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Architecture and History1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

‘Architecture and History’: I take my title from a lecture by William Morris, delivered in 1884. One of its themes was the link between art and society, between style and culture, between architecture past, present, and future. My lecture takes up a similar theme from a rather different perspective. I want to concentrate on the stylistic problems created by those assumptions of continuity and reciprocity. In a nutshell, Morris’s generation was faced with an architecture apparently dying from a surfeit of history. In an age of extraordinary scientific and technological progress — an age bewitched by theories of evolution — architecture seemed to be mesmerized by the Renaissance, by the Middle Ages, by Antiquity. Hence the dilemma of style. What I shall try to do is to examine that Victorian problem of style through the eyes of the Victorians themselves. But this is an inaugural lecture. So the witnesses I shall call will be my predecessors.

Type
Section 7: Recording and Criticism
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

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Footnotes

1

An inaugural lecture, delivered at Bedford College, University of London, 12 May 1983.

References

Notes

2 To the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, in January 1884. Reprinted under different titles, The Architect, xxxn (1884), 171-73; The Builder, xlvii (1884), 8-10; William Morris: Artist, Writer, Socialist (Oxford, I93h), pp. 124-45. ‘Dead men guide [the designer’s] hands, even when he forgets that they existed.’

3 Banham, P. Rayner was Professor of the History of Architecture at University College, London, 1969-76.Google Scholar

4 ‘There is one art for which no professorship at present exists in this country and which therefore has the greater need of a reception into a new university. This is Architecture. It ought to be grounded on principles of philosophy as well as of taste. In so far as it is usejul, it is established on mathematical reasoning ... so far as it is ornamental, it . . . appeals to the sense of the sublime and the beautiful; it is a kind of tangible poetry; it is like painting, with the grandest materials; it exercises the imagination without requiring more of refinement and abstraction than commonly belongs to the youthful student. It is intimately connected with the most interesting and important views of the state of society and of the history of mankind ... It is particularly adapted to give correctness to the eye, and accuracy to the hand in drawing. The theories also respecting the origin of the different kinds of architecture, and their various decorations, exercise with an agreeable entertainment the imaginative and reasoning faculties.’ ( Yates, J. Thoughts on the Advancement of Academical Education in England (1826), pp. 91-92.Google Scholar)

5 University College Gazette (1886-87), p. 68. George Godwin mounted a similar campaign: ‘Why should not architecture and all the fine arts be taught universally in our schools, and be made a necessary part of liberal education? At all events, professorships should unquestionably be instituted at the universities, to spread a knowledge of the beautiful and inculcate a love for it’ (CEAJ, iv (1841), 334).

6 The defeated candidates were Elmes, James Jenkins, John and Inman, j. W. (H. Hale Bellot, University College London, 1826-1926 (1929), pp. 264-66).Google Scholar

7 Pompeii (1827); Doorways . . . in Greece and Italy (1833); Architectura Numismatica (1859). Some of his archaeological drawings are in the RIBA Drawings Collection, and in UC Archives, MS ADD. 36.

8 B., xxm (1865), 415; RIBA Journal, NS 11 (1885-86), 126 (James Brooks); Companion to the Almanac (1886), p. 128 (T. Hayter Lewis); U.C. Gazette (1886-87), PP- 67-68 (T. Roger Smith).

9 He lectured four times per week, averaging 100-120 lectures per year (B., xlix (1885), 273). Notes from his 1863-64 lectures are in UC Archives MS ADD. 121. Among the students in Donaldson’s heyday were Seddon, J. P. Brooks, James and Hayward:, C. F. Seddon won the Fine Art Prize two years running (B., III (1845), 329, and iv (1846), 317).Google Scholar

10 He always wore a black gown, and insisted on being addressed as Professor (UC Archives, correspondence with Atkinson, C. C. Secretary of UC.) On his retirement he was presented with a gold medal engraved with his profile by A. B. and Wyon, J. S. Google Scholar; thereafter Donaldson silver medals were presented annually as prizes.

11 The Building News, xlix (1885), 179, 204-05.

12 At the Craven Hotel (B.N., xlix (1885), 204; RIBA Journal, NS 11 (1885-86), 1-2, 121-26). In July 1846 we find him giving a conversazione at his Russell Square home for the newly-fledged Institute, providing ‘sumptuously for their entertainment mentally and bodily. The tables that were not filled with choice carvings groaned under the weight of a goodly supper, and antique vases and agate cups did more than divide attention with Roman punch. An immense number of drawings were scattered about. . . [and] we particularly noticed a singularly good colossal head in bronze, of the Duke of Hamilton, by Mr. Campbell’, (B, iv (1846), 331).Google Scholar

13 RIBA, MSS, SP 4/1: I5june 1835.

14 No ‘“Architectural Building Union” (unlimited). Let us stand by the charter!’ (B, xxxiv (1876), 10).

15 ‘For general arrangement, enlarged conception of masses in plan, and the distribution of ornamental grounds, he was unrivalled. [Though] the eye of the refined and the acumen of the critic must be offended here and there with details, that sin against the purer examples of Greek and Roman art’ (RIBA MS S.P. 4/1).

16 G.M. (1830), 1, 579-80. Extended by A. Blomfield.

17 B., xv (1857), 671: RIBA.

18 B., xvi (1858), 700. For Donaldson’s summary of his course, seeB., xx (1862), 710. For details of prizes, trips, etc., see B., xi (1853), 440; for examination questions (1845-46), see RIBA PAM. 30/16, 17 and B., 111 (1845), 308, 320. For a history of the department, see Jnl oftheAUT (1964).

