Bodley, George Frederick (1827–1907). Hull-born English architect, one of the most successful and sensitive of the Gothic Revival. A student of George Gilbert Scott in the 1840s, his first churches include St Michael and All Angels, Brighton (1859–61), an essay in C13 polychromy of the ‘muscular’ type; All Saints', Jesus Lane, Cambridge (1862–9), which marks Bodley's rejection of Continental influences in favour of English Second Pointed; and St John the Baptist, Tue Brook, Liverpool (1868–71), representing a glowing and refined English C14 Second Pointed revival of the utmost delicacy, with glorious colour all over the walls, roof, and furnishings (beautifully restored by S. E. Dykes Bower). From 1869 to 1897 Bodley was in partnership with Thomas Garner, designing several churches, including the exquisite and scholarly Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, Staffs. (1872–1900); St Augustine's, Pendlebury, Manchester (1870–4), with the internal buttress arrangement of Albi Cathedral translated into English Second Pointed (the buttresses being pierced to form aisle-passages); and St Mary the Virgin, Clumber Park, Notts. (1886–9), a cruciform church with a central tower and spire, the ensemble being in Bodley's most elegant flowing Second Pointed style. Bodley designed most of Clumber on his own, as he did with St Mary's, Eccleston, Ches. (1894–9), again nominally C14 in style, with stone rib-vaulting throughout. His Holy Trinity, Prince Consort Road, Kensington, London (1902), is light and airy, quite unlike his earlier work. His last great church was the Cathedral of Sts Peter and Paul, Washington, DC (1906–76, finally completed in 1990).

Bibliography

B. Clarke (1969);
J. Curl (2002b);
Dixon & and Muthesius (1985);
Eastlake (1970);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004)

George Frederick Bodley (bŏd´lē), 1827–1907, English architect. One of the most prominent and prolific ecclesiastical architects, Bodley was a pupil of Sir George Gilbert Scott. A friend of William Morris and the other Pre-Raphaelites, he also did much to foster good taste in the applied arts. Among his many works is Queens' College Chapel at Cambridge. His secular buildings include additions to Magdalen and other colleges at Oxford. Besides his English work, he designed cathedrals in Tasmania, in San Francisco, and, with his pupil James Vaughan, the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul in Washington, D.C.

See B. F. L. Clarke, Church Builders of the Nineteenth Century (1938).