William Butterfield was
precisely the kind of architect the Cambridge Camden Society
(later Ecclesiological) Society liked. A dogmatic if also
unconventional High Churchman, committed to building churches
that facilitated the 'proper' execution of the Christian
rubrics, it was unsurprising
they chose him to build their model church in Margaret Street, Westminster,
which they intended to be an exemplar for church architects everywhere.
They approved of ornament and they approved of display, in both of which
Butterfield excelled, and Butterfield's profound interest in structural
polychromy seemed one representation of this.
Butterfield was an abstemious bachelor,
however, determined to plough his own furrow. Self-contained and
indifferent to criticism or the approbation of his peers, he could not always be
relied upon in later life to deliver what was wanted. And there were also
very strict limits to Butterfield's tolerance of Ritualism:
he would not attend his church at Margaret Street after it was
completed
(Paul Thompson, William Butterfield, London, Routledge & Kegan Paul,
1971, p. 33) because he objected to the incense, lights, and elevation of the Host. He had, after all, been brought up as a
Nonconformist, some aspects of which he would never throw off. Yet his
professional style owed a greater debt to the High Church Pugin
than it would ever do to the Evangelical Ruskin, and Butterfield's use of
coloured materials, as shown at Margaret Street, predated its advocacy in Ruskin's
The Seven Lamps of
Architecture, if not by very much. He quickly became its supreme
exponent too, for only Street proved a serious rival. Mocked in later
years for his 'streaky bacon' or 'holy zebra' style, it was his misfortune to
have many of his buildings ruined by subsequent generations, sometimes by the
insertion of heavy stained glass in the windows, which prevented his colourful
interiors from being seen in good light, or, more usually in the twentieth
century, by whitewashing over them by those who thought them garish, as at St.
Mary's Hitchin (Hertfordshire). Some, such as the building considered
here, survive in good heart however, and while Butterfield's
churches illustrated on this web-site include a number of minor buildings, they also feature a few examples of his
very best.
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'[All Saints', Margaret Street]
assuredly decides one question conclusively, that of our present
capability of Gothic design. It is the first piece of architecture
I have seen, built in modern days, which is free from all signs of
timidity or incapacity. In general proportion of parts, in
refinement and piquancy of mouldings, above all, in force, vitality, and
grace of floral ornament, worked in a broad and masculine manner, it
challenges fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time.
Having done this, we may do anything; there need be no limits to our
hope or our confidence; and I believe it to be possible for us, not only
to equal, but far to surpass, in some respects, any Gothic yet seen in
Northern countries.'
John
Ruskin. Quoted from the final chapter of
The Stones of Venice,
Book 2,
published while the church was still under construction in 1853.
So much has been written about this church by so many that it is quite
impossible here to add anything new. However, its importance is such
that that cannot be used as an excuse for its omission either, for this
building was of prime importance in the evolution of the Gothic Revival as
the Ecclesiological Society sought to promote its ideas by the erection of a
building that would exemplify everything they believed essential for devout
Christian worship. That being the case, the cramped site in Margaret
Street was, on the face of it, a curious initial choice by the Society, but
this happened to be where the eighteenth century Margaret Chapel, stood, a
poor little building entirely unsuited to its minister's and congregation's penchant for
Anglo-Catholic ceremonial. (See B.F.L. Clarke, Church Builders of the
Nineteenth Century, London, SPCK, 1938, pp. 119 - 121.) The
decision to engage William Butterfield as
architect for the new church was also a rather courageous one at this stage,
for while he certainly met the Society's requirement of 'a single, pious and
laborious artist alone, pondering deeply over his duty to do his best for
the service of God's Holy Religion' (quoted in the church guide, All
Saints Margaret Street, Norwich, Jarrold Publishing, 2005, p. 4), he
already had a reputation as a man of strong and singular convictions, who
would not bend readily to opinions not his own. As a result, its patron, Mr.
Alexander Beresford-Hope M.P., had distinctly mixed views
about the church when it was finished, for
what he appears to have had in his mind was something more conventionally
'mediaeval', whereas what he got was both striking and original.