19 B., L (1886), 229 (Wyatt Papworth).

20 Tite apparently modelled his Royal Exchange portico on Donaldson’s defeated design (B., xlix (1885), 213; N. Taylor, Monuments of Commerce (1968), pi. 4). His ‘dream’ design (1854) for opening up the crypt of St Paul’s —with the tombs of Wellington and Nelson echoing Napoleon’s in Les Invalides — might have been impressive (Graves, R.A. Exhibitors, I, 353).

21 Revue Générale (1842), p. 75.

22 Preliminary Discourse ... on Architecture (1842), pp. 28-31. For a review, see Literary Gazette, 22 October 1842. For relevant correspondence, see also RIBA MSS, DOT. 2/42.

23 Crook, J. Mordaunt ‘Regency Architecture in the West Country’, Jnl. Royal Soc. of Arts, cxix (1971), 438-51.Google Scholar

24 In reply to Kerr’s paper on the ‘Education of the Architect’ (B., v (1847), 492). Flosking and Cockerell were absent from this historic debate, the first meeting of the AA in Lyon’s Inn Hall, Strand.

25 See the RIBA circular to members, prior to publication of a new series of Transactions, signed T. L. Donaldson and J. J. Scoles (RIBA Council Minutes, 11, 28 August 1849). However, when W. Vose Pickett offered to read a paper on ‘A New System of Architecture’, he was rebuffed (ibid., 12 January 1846).

26 In reply to Cockerell’s RIBA paper ‘On Style in Architecture’ (B., vu (1849), 337-38).

27 ‘The Architect’s Character’, B., v (1847), 329 ‘On the education and character of the Architect’, in Architectural Maxims and Theorems (1847); reviewed in Westminster Rev. xlviii (1848), 255. See also Donaldson’s ‘Common Place Book’, RIBA MSS DOT. 1/1-2.

28 Donaldson regarded Palmerston as an ‘excellent friend and patron’. See correspondence relating to work at Broadlands, Hants., Lee Chapel, etc., RIBA MSS DOT. 1/3/1-23.

29 B., xlix (1885), 179.

30 Preliminary Discourse . . . on Architecture (1842), p. 25.

31 Vignoles, C. B. Google Scholar appointed 1841, England’s first Professor of Civil Engineering. His predecessor, Millington, was appointed in 1827 but resigned before the opening of the college (ex inf. Dr Negley Harte).

32 Crook, J. Mordaunt ‘The Pre-Victorian Architect: Professionalism and Patronage’, Architectural History, xii (1969), 66-78.Google Scholar

33 Donaldson made use of the occasion to put the matter bluntly: ‘the highest credit was due to Mr. Paxton. It must be remembered, however, that Mr. Paxton was a man of one idea’ (B, ix (1851), 173, 341). Donaldson became PRIBA in 1862-65.

34 ‘On the Progress of Architecture’, B., xxn (1864), 743, 823—24: RIBA.

35 A., xvi ( 1876), 333. At the end of his life Donaldson gently tried to persuade even Waterhouse to go classic (RIBA MSS, DOT 1/3/1-23.?

36 ‘His testimonials were of the most remarkable character, and . . . left [the College] little alternative’ (B., xxm (1865), 415). As a young man he had worked withTite on the Royal Exchange (RIBA Journal, 3rd series vi (1899), 126: portrait). See also B.N., lix (1890), 149, 166: ill.

37 B., lxxv (1898), 565.

38 RIBA Journal, 3rd series vi (1899), 99: John Slater; perhaps over-meticulous (ibid., 128; J. Tavernor Parry).

39 He left £88,789 12s. 4!. (Illustrated London News, 28 January 1899, p. 138).

40 The Times, 12 December 1898, p. 8.

41 Details in UC Archives, College Correspondence AM/102. For his lectures, 1865-72, see MS ADD. 34.

42 B., lxxvii (1899), 349. E.g. paper on ‘Cairo’ (Architectural Photographic Society, 1859); ‘Saracenic Architecture’ (Architectural Exhibition, 1859); ‘Notes on Celtic, Roman, Moorish and other Remains in Algeria’ (RIBA, 1868); ‘Ancient and Modern Egypt’ (RIBA, 1875); ‘Persian Architecture and Construction’ (RIBA, 1881). He was Master of the Freemasons’ Lodge Quatuor Coronati, a lodge of architect-scholars.

43 E.g. drawings in RIBA Drawings collection (1874-75), and in V & A, P & D, DD 15, A6, C.116, 94, F23 (mostly 1841-42). Many of his drawings appear in APSD; AA Sketchbook; and RIBA Transactions. After visiting Constantinople, he edited a translation of Procopius on Justinian’s buildings (with Col Sir C. W. Wilson; translation by A. Stewart).

44 E.g. papers on ‘Domes’ (RIBA 1857 and 1859); ‘Concrete’ (RIBA, 1857); ‘Fireproof Materials and Construction’ (RIBA, 1865); ‘Fireproof Floors’ (RIBA, 1871).

45 ‘Researches on Colour and Coloured Decoration’ (RIBA, 1862).

