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St Sophia’s Church, Galston: ‘the vast space of the interior’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
It is a truism that, for the Victorians, Gothic was the dominant style of church architecture. From time to time however, other voices were heard. Sara Losh created a remarkable church in the Byzantine style at Wreay in Cumbria, consecrated in 1842. The Greek communities of Liverpool and London had Byzantine churches designed for them by British architects. John Patrick Crichton Stuart, third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900), one of the most important patrons of the domestic Victorian Gothic, also commissioned chapels in the Byzantine style. The first of these, constructed in a former servant’s bedroom at Mount Stuart House in 1873 by William Burges, had two Gothic arches, although most other details were either Romanesque or classical. For this chapel Burges drew on very early Byzantine forms, and Losh followed both Byzantine basilica and early British styles. Losh ‘may well have drawn on knowledge of the nearby church of St Leonard in Warwick, Cumberland or the famous church of St Mary and St David at Kilpeck, in Herefordshire’.
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2003
References
Notes
1 Bullen, J. R., ‘Sara Losh: architect, romantic, mythologist’, The Burlington, CXLIII, no. 1184 (November 2001), pp. 676-84Google Scholar.
2 The Buteman, 28 December 1875, p. 2.
3 Bullen, p. 678.
4 Bullen, p. 681.
5 BU21/175/10, Bute to Gwen, Lady Bute, 2 March 1882.
6 1834-1921.
7 McKinstry, Sam, Kowana Anderson: the Premier Architect of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 79 Google Scholar.
8 Sam McKinstry, ‘S. Sophia’s Church, Galston: the design in context’ (unpublished report). This article was prepared to assist the architects, W. I. Munro, Kilmarnock, currently undertaking a major restoration of St Sophia’s, Galston. It is unpublished and sections are reproduced by kind permission of the author.
9 BU21/175/10, Bute to Gwen, Lady Bute, 2 March 1882.
10 Charles Stuart, 1810-92.
11 George Williams (1814-78) was born in Eton, the son of a bookseller, and graduated from Cambridge in 1837. He was for a time in charge of Cumbrae College, within the Episcopal Church of Scotland, at Millport on Great Cumbrae, Bute’s sister isle in the Clyde. See DNB, LXI, pp. 399-400.
12 Ibid., 21 July 1866.
13 BU/31/1, Bute’s diary, 26 July 1866.
14 Ibid., 26 July 1866.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 BU/21/139/4, Bute to Gwen, 24 February 1877.
18 Ibid.
19 Stamp, Gavin, Robert Weir Schultz Architect and his Work for the Marquesses of Bute (Mount Stuart, 1981), p. 10 Google Scholar.
20 BU/36/3/6, Bute to Grant, 6 March 1882.
23 The Catholic Directory for the Clergy and Laity in Scotland (Aberdeen, 1882), p. 120.
22 Patrick McLaughlin was priest in charge of St Margaret’s, Ayr, 1871-90. Johnson, C., Scottish Catholic Secular Clergy 1879-1989 (Edinburgh, 1991), p. 198 Google Scholar.
23 The Catholic Directory for the Clergy and Laity in Scotland (A. King & co., Aberdeen, 1883), p. 214.
24 BU21/175/10, Bute to Gwen, 2 March 1882.
25 R. P. Pullen was William Burges’s brother-in-law. There is no indication of why Bute thought him ‘rather a brute personally’.
26 BU21/175/10, Bute to Gwen, 2 March 1882.
27 McKinstry, Sophia’s. J. O. Scott had taken over the building of the Bute Hall for Glasgow University, for which Bute was the major donor, although not the patron.
28 The Times, 6 February 1882, p. 7.
29 The Builder, XLII (April 1882), p. 386.
30 Ibid.
31 Ibid.
32 BU21/175/107, Bute to Gwen, 2 June 1882. There is nowhere any indication of what the incident in Mr McLaughlin’s life might have been.
33 Mount Stuart MSS, Stuart’s diary, 30 December 1859.
34 BU/21/175/133, Bute to Gwen, 18 June 1882.
35 Ibid.
36 rbid.
37 Stamp, Schultz, p. 11 is incorrect in stating that the church at Troon was built in the Byzantine style.
38 BU/21/177/25, Bute to ?, 27 October 1882.
39 Presumably Patrick McLaughlin, although the ‘Rev’d sir’ to whom the letter is addressed is nowhere named. Bute was distressed by the awareness that those asking for help often wanted only his money, and not the more personal qualities he had to offer.
40 The Catholic Directory for the Clergy and Laity in Scotland (Aberdeen, 1883), p. 214. The building became a school when a new and much more distinguished church was financed by the fourth Marquess of Bute. It was demolished to make way for a new school building in 1996.
41 Mount Stuart MSS, uncatalogued, Gwen to Bute, 2 August 1884.
42 BU/91/26/17, Laverty to Gwen, 1 September 1884.
43 Ibid.
44 Mount Stuart MSS, uncatalogued, Gwen to Bute, 24 September 1884.
45 Stamp, Schultz, p. 12.
46 BU/21/13/5, Anderson to Bute, 6 April 1885.
47 Mount Stuart MSS, uncatalogued: undated plan labelled Galston church.
48 McKinstry, Sophia’s.
49 The Weekly Supplement and Advertiser for Galston, Newmains, Darvel and Hurlford, 31 December 1886, p. 4.
50 The Catholic Directory for the Clergy and Laity in Scotland (Aberdeen, 1888), p. 148.
51 Ibid.
52 The Weekly Supplement and Advertiser for Galston, Newmains, Darvel and Hurlford, 31 December 1886.
53 Ibid.
54 Stamp, Schultz, p. 12.
55 Cassell’s Reinforced Concrete, ed. Jones, Bernard E., assisted by Lakeman, Albert (London, 1913), p. 5 Google Scholar.
56 Lang, Jane, Rebuilding St Paul’s after the Great Tire of London (Oxford, 1956), p. 131 Google Scholar. The surfaces of several areas including the brick built ‘saucer domes’ were lined in ‘cockleshell lime’ (p. 236). Sir Christopher Wren had initially opposed the practice of embedding iron chains and bars in buildings, but, after cracks appeared in the pillars of the crypt, he ‘admitted it to be a wise precaution and did not scruple to resort to it frequently’ (p. 151). This concrete, when dried, ‘set as smooth, hard and durable as stone’ (p. 156).
57 Dunn, William, Lectures on Reinforced Concrete delivered at the Institution of Civil Engineers in November 1910 (London, 1911), p. 119 Google Scholar. As Cusack shows, Dunn was one of the architects working in concrete at this period. Cusack, Patricia, ‘Architects and the reinforced concrete specialist in Britain 1905-08’, Architectural History, 29 (1986), p. 184 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
58 Cassell’s Reinforced Concrete, p. 7.
59 Ibid., p. 9.
60 Cusack, Reinforced Concrete, p. 183.
61 Conservation plan for St Sophia’s Church, W I. Munro Chartered Architects, Kilmarnock.
62 St Sophia’s is a church with a flourishing congregation. The first they knew of the serious problems facing a much-loved building was when a large section of plaster and concrete crashed to the tiled floor in 1999. Since then, they have been worshipping in the church hall of another denomination, and seeking the funding for the restoration of this remarkable church. Their architects, the Kilmarnock firm of W. I. Munro, are at the time of writing hoping to be able to go to tender in the near future.
63 BU/21/225/73, the bishop of Galloway to Bute, 5 June 1886.
64 Matthew Williams, Curator of Cardiff Castle, pers. comm.