robert Gray (London, 1876), p. 338 Google Scholar; Langham-Carter, , ‘South Africa’s First Woman Architect’, pp. 14–18.Google Scholar
16 For example, in a speech in 1858 on the evangelization of the indigenous peoples of southern Africa, the bishop pondered upon the value of Britain’s presence at the Cape of Good Hope: ‘No doubt its value consists in this,’ he observed, ‘that it is the half-way house to India, and that the maintaining it in our strength is essential to our maintaining, unshaken, the Indian Empire which God has given to us; and, therefore, we must look at the question [of extending British religious and cultural influence among the indigenous inhabitants of southern Africa] as mixed up with the great question before us’ ( Wilberforce, Samuel, ‘Upon the Evangelisation of the Native Tribes of Southern Africa’, in Speeches on Missions, ed. Rowley, H. (London, 1874), p. 151)Google Scholar.
17 Carter, T. T., A Memoir of John Armstrong, D. D., Late Bishop of Grahamstown (Oxford, 1857), p. 91 Google Scholar. Armstrong also designed and superintended the construction of buildings while in South Africa, including the main school building of St Andrew’s College, and Bishopsbourne house, both in Grahamstown (ibid., pp. 381, 390).
18 Armstrong was one of the founders of the House of Mercy at Bussage in Gloucestershire. Bodley had designed an extension to the parish church in 1852, while White had designed permanent buildings, including a chapel, in 1853.
19 ‘“Notes from South Africa” by the Bishop of Grahamstown’, USPG Archive, Rhodes House Library, Oxford: 07b (Letters received: Capetown and Grahamstown). For Scott’s design, see Berning, M., The Tower, Clock and Bells of Grahamstown Cathedral: An Outline History (Grahamstown, 1987)Google Scholar.
20 Armstrong was a rather sickly man even before he arrived in South Africa. He was prone to influenza-type illnesses, which came on during periods of prolonged stress. He suffered a severe bout of influenza during the early months of 1856, exacerbated by the particularly arduous nature of his Episcopal duties. The official cause of death was purpura haemorrhagica, owing to a depressed immune system resulting from general exhaustion combined with the effects of secondary ailments such as continual nausea caused by long journeys in horse-drawn carts. See letter from Revd John Hardie to Ernest Hawkins, 24 May 1856, USPG Archive: D / 7b-1077; for an account of Armstrong’s last illness, see Carter, A Memoir, pp. 380ff.
21 The vestry minute book from St Bartholomew’s church shows that William White was paid £60 for supplying drawings (Cory Library (Rhodes University, Grahamstown), PR 3514 (d)). During a return trip to England in 1855, Merriman was able to raise some £1,700 for the project, including the donation of church plate and furnishings.
22 Eccl., 15:82 (1857), p. 65. For White’s earlier designs see Bishops Diocesan College Archive, Cape Town: unpublished letters from H. M. White to William White (1849).
23 The ‘Fingoes’ — a term derived from a Bantu word [amaMfengu] meaning ‘destitute people in search of work’ — were a coalescence of various indigenous fugitives driven south from Natal by tribal warfare. See ‘Grahamstown Missions’, Mission Field, 12:137 (May 1867), p. 189; Peter Hinchliff, The Anglican Church in South Africa (London, 1963), pp. 45–48.
24 See Grey’s speech on his policy, printed in The Cape Monitor (17 March 1855). For more on Grey and his governorship, see Rutherford, James, Sir George Grey, KCB 1812–1898: A Study in Colonial Government (London, 1961), pp. 291–439.Google Scholar
25 For Gray and Armstrong’s response to Grey’s plans, see USPG Archive: CLR/114 (South Africa), letters received, 23 Dec. 1854; 28 Dec. 1854; 10 Feb. 1855; 20 March 1855; 6 June 1855; 14 July 1855; 5 Feb. 1865.