46 For his restoration of St Bartholomew the Great, Smithfield, see Ecclesiologist, xxiv (1863), 154-59; xxv (1864), 277; xxvi (1865), 117-20; xxvii (1866), 27-30. Drawings, V & A, P & D, DD 10 (with William Slater). Other church restorations were Staplehurst, Horley and Dunkirk.

47 Hodge’s Wharves, Wapping; Reed’s Upper and Lower Wharves, Bermondsey; Zetterquist’s Factories, Blackfriars; Messrs Hoare & Co.’s Red Lion Brewery; Messrs Board’s Distillers, St Bartholomew Close (RIBA Journal, 3rd series vi, 1899, 126-30).

48 E.g. The Hall, Warninglid, Sussex; Staplehurst Place, Kent; Stone Lodge, Horsham, Sussex; The Knowle, Brenchley, Kent; Denham Lodge, Uxbridge, Middlesex; and a house at Geeloijg, Australia (ibid.).

49 In 1859 he was called in as a mediator in the RIBA battle between Goths and Classics. He might have been PRIBA in 1881-82, had his health been better (ibid.). The establishment of voluntary examinations as a qualification for associate membership of the RIBA, was also his achievement, in conjunction with T. Roger Smith and Robert Kerr (RIBA MSS; B., liii (1887), 489).

50 Illustrated Handbook (1854), 6, 9-10, quoted in Survey of London, xxxiv (1966), 492-99. With marvellous optimism, George Godwin noted; ‘the name [Panopticon] was originally given ... by Jeremy Bentham to a prison on the radiating system designed by his brother wherein the inspector could see the prisoners without being seen himself. We hope the Panopticon of our day will prove one of those educational levers which will gradually lessen the necessity for bestowing thought on any prisons at all’ (B, xn (1854), 137).

51 Handbook, op. cit., 13; B, IX (1851), 803, ill. The dome was altered in execution (watercolour by Shepherd, T. H. Google Scholar Crace Collection, BM, Views Portfolio, xvm).

52 B., xi (1853), 290-91.

53 B., xi (1853), 308-09; xn (1854), 137, 143 ill. Galleries added by Lewis 1864; destroyed by fire, 1882; rebuilt within original façade; demolished 1937.

54 The Fine Arts and their Connection with Education (1865).

55 Summerson, J. What is a Professor of Fine Art? (Hull, 1960).Google Scholar

56 ‘The Slade . . . chair . . . seems to hover in thin air rather than to be firmly based on a University foundation. Its legs — if legs it have — find no resting place in any College; it has no local habitation in any University building ... It has no official arma scholastica, or equipment of books, reproductions or actual works of art’ (R. Gleadhowe, ‘Oxford University and the Fine Arts’, RIBA Journal, xxxv (1928), 636-40, 676-79). For an attack, by W. Watkiss Lloyd, on Ruskin’s continued tenure of the Oxford Slade chair, see A, xxi (1879), 106—07. Ellis Waterhouse predicted in 1952 that there would be no art history school at Oxford ‘until the history of art becomes a lost cause’ (‘Art as a “Piece ofHistory”’, Listener, xlviii (1952), 761-62). Pevsner argued that the subject was better left, in the older universities, as part of the history syllabus (ibid., 715-16). Ruskin had given his inaugural in the Oxford Museum (A, 111 (1870), 73). He predicted that the post would become a sinecure unless it was attached to an art history department (A, xi (1874), 351).

57 A., 1 (1869), 166-67.

58 A., xxm (1880), 59, 205.

59 Beamont, W. J. Fine Art as a Branch of Academic Study (Cambridge, 1863)Google Scholar; Greswell, R. On Education in the Principles of Art (1857).Google Scholar

60 Calendar, K. C. L. (1840).Google Scholar He later became Director of the Government School of Design, South Kensington. From 1834 onwards, Cotman, J. S. Google Scholar was teaching drawing and perspective at King’s College.

61 Ibid. (1879); RIBA Journal, xliv (1936-37), 355-56. He was succeeded by A. W. Holden in 1887.?

62 Boase, Modern English Biography, m; Margaret Tuke, A History of Bedford College for Women (1939), pp. 340, 343. Kinkel (1815-82) was writing, for example, on Hans Holbein in the Fine Art Quarterly Review v (1867), 233, and on the Harlicarnassion sculptures in the National Review, vn (1858), 296-32.

63 He received £200 p.a., plus about £500 from students’ fees (A., xiii (1857), 325). T. Hayter Lewis was a member of the RIBA committee set up to advise on the implementation of Slade’s will (RIBA Council Minutes, vi, 4 and i8January 1869, 5january 1870).

64 Hayter Lewis, T. also designed the South wing, 1869-76.Google Scholar

65 The Fine Arts and their Connection with Education (1865), pp. 7, 9, 11.

66 ‘This clear identification of a nation by its art works is as valuable to the historian as to the artist. But we can look for this no longer. We ourselves build Greek, Roman, or Italian palaces in our great towns of India, whilst close by, perhaps, is a church or cathedral in our English style of Gothic, and a college in the style of the Saracens, who themselves, centuries back, brought it with them as the art of foreign conquerors from Egypt or Persia. And the French in Algiers, to celebrate the triumph of their religion, erect a splendid church copied from the mosques of the people whom they have conquered, and whose religion they detest’ (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 9th edn., n (1875), 453-54: signed T. Hayter Lewis and G. E. Street).