Butterfield
is renowned today for his fondness for 'structural polychrome', employed to create buildings where colour and
pattern are inherent in the structure. All Saints' is faced
externally in pink and black brick, the former 'more expensive
than stone' (All Saints Margaret Street, p. 6). The tower is
highly patterned with lines and zigzags, and the soaring broach spire above,
clad in grey slates interrupted by bands of cream ashlar at intervals, rises to 227' (69m.)
and is still visible over and between the shops at a number of points
along Oxford Street. The range of construction materials used internally is
still greater and includes Aberdeen granite (for the columns),
serpentine, veined alabaster, the so-called Derbyshire fossil 'marble'
(which
is actually a hard limestone capable of taking polish), and among the true
marbles, red Languedoc, yellow Sienna and green
Connemara. (Paul Thompson, William Butterfield, London, Routledge
and Kegan Paul, 1971, p. 236.) Such a palette was exotic even for Butterfield, who usually
privileged any materials he could obtain locally. As this was a metropolitan
church, however, this may have seemed an irrelevant consideration, and since
there was plenty of money available, he had no need to restrict himself on financial grounds.
Butterfield made the best use he could of the
limited space available (about 100' square - All Saints Margaret Street,
p. 4) by placing his church along the back (where it was fortuitously aligned east
to west) and setting a small courtyard to the fore, flanked by the vicarage on the
right and a parish room on the left. (See the photograph, right.)
The church butted up against pre-existing buildings north and east so that the only windows able to be
constructed there were high up in the clerestory. The building plan of
the building is composed of a three-bay nave and two-bay chancel along the centre,
with: (i) in turn on the north side, from west to east, a three-bay
aisle, a short Lady Chapel and organ chamber that terminates about half a bay
short of the sanctuary; and (ii), on the south side, by the
tower, the lower stage of which serves as a baptistery, a two-bay
aisle, then another chapel, and finally a vestry to the east. A small S. porch
leads into the westernmost bay of the arcade and the baptistery is divided by
from the aisle by a solid wall, from structural necessity, to support the weight of the
tower above.
After this, a detailed description of the
building would be excessively long and tedious. Externally the most
striking feature is obviously the tower, which has angle buttresses reaching
up to the base of the bell-stage, and very tall and narrow two-light geometric
bell-openings set
together in recessed rectangles with denticulation in moulded brick above.
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Inside
the building, the nave arcades are formed of clusters of four major and four
minor shafts with deeply-cut stiff leaf capitals, supporting two centred
arches bearing wave mouldings and rolls with fillets. The spandrels are
decorated with inlaid coloured stone and mastic, the clerestory consists of
three lancet openings per bay, followed by a blank arch, all supported on
circular shafts, and the nave roof is characterized above all by the way in
which its painted arched braces simulate stone. The painted wall tiles
depict the Nativity among other scenes.
Alas, such decorative schemes were lost on Pevsner, writing
in 1952 in the 'London except the Cities of London and Westminster' volume
of The Buildings of England (Harmonsdworth, Penguin). (St. Marylebone was at that time a separate
London borough.) Today his view seems astonishingly cramped and
narrow-minded: 'The interior is indeed dazzling, though in an
eminently High Victorian ostentatiousness or obtrusiveness. It is by
no means tasteful and was in fact called ugly, though forceful and powerful,
by the very organ of the Cambridge Camden Society, the Ecclesiologist.
No part of the walls is left undecorated. From everywhere the praise
of the Lord is drummed into you. The motifs are without exception big
and graceless.'
The chancel arch rises from corbel shafts and
half arches cross the aisles between the aisles and chapels.
Butterfield vaulted the chancel in two quadripartite bays with the addition
of a
ridge rib, which, against his wishes, were painted and
gilded shortly afterwards. The fine painted and gilded reredos
is Sir Ninian Comper's reproduction,
c. 1909, of the original by William Dyce (1806 - 64), but the reredos to the
Lady Chapel, which Comper produced a couple of years later, is a less happy
addition to the building, for it is marred by the ornate but heavy and
ungainly square canopy above. The Minton floor-tile patterns throughout the
church demonstrate Butterfield's usual practice of intensifying the effect as one
passes from west to east.
Also as usual, however, Butterfield lavished particular
attention on his font and pulpit. The former (illustrated above left),
though not necessarily better than his beautifully judged example at
Baldersby St. James, which is similarly supported on eight coloured marble
columns, has here a shaped and more elaborate bowl, with carved angels on
the broaches and warm-coloured inset stones providing the patterning on the
faces. Perhaps the pulpit is a little heavy, yet the decoration is
still more intense. (See the photograph, right.)
The drum is supported on brown marble shafts with stiff leaf capitals and
surrounded by narrower shafts of green, red and black marble, while every
external surface is decorated with coloured inlay, like an intricate piece
of jewellery.
Beresford-Hope spent seventy thousand
pounds on the construction of this building - the equivalent of between four
and five million today. If the result was not entirely that which he
had anticipated, he certainly got for his money one of the most distinctive and ornate
Victorian churches in the country, and the Ecclesiologists obviously
adjusted to Butterfield's conception, for they were usually kind to his
subsequent work.