Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore

Pugin, Augustus Welby Northmore (1812–52). English architect and polemicist, the son of A. C. Pugin, he was one of the key personalities of the Gothic Revival. After his conversion to Roman Catholicism in c.1835 he became a leading figure in Ecclesiology.

In 1836 he published Contrasts; or, a Parallel between the Noble Edifices of the Fourteenth and Fifteenth Centuries, and Similar Buildings of the Present Day; Shewing the Present Decay of Taste. He claimed that Pointed architecture (Gothic) was produced by the RC faith, that Classical architecture was pagan, that the Reformation was a dreadful scourge, and that medieval architecture was greatly superior to anything produced by the Renaissance or Classical Revivals. The great test of architectural beauty was the fitness of the design to the purpose for which it was intended, and the style of a building should tell the spectator at once what its purpose was. Buildings of C19 (especially those of the leading architects of the day) were weighed in the balance against those of C14 and found wanting. His other main works, The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture set forth (1841), The Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England (1843), and An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture in England (1843), made it clear that Gothic was not a style, but a principle, a moral crusade, and the only mode of building possible for a Christian nation. His arguments and his very deep knowledge of all aspects of Gothic design had an immense impact on Anglican church-archi-tects, however. George Gilbert Scott was to write that he was ‘awakened’ from his ‘slumbers by the thunder of Pugin's writings’.

Pugin assisted Charles Barry with the details and furnishings of the Palace of Westminster (built 1840–70) and indeed it was Pugin, rather than Barry, who designed the exquisite architectural enrichments and confident colour-scheme for what is one of the great monuments of the Gothic Revival. As a church-architect, however, Pugin was unfortunate. Most of his churches have a mean and pinched look owing to a shortage of funds, and the RC hierarchy was not always convinced by the furious arguments of its recent convert, but at St Giles's, Cheadle, Ches. (1840–6), where his patron, John Talbot, 16th Earl of Shrewsbury and Earl of Waterford (1791–1852), paid handsomely (against his better judgement), Pugin was able to create a scholarly and sumptuous revival of a parish-church of the time of King Edward I (1272–1307), with a glowing polychrome interior, complete with chancel-screen, all in the Second Pointed style. Other works by him include St Chad's Cathedral, Birmingham (1839–41), St Alban's Church, Macclesfield, Ches. (1838–41), St Barnabas's Cathedral, Nottingham (1841–4), and St Mary's (or Marie's), Derby (1837–9).

His secular architecture and his polemics were of great importance because he demonstrated by historical argument (e.g. Haddon Hall, Derbyshire (C12–C17) ) and by his own example (e.g. Alton Castle, Staffs. (1840–52); the complex of the Grange and St Augustine's, Ramsgate, Kent (1843–52—where he is buried); and Scarisbrick Hall, Ormskirk, Lancs. (1836–47) ) that the three-dimensional form of the building should grow naturally out of the plan. This he called the ‘true Picturesque’, while many houses he criticized were sham Picturesque with ‘donjon keeps … nothing but drawing rooms’, ‘watch-towers … where the house-maids sleep’, and bastions ‘where the butler keeps his plate’. Such buildings (e.g. G. L. Taylor's Hadlow Tower, Kent (c.1840)) were ‘mere masks’ and ‘ill-conceived lies’, whereas beauty should grow from necessity. Pattern-books and illustrations of historical architecture, to Pugin, were dangerous because they were mindlessly copied, and bits jumbled together in new concoctions. Such publications, in the possession of architects and builders, were as ‘bad as the Scriptures in the hands of Protestants’. His arguments led to the adoption of freely composed asymmetrical buildings (e.g. the vicarages of Butterfield) and to the Domestic Revival, the Queen Anne, and Free styles.

Bibliography

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