BCD SPECIAL REPORT ON HISTORIC CHURCHES 31st ANNUAL EDITION 37 GE STREET AND THE DAWN OF THE GOTHIC REVIVAL Jonathan Taylor THE BICENTENARY of the birth of George Edmund Street has been widely celebrated in 2024. One of the great masters of the Gothic Revival, he is perhaps most famous as the architect of the Royal Courts of Justice in the Strand, London (1866) and of many richly decorated churches, such as St James the Less, Pimlico (1859) and St Peter’s, Bournemouth (1855–79). Many of his commissions were for additions and alterations to existing buildings in the gothic style, often at the expense of all later work that didn’t suit the prevailing gothic aesthetic. Others were on a much smaller, jewel-like scale, from elaborately decorative monuments, pulpits and fonts, to fine metal screens and stained glass windows. Born in 1824, Street grew up in a period of great change in the Anglican church. Non-conformism was on the rise and the Church of England was widely considered to have lost its way, with the vested interests of its clergy preventing the development of new churches in the rapidly expanding industrial towns and cities. Growing awareness of the need for reform inspired several key developments in the 1830s which would lead to a dramatic transformation in both the ethos and the architecture of the established church. One of these was the ‘Tractarian’ or Oxford Movement led by John Henry Newman, an Oxford vicar and theologian who published the first of many ‘tracts’ in 1832, tracing the authority of the established church back to Rome before the Reformation. Another was the publication of Contrasts by AWN Pugin which proposed a return to the faith and values of the Middle Ages, and for a revival of the medieval gothic styles of architecture and design. This was in part a reaction to the use of classical architectural forms which were arguably pagan in origin, but also a reaction to the rather lose interpretation of gothic forms by his contemporaries. Pugin’s reasoning for a more serious revival of gothic design resonated with Rich sculpture and colourful materials adorn the pulpit at St Peter’s, Bournemouth, which was designed by Street and exquisitely carved by Thomas Earp c1861 – see cover. (All photos: Jonathan Taylor) many and its importance was cemented when a gothic design by