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James Wyatt's choir screen at Salisbury Cathedral reconsidered

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

John Frew
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Extract

Long before its completion in 1792 James Wyatt’s restoration of Salisbury Cathedral was the subject of fierce debate within antiquarian circles. Criticism of Wyatt’s activities was at first directed at the destruction of antiquities they involved, but attention also focused on the alleged inadequacies of the Wyatt Gothic style, a criticism inspired by the new fittings and altarpiece, but above all by ‘the most conspicuous object in the whole church’, the reconstructed choir screen and organ loft.

Type
Section 6: A Miscellany of Building Types and Some Definitions
Information
Architectural History , Volume 27: Design and Practice in British Architecture , 1984 , pp. 481 - 487
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1984

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References

Notes

1 Culminating in the controversy surrounding Wyatt’s election (1797) to the London Society of Antiquaries. See Evans, J. A History of the Society of Antiquaries (Oxford, 1956), pp. 207-13 Google Scholar and Frew, j. ‘Richard Gough, James Wyatt and late 18th century Preservation’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxxviii (1979), 366-74.Google Scholar

2 Which nevertheless had claims to historical authenticity. For an analysis of Wyatt’s mid-career Gothic experiments, confirming his familiarity withjames Bentham’s History of Ely Cathedral (1771), see Frew, j. ‘Some observations onjames Wyatt’s Gothic Style, 1790-1797’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xli (1982), 144-49.Google Scholar

3 Milner, J. A Dissertation on the Modern Style of Altering Antient Cathedrals, as Exemplified in the Cathedral of Salisbury (1798), p. 46.Google Scholar

4 Dodsworth, W. A Guide to the Cathedral Church of Salisbury with a Particular Account of the Great Improvements Made Therein under the Direction of James Wyatt Esq. (Salisbury, 1792), pp. 36, 40.Google Scholar

5 Milner, Dissertation, p. 46.

6 Scott, G. G. Personal and Professional Recollections (1879), pp. 300-09 Google Scholar; Cole, D. The Work of Sir Gilbert Scott (1980), pp. 88-89.Google Scholar

7 Included in Barrington’s private correspondence (in packet marked ‘Bishop: Administration/Personal Papers’), Salisbury Diocesan Office.

8 Comprising a ‘Design for a gothic altar piece and screen, intended to be executed in Salisbury Cathedral, introducing the view of Bishop Poore’s monument, founder of the said church, into the choir, which at present is visible only in the north aisle’. A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts: a complete dictionary of contributors and their work from its foundation in 1769 to 1904 (Bath, 1970), 371. For an explanation for the two-year period that separated the submission ofWyatt’s plans from the commencement of work (to an amended scheme), see Frew, ‘Gough, Wyatt and . . . Preservation’, p. 368.

9 Including the Dean of Gloucester, J. Tucker, who advised that ‘every alteration must be touched with a tender hand’ (Barrington correspondence, op. cit., n. 7, letter dated 22 September 1787). Attention has also been drawn to the objections raised by the Rev. William Gilpin, Vicar of Boldre, to the planned insertion of tracery in the arches behind the high altar (letter dated 3 July 1788. Quoted in A. Dale, James Wyatt (1956), p. 104. See also n. 8).

10 First expounded in detail by Laugier, M. A. in his enormously influential Essai sur ¡'architecture (Paris, 1753), p. 200 Google Scholar, and at greater length, Observations sur Varchitecture (Paris, 1765), pp. 129-51. See alsojames Essex’s plans for Ely Cathedral which incorporated an ‘improved’ crossing, purged of internal obstacles (including the ‘neither useful nor ornamental’ Norman Pulpitum) and opened to the nave and transepts (W. Elope, St John ‘Quire Screens in English Cathedrals’, Archaeologia, lxviii (1917), 43).Google Scholar

11 Barrington Correspondence, op. cit., n. 7, Radnor to Barrington, 14 August 1789.

12 Wren, S. Parentalia: or memoirs of the family of the Wrens (1750), pp. 305-06.Google Scholar

13 Price occupied the position of‘surveyor’ to Salisbury cathedral from 1737 until his death in 1753. He was a prolific writer whose publications included the highly successful British Carpenter (1733). For his career see Ferriday, P. ‘Francis Price, Carpenter’, Architectural Review, 114 (1953), 327-28 Google Scholar and Colvin, H. M. A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600-1840 (1978), p. 659.Google Scholar The Observations were republished (in slightly altered form) in 1787, exactly coinciding with'Wyatt’s first plans for the cathedral’s improvement.

14 Price, Observations, pp. 30-32.

15 Ibid., p. 37.

16 Ibid., p. 36.

17 Ibid., pp. 41-42.

18 For a summary of late eighteenth-century medievalist research in this respect see Lang, S. ‘Principles of the Gothic Revival in England’, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, xxv (1966), 240-67 Google Scholar, and Frew, J. ‘An Aspect of the Early Gothic Revival: the Transformation ofMedievalist Research 1770-1800’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, xliii (1980), 174-86.Google Scholar

19 See, for example, William Dodsworth’s praise of Price’s ‘Valuable observations’ on the cathedral structure (Dodsworth, Guide, p. 32). It was not until the first two decades of the nineteenth century that British antiquaries addressed themselves to a systematic analysis of Gothic constructional methods. See Frankl, P. The Gothic: literary sources and interpretations through eight centuries (Princeton, 1960), pp. 499-506 Google Scholar and Pevsner, N. Some Architectural Writers of the Nineteenth Century (Oxford, 1972), pp. 16-22.Google Scholar

