A great conflagration in 1834 destroyed the seat of Parliament and led to the building we are familiar with from the labels on HP sauce and a hundred other pictures. The fire opened the door for a resurgence of church architecture that looked back to the high medieval achievements as a gold standard in church design. Neo-Gothic came to be the preferred choice of those designing churches for the glory of God.
Barry and Pugin had plenty to keep them busy in bringing to birth the present Houses of Parliament. Gilbert Scott gained the reputation of being the foremost practitioner of neo-Gothic. The neo-gothic idea of what a church should look like held sway throughout the Victorian era with architects like Butterfield, Blomfield, Pearson, Street and, later, Comper, much in demand for the building boom that brought pointed arches and soaring spires to suburbs throughout the land.
There were individual architects who kicked over the traces in the 19th century. Teulon let himself go at St Mary’s, Ealing. He earned himself the label of ‘rogue architect’ for his ventures into non-Gothic. Tite was another who looked outside the Gothic boundaries – in his design of St James’s, Gerrards Cross, for example.
Before Pugin church architecture had settled on other lines. Wren, Gibbs and the Inwoods showed in St Martin—in-the-Fields, St Pancras parish church and the numerous City churches that Wren designed in addition to St Paul’s cathedral that an auditory church (a box for preaching in, with galleries to pack in a congregation) could provide an elegant and uplifting setting for worship.
The neo-Gothic pattern survives in popular assumptions about what a church should look like. St Aldates, Gloucester and the Church Army chapel, Blackheath are examples of what can be achieved working from first principles. The lockdowns may have made a dent in plans to build new churches but we can prepare for better days that will include good innovative church designs.
SHARED CHURCH
St Peter’s, Stoke Hill, Guildford is a shared church. It started life in 1952 in a Nissen hut. The present building (with striking frontage) dates from 1967 when its congregation worshipped with Congregationalists who had a hall next door. In 1970 a sharing agreement between the URC and the C of E was concluded. The Vicar is Kirsten Rosslyn-Smith.
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