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‘Pugin in his home’: A Memoir by J. H. Powell

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Extract

In this touching and perceptive memoir written late in his life, John Hardman Powell calls himself Pugin's pupil. He was in fact the only person who had the right to call himself that. Pugin never set up an office in the usual manner of busy mid-nineteenth-century architects. He preferred to work with a small number of close colleagues who understood his aims and could interpret his drawings. George Myers, his builder who worked from London, and John Hardman, the Birmingham metalwork manufacturer, were the principal two members of this group, and the other two were John Gregory Crace, the interior decorator, also London based, and Herbert Minton, the Staffordshire pottery manufacturer. Of these John Hardman was undoubtedly the closest friend.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1988

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References

Notes

Abbreviations

1 The word in the original text is ‘italics’.

2 In the original text there follows here a list of fifteen chapters. These correspond approximately to the sub-headings which appear here, but there are fewer chapters given in the list and they are in a slightly different order.

3 Pugin's house which he built in 1843 is now known as the Grange, but he addressed letters to ‘S. Augustins, Ramsgate’, and it appears to have been commonly called St Augustines in his lifetime. No doubt in full it was St Augustine's Grange.

4 Powell is mistaken in the implied date of 1842. He probably arrived at Ramsgate shortly before Christmas 1844. See also the introduction.

5 Edward Pugin (1834–75), Pugin's eldest son who became an important architect.

6 Anne Pugin (1832–97), Pugin's first child. She married J. H. Powell on 21 October 1850; they had seven daughters and five sons.

7 Miss Greaves was probably staying at the Grange from the autumn of 1844 to spring 1846. At one time she expected to become the third Mrs Pugin (Belcher, p. 413).

8 All the fittings, vestments, and plate from the Chapel at the Grange, except the stained glass, are now in the church of St Augustine next door. The two-light east window contains St George and two angels in the tracery with St Augustine and Pugin and St Gregory with Louisa and three daughters below. The two-light south window contains St Edward with Edward Pugin and St Cuthbert with Cuthbert Pugin. In 1988 the glass has been removed for restoration.

9 Agnes Pugin (1836–95). She married L. F. Peniston and they had a son and four daughters.

10 Cuthbert Welby (1840–1928). He never married and lived most of his life at the Grange.

11 Katharine (1841–1927). She married Dr Austin Meldon of Dublin and they had two sons and two daughters.

12 Mary (1844–1933). She married the Irish architect, George Coppinger Ashlin, and they had one daughter.

13 The niche and statue have gone from the hall, but perhaps the niche survives in the sacristy of the church. The floor is covered with Minton tiles. The railing to the stairs survives and is both unusual and delightful.

14 There is one sea-locker beside the fire. The shields on the cove, apparently of enamel, have been stolen. There are two two-light windows with, in one window, the arms of Towers and Knill, and in the other, Pugin and Welby.

15 The Drawing Room was immediately to the right on entering the house. The room was altered by E. W. Pugin who extended it and made it his office. The ceiling has also been altered, probably in the 1950s. The three-light mullioned west window survives with its glass. The roundel with the plan of the Isle of Thanet marking twelve old churches is in the centre between a roundel of St Peter and one of the Virgin and Child. The roundels are set among quarries of foliage and martlets. There is also a panel to St Barbara, the patron saint of architects above the door to the garden.

16 The Library, where Pugin worked, is on the garden front, looking south-east. This room after Pugin's death became the drawing room. The three-light west window contains three roundels of Netherlandish glass of c. 1500 with Old Testament subjects. It is set in quarries containing Pugin's monogram. In the oriel window are roundels of Kentish Saints, Saints Augustine, Anselm(?), Thomas Becket, and Dunstan, which are set in quarries which also contain Pugin's monogram.

17 The friends shown are Hardman, Benson, Amherst, Shrewsbury, Scarisbrick, Scott-Murray, and Sutton.

18 Pugin is known to have had martlets on his wallpaper in the dining room, the drawing room and Mrs Pugin's room, on some ceilings, on curtains in the dining room, the library and the parlour (presumably the drawing room). They were also on tiles, fireplaces, furniture, the candlesticks, and numerous picture frames (Wedgwood, 1985, pp. 232–34, p. 325).

