Canterbury and the Gothic Revival by Lawrence Lyle

Canterbury and the Gothic Revival by Lawrence Lyle

Author:Lawrence Lyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780752492209
Publisher: The History Press
Published: 2012-12-16T16:00:00+00:00


The ‘Canterbury Vauxhall’. By 1836 the pleasure gardens at St Augustine’s Abbey had lost appeal, as had Mrs Baker’s Theatre with its seasonal productions. Mr Stanmore’s efforts were unable to prevent the eventual sales by auction.

Help was at hand. In the September of that year a London surgeon, Mr Robert Brett, was holidaying at Ramsgate and made a day’s pilgrimage to Canterbury. He was so horrified at the state of St Augustine’s that he wrote to the English Churchman urging that ‘the hearts of the wealthy might be moved to rescue this hallowed spot’. This proved to be the necessary trigger. Mr Brett’s letter was read by Alexander James Beresford Hope, a twenty-three year old with an extraordinary reputation already behind him. The prize-winner from Harrow had gone up to Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1837 aged seventeen, and had become a founder member of the Cambridge Camden Society and its chairman by twenty. He had meanwhile inherited a fortune, two estates and a London house from his stepfather, and spent his vacations improving the plain church built by Salvin for his stepfather at Kilndown in Kent. Salvin’s original sandstone church had no division between nave and chancel. Following ecclesiological principles, Beresford Hope created a chancel, employing Salvin to install a stone altar on three steps and R.C. Carpenter to design a screen and choir stalls. At this time, the Cambridge Camden Society’s aim was to recreate pure medieval examples, preferably of the fourteenth century; at Kilndown the altar was modelled on William of Wykeham’s tomb in Winchester Cathedral and the pulpit on an example from Beaulieu Abbey. Beresford Hope employed William Butterfield to design the lectern and taper stands, a commission which began the fruitful cooperation between the two men which would lead to the creation of St Augustine’s Missionary College and of All Saints’, Margaret Street. Kilndown also exhibited the tiles and wall painting which would become such a feature of ecclesiological architecture. In 1845, the Ecclesiologist praised the Puginesque wholeness of Beresford Hope’s chancel. His Kentish connections were strengthened by his election as Tory MP for Maidstone in 1841, the year of his graduation.

On reading Brett’s letter in the English Churchman, young Beresford Hope went to lunch in Canterbury with his friend Archdeacon Lyall, who told him that he would be ‘very much disgusted’ by the state of affairs at St Augustine’s – as indeed he was. He instructed his lawyer to purchase at least the Great Court if possible, and nine months later it was bought at auction on a long lease for 2,000 guineas. Beresford Hope’s motivation was to reclaim the ancient patrimony of the Church of England, dating back to St Augustine’s mission in 597. At this time he had no idea what to do with his purchase.

At this point he received a letter from Revd Edward Coleridge, a housemaster at Eton (see colour plates 7 and 8). Twenty years older than Beresford Hope, he had been born at Ottery St Mary, Devon, into a



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