67 Quoted by Hayter Lewis, T. in the Companion to the Almanac (1886).Google Scholar In 1885 he noted ‘how much we have gained in sanitary work [since the Middle Ages], and lost in artistic’ (ibid., 1885).

68 UCL Archives, College Correspondence, AM/C/72-7. Among those defeated were Tavenor Parry and H. Heathcote Statham.

69 Men and Women of the Time (1895), p. 782.

70 Inaugural lecture: A., xxvi (1881), 249-53. ‘The difficulties which beset us on every side are so great as to call for . . . the labours of a Hercules to cleanse this Augean stable of the accumulated neglect of 40 years’ (A., 1 (1867), 13, 76, 237-38, 249-50, 272-73: Smith was editor of The Architect from 1869 to 1870). See also‘The Training of an Architect’, B., liii (1887), 488-91; ‘On the Technical Education of Architects’, B., lix (1890), 265-68, 285-86. Hayter Lewis had lectured every Tuesday at 5.30 and 6.30, on ‘Construction’ and on ‘Ancient Architecture as a Fine Art’ and ‘Architecture from the Medieval to the Renaissance Period’ (A., iv (1870), 183). During his absence in 1879-81, Smith added an extra course on ‘Modern Practice’. This included lectures on estimates, quantities, contracts, accounts, charges, building legislation, contractual litigation, arbitration, valuation, etc. (B., xxxvn (1879), 1085 and xxxix (1880), 30, 436). For the syllabus, see B., xlv (1883), 516.

71 Lectures on Architecture (School ofMilitary Engineering, Chatham, 1880), p. 85.

72 ‘Architecture: an Art, a Science and a Profession’, B., lxiii (1892), 277-80; B.N., Lxill (1892), 484-86. He was remembered as ‘one of the most zealous and useful educationists of our time’ (A., lxix (1903), 187: portrait).

73 A., 1 (1869), 176, 185.

74 Illustrated London News, xxv (1859), 357-58: ill.

75 Lectures on Architecture, p. 84; ‘Architectural Education’, B., xli (1881), 480-82.

76 A., xi (1874), 107. He admired Westminster Abbey (B., xlix (1885), 513-14 and lxxx (1901), 317), but preferred Wren, Cockerell and Barry as models (B., lvii (1889), 239-41; Li (1886), 516; xlv (1883), 404).

77 ‘Architectural Art in India’, Journal of the Society of Arts, xxi (1873), 278-87.

78 See Stamp, G. ‘British Architecture in India, 1857-1947’, ibid. cxxix(1981), 362.Google Scholar

79 He suggested rundbogenstil as suitable for industrial work (B.N., xxn ( 1872), 321). E.g. his elevation for Kirkaldy’s Testing and Experimenting Works, Southwark Street (A., xi (1874), 48: ill ). The 1870s, he admitted, were ‘a flat period, with very little impulse to help them forward’ (A., xi (1874), 65J; exotic imports, like Owen Jones’s Mahommedan style, would never thrive (‘Mistakes in Architecture’, B., lx (1888), 246-50).

80 B., lxiv (1893), 418-19, 423-24, 466; B.N., lxvi (1894), 285 and lxvii (1895), 45: ill.

81 ‘On Learning to Design Buildings’, B., li (1886), 514-18. Even the construction of a wall supplied opportunities for ‘spontaneous grace’ (B., xlvii (1884), 505-06).

82 ‘Plans and Planning’, B., xliii (1882), 473-74.

83 ‘New Departures in Architecture’, B., lxi (1891), 274-77; B.N., lxi (1891), 496, 528.

84 ‘Discoveries in Architecture’, B.N., lxvii (1894), 528.

85 ‘New Departures . . .’, op. cit. See also B., lxxvi (1889), 219-22. In 1893 he edited a translation by W. Collett-Sandars of A. Rosengarten’s Handbook of Architectural Styles. Rosengarten predicted a ‘universal’ modern style based on international technology, but he admitted that the ‘germ’ of such a style had yet to appear: the ‘goal’ was ‘still indistinct’ (Handbook, vi, 494, 500).

86 ‘The Practice of an Architect’, British Quarterly Review, lxxii (1880), 420-41: a reply to [ Emmett, J. T.] ‘The Profession of an Architect’, ibid., lxxi(1880), 335-68.Google Scholar See Emmett, J. T. Six Essays (1891; ed. Mordaunt Crook, J. 1972).Google Scholar

87 ‘Building on Paper’, B., lxxvii (1899), 349-52. See also B., lxxv (1898), 427.

88 ‘A real student of architecture ... a very learned man, a very modest man, and a very lovable man ... [a man who] made no enemies' (RIBA Journal, 3rd series x (1903), 276-77).

89 ‘Competitions’, B., lxxix(i9oo), 317-18, 338-40. By that date he was crippled with arthritis.?

90 Architectural Publication Society Dictionary, D.N.B.; B., XIX (1861), 560, 784; H. Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), 437. Hosking is buried in Highgate Old Cemetery, square 10, by the West steps leading to the terrace.

91 KCL Archives, Council Minutes, 10 July 1840, 156 (1). ‘This Course includes a descriptive account of the various arts, operations, and tools employed in Civil Engineering and Architecture; the formation of drains and sewers; excavating, earthworking, and mining; erecting and striking scaffolding; the formation and construction of Viaducts, Bridges, Roads, Culverts, Railways, Canals, Tunnels, Docks, Harbours, Water-works. General instruction is also given in laying out, arranging, designing, delineating, and specifying Works; ascertaining the quantities, estimating the probable construction, and superintending, and directing the execution of Works’ (KCL Calendar, 1848-49, 53-54).