19 Augustus Charles Pugin (c. 1769–1832). He was born in France, probably Normandy, and various stories are told of his escape to England during the French Revolution (Ferrey, p. 2).

20 A. C. Pugin was employed as a draughtsman by John Nash and by 1820 had set up a flourishing school of architectural drawing (Ferrey, pp. 2–20; Wedgwood, 1977, pp. 9–10).

21 In the original text there follows unpaginated addenda in J. H. Powell's hand, largely repeating the description of the garden.

22 Louis Acquerone or Aquaroni (c. 1795–1850) was an Italian priest. Pugin noted his arrival at Ramsgate in his diary on 20 December 1844 (Diary, Library, V & A). He became professor of Italian at Oscott College in 1846.

23 Mary Holmes (1815?–78) is mentioned in Pugin's diary on 22 March 1847.

24 John Henry Newman (1801–90), the future Cardinal. Pugin first met him in Oxford in 1840 and he provided the illustrations to the Lives of the English Saints, which Newman edited from 1844–45. He was delighted by Newman's conversion to Catholicism in 1845, but was soon deeply disappointed by Newman's sponsorship of the Oratorians and Italianate architecture.

25 St Mary's College, Oscott, near Birmingham, was a RC school and seminary. Pugin first went there in March 1837, and it proved to be the crucial meeting place for his first Catholic patrons and it was from here that his influence spread rapidly through the Catholic Church in England.

26 Several similar railway stories are told (Ferrey, p. 98).

27 Pugin's unusual clothes clearly marked him out and were often commented on (Ferrey, pp. 98–99).

28 In the original text there follows unpaginated addenda in J. H. Powell's hand, containing rough notes about Edward and pets.

29 This happened in 1849 and is described in the journal of Jane Pugin. (MSS in a private collection; microfilm in House of Lords Record Office, Historical Collection No. 339.)

30 This happened on 18 December 1845 (Diary, Library, V&A).

31 Peter Paul Pugin (1851–1904), his youngest child, became an architect.

32 Edward Irving (1792–1834), a minister of the Church of Scotland, who came to the Caledonian Chapel in Hatton Garden, London, in 1822 and drew great crowds to his sermons. Ferrey describes this youthful experience in detail (Ferrey, pp. 43–44).

33 It is most surprising that Pugin never mentions the work of the greatest sea painter of his day, J. M. W. Turner.

34 A word is missing in the original text.

35 Pugin bought his boat on 21 February 1849, (Diary, Library, V&A). A hoveling boat is the craft used by an unlicensed pilot or boatman, especially on the Kent coast, often for going out to wrecks (OED).

36 This is probably the correct account of Pugin's early ship-wreck to which Ferrey mistakenly attributes his first meeting with J. Gillespie Graham, the Scottish architect (Ferrey, pp. 62-63).

37 Contrasts: or, A Parallel Between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and similar Buildings of the Present Day; showing the Present Decay of Taste: Accompanied by appropriate Text was published privately in Salisbury on 4 August 1836.

38 In the sense of‘convert’. Pugin became a Roman Catholic on 6June 1835.

39 Pugin worked extensively at St Mary's College, Oscott, from 1837, also at St Cuthbert's College, Ushaw, from 1840 and at St Edmund's College, Ware, from 1845.

40 John, sixteenth Earl of Shrewsbury (1791–1852), was Pugin's principal patron. He was a Roman Catholic and employed Pugin extensively from October 1836 both on church commissions and on his estate at Alton Towers in Staffordshire.

41 Pugin, especially towards the end of his life was as much occupied with the applied arts as he was with architecture.

42 Pugin had a particular hatred for this kind of event and enjoyed satirizing it (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 159).

43 John Milner (1752–1826) RC Bishop of the western district. He wrote a pioneer work on the medieval period, The History, Civil and Ecclesiastical, and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 1798-1801. Milner built the RC Chapel of St Peter at Winchester in 1792 with John Carter as architect. Partly to Milner's design, it anticipated both in the gothic style and reuse of medieval fragments much of Pugin's approach. (Information from Dr R. O'Donnell.)

