Editing Gothic Revival architecture (section)

==Gothic as a moral force==

===Pugin and "truth" in architecture===
[[File:Palace of Westminster detail.jpg|thumb|upright=1.3|The [[Palace of Westminster]] (1840–1876), designed by [[Charles Barry]] & [[Augustus Pugin]]]]

In the late 1820s, [[Augustus Pugin|A. W. N. Pugin]], still a teenager, was working for two highly visible employers, providing Gothic detailing for luxury goods.{{sfn|Aldrich|Atterbury|1995|p=372}} For the Royal furniture makers Morel and Seddon he provided designs for redecorations for the elderly [[George IV of the United Kingdom|George IV]] at [[Windsor Castle]] in a Gothic taste suited to the setting.{{efn|Pugin subsequently recanted, writing in the second of his two lectures, ''The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture''; "A man who remains any length of time in a modern Gothic room, and escapes without being wounded by some of its minutiae, may consider himself extremely fortunate. There are often as many pinnacles and gables about a [[pier glass]] frame as are to be found in a church. I have perpetrated many of these enormities in the furniture I designed some years ago for Windsor Castle... Collectively they appeared a complete burlesque of pointed design".{{sfn|Charlesworth|2002c|p=199}}}}{{sfn|Hill|2007|pp=74-75}} For the royal silversmiths [[Rundell and Bridge|Rundell Bridge and Co.]], Pugin provided designs for silver from 1828, using the 14th-century Anglo-French Gothic vocabulary that he would continue to favour later in designs for the new Palace of Westminster.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.victorianweb.org/art/design/pugin/bio.html |title=Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–52) |publisher=The Victorian Web |access-date=3 October 2008}}</ref> Between 1821 and 1838 Pugin and his father published a series of volumes of [[architectural drawing]]s, the first two entitled, ''Specimens of Gothic Architecture'', and the following three, ''Examples of Gothic Architecture'', that were to remain both in print and the standard references for Gothic Revivalists for at least the next century.{{sfn|Hill|2007|pp=52-53}}

In ''Contrasts: or, a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Middle Ages, and similar Buildings of the Present Day'' (1836), Pugin expressed his admiration not only for medieval art but for the whole medieval ethos, suggesting that Gothic architecture was the product of a purer society. In ''The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture'' (1841), he set out his "two great rules of design: 1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building". Urging modern craftsmen to seek to emulate the style of medieval workmanship as well as reproduce its methods, Pugin sought to reinstate Gothic as the true Christian architectural style.{{sfn|Charlesworth|2002c|pp=168–171}}

Pugin's most notable project was the [[Palace of Westminster|Houses of Parliament]] in London, after its predecessor was largely destroyed in a fire in 1834.{{efn|Pugin recorded his delight at the destruction of what he considered the wholly inadequate earlier restorations of [[James Wyatt]] and [[John Soane]]. "You have doubtless seen the accounts of the late great conflagration at Westminster. There is nothing much to regret...a vast amount of Soane's mixtures and Wyatt's heresies have been consigned to oblivion. Oh it was a glorious sight to see his composition mullions and cement pinnacles flying and cracking."{{sfn|Atterbury|Wainwright|1994|p=219}}}}{{sfn|Hill|2007|p=317}} His part in the design consisted of two campaigns, 1836–1837 and again in 1844 and 1852, with the classicist [[Charles Barry]] as his nominal superior. Pugin provided the external decoration and the interiors, while Barry designed the symmetrical layout of the building, causing Pugin to remark, "All Grecian, Sir; Tudor details on a classic body".{{sfn|Atterbury|Wainwright|1994|p=221}}

===Ruskin and Venetian Gothic===
{{Main|Venetian Gothic architecture|High Victorian Gothic}}
[[File:Ismailiya Palace from the corner.jpg|upright=1.3|thumb|Venetian Gothic in [[Baku]], [[Azerbaijan]]]]

[[John Ruskin]] supplemented Pugin's ideas in his two influential theoretical works, ''[[The Seven Lamps of Architecture]]'' (1849) and [[The Stones of Venice (book)|''The Stones of Venice'']] (1853). Finding his architectural ideal in [[Venice]], Ruskin proposed that Gothic buildings excelled above all other architecture because of the "sacrifice" of the stone-carvers in intricately decorating every stone. In this, he drew a contrast between the physical and spiritual satisfaction which a medieval craftsman derived from his work, and the lack of these satisfactions afforded to modern, [[Industrial Revolution|industrialised]] labour.{{efn|Ruskin also had an abhorrence of the contemporary "restorer" of Gothic buildings. Writing in the Preface to the first edition of his ''The Seven Lamps of Architecture'', he remarked; "[My] whole time has been lately occupied in taking drawings from the one side of buildings, of which masons were knocking down the other".{{sfn|Ruskin|1989|p=ix}}}}{{sfn|Charlesworth|2002c|p=343}}