92 B., 1 (1843), 37.

93 [ With Jenkins, J.], A Selection of Architectural and Other Ornament, Greek, Roman and Italian (1827)Google Scholar; ‘Extracts from the journal of an architect’, New Monthly Magazine 1, ‘Paestum’, xvi (1826), 329-36 and 11, ‘Pompeii and Herculaneum’, xvn (1826), 209-15.

94 It has echoes of Bloxham Church, Oxon., and Beverley Minster; and of St Mary Redcliffe, which Hosking restored with John Britton ( Britton, J. Restoration of St. Mary Redcliffe (Bristol, 1842)).Google Scholar Ex. inf. Philip Temple. Britton supported Hosking’s application to become FSA in 1830 (Society of Antiquaries MSS).

95 Simms, F. W. ed., Public Works of Great Britain (1853), 1, 65-68 Google Scholar, pis 73-74; Blouet, Bâtir, L’Art de (Paris, 1847-48), pi. 97 Google Scholar; Allgemeine Bauzeitung (Vienna, 1838), 205, pi. 211.

96 ‘The practice of Civil Engineering and Architecture is . . . the complete practice of architecture in its most extended sense . . . The Architect who builds sewers and drains ... is in so far a Civil Engineer, whilst the Engineer who builds a bridge or a viaduct is in so far an Architect. The arts of construction are the same to both’ (Introductory Lecture . . . [on] Civil Engineering and Architecture (1841), pp. 12, 17; B., 11 ( 1844), 513-14).

97 ‘Rather learn to use one style well than many styles badly, or your Greek will be like the nonsense verses of schoolboys, and your English [Gothic] like the English of modern novelists’ (Introductory Lecture ... on the Principles and Practice of Architecture (1842).

98 Lectures to the Western Literary and Scientific Institution, re-published as ^Architecture’ and ‘Building’ in Encyclopaedia Britannica, 7th edn, in (1842), 406-64.

99 F. Algarotti, Opere, newednm, 25.

100 Encyclopaedia Britannica, supplement to 8th edn, in (1853), 490-506.

101 Particularly magnanimous on Hosking’s part, since Pugin caricatured his Egyptian entrance to Abney Park Cemetery in his Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843).

102 Wiseman, Cf. Cardinal Essays on Various Subjects (1853)Google Scholar, on the absurdity of copying primitive forms.

103 Even at his own college there was a separate chair of civil engineering. But Hosking was in any case not a college man: he employed an assistant, Andrew Moseley, to deliver forty out of his course of sixty lectures (KCL Archives: Council Minutes, 15 November 1861, 33 (52)).

104 E.g. ‘gladiatorial passages’ during a public meeting about drains at the Metropolitan Commission of Sewers (B., xi (1853), 172, 193); and controversy with [W. H. Leeds], ibid., 247. Like Donaldson, he was a founder member of the RIBA; but unlike Donaldson he never seems to have been happy there, and he resigned — at the third attempt — in 1846 (RIBA Council Minutes, 1, 16 December 1834, 23 December 1834, 6January 1835, II January 1841, 8 March 1841, 7june 1841; 11, I2january 1846).

105 E.g. in a case v. Cubitts over House Agents’ Charges (B., ix (1851), 805-06).

106 Crook, J. Mordaunt The British Museum (1972), pp. 175-79.Google Scholar For Hosking’s plan, a modified version of the Pantheon, see B., VIII (1850), 29S-96; ill., 307-08, 320, 507.

107 In more ways than one: as a Scots Presbyterian, he had first to make his peace with the Church of England, before he could take up his chair (KCL Archives: Council Minutes, 15 November 1861, 34 (52)). Defeated candidates were Hosking’s assistant Andrew Moseley, and C. P. B. Shelley, Professor of Manufacturing Art and Machinery.

108 At KCL he gave only two lectures per week, every Tuesday and Thursday at 3.30, and received £125 p.a. (KCL Archives, ‘Chair of Architecture, 1899’; A., iv(i87o), 183).

109 A., iv (1870), 1: Kerr took over from T. Roger Smith as thejournal’s leader writer

110 ‘Copyism in Architecture’, B., vm (1850), 541-43: AA.

111 ‘To bow to antiquity is to believe in ghosts and hobgoblins’ (B, iv (1846), 327-28).

112 ‘We could find no masters who could instruct the pupils, [so] we called the pupils together to instruct each other’ (B., xv (1857), 575).

113 ‘We have a style of our own’, that is a ‘material embodiment’ of a ‘spiritual idea’, and ‘one that cannot fail to triumph . . . over every attempt to introduce the style of another nation, another climate, . . . another age’ (‘Copyism in Architecture’, B., vm (1850), 541-43; AA).

114 B., xvili (i860), 292-94. Kerr was calling himself a latitudinarian as early as 1846 (B., iv (1846), 327-28).

115 ‘Modern Architecture’, B., xxvn (1867), 1002-03; A-, 11 (1869), 250: London Institution.?

116 RIBA Proceedings, Papers (1868-69), PP- 89-104; B., xxvii (1869), 138-39, 160-61.

117 ‘How can the engineer be blamed for regarding his cousin the architect as . . . scientifically but a poor relation? ... a gentleman of the highest respectability, no doubt. . . but, besides the towering Titan himself, unmistakably behind the age’ (Kerr: ‘Opening Address’, RIBA Conference 1874, A., xi (1874), supplement, 3).