26 See Library, Cory (Rhodes University, Grahamstown), PR 3514 (d)Google Scholar; annual report, St Bartholomew’s church (1862). The Revd William Turpin, the mission’s incumbent, had also expressed the pressing need for such a building in 1862. Merriman also sent a message back to England the same year seeking assistance to this end (USPG Archive (Rhodes House, Oxford): D/24c (Grahamstown), and E/9a (Kaffir Mission, Grahamstown — Report), p. 446).
27 Ibid, (annual report).
28 Eccl., 18:101 (1860), p. 113.
29 Ibid.
30 Bodley was brought up on a strict diet of thirteenth- and fourteenth-century English Gothic while training in the office of George Gilbert Scott. The distinct continental influence evident in his early churches has been interpreted as a ‘revolt’ against these formative years. See Warren, Edward, ‘The Life and Work of George Frederick Bodley’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3rd series, 17 (1910), p. 306 Google Scholar. However, as Michael Hall has shown, by 1862 a definite shift in the character of Bodley’s architecture from Early French and Italian in the High Victorian manner to a more ‘refined’ adaptation of English, fourteenth-century Decorated forms had begun to occur ( Hall, Michael, ‘The Rise of Refinement: G. F. Bodley’s All Saints, Cambridge, and the Return to English Models in Gothic Architecture of the 1860s’, Architectural History, 36 (1993), pp. 103–26)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
31 Reference to the Norman architecture of France was popular in the early phases of the High Victorian movement. See Stamp, Gavin, ‘High Victorian Gothic and the Architecture of Normandy’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians (hereafter JSAH), 62:2 (2003), pp. 194–211 CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The broad shift toward medieval French forms in English architecture was also heavily influenced by the competition for Lille Cathedral (1854–56), which a number of English architects entered (Street came second).
32 The design for Street’s church was described in the Ecclesiologist. A debate arose around the design concerning its ‘foreign’ character, particularly its French elements (Eccl., 17:135 (Dec. 1859), pp. 389–93). Street was also a formative influence on Bodley in his early career. The two worked together in the office of George Gilbert Scott from 1846–49. For the influences in Bodley’s early career, see Verey, Daniel, ‘George Frederick Bodley: Climax of the Gothic Revival’, in Seven Victorian Architects, ed. Fawcett, Jane (London, 1976), p. 75 Google Scholar; Warren, ‘The Life and Work’, pp. 305–10.
33 It is noted in Arthur Street’s memoir of his father that Bodley helped Street out from time to time once he had moved to Oxford in the early 1850s (Arthur E. Street, Memoir of George Edmund Street, R.A. 1824–1881 (London, 1888), p. 20).
34 G. E. Street also played a hand in revising the design for St Michael and All Saints. Some of the schemes presented in George Truefitt’s Designs for Country Churches (1850) also resemble the description of Bodley’s design given in the Ecclesiologist.
35 It was also around this time that Street’s interest in French medieval church architecture was renewed. He had recently made a return visit to France and reported his findings in the Ecclesiologist, the first instalment of which appeared in December 1858 (Eccl., 16:129 (Dec. 1858), pp. 362–72). For subsequent instalments, see ibid., 17:130 (Feb. 1859), pp. 18–26; 17:131 (April 1859), pp. 91–100; 17:132 (June 1859), pp. 178–84; 17:134 (Oct. 1859), pp. 332–40. For the continental influences in Street’s architecture during the 1850s, see Brownlee, David B., The Law Courts: The Architecture of George Edmund Street (New York and Cambridge, Mass., 1984), pp. 17–35.Google Scholar
36 An excellent example was Street’s ‘eminently un-English’ polychrome masterpiece of St James-the-Less, Westminster (1859–61). A description of St James-the-Less had also appeared in the Ecclesiologist in June 1859. A perspective drawing was later published in the same journal and other architectural periodicals (e.g. Eccl., 17:135 (Dec. 1859), p. 426). As Bodley was also a friend of William Butterfield — for whom he had ‘an unqualified admiration’ — the polychrome surfaces of All Saints, Margaret Street (1849–59) would also have been influential. According to those who knew him best, Bodley also had a natural enthusiasm for colouration in architecture; see G. H. Fellowes-Prynne’s comments in Warren, ‘The Life and Work’, p. 337.