44 The RC Cathedral of St Chad, Birmingham.

45 Pugin was most unusual at this period in not having an office. J. H. Powell was the nearest he ever got to having a clerk. This was all the more surprising given the great number of small commissions in the applied arts executed by Pugin.

46 It is true that few of his architectural drawings have survived compared with, for example, those of Charles Barry and G. G. Scott.

47 Pugin's diaries for the years 1835–42, 1844–45, and 1847–51 are in the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum and have been published in full in Wedgwood 1985. His account books do not seem to have survived.

48 George Myers (1804–75) was Pugin's principal builder.

49 This was Pugin's common practice and he did it for his other colleagues, John Hardman and J. G. Crace, and also at the Thames Bank workshops, for the carpenters working at the Houses of Parliament.

50 Speed was one of Pugin's chief attributes and it characterized all his work.

51 The Chapel of St Edmund's College, Ware, built from 1845, substantially finished in 1848, finally opened in 1853, was particularly grand with a splendid rood screen.

52 Perhaps Powell is referring to the stained glass in the east window of the south aisle in the parish church of St Mary, Oxford.

53 Perhaps Powell is referring to the chapel of the Convent of Our Lady of Mercy, Handsworth. The drawings that he talks about do not seem to have survived.

54 Pugin made a substantial number of these kind of illustrations, which have most usefully been listed in Belcher, pp. 137–54.

55 Pugin certainly worked at Covent Garden between 1829 and 1831. Most information about this period comes from his unfinished autobiography, now in the Library of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Wedgwood, 1985, pp. 28–30).

56 The ballet Kenilworth was performed at the King's Theatre, with choreography by A. J. J. Deshayes and music by Costa in March 1831. Pugin states in his autobiography ‘for this ballet I painted 2 scenes: the interior of Cumnor Place and Greenwich Palace with the exception of the back cloth by Mr. W. Greive. I likewise furnished documents for costume and other scenes of the ballet.’ (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 28).

57 See, for example, sketchbook, catalogue 104, in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Wedgwood, 1985, pp. 123–27).

58 E.-E. Viollet-le-Duc (1814–79) the leader of the Gothic Revival in France. Powell is no doubt thinking of the splendid illustrations in his great Dictionnaire raisonné de Varchitecturefiancaise, 1854–68.

59 William Dyce (1806–64). At the Houses of Parliament he painted the Baptism of King Ethelbert in the House of Lords, 1845–46, which was the first fresco, and in 1847 he was commissioned to paint the Legend of King Arthur in the Robing Room. This proceeded very slowly with the first panel completed in 1851 but the series was incomplete at his death.

60 J. R. Herbert (1810–90). He was a close friend of Pugin (see below n. 166). At Westminster he painted a fresco of a subject from King Lear in the Upper Waiting Hall between 1848–50. Then he was commissioned to paint the pictures in the Moses Room. This time using waterglass painting on plaster, Herbert painted ‘Moses Bringing Down the Second Tables of the Law’ between 1858 and 1864. This painting was enthusiastically received, and gave its name to the room. Herbert then painted in oil, ‘Thejudgment of Daniel’, which was finished in 1880. This series is incomplete.

61 J. E. Millais (1829–96). He exhibited ‘Isabella’ in the Royal Academy in 1849. The picture, which is now in the Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool, is signed P.R.B., for Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood. It is most interesting that Pugin appreciated this important painting.

62 In the original text there follows unpaginated addenda in J. H. Powell's hand, containing a paragraph about Pugin's mouldings.

63 See particularly Ayling, S., Photographs from Sketches by Augustus Welhy N. Pugin, 2 vols, 1865, Wedgwood, 1977, pp. 89–109, and Wedgwood, 1985, pp. 281–99.Google Scholar

64 Pugin exhibited four watercolours in the Royal Academy in 1849. Powell has forgotten about ‘No 1013 New dining-hall, now erecting for the Rt. Hon. The Earl of Shrewsbury, at Alton Towers.’