118 As one member of the audience commented, he had ‘reduced the architect to the level of the modiste’ (‘The Treatment of Scientific Engineering Artistically’, B., xxxiv (1876), 235-36, 273). Kerr however remained convinced that an engineer was simply ‘a non-artistic builder’ (RIBA Conference, 1874; A., XI (1874), supp. 7).

119 ‘No More Lectures’, A., xi (1874), 329-30.

120 ‘Professor Kerr’s magnificent mountain has brought forth a mouse’: J. P. Seddon (RIBA Transactions, Papers, 1883-84, 218-30; B, xlvi (1884), 713-14, 726-31).

121 See also ‘Architectural Prospects: the Queen Anne Style’, A., xi (1874), 1-2.

122 B.N., lxvi (1894), 531.

123 Seddon, J. P. ‘The Modern European Style’, A., xi (1874), 32.Google Scholar

124 ‘Ruskin and Emotional Architecture’, RIBA Journal, vn (1900), 181-88.

125 B., xxi (1863), 11—13; ill.; B.N., ix (1862), 317: ill., J. Summerson, The Architectural Association, 1847-1947 (1947), p. 8. For Kerr’s designs for the Foreign Office, see B., xv (1857), 550-51: ill.; for his Natural History Museum design, see B., xxn (1864), 473-75: ill.

126 SeeR. Kerr, The Gentleman’s House (1871 edn; ed. Mordaunt Crook, J. 1972).Google Scholar

127 B., xxvii (1869), 1025-27: ill.; I. Nairn, N. Pevsner and B. Cherry, The Buildings of England: Surrey (1971 edn), p. 266.

128 E.g. Kerr’s plan on the ‘Modern Scottish Model’ filched from Burn’s Buchanan House. Kerr was unrepen tant: ‘every man’s brains are the property of the public’ (RIBA MSS, Box 4).

129 The Gentleman’s House (1864 edn), p. 358.

130 Kerr: RIBA Conference, 1874, A., xi (1874), supp. 10.

131 Boase, Modern English Biography, v; Who Was Who; Illustrated London News, 15 July 1899, p. 49: portrait; Men and Women of the Time (1899), p. 370; RIBA Journal, vi (1898-99), 523-25; B., lxxvii (1899), 349.

132 B.N., lix (1890), 497-98, 530.

133 By 1891 there were 776 architectural drawings, 118 casts, 204 building construction diagrams, 87 models and 662 specimens and examples. Their stylistic arrangement followed that conceived by Viollet-le-Duc for the museum of comparative sculpture in the Trocadero, Paris (B.N., lix (1890), 499).

134 Student numbers at the AA increased from 559 in 1874 to 1200 in 1891. At King’s, by 1891, there were 125 students, each paying 6 gns p.a. By 1901 the curriculum included: Mathematics, Mechanics, Physics, Divinity, Geology, Mineralogy, Geometrical and Freehand Drawing, Building Construction, Architectural Drawing, Chemistry, Carpentry, Strength of Materials, Theory of Structures, Land Surveying, Specifications, Sanitary Science, Professional Practice, History of Ornament and Architectural History (KCL Archives: Council Minutes, 8 March 1901, p. 320).

135 Briggs, M. ‘Architectural Education’, RIBA Journal, 3rd series lviii (1950-51), 201-306.Google Scholar For the reorganization of the departments of architecture and engineering at KCL, involving the retirement of both Prof. Kerr and Prof. Shelley, see KCL Archives, Council Minutes, 13 December 1889, 397 (954-55). Kerr’s lectures on ‘The Arts of Construction’ had been supplemented by classes on architectural drawing and shading, descriptive geometry, and surveying and levelling (B., xxxn (1874), 914). But he was not averse to lecturing on decoration (B., XX (1862), 44). When Fletcher arrived, lecturing was still an evening supplement to daytime pupillage in an architect’s office. He began afternoon lectures as well, andUC followed suit (B., lx (1891), 245, 471-72; B.N., lxi (1891), 62, 453. 495-96, 522, 966; A.A. Notes, May 1890; B.N., lxiii (1892), 519-20, and lxvii (1894), 376). T. Roger Smith noted that lectures at UC and the AA did not overlap: UC was patronized by ‘rather a different class of students’ (B., lxi(i89i), 277). In 1898 the fees at UC were reduced to bring them in line with County Council Scholarships: for 5 gns a student could attend forty lectures in art or construction, as well as drawing classes in the evening (B., lxxv (1898), 295).

136 KCL Archives: ‘Chair of Architecture: 1899’; Council Minutes I7july 1896, p. 6. The salary of a third assistant, James Bartlett fsa, was paid by the Carpenters’ Company of which Fletcher was Master. His college income in 1898-99 — salary plus students’ fees — was £631 19s. id.

137 Originally entitled A History of Architecture for the Student, Craftsman and Amateur, being a Comparative View of the Historical Styles from the Earliest Period (1896) by Banister Fletcher and Banister F. Fletcher. Early reviews were mixed: ‘If the book reaches a second edition, there are many inaccuracies to be corrected’ (B., lxxi (1896), 36). The 5th edn (1905) became A History of Architecture on the Comparative Method, by Banister F. Fletcher.