By declaring the [[Doge's Palace, Venice|Doge's Palace]] to be "the central building of the world", Ruskin argued the case for Gothic government buildings as Pugin had done for churches, though mostly only in theory. When his ideas were put into practice, Ruskin often disliked the result, although he supported many architects, such as [[Thomas Newenham Deane]] and [[Benjamin Woodward]], and was reputed to have designed some of the [[corbel]] decorations for that pair's [[Oxford University Museum of Natural History]].{{sfn|Dixon|Muthesius|1993|p=160}} A major clash between the Gothic and Classical styles in relation to governmental offices occurred less than a decade after the publication of ''The Stones of Venice''. A public competition for the construction of a new [[Foreign and Commonwealth Office|Foreign Office]] in [[Whitehall]] saw the decision to award first place to a Gothic design by [[George Gilbert Scott]] overturned by the Prime Minister, [[Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston|Lord Palmerston]], who successfully demanded a building in the [[Italianate architecture|Italianate]] style.{{efn|The rumour that Scott repurposed his Foreign Office design for the [[St. Pancras Renaissance London Hotel|Midland Grand Hotel]] is unfounded.{{sfn|Cherry|Pevsner|2002|p=362}}}}{{sfn|Stamp|2015|p=152}}

===Ecclesiology and funerary style===
In England, the [[Anglicanism|Church of England]] was undergoing a revival of [[Anglo-Catholic]] and [[Ritualism|ritualist]] ideology in the form of the [[Oxford Movement]], and it became desirable to build large numbers of new churches to cater for the growing population, and cemeteries for their hygienic burials. This found ready exponents in the universities, where the [[ecclesiological movement]]<!-- do not link to ecclesiology, which is different--> was forming. Its proponents believed that Gothic was the ''only'' style appropriate for a parish church, and favoured a particular era of Gothic architecture – the "[[Decorated Period|decorated]]". The [[Cambridge Camden Society]], through its journal ''The Ecclesiologist'', was so savagely critical of new church buildings that were below its exacting standards and its pronouncements were followed so avidly that it became the epicentre of the flood of [[Victorian restoration]] that affected most of the Anglican cathedrals and parish churches in England and Wales.{{sfn|Clark|1983|pp=155–174}}

[[File:Exeter College Chapel, Oxford - Diliff.jpg|left|upright=1.4|thumb|[[Exeter College, Oxford]] Chapel]]

[[St Luke's Church, Chelsea]], was a new-built [[Commissioner's Church]] of 1820–1824, partly built using a grant of £8,333 towards its construction with money voted by [[Parliament of the United Kingdom|Parliament]] as a result of the [[Church Building Act 1818]].{{sfn|Port|2006|p=327}} It is often said to be the first Gothic Revival church in London,{{sfn|Germann|1972|p=9}} and, as [[Charles Locke Eastlake]] put it: "probably the only church of its time in which the main roof was groined throughout in stone".{{sfn|Eastlake|2012|p=141}} Nonetheless, the parish was firmly [[low church]], and the original arrangement, modified in the 1860s, was as a "preaching church" dominated by the pulpit, with a small altar and wooden galleries over the nave aisle.<ref>{{Cite web|url=http://www.chelseaparish.org/stlukes.htm|title=St Luke's Church – A Brief History|publisher=St Luke's Parochial Church Council|access-date=2 November 2012}}</ref>

The development of the private [[Magnificent Seven, London|major metropolitan cemeteries]] was occurring at the same time as the movement; [[William Tite|Sir William Tite]] pioneered the first cemetery in the Gothic style at [[West Norwood Cemetery|West Norwood]] in 1837, with chapels, gates, and decorative features in the Gothic manner, attracting the interest of contemporary architects such as [[George Edmund Street]], Barry, and [[William Burges]]. The style was immediately hailed a success and universally replaced the previous preference for classical design.<ref>{{Cite web|url=https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/west-norwood-cemetery|title=West Norwood Cemetery|publisher=The Courtauld Institute of Art|access-date=6 May 2020|archive-date=16 July 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200716181401/https://courtauld.ac.uk/event/west-norwood-cemetery|url-status=dead}}</ref>

Not every architect or client was swept away by this tide. Although Gothic Revival succeeded in becoming an increasingly familiar style of architecture, the attempt to associate it with the notion of high church superiority, as advocated by Pugin and the ecclesiological movement, was anathema to those with ecumenical or nonconformist principles. [[Alexander Thomson|Alexander "Greek" Thomson]] launched a famous attack; "We are told we should adopt [Gothic] because it is the Christian style, and this most impudent assertion has been accepted as sound doctrine even by earnest and intelligent Protestants; whereas it ought only to have force with those who believe that Christian truth attained its purest and most spiritual development at the period when this style of architecture constituted its corporeal form".{{sfn|Stamp|1997|p=1}} Those rejecting the link between Gothic and Catholicism looked to adopt it solely for its aesthetic romantic qualities, to combine it with other styles, or look to northern European [[Brick Gothic]] for a more plain appearance; or in some instances all three of these, as at the non-denominational [[Abney Park Cemetery]] in east London, designed by [[William Hosking|William Hosking FSA]] in 1840.<ref>{{NHLE|num=1000789 |desc=Abney Park Cemetery, Hackney |date=1 October 1987|access-date=11 May 2018}}</ref>