65 This picture surivives in a private collection (Fig. 3).

66 Powell is mistaken about the date. The two scrolls are in the border at the bottom of the picture; one says ‘The church was begun’ and the other ‘in the year of our Lord MDCCCXLVI.’ By 1849 a considerable part of the church was built.

67 The spire was never built. The drawing survives at St George's Southwark.

68 At Bilton Grange, Rugby, Pugin made extensive additions and internal decoration to an existing building. He found Captain Hibbert a most difficult client.

69 There was a critical review of his exhibits in the Ecclesiologist (Belcher, pp. 260–61). It seems possible that Pugin's work was skied. The Art Journal, xi (1849), 176, statesGoogle Scholar: ‘In the Architectural Room are also some oil pictures and water-colour drawings of great merit, but many of them are distant from the eye, in so much as to render description difficult'.

70 J. H. Foley (1818–74), the sculptor, was elected Associate.

71 George Cruikshank (1792–1878), the caricaturist.

72 Henry James Townsend (1810–66), the history painter, illustrator and etcher.

73 David Charles Read (1790–1851), the painter and etcher, who lived at Salisbury between 1820–45 and knew Pugin.

74 An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England, 1843. For a description of his work for this book, see his letters to Weale, the publisher (Belcher, pp. 70–73).

75 K. M. Geerts (1807–85), a sculptor and Professor at the Academy of Louvain. Pugin mentions a dinner with him in Ostend on 3 July 1844 (Diary, Library, V&A).

76 Stained glass was an important element in Pugin's churches and he tried several workshops before persuading Hardman to set up his own glass-works in the autumn of 1845. He had previously used Thomas Willement (1786–1871), principally at Alton, William Warrington (1796–1869), especially at Oscott and St Mary's Derby, and finally William Wailes (1808–81), who worked for him extensively between 1841 and 1846.

77 Pugin's Cartoon Room, next to the entrance wall at the Grange, still survives though altered. Powell wrote a useful account of The art of stained glass in Birmingham’ in The resources, products and industrial history of Birmingham and the Midland hardware district, ed. by Timmins, S. (1886), in which he mentions several of the young men who came to Ramsgate (Belcher, p. 322).Google Scholar

78 Francis Wilson Oliphant (1818–59) was for a time chief draughtsman for Hardman. He had previously worked for William Wailes.

79 The cartoons for the stained glass in the House of Lords Chamber were made by Oliphant, but, apart from a sample by Hardman, the windows were made by the Edinburgh firm of Ballantine and Allen between 1847 and 1850. Only the sample window now survives and in 1987 this was placed in the Peers’ Dining Room.

80 This statement is borne out on many surviving cartoons.

81 Charles Barry (1795–1860) won the competition for building the New Houses of Parliament in April 1836; the foundation stone was laid in April 1840, and the building, probably the largest commission of the century was incomplete at his death.

82 Pugin helped Barry with his competition drawings in the autumn of 1835; he designed and executed between 1836 and 1837 the drawings from which the estimate for the building was prepared; from September 1844 until his death he designed internal decoration and fittings.

83 In December 1844 Pugin received an official appointment to superintend the works of wood carving at the New Palace. (PRO Works 1/27, p. 318).

84 John Thomas (1813–62) was superintendent of all the stone carving.

85 The stained glass, with the exception of that in the House of Lords Chamber mentioned above, and the metalwork were entirely manufactured by John Hardman.

86 The encaustic tiles were entirely made by Herbert Minton (1793–1858), a close colleague of Pugin.

87 The wallpapers and internal painting were carried out by John Gregory Crace (1809–89), another close colleague. Barry certainly had the final word with all this decorative work.

88 There is a delightful description by Charles Barry junior of a visit to Ramsgate on 26 October 1846. (MSS diary in a private collection; microfilm in the HLRO).

89 Powell's judgement here is very sound.

90 This might refer to the designs for the throne canopy, about which Pugin and Barry had quite different ideas ( Wedgwood, A., ‘The throne in the House of Lords and its setting', Architectural History, XXVII (1984), pp. 59–73 Google Scholar).