37 This term was used by Edward Warren to describe the character of Bodley’s early work (Warren, ‘The Life and Work’, p. 306).
38 This is a feature Bodley also introduced into an alternate design for St Stephen’s, Guernsey; see sketch in unpublished letter from G. F. Bodley to Capt. Short, 23 Oct. 1863, Vestry archive, St Stephen’s, Guernsey.
39 By South African standards, St Philip’s was also relatively cheap to build (because it had to be). In the end it cost exactly £1,580: a masterstroke of economy in simplicity (Crozier, St Bartholomew’s, p. 7).
40 There is a possibility that this was merely done for effect, as at All Saints, Cambridge, since the north façade of St Philip’s fronts onto the approach road.
41 Again, an example of this can be found at St Stephen’s, Guernsey, where the original design was shaped and reshaped according to a very modest budget (unpublished letters by Bodley (1861–64), Vestry archive, St Stephen’s, Guernsey). Precedent for this can also be found in the colonial context with G. G. Scott’s design for St John’s Cathedral, Newfoundland, where several designs went back and forth before an appropriate one was settled upon; see unpublished letters between Scott, the Bishop of Newfoundland, and William Hay (superintending architect) in USPG Archive: C/CAM/NFL6 (Newfoundland Cathedral); Centre for Newfoundland and Labrador Studies (Memorial University, St John’s, Newfoundland): Coll. 45; and the Archive of St John’s Cathedral, Newfoundland. For an account of the design and construction of St John’s, Newfoundland, see Coffman, ‘St. John’s Anglican Cathedral’, pp. 3–22.
42 Annual report, St Bartholomew’s church (1863 and 1865). This was also noted by the Revd W. H. Turpin, head of the mission (USPG Archive: D / 240–2011).
43 I say ‘reportedly’ here because, although an article on St Philip’s that appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1867 (6 April) gives the name Abbott, there is no mention of him in the official records. Although the builder may well have been Abbott, it might also have been a builder going by the name of Stitt (or Stilt), who was responsible for St Bartholomew’s. Either way, neither of these men seems to have known anything about constructional polychromy.
44 W. H. Turpin’s mission report for 1863–64, USPG Archive: E/15 (Grahamstown), pp. 205ff.
45 The full citation from Merriman’s letter is as follows: ‘PS. When you have any funds please let W. White architect draw for what he wants to pay for things ordered in England — as he did for my church here’ (unpublished letter from N. J. Merriman to W. T. Bullock, 13 May 1862, USPG Archive: D/24c).
46 Eccl., 22:126 (June 1864), p. 149.
47 For an account of White’s early years, see Hunter, Gill, ‘William White — The Early Years’, Journal of the Victorian Society (forthcoming)Google Scholar; see also Clarke, B. F. L., Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century: A Study of lhe Gothic Revival in England (London, 1938), p. 157.Google Scholar
48 RIBA Journal (10 Feb. 1900), p. 146; Eastlake, Charles L., A History of the Gothic Revival (London, 1872), p. 292.Google Scholar
49 In White’s obituary it was noted that he knew the work of Bodley ‘intimately’ (RIBA Journal (10 Feb. 1900), p. 145).
50 Both White and Bodley had entered the competition for the Crimean War Memorial Church in Constantinople a few years earlier (1856), with Bodley receiving third prize. Here it was stipulated explicitly that the building contain modifications ‘to suit the climate’. The competition regulations reprinted in Eccl., 14:79 (Aug. 1856), p. 295; Bodley’s design was described at length in Ecc;., 15:83 (April 1857), p. 106. The ‘narthex’ at St Philip’s most likely served a number of purposes, including a gathering area for ‘inquirers’, but was added primarily to protect against the intense sun and howling winds of the Eastern Cape while the front door to the church was open. For Bodley’s mission church in Delhi, see Eccl., 19:108 (Aug. 1861), pp. 282–83.
