In the Footsteps of William of Wykeham: Anglican Priest-Architects of the Nineteenth Century

摘要

The drift of much post-war scholarship has been away from the Romantic belief that the medieval faithful, whether laity, monks, or clergy, spurred on by the example of the early Christians of Rome in their hewn out caves, built churches and monasteries with their own devoted labour. Long-standing AMS trustee John H. Harvey spent much of his professional life establishing the concept of the medieval architect, demonstrating that the greatest churches and cathedrals were as much the result of individual human genius as the coming together in the corporate, even divine, inspiration of God's People and Clergy. And yet, as James Bettley shows in this seminal paper, the concept of the Anglican priest-architect in the heyday of the nineteenth-century Gothic Revival has, if anything, been underplayed. Ernest Geldart was just one among many clergymen who not only built or embellished their own churches but on occasion offered their services to other congregations. Although this paper is confined to the work of Anglican clergy, the story is just as convincing beyond the Established Church. Men like Father Benedict Williamson were the Roman Catholic equivalent of Geldart, and what at face value seems like a Puginian myth, that the Franciscan Brothers shared the scaffolding with professional builders to construct the magnificent monastery at Gorton in Manchester, designed by E.W. Pugin in 1866-72, turns out to have been true. And in Wales few have hitherto taken seriously the Revd William Jones, who designed over 200 chapels, and the Revd Thomas Thomas, responsible for scores more. The Revd Thomas Morris seems by comparison to have been positively meagre in his output, given his friendly nickname of 'Ten Chapel Tom'.