91 This perceptive remark is an addition inj. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

92 Jane Pugin was granted a Civil List pension of £100 per annum on 2 September 1852. In the published list (HC 1852–53 (682), LVII, p. 3 53) it states:'Wife of R. (sic) Welby Pugin, Esq. In consideration of her husband's eminence as an Architect, and the distressed situation in which his family are placed, from his inability, in consequence of illness, to pursue his profession. In trust to John Hardman, Esq., and John Knill, Esq.’ It continued until her death.

93 The phrase about the statue on the Albert Memorial is an addition in J. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page. There is a story that Pugin has only given a place on the Albert Memorial following G. G. Scott's intervention ( Trappes-Lomax, M., Pugin (1932), p. 355 Google Scholar).

94 Twenty-five years ago was approximately the time of Ferrey's biography (1861) and the great Houses of Parliament controversy (1866–67) between Barry's sons and E. W. Pugin about their fathers’ respective contribu tions to the building. By 1889 the Gothic Revival in public buildings had run its course and been replaced by the ‘Queen Anne style’.

95 Pugin was an excellent letter-writer and large numbers of them have survived. An edition of them by Margaret Belcher is in preparation.

96 RC Church of St Mary, Derby, built between 1837 and 1839 may be considered Pugin's first large parish church.

97 RC Cathedral of St Chad, Birmingham, was built between 1839 and 1941. It is unusual, both the material, red brick, and the style, being that of fourteenth–century Baltic Germany, where brick facing, two west towers with spires and eastern apses are common features. Powell shows his deep affection for this, his parish church.

98 RC Cathedral of St Barnabas, Nottingham, was built from 1841 to 1844, with Lord Shrewsbury as chief benefactor.

99 RC Chapel at Ackworth Grange, Pontefract, for the Tempest family, built 1841–42, and unfortunately demolished.

100 RC Church of St Giles, Cheadle, was built between 1840 and 1846 at the expense of Lord Shrewsbury.

101 In the original text there follows an unpaginated addendum in J. H. Powell's hand, about ‘St. Anne's Liverpool’ (perhaps in mistake for the RC Church of St Mary, 1844–45, rebuilt) and the RC Church of St Augustine, Kenilworth of 1841.

102 RC Cathedral of St George, Southwark, was built with great financial difficulties between 1841 and 1848. It has been virtually rebuilt following major damage in the Second World War.

103 RC Church of St Augustine, Ramsgate, was built at Pugin's own expense.

104 These designs, dated 1839, are in the Oscott College Archive.

105 Perhaps Powell means the RC Church of St Marie, Ducie St, Manchester, for which the designs of 1837–38 survive. (Wedgwood, 1985, pp. 229–31).

106 Probably Powell refers to Pugin's designs of 1849 for the RC Cathedral of St Mary, Edinburgh. This paragraph on unexecuted work is an addition on an unnumbered page in J. H. Powell's hand.

107 RC Cathedral of St Mary, Killarney, was built between 1842 and 1849 when the famine halted work. The cathedral was continued by J. J. McCarthy from 1853 to 1856 and completed by G. C. Ashlin and T. Coleman in 1912.

108 This collection survives in private hands, and is at present on loan to the Birmingham City Museum. This paragraph is an addition on an unnumbered page in J. H. Powell's hand.

109 Criticism of the cleaning and substitution of glass by J. P. Hegeland in the windows of the chapel of King's College, Cambridge, began in 1849.

110 Pugin wrote his opinions on the Calvinist, the Pagan, the Revolutionary and the Modern Ambonoclasts in his Treatise on Rood Screens (1851), pp. 76–99.

111 It is true that very few letters to Pugin exist. A few letters from Lord Shrewsbury have survived in a private collection (microfilm in the HLRO Historical Collection No. 339).

112 Powell has underestimated; more than 1, 100 letters from Pugin to Hardman survive in a private collection (microfilm in the HLRO Historical Collection No. 304) and also in Birmingham City Museum (microfilm in HLRO).