20 Scott, op. cit., pp. 301-03. See also Forsyth, W. A.. ‘The Structure of Salisbury Cathedral Tower and Spire’, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 3rd series, liii (1945-46), 85-87.Google Scholar

21 Price, Observations, pp. 54-62.

22 Milner, Dissertation, pp. 40-41.

23 Dodsworth, Guide, pp. 25-30.

24 Ibid., p. 30.

25 Chapter Act Book, vol. 21 (1741-96), 337 (Salisbury Diocesan Record Office).?

26 The organ, ‘supposed to be one of the finest in Europe’, was built by ‘the celebrated Mr Green of Isleworth’, who was also responsible for the organs of St George’s Chapel, Windsor, and Canterbury and Lichfield cathedrals (Dodsworth, Guide, pp. 40-41).

27 The plan of the original arrangement provided by Richard Gough (Sepulchral Monuments of Great Britain (1796), II, cccxxix) confirms that the medieval screen extended well into the crossing area (see also St John Hope, ‘Quire Screens’, pp. 46-48, 55-56 and W. H. A. Vallance, Greater English Church Screens (1947), p. 81). For a plan of Wyatt’s arrangement, which was set back to expose the inner shafts of the east crossing piers (Dodsworth, Guide, p. 33) seej. Britton, The History and Antiquities of the Cathedral Church of Salisbury (1814), pi. 1. It is difficult to determine the extent to which Wyatt made use of the original composition, although, like it, his screen was solidly constructed of stone (ibid., 78).

28 See especially Dodsworth, Guide, p. 36, and Milner, Dissertation, pp. 43-46.

29 Wren, Parentalia, p. 306; Price, Observations, pp. 42-43. The removal of the original screen was not, however, achieved without at least one structural complication, Dodsworth noting that ‘the additional arches in the principal transept (which had been formerly erected to prevent any further pressure inwards of the grand legs which support the spire) completed; the old organ screen, having been a work anterior to those arches, the architect who erected them availed himself of that circumstance, and rested that end of them upon the screen, which, when removed, it was found that they had to shore up the arches, and complete them to the height of the screen.’ (Guide, p. 33).

30 Included in his ‘Estimate of Repairs within the Cathedral Church at Lichfield’, dated 8 March 1788. Lichfield MS 036 (Lichfield Joint Records Office).

31 ‘. . .in consequence of which the walls have not now one twentieth part of the weight to sustain’, Gentleman's Magazine, lxvi (1796), 193-94.

32 The west tower of Hereford cathedral had collapsed on Easter Monday 1786, with a further fall occurring in June 1787 (Gentleman’s Magazine, lvii (1787), 459). Wyatt’s initial proposals were to add ‘flying buttresses to support the walls of the great Western Nave (which are great out of uprights and which would be attended with very heavy expence to rebuild and would perhaps endanger the great Tower by being taken down as the main buttresses on the western side of the great Tower stand upon the walls of the great Western Nave)’ (Report on the State of Hereford Cathedral, dated 2 June 1788. Hereford Cathedral Muniments MS 5695). The south transept flying buttress is not referred to in Wyatt’s surveys but is shown in the process of erection in James Wathen’s view of August 1794 (Hereford City Library). For the buttresses to the south side of the choir see G. Marshall, The Cathedral Church of Hereford (Worcester, 1951), 67-70. The Hereford restoration was declared finished on 25 June 1796 (Hereford Cathedral Chapter Act Book, 1768-1801, p. 325. Hereford Cathedral Muniments).

33 Hence his nineteenth-century nickname‘the Destroyer’, first coined by Pugin ( Ferrey, B. Recollections of A. N. Welby Pugin, and his father; with Notices of their works (1861), pp. 65-661.Google Scholar

34 William Wilkins senior had urveyed the Ely west tower in November 1799, reporting it to be in ‘a very dangerous and dilapidated state’ (Ely Chapter Order Book, 1770-1804, p. 227). On 25 November 1800 a committee appointed to examine into the state of the cathedral advised the acceptance of a report by Wyatt and J. T. Groves ‘in which the defects of the Tower and a mode of rectifying them are described’ (Ely Chapter Order Book, p. 234). The west tower was ‘strengthened and tied together with stone in the upper part’, its wooden spire removed and a low-hanging belfry dismantled (G. Millers, A Guide to the Cathedral Church ... at Ely (1805), p. 18). Work was still under way in 1805 when the tower and Galilee were described as being ‘repaired . . . under the direction of Messrs. Wyatt and Groves’ (Gentleman’s Magazine, lxxv (1805), 122-23).

35 See especially, L. N. Cottingham, Plans, Elevations, Sections, Details and Views of the magnificent Chapel of King Henry VII at Westminster Abbey Church, 1 (1822), Preface, 1, andj. Frew, ‘The Destroyer Vindicated?: James Wyatt and the Restoration of Henry VII’s Chapel, Westminster Abbey’, Journal of the British Archaeological Association, cxxxiv (1981), 100-06.

36 Cottingham, Plans, 1, 17-24. See also Westminster Abbey MS 54135 for payments (1808-09) for ‘taking down and lowering’ the north-east ‘buttress and turret’ (Westminster Abbey Muniments).