George Basevi, a pupil of John Soane, is not exactly well known. He did his level best with Belgrave Square, a handsome essay in brick-and-stucco Neoclassical London terraced housing, along with the more delicate Pelham Crescent in South Kensington. He had a crack at early Gothic Revival churches in Chelsea, yet was condemned for his Gothic competition designs for Balliol College, Oxford, rounded on in no uncertain terms by the fiery young Augustus Pugin for whom there could be no dabbling between styles. An architect must either be a Classicist, and thus a pagan, a sham, and unpatriotic to boot, or a Goth, and therefore honest, Christian, an upholder of true national values and, above all, right.
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