113 In the original text this paragraph follows in J. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

114 Powell is referring to the Medieval Court at the Great Exhibition of 1851.

115 The Medieval Court received much praise, particularly in the Reports of the Juries (1852), in the perceptive ‘Supplementary Report on Design’ by Redgrave, Richard, pp. 708–49.Google Scholar

116 In the original text this paragraph follows in J. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

117 Pugin had considerable knowledge of medieval wood carvings and acquired many fine pieces. See the sale catalogue of Sotheby and Wilkinson for 12 February 1853.

118 In the original text this paragraph follows in J. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

119 In the original text this paragraph follows in J. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

120 ‘Catholic Town in 1440’ appears in the second edition (1841) of Contrasts; Chichester Cross is contrasted with King's Cross, Battle Bridge; Redcliffe Church, Bristol, is contrasted with All Souls Church, Langham Place, all in the first edition of 1836.

121 Details of Ancient Timber Houses of the 15th & 16th centuries (1837).

122 St John's Hospital Alton appears on plates 5 and 6 and Jesus Chapel near Pomfret as plate 9, in On the Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England. Article the Second, from the Dublin Review, XXIII, February 1842.

123 An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843). Plate x is ‘Church Furniture revived at Birmingham’ and the famous frontispiece shows all the churches and chapels designed by Pugin in one perspective.

124 The first sixteen plates are wood–engravings, the second sixteen are steel–engravings.

125 The wood–engravings of Viollet–le–Duc's Dictionnaire are particularly fine.

126 Charles Barry frequently used this method of making quick copies of architectural drawings. The print appears in reverse.

127 In the original text this section follows in j. H. Powell's hand on unnumbered pages.

128 The original manuscript is confused here.

129 Pugin invariably put a rood screen in his churches between the chancel and the nave. From 1848, however, and particularly in connection with the RC Cathedral of St George, Southwark, and the RC Church of St Thomas of Canterbury, Fulham, there was strong criticism of such screens by Catholic writers. Pugin's final book was a justification of his practice, A Treatise on Chancel Screens and Rood Lofts (1851). Pugin's ideas have not prevailed, however, and rood screens are still being removed from his churches.

130 This appears to refer to Ruskin's famous criticism of St George's Southwark and its ‘eruption of diseased crockets’ in The Stones of Venice. Volume the first: The Foundations (18 51).

131 Glossary of Ecclesiastical Ornament and Costume (1844, second edition 1846; third edition 1868).

132 Pugin went to Italy in 1847. He arrived in Livorno on 23 April and travelled around visiting Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan and crossed the St Gothard Pass on 5 June.

133 Not many seem to have survived in public collections (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 294).

134 This section does not exist in other versions of the MSS. From the numbering of pages in the MSS in a family collection, however, it is clear that it was copied and then for some reason removed.

135 Anne Pugin(1811?–32). Most of our information about her comes from Ferrey, who probably knew her well. (Ferrey, pp. 68–69).

136 She died on 27 May 1832. Her daughter, Anne (1832–97), married J. H. Powell.

137 E.J. Willson (1787–1854) a Roman Catholic architect in Lincoln. He was a friend of A. C. Pugin, with whom he collaborated on Specimens of Gothic Architecture. He claimed that he was responsible for Pugin's coversion.

138 This story, plus J. H. Powell's part in it, is repeated in M. Trappes–Lomax, Pugin, p. 36).

139 According to Ferrey, Pugin as a young man thought of living at Christchurch and that is why he buried his wife there. (Ferrey, pp. 69–71). In a letter to E.J. Willson, however, Pugin says that it was Anne's ‘last wish’ (Belcher, p. 472).

140 Louisa Burton (?–1844) married Pugin in 1833. Very little is known about her.

141 This information only comes from Powell, and he may be confusing Louisa with Anne, who was a relation of George Dayes. In Pugin's early autobiography he says that Dayes was for a time attached to Covent Garden Theatre and introduced him there (Wedgwood, 1977, p. 27). On the other hand, it is quite possible that both wives had theatrical connections.

142 Pugin lived at 42 Cheyne Walk from 1841 to September 1844. He had previously had lodgings in Chelsea with a Mrs Avery. (Diaries, Library, V&A).