138 ‘When will we have our own Cuvier to teach us the comparative anatomy of antique and modern monuments, and to teach us not to put rabbit’s feet on a monkey’s body or to clothe the skeleton of a lizard with fur?’ (quoted by P. Collins, ‘The Shape of Architectural History’, The Guardian, 7 September 1961, p. 6).

139 1st edn (1896), pp. 4, 293.?

140 D.N.B.; Who Was Who; W. Hanneford-Smith, The Architectural Work of Sir Banister Fletcher (1934); M. S. Briggs, ‘Sir Banister Fletcher: the Man and his book’, Jnl. London Soc., 322 (1954), 20-26; The Times, 19, 22, 25, 26 August 1953, 26 October 1953. Heleft£ii5,520, mostly to the RIBA and London University.

141 Architecture and its Place in a Liberal Education (1905; revised 1930 etc.). Fergusson, when he received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1871, was described by T. H. Wyatt as‘an architectural historian’ (RIBA Papers 1870-71, pp. 145+7)-

142 ‘No modern work in English can be said to equal it in merit . . . Perhaps only the reading of the Arabian Nights, ot the possession of Seven League Boots, can do . . . what this book has . . .You have only to let these pages turn idly between your fingertips and rather more than the Seven Wonders of the World appears before you as in a dream’ (Architect’sJournal, publisher’s advertisement, n.d.).

143 In 1892 he was Studio Instructor at KCL; in 1896 Lecturer and Assistant Professor; and in 1899 temporary Acting Professor.

144 Messrs Middleton, Orr and Cross were also candidates; Reilly, C. H. was considered too young, and appointed Assistant Lecturer (KCL Archives, ‘Chair of Architecture, 1899’; Council Minutes, 10 November 1899, p. 236, and 13 July 1900, p. 286).Google Scholar

145 The other defeated candidates were Reilly, C. H. Ricardo, Halsey Stannus, Hugh Farrow, F. R. Bond, F. and Watson, A. M. (UC Archives, College Correspondence, Chair of Architecture, 1903).Google Scholar

146 In the 1880s he worked with D. G. Hogarth of Oxford, excavating in Cyprus, and it was probably Hogarth’s reference which got him thejob at King’s — though his father also sent in a rosy testimonial (KCL Archives: ‘Chair of Architecture 1899’).

147 KCL Archives, Council Minutes, 14 February 1890, 15 (33) and i2june 1891, 122 (262).

148 It had previously been linked with Engineering and Applied Sciences in the Faculty of Science (KCL Calendar, 1899-1900, pp. 164-73).

149 Who Was Who.

150 B.N., lxvii (1894), 202; B., lxxix (1900), 315, 34s, 368. Liverpool began the first full-time, three-year course in architecture outside London in 1894.

151 B., lxxvii (1899), 394: ill. See also his Stoke Farm, near Sevenoaks (B., lix (1890), 443: ill.).

152 Simpson’s 1913 scheme for an Ionic entrance screen remained unexecuted. Besides the Bartlett, he designed buildings for Physiology, Chemistry, Pharmacology, Engineering, Eugenics and Anatomy (B., cxxxiv (1928), 1062, 1102). For previous extensions, seeB.N., xliv(i893), 781-82. Forills., seej. North andN. Harte, The Work of University College, London, 1828-1978 (1978), pp. 136, 139, 140-42, 145-46.

153 B., lxxxi (1901), 314. Simpson divided the nineteenth century into two halves, the age of revivals, up to c. i860 (Cockerell v. Pugin), and the age of experiments, up to c. 1890 (‘Architectural Development during the 19th century’, B., lxxxvi (1904), 310-11: Carpenters’ Hall). After that, ‘sated with Continental fragments’, English architects returned to Wren and the Georgian tradition (‘An Architectural Critic in the Year 2000 A.D.’, B., lxxix (1900), 313-15).

154 This is also the theme of Simpson’s Liverpool inaugural, Architectural Education (Liverpool, 1895).

155 ‘Architectural Evolution’, B., lxxv (1903), 359-61. There is ‘a general agreement among architects as to . . . style , . . There is now every chance that the 20th century may possess what the 19th century never attained to, a recognised vernacular style based on tradition, but not fettered by it, and original without being eccentric’ (B., xcvii (1909), 559: Sheffield Society of Architects and Surveyors).

156 ‘Architectural Development’, op. cit.

157 KCL Archives: Council Minutes, 3ijuly 1896, 11.

158 Crook, J. Mordaunt ‘Multifacultimania’, Times Higher Education Supplement, 28 May 1982, p. 31.Google Scholar

159 KCL Archives: Principal’s and Secretary's Records: files relating to transfer (1913), including inventories of books, models, casts, samples, photographs and drawings, e.g. Gilbert Scott’s RA lecture diagrams, presented by Oldrid Scott (KCL Archives: Council Minutes, 8 October 1897, p. 86; 12 November 1897, p. 96). One built-in model, an eighteenth-century doorway, was re-built into the Bartlett School by F. M. Simpson. Sir Herbert Bartlett (1842-1921), a leading contractor, was created a baronet in 1913.

160 Hearnshaw, F. J. C. History of King’s College (1829), p. 426.Google Scholar ‘King’s was now an incorporated college, and it was open to the senate of the university to shift its own property and the appendant staffs from one place to another as it saw fit’ (ibid., p. 457-58).

