Lawrence Lyle - Canterbury and the Gothic Revival

For our great-grandchildren,
Leela and Oliver, to read one day

Many fellow citizens have contributed to our final tribute to the city and Cathedral. Our gratitude goes to: Cressida Williams and Dr Toby Hewitson at the Cathedral Archives; Philip Hadfield and his colleagues at Canterbury Museums and Galleries; the Kings School, Canterbury, and particularly Mary Berg and Peter Henderson, and their librarian at St Augustines, for their co-operation; Professor Jackie and Richard Eales, who commented on the historical accuracy of the first two chapters; Andrew Lyle and Pat Butler, who detected inaccuracies in the text; Paul Crampton and Jane Boucher, who provided access to additional information; and Heather Newton and Geoff Downer, for sharing their knowledge of the Cathedrals fabric.

Our particular admiration and thanks go to our granddaughter, Victoria Lyle, for her picture-research and negotiation worldwide, and to our local photographer, John Kemp. For the second time he devoted uncounted hours to recording and processing his stunning images. Finally, we are grateful to the Dean of Canterbury, Dr Robert Willis, who took the time to read and commend this book.

Our apologies to anyone inadvertently omitted. We acknowledge that any remaining imperfections are our responsibility.

Bell Harry Tower. The Cathedrals crowning glory was completed in 1504; because its picture is taken by most pilgrims, this image has been spread worldwide.

The Compass Rose. Symbolising the spread of the Anglican communion worldwide, this compass lies above the probable site of St Augustines first church, traced by archaeologists in 1993.

St Denis interior

The Cathedral Quire, north

The Cathedral Corona

The Cathedral nave

Christchurch Priory ruins

St Augustines Abbey ruins

Archbishop William Laud

William Somner

Cathedrall Newes from Canterbury (1644)

The Cathedrals old west front

Fonthill Abbey

Lee Priory, near Canterbury

The Scott Monument, Edinburgh

Thomas Rickmans frontispiece

Thomas Rowlandson cartoon: Dr Syntax

T.S. Cooper by John Prescott R.A., 1850

St Augustines Monastery (lithograph by T.S. Cooper)

The Cathedral and the railway by L.L. Raz

The throne in the House of Lords

The Grange and St Augustines Church, Ramsgate

Cambridge Camden Society seal

Revd Francis Closes sermon, 1844

The Canterbury Vauxhall

Library interior of St Augustines College

Chapel faade of St Augustines College

Students range of St Augustines College

Realigned monuments in St Augustines College, lower chapel

St Augustines College exterior by L.L. Raz

William Butterfield

Butterfields pulpit in the Cathedral

The Archbishops throne in the Cathedral

The font of St Marys, Ottery St Mary, Devon

All Saints, Margaret Street, London

The apse of St Margarets Church, Canterbury

The Martyrs Memorial, Oxford

The Cathedrals south-west porch

The Cathedrals porch, west side

Statue of Dean Alford on the Cathedrals west front

Tomb of Archbishop Broughton

Tomb of Dean Lyall

The Clergy Orphan School by L.L. Raz

Revd Samuel Marsden landing at the Bay of Islands, 1814

William Broughton and his bishops

St Patricks Cathedral, Melbourne

George Selwyn

Old St Pauls, Wellington

The Provincial Council Chamber, Christchurch

Benjamin Mountfort (1825-1898)

Christ Church Cathedral, Christchurch, New Zealand

John Medley

The Church of the Nativity, Huntsville, Alabama

1. Eastern Crypt of the Cathedral

2. The Cathedral nave

3. The Great Gallery of Strawberry Hill

4. Horace Walpole

5. A.W.N. Pugin

6. St Giles, Cheadle

7. A.J. Beresford Hope

8. Revd Edward Coleridge

9. The Great Court of St Augustines College

10. Spandrel at All Saints, Margaret Street, London

11. The pulpit at All Saints, Margaret Street, London

12. St Pauls Cathedral, Melbourne

13. Christ Church Cathedral, Fredericton, New Brunswick

14. Trinity Chapel, Canterbury Cathedral

When you hear Gothic Revival, what probably springs to mind is Strawberry Hill, the Houses of Parliament or St Pancras Station; so why a book about Canterburys place in this mainly nineteenth-century phenomenon? The answer lies in St Augustines mission of AD 597; a year later the Cathedral and Abbey were begun, and became the joint power houses of an expanding Church. The bold decision of the monks at the Cathedral five centuries later, in 1174, to rebuild their burnt choir in the new French Gothic style, would have revolutionary consequences. This first major example in England was copied across the country by pilgrims returning from the shrine of St Thomas Becket, where the high vaulting, tall pillars and large windows combined to produce a stunning Gothic space. This shrine, placed at the apex of a series of steps, created a separate raised space at the east end of the church. The appeal of such a layout was strong in the 1840s, as the High Church Cambridge Camden Society planned the restoration of parish churches in what they considered the natural English Gothic style. They wanted to reinstate a separate chancel, an area that had been demoted during the Reformation in the interests of preaching and congregational worship.

Through the troubled Reformation centuries, antiquarians from William Somner onwards would secure the survival of Canterburys Gothic image. For the Gothic Quire had in turn spurred later architects to produce fourteenth- and fifteenth-century Gothic examples of great beauty in the nave and Bell Harry Tower. In the early years of the Gothic Revival, the Cathedrals romantic and picturesque appearance made it a favourite subject for topographers, lithographers and artists. Academic studies of the evolution of Gothic cathedrals followed the popularisers.

The 1840s would prove to be a seminal decade in Canterbury, as elsewhere. Robert Williss groundbreaking Architectural History of Canterbury Cathedral was adumbrated at lectures here in 1844. This was to prove an important year. The ideas of Pugin, of the Tractarians, and of the High Church Ecclesiological Society had become the talk of the day. Under their influence, three key individuals came together in that year: A.J. Beresford Hope, Revd Edward Coleridge and William Butterfield. Their project was to rescue Englands first Abbey of St Augustine from its fate as a rundown brewery and pleasure garden. Their campaign from 1844 to 1848 to create an Anglican missionary college on the site would have important consequences.

The architect of the college buildings, William Butterfield, would see his career take off; and his influence on secular and ecclesiastical buildings at home and abroad would affect the later spread of the Gothic style. The early advocates and founders of the college, and its missionaries, would go on to do much to make Gothic whether in wood, stone or brick as natural a style in the British colonies as it had become in England itself.

Unlike Victorian industrial cities, whose expansion coincided with the Gothic Revival, Canterbury boasts no Gothic civic buildings, hotels or grand mansions; one isolated Gothic bank stands in the High Street. So the host of modern tourists come to visit the three-part Gothic Cathedral and its Precinct in a setting of narrow lanes lined with mainly late medieval buildings encircled by its ancient walls.