143 Contrasts was published in Salisbury. Powell did not know Pugin at this period and often makes mistakes.

144 Edward was born at Ramsgate, Agnes at Salisbury, Cuthbert at Ramsgate, Katharine in London and Mary at Ramsgate. (Diaries, Library, V&A).

145 Louisa died suddenly 22 August 1844.

146 Louisa's funeral, on 30 August, was an elaborate event. (The Tablet (1844), p. 580; information from Dr R. O'Donnell).

147 Mary Amherst (1824–60) was the sister of Francis Kerril Amherst, the future Bishop of Northampton, who was a friend of Pugin (see below n. 175). Pugin proposed to her on 10 November 1844 and did not give up all hope of marrying her until she finally became a nun in May 1846 (Diaries, Library, V&A; Anon., Life of Mother Mary Agnes Amherst (1927), pp. 1516 Google Scholar, information from Dr R. O'Donnell; Belcher, pp. 412–13).

148 Helen Lumsden was a Scottish Protestant whom Pugin met while she was visiting her aunt, Mrs Benson, a neighbour of Pugin at Ramsgate in 1846. He proposed to her on 26 November 1847 and they became engaged on 25 January 1848, but the affair ended in disaster in March following her parents’ implacable opposition to Helen becoming a Catholic (Diaries, Library, V&A. His letters to Miss Lumsden survive in a private collection, microfilm in the HLRO Historical Collection No. 339).

149 Pugin wrote a pamphlet, A Statement of Facts, which he printed for private circulation. No copy is known to survive, but much of the text is printed in Ferrey, pp. 193–222.

150 JaneKnill (1827–1909).

151 In the original text this section is preceded by a list of the eighteen friends about whom Powell writes, with numbers given beside them, apparently suggesting that they are given in a quite different order.

152 William Etty (1787–1849) the painter. It is perhaps a surprising friendship. Etty had considerable sympathy with Catholicism. Etty described his stay at the Grange, Ramsgate in July 1846 in a letter to his niece (Library, V&A).

153 John Lambert (1815–92) was a solicitor in Salisbury and prominent in local politics.

154 Pugin built his own house, St Marie's Grange, at Alderbury, near Salisbury in 1835. It was his first significant building.

155 RC Church of St Osmund, Salisbury, 1847–48. Lambert was a major donor.

156 Bernard Smith (1815–1903). He was a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, where Pugin met him. He was an Anglican priest at Leadenham, Lines, until 1842 when he entered the Catholic Church. Pugin and he must have collaborated closely during 1843 on the text of the Glossary, for which Smith produced much valuable scholarly work.

157 Dr James Daniel was clearly a good friend and Pugin designed things for him (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 234).

158 Father Thomas Costigan (1788–1860) sometimes celebrated mass in Pugin's church.

159 RC Chapel at Prospect Palace Margate was built between 1801 and 1804, and had a west gallery (Laity's Directory, 1804). It was considerably altered in the second half of the nineteenth century (Information from Dr R. O'Donnell).

160 Thomas Talbot Bury (1811–77), an architect.

161 He was a pupil of A. C. Pugin from 1827 to 1832 and therefore knew the young A. W. N. Pugin well. Unlike Ferrey he remained a lifelong friend. He wrote an important obituary of Pugin and criticized Ferrey's biography for inaccuracy (Belcher, pp. 286–87 and 305–07).

162 Catherine Welby (?–1833), Pugin's mother, has had a bad press from the young men who were pupils to her husband (Ferrey, pp. 26–28, 43–47).

163 A. C. Pugin was in fact generous in acknowledging his pupils’ work. Many plates in his publication are signed ‘A. Pugin Archt. dirext T. T. Bury delt.’.

164 A preliminary drawing for this survives in the Drawings Collection of the RIBA (Wedgwood, 1977, p. 27). It seems likely that the finished drawing at one time belonged to J. H. Powell but its present whereabouts is not known to this editor.

165 These illustrations are on pages 23 and 24 of Pugin's The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841).

166 J. R. Herbert (1810–90), the painter (see also n. 60). He became a Catholic through Pugin's influence. Pugin's designs for furniture for him are in the V&A Museum (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 202).