161 Adshead, S. D..Google Scholar He was succeeded in 1935 by Sir Patrick Abercrombie, and in 1948 by Lord Holford.

162 The first prospectus stated dearly that ‘The “Orders” form the basis of architectural design’, and that the ‘Academic Design’ course was based on that of the Ecole des Beaux Arts, Paris. A knowledge of Building Construction was also required: sufficient for architects ‘not to ... be entirely at the mercy of the Engineer’ — changed at proof stage to: sufficient to ‘cooperate effectively with the Engineer when bigger problems present themselves’ (KCL Archives; ‘transfer of department, 1913’).

163 D.N.B.; S. Houfe, The Professor (1980); N. Taylor, ‘A Classic Case of Edwardianism’, Architectural Review, CXL (1966), 199-205.?

164 Richardson, A. E. Scholarship and the Fine Arts (Birkbeck College, 1955).Google Scholar

165 At the presentation of the RIBA Gold Medal to Sir Nikolaus Pevsner (RIBA Journal, 3rd series, lxxiv (1967), 316.

166 For examples of his carefully measured drawings of historic buildings, see V & A, P & D, DD. 15 and 91c, 50-52.

167 ‘A Georgian monument died yesterday. The name of this structure was Professor Sir Albert Edward Richardson’ (Cassandra, Daily Mirror, 4 February 1964).

168 ‘The Architectural Spirit of the Age’, A.A. Jnl, xxx (1915), 159.

169 ‘Neo-Hell’, A. A. Jnl., xxxv (1919), 189-91.

170 The Significance ojthe Fine Arts (Romanes Lecture, Oxford, 1955), p. 12. For modern support for this view, see Scruton, R. The Aesthetics of Architecture (1979).Google Scholar

171 ‘The Modern Movement in Architecture’, RIBA Journal, 3rd series xxxi (1924), 267-74. ‘It is structure and structure alone that will provide the germ of the new style . . . No past motifs . . . can be accepted as the basis of modern architecture’ (A.A. Jnl., xxxix (1923), 203-13).

172 N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: London, 1, pp. in, 580: e.g. the AEI (British Steel) building in Grosvenor Place.

173 B., cli (1936), 728-32; A.J., lxxxvi (1937), 890-91.

174 ‘The Influence of Material on Architecture’, B., lxxiii (1897), 181-82 (originally an RIBA Prize Essay, 1896; reprinted 1927). The following year, at the AA he was even more ‘lugubrious’ (B., lxxv (1898), 581).

175 See Garbett’s criticism of unnecessary decorative forms in the roof of Westminster Hall (B., vm (1850), 233).

176 Architecture and Its Place in a Liberal Education (1905), p. 20.

177 Freeman, E. A. 1862, quoted in RIBA Journal, lxxvii (1970), 547.Google Scholar ‘As a student at once of history and architecture ... I am quite sure that architecture has been studied a great deal too much as a subject by itself, or in connection with subjects which are not its most natural congeners. On the one hand it has been too much looked at, by different minds, as a purely aesthetic or constructive affair ... Its true place, I have always held, is as a branch, and by no means an unimportant branch, of history’ (Freeman to J. H. Parker, 12 June i860, quoted in W. A. Pantin, ‘The Oxford Architectural and Historical Society, 1839-1939’, Oxoniensia iv (1939), 185). See also Saturday Review, xxxvii (1874), 437-38: Parker’s Gothic Architecture ‘shows that it is impossible to deal with the history of architecture or of anything else without a firm grasp of. . . political history and historical geography’.

178 As quoted by Frederick Antal: ‘there is no contradiction between a picture as a work of art and as a document of its time, since the two are complimentary . . . the time will . . . come when the exclusive formalists will generally be recognised as in the rear of art history, as today are the antiquarians and anecdotalists’ (Burlington Magazine, Feb.-March 1949; reprinted in Classicism and Romanticism, 1966, 175-89).

179 ‘The visible embodiment 0/[a] country’s power and glory and skill’ (T. Hayter Lewis, ‘The Professional Education of Architects’, RIBA Conference, 1874, A., xi (1874), supplement, 5). ‘The most democratic of the arts’ (Sir Banister Fletcher, How to Appreciate Architecture (BBC broadcast, 16 February 1928), p. 6.

180 Colvin, H. M. ‘The Study of Architectural History in England’ (Inaugural Address, Society of Architectural Historians of GB, York, june 1957).Google Scholar

181 RIBA Journal, 3rd series, xxvra (1921), 436-37.

182 ‘No chapter in the history of national manners would illustrate as well, if duly executed, the progress of social life, as that dedicated to domestic architecture. The fashions of dress and of amusements are generally capricious and irreducible to rule; but every change in the dwellings of mankind, from the rudest wooden cabin to the stately mansion, has been dictated by some principle of convenience, neatness, comfort or magnificence. Yet this most interesting field of research has been less beaten by our antiquaries than others comparatively barren’ (H. Hallam, A View of the State of Europe during the Middle Ages (1818): ‘State of Society’). Similarly Goldwyn Smith: ‘The buildings of every nation are an important part of history, but a part that has been neglected by all historians, because the historians themselves have been entirely ignorant of the subject’ (quoted in Parker, J. H. The Ashmolean Museum, (Oxford, 1870), pp. 9-12).Google Scholar

183 Pugin, A. W. An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture (1843), P- 4.Google Scholar