Other denominations in England, except the Quakers whose meeting houses remain resolutely unostentatious, are unclassifiable.4
In Wales the chapel architecture of the nineteenth century is not denominational but racial. It is hardly ever architect-designed, but the product of a local contractor who has made the fullest use of an illustrated catalogue. The congregations are often, to this day, in debt to the contractor for his work. The buildings are essentially local and vary with the districts. They have the quality of good sign-writing and a vigorous style of their own.In one the designer will have concentrated on emphasising the windows, in another on bringing out the texture of the stone, in another on arranging ingeniously the doors and windows of the west front, in another on colouring the outside plaster. These buildings have beauty which is apart from date and akin to the naïveté of the Douanier Rousseau.
Legbourne, Lincs. Pale yellow brick with purple-brown railings.
Broad Town, Wilts. It looks as though it has been under water. Grey-green plaster, frosted glass with star-patterned borders and faded yellow plaster in the pediment of the porch, railings red-lead colour.
Great Yarmouth. Methodist. Grandest native Baroque mixed-style unified by central arch which also modifies an otherwise top-heavy pediment.
Since about 1910 there has been a liturgical movement in many Nonconformist churches and this has affected new building. Unitarian churches now have chancels; Holy Tables have bunches of flowers on them and the pulpit is losing its old position of predominance. Even Methodist churches have a sober look and may be mistaken, externally, for a mission church of the Church of England.The two styles usually adopted are either Perpendicular with a touch of art-nouveau and terra-cotta about it, or Christian Science Romanesque. Indeed the new buildings of Nonconformity lack the individuality and strong character of those scrubbed conventicles of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries or the gigantic preaching houses of the Victorian age.
1 The Independents started in England in the mid-sixteenth century.
2 It is interesting to notice Mr. F. Etchells’ observation that Wren seems to have been aware of the double nature of the Church of England, its Laudian and Puritan sides, for while St. Paul’s has space for a hundred altars and could be a Catholic place of worship, his City churches are often primarily preaching houses.
3 I only know of one exception—the Circus Church, Portsmouth (if it still stands), which looks Nonconformist but is very low Church of England.
4 I am not including the splendid buildings of the Catholic Apostolic Church under the heading of Nonconformist architecture.
11 1837–1937 The Drift Towards Ugliness
THE history of the last hundred years of taste in England is profoundly influenced by three things: increase in population, mass production, absence of any uniting faith. The development of Boggleton, a small English town which I have traced at set periods in the next pages, is symptomatic of all England. We can learn the character of the country from the scars and wrinkles on its face. Probably no other place in Europe was so beautiful as England in 1820, few are uglier than it is round its larger towns today. In 1820 there were high standards of craftsmanship and certain canons of taste. Today craftsmanship has gone, or is revived, without any appreciable influence, by escapists. Canons of taste are as uncertain as they are various.
The history of Boggleton may help to show how this has come about and for those who prefer their art history in terms of generalisations, I have summarised each section with some general remarks.
1837
It is interesting to analyse, as one enters an English provincial town today, the statement that no error of taste was committed before 1840 and to consider how far it is true.
A provincial town presents a complete history of nineteenth-century taste which is still traceable underneath the hoardings, neon signs and wires with which progress has strung every feature of urban and even rural landscape.And there is no doubt that architecture is the outward and visible form of inward and spiritual grace or disgrace. So it is with architecture I propose to start this account.
The topographical dictionary (1837) describes Boggleton as a neat market-town standing in an elevated position on the slopes of the Bogdown hills. The subsoil is limestone. The population is 3,000. The chief industries are flint knapping, for flint-lock muskets, and agriculture. There is a decent town hall recently erected (1825); an ancient Parish Church situated not far from the centre of the town, an Independent Chapel and a Meeting House for the Society of Friends in Bowling Green Alley. Magnificent views are obtainable from the Common, a considerable expanse to the south to which freeholders have had the right of free pasturage since the time of King John.
And what the topographical dictionary omits, the eye of the traveller will discern as he bowls through the main street in his coach and four, putting up at The Dolphin where there is adequate stabling for his horses.
The main street of Boggleton is of even appearance. It is wide and well-proportioned and the Doric columns of the new Town Hall make a fine termination to the vista which the traveller sees as he approaches