167 The portrait was painted in 1845 and is the best known of Pugin's portraits. It has been engraved and frequently exhibited and illustrated. It now belongs to the House of Commons where it hangs in the ‘Pugin Room'.

168 John Hardman (1812–67), J. H. Powell's uncle and Pugin's closest friend from 1837. The family was Catholic and his father was a manufacturer of metal buttons in Birmingham. In 1838 Pugin persuaded him to start making metalwork, particularly ecclesiastical, to his designs. In 1845 the firm started to make stained glass to his designs. Drawings for these projects and many letters from Pugin to Hardman survive (see notes 108 and 112).

169 Henri Gerente (1814–49) came to England in 1846 for the opening of St Giles, Cheadle. Also both he and his brother Alfred (1821–68) worked at Ely Cathedral.

170 The throne in the House of Lords is constructed of wood, gilded, with inlaid enamels and rock crystals made by Hardman.

171 John Stuart Knill (1824–98) became a Catholic in 1844, Lord Mayor of London in 1892–93 and a baronet in 1893.

172 Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle (1809–78) was a convert to Catholicism and a major benefactor to Catholic buildings near his Leicestershire seat of Grace Dieu. He and Pugin thought alike on many subjects including rood screens. In the original text; a very similar second version appears inj. H. Powell's hand on an unnumbered page.

173 Pugin was greatly excited by the religious and also architectural implications of the Oxford Movement, which was led by a group of High Church Anglicans who published ‘Tracts for the Times’. He expected, as did Phillipps, that it would lead to the reunification of the Churches of England and Rome.

174 Clarkson Stanfield (1793–1867), the marine painter. In the late 1820s he was a scenery painter at Drury Lane which was probably where he met Pugin.

175 Francis Kerril Amherst (1819–83), bishop of Northampton and son of the donor of Pugin's Church of St Augustine, Kenilworth. See also n. 147.

176 George Myers (1805–75), the builder for many of Pugin's commissions. Several different stories are told about how Pugin and Myers met but all accounts agree that it was at Beverley (Ferrey, pp. 185–86).

177 Henry Granville Fitzalan Howard (1815–60), the Earl of Arundel and Surrey, from 1856 the fourteenth Duke of Norfolk. In 1839 he became a Roman Catholic and was a prime mover of the fund–raising and the eventual opening of St George's Cathedral Southwark.

178 Sir John Sutton (1820–70) of the family of Lynford Hall, near West Tofts, Norfolk. Pugin's commission for the restoration of the chapel of Jesus College Cambridge came about through John Sutton.

179 William Leigh (1802–73), bought the estate of Woodchester Park near Stroud in 1845. He commissioned Pugin to make plans for a new house, which Pugin did by early 1846. He withdrew, however, from the commission because he felt that Leigh was not prepared to spend enough money. The same thing happened with a church and monastery for the Passionists that Leigh asked Pugin to design in 1846.

180 Pugin began St Augustine's church and its associated buildings in 1846. It was unfinished at his death. Much documentary evidence survives (Wedgwood, 1985, p. 121).

181 A few drawings exist for furnishings (Wedgwood, 1977, pp. 72–73).

182 This is the building with a fine north window beside the road which now forms the east range of the cloister. The first public mass was celebrated here on Christmas Day, 1846.

183 The great gale was on 25 November 1850. (Diary, Library, V&A).

184 The building of St Augustine's Church probably did constitute the major part of E. W. Pugin's architectural training.

185 The wicket doors at St Augustine's Church are indeed tiny. They are not now generally used.

186 Pugin made over the land and buildings to the diocese of Southwark at the end of 1846. The church was mainly redundant until the Benedictine monks came to Ramsgate in 1856 when it became their abbey church, though it also remains a parish church.

187 Pugin's final illness began at the end of February 1852.

188 For an account of Pugin's final illness, see the journal of Jane Pugin (manuscript in a private collection; microfilm in HLRO Historical Collection No. 339) and a letter by Pugin, E. W. in Blackwoods Edinburgh magazine, February 1862. (Belcher, p. 317).Google Scholar

189 St Augustine landed at Ebbsfleet, about one mile west of Ramsgate in 597.

190 Pugin was forty years old at his death.