51 It has been suggested by Paul Thompson that White exhibited a ‘rare skill’ in handling constructional polychromy. If this is the case, then it is certainly apparent at St Philip’s. See Thompson, Paul, ‘The Writings of William White’, in Concerning Architecture: Essays on Architectural Writers and Writing Presented to Nikolaus Pevsner, ed. Summerson, John (London, 1968), p. 227.Google Scholar
52 Neither should one discount the possibility that G. E. Street’s exceptionally powerful churches of the 1850s might have been an active influence on the final design of St Philip’s. Apart from those outstanding examples of Street’s work already mentioned, a building such as All Saints, Boyne Hill (1854–58), has a number of features in common with St Philip’s, in particular the distinctive application of polychrome brickwork, both inside and out, including the use of diapering. As White was good friends with Street, any such influence was more likely to have been direct rather than through the agency of Bodley. Indeed, White had worked with Street in Scott’s office in the mid-1840s. See Hunter, ‘William White’.
53 For example, Smart, C. M., Muscular Churches: Ecclesiastical Architecture of the High Victorian Period (Arkansas, 1989).Google Scholar
54 Another of White’s acquaintances, John Loughborough Pearson (1817–97), also had great facility for designing churches in this manner ( Quiney, Anthony, John Loughborough Pearson (New Haven and London, 1979), pp. 51–78)Google Scholar.
55 Kaufman, Edward N., ‘“The weight and vigour of their masses”: mid-VICTORIAN COUNTRY CHURCHES and “The Lamp of Power”’, in The Ruskin Polygon: Essays on the Imagination of John Ruskin, ed. Hunt, John Dixon and Holland, Faith M. (Manchester, 1982), pp. 94–121.Google Scholar
56 This is a point that is also made by Paul Snell ( Snell, P., ‘The High Victorian Style of George Frederick Bodley, 1852–65’ (MA Report, Courtauld Institute of Art, University of London, 1996), pp. 5–15)Google Scholar.
57 It was observed, for example, that the effect derived from the ‘massive and dignified’ tower lent a feeling of ‘great character’ to what was otherwise a modestly sized and unpretentious church. In situations where the budget for a new building was extremely tight, Bodley can be found compensating for simplicity of design through ‘good proportion’. For example, this approach was adopted in the case of St Stephen’s, Guernsey, where a design ‘very simple in character’ was made ‘effective’ through the thoughtful massing of forms (unpublished letter from G. F. Bodley to the Revd De Lisle Dobrée, 27 Jan. 1862, Vestry archive, St Stephen’s, Guernsey).
58 For example, Mission Field, 12:138 (June 1867), p. 224. Such qualities seemed to be endemic to Merriman’s character. For example, while a student at Winchester he won the school’s gold medal for an essay titled ‘Simplicity is the Essential of True Greatness’ (Whibley, Merriman, p. 2).
59 A summary of this idea of the propriety of adopting simple and bold forms, particularly from French precedent, can be found in Alexander J. B. Beresford Hope’s The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century (1861), in which he observes that the idea stemmed from the ‘metaphysical’ notion of architecture being seen to have ‘a missionary vocation’. He sums it up thus: ‘[T]here now prevails [in England] a feeling in favour of the Early French, as pre-eminent for strength and dignity. … The grave, strong, Early French will be adduced as the preacher of righteousness, truth, and simplicity to a luxurious and crooked generation, and it will be urged that, in order to give cogency to the sermon, a somewhat dispendious use of material may in the end be true economy’ (Alexander J. B. Beresford Hope, The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century (London, 1861), pp. 58–59).
60 White quoted in Kaufman, ‘The weight and vigour’, p. 100. In fact, it almost appears as though White had taken the advice offered by the Ecclesiological Society on this matter over ten years earlier. In 1847 Benjamin Webb had noted that the use of brick in colonial church architecture ought to be treated in ‘bold and broad masses’ and ‘thrown into different planes’, as much for effect as for integrity (Eccl., 5:27 (Dec. 1847), pp. 146–47).
61 Webb, Benjamin, ‘On the Adaptation of Pointed Architecture to Tropical Climates’, Transactions of the Cambridge Camden Society (1845), pp. 199–218.Google Scholar See also Eccl., 4:23 (May 1847), pp. 168–71; 5:27 (Dec. 1847), pp. 142–47; 6:33 (Dec. 1848), pp. 181–87; 9:46 (Feb. 1851), pp. 20–23, 29–45; 948 (June 1851), pp. 169–72; 12:65 (April 1854), p. 150.
62 For the concept of ‘development’ in Victorian church architecture, see Brownlee, David, ‘The First High Victorians: British Architectural Theory in the 1840’s’, Architectura, 15 (1985), pp. 33–46 Google Scholar; Hall, Michael, ‘What do Victorian Churches Mean?: Symbolism and Sacramentalism in Anglican Church Architecture, 1850–1870’, JSAH, 59:1 (2000), pp. 78–95.Google Scholar
63 ‘St. Philip’s Mission, Grahamstown’, Mission Field, 10:117 (1865), pp. 176–78. Turpin noted that there was likely to be only enough money to complete the nave at first and that the chancel would have to be added later. The church was opened for divine service on 4 November 1866 but not consecrated until the following year (23 June 1867) (Quarterly mission report by W. H. Turpin in USPG Archives: E/21 (Grahamstown), pp. 215–19). See also ‘A Chief Account of St. Philips Mission from its Commencement in 1860’, USPG Archive: D24/C-2529; Illustrated London News (6 April 1867), pp. 336–37. Building progressed slowly because of the limited funds. For example, after the foundations had been laid in 1864, it was decided that only enough money remained to build about two-thirds of the church as planned (USPG Archive: E/15 (Mission Report, St Philip’s), p. 205).
64 St. Philip’s Church, Grahamstown (1960): Cory Library (Rhodes University, Grahamstown), MS 16 811–12.
65 Hinchliff, The Anglican Church, pp. 45–48. The benefits of this approach appealed to Gray and were adopted as the basis for Anglican missions. See also Gray’s comments in Gray, Life of Robert Gray, pp. 198, 269; ‘An Appeal to the Church of England in behalf of the Heathen of South Africa’, USPG Archive: D/7a.
66 Armstrong, John, The Pattern for Church Building: A Sermon Preached in Aid of the Erection of a Chapel of Ease (London, 1852)Google Scholar.
67 This is something that was also recognized by Newman (cf. n. 6); for example, see South African Church Magazine and Ecclesiastical Review, 5, new series (1857), p. 335.
68 Mission Field, 10:117 (Sept. 1865), p. 177. This sense of ‘excitement’ was also observed by Henry Cotterill, then Bishop of Grahamstown, in relation to the opening of the Grahamstown mission school chapel in 1861, where he noted that the converts felt that it was ‘specially for themselves’ (USPG Archive: D/24C-4148).
69 Mission Field, 11:126 (June 1866), p. 125.
70 An example of this anxiety can be found in a letter Armstrong wrote to Ernest Hawkins of the SPG in 1855 in which he noted that unless the Anglican Church acted swiftly and with determination it would lose ground to the Wesleyans and Independents (Carter, A Memoir of John Armstrong, p. 316).
71 South African Church Magazine and Ecclesiastical Review, I (New Series 1853), p. 68.
72 ‘A Chief Account of St. Philips Mission from its Commencement in 1860’, USPG Archive: D24/C 2529; Illustrated London News (6 April 1867), pp. 336–37.