Gothic Revival
The Gothic Revival (also referred to as Victorian Gothic or Neo-Gothic) is an architectural movement which began in the 1740s in England. Its popularity grew rapidly in the early nineteenth century, when increasingly serious and learned admirers of neo-Gothic styles sought to revive medieval forms, in contrast to the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. In England, the centre of this revival, it was intertwined with deeply philosophical movements associated with a re-awakening of "High Church" or Anglo-Catholic self-belief (and by the Catholic convert Augustus Welby Pugin) concerned by the growth of religious nonconformism.
The Gothic Revival was paralleled and supported by medievalism, which had its roots in antiquarian concerns with survivals and curiosities. As industrialisation progressed, a reaction against machine production and the appearance of factories also grew. Proponents of the picturesque such Augustus Pugin took a critical view of industrial society and portrayed pre-industrial medieval society as a golden age. To Pugin, Gothic architecture was infused with the Christian values that had been supplanted by classicism and were being destroyed by industrialisation. Gothic Revival also took on political connotations; with the "rational" and "radical" Neoclassical style being seen as associated with republicanism and liberalism (as evidenced by its use in the United States and to a lesser extent in Republican France), the more "spiritual" and "traditional" Gothic Revival became associated with monarchism and conservatism, and this was reflected by the choice of styles for the rebuilt Palace of Westminster in London. In English literature, the architectural Gothic Revival and classical Romanticism gave rise to the Gothic novel genre, beginning with Castle of Otranto (1764) by Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, and inspired a 19th century genre of medieval poetry which stems from the pseudo-bardic poetry of "Ossian".
Commentary
Referring to Pugin’s ‘philosophy’ of architectural style, Sutton observes that ‘For him Gothic was the only true Christian style and to adopt it – together with the values that went with it – was to remedy all the ills of the contemporary world, not just aesthetic but religious, social and moral as well’ (p. 274). How plausible do you find the claim that architecture can act in itself as a force for good within society?
The notion that architecture – or, more broadly, the built environment as a whole – can act as a factor in influencing individual and social behaviour is one which, came to achieve great prominence in the architectural theories of the twentieth century. In order to explore this idea, look at the following two images. The first is the Royal Courts of Justice, completed in 1866, and designed in typically robust ‘geometrical Gothic’ style by George Edmund Street. The second is the façade of the Bank of England, designed by one of the last of the neo-classical generation of architects, Sir John Soane, from 1788 onwards (although substantially remodelled during the 1920s). Both of these buildings are clearly designed to embody, and express, particular sets of values or associations. Street's Law Courts represent a clear attempt to clothe the workings of the British judicial system with the same veneer of medieval antiquity (‘supposedly representing the ancient sources of British liberty’) as that enjoyed by the legislature in the Palace of Westminster. Soane’s (redeveloped) Bank of England façade combines the imperial grandeur of the (Roman) Composite order, with the massive strength and stability of rustication in the (windowless) outer wall. The prominent arched doorways and flanking niches also perhaps evoke something of the Roman triumphal arch
With Strawberry Hill – as with the Pavilion – fashionable, if eccentric, stylistic and architectural tastes are given full rein: elements (sometimes, though by no means always, imperfectly understood) of Gothic architecture and decoration mix and mingle in a wholly fanciful and ‘Picturesque’ manner. Lancet windows perform double arabesques, until they come to resemble Islamic arches; Jacobean ceiling decoration is laid upon shallow vaults; fireplaces echo (and sometimes directly quote) the Gothic mouldings of medieval tomb canopies; ‘star’ vaults derived from Gothic chapter-houses evolve and convolute until they come to resemble tree-roots… Nothing here is as a medieval craftsman would have understood Gothic architecture: all is fantastic and fanciful, and - like the Pavilion – built in such a light manner that conservation and restoration has been and remains a perennial problem.
Both of these buildings represent departures from the mainstream of Georgian architectural practice and development; yet these buildings do nevertheless serve to remind us that the ‘Georgian era’ in architecture is not purely concerned with various forms of neo-Classicism. The Georgian period in English architecture boasts a wealth and range of stylistic variety and experimentation which in some respects powerfully anticipates that of the subsequent Victorian era.
So: do these buildings therefore represent ‘cul-de-sacs’ in terms of the overall trajectory of architectural history? In an important sense, no, they do not. I think we need to focus on the structural technology which Nash used to produce the Pavilion. As has been acknowledged already, this is essentially an iron-framed structure, which wears an elaborate, and fabulous, 'skin' of Indian and Chinese-inspired ornament: as such, it represents an early, and I think highly significant, example of a de-facto separation between 'structure' and 'ornament' which will come to dominate architectural theory during the succeeding century (and which will come to condition much Modernist architectural thinking as well).
One could put it like this: given that Nash can now produce a structure capable of donning a stylistic 'skin' as eclectic as this, then what is to stop him, and other architects of his and succeeding generations, from applying other stylistic 'skins' - say a Gothic 'skin', or indeed a neo-Classical one? As I think we have appreciated this week, the intrinsic link between the basic structure of a building, and its ornamental character (so essential to its identity as 'architecture') has been broken at the Pavilion - with consequences which were to prove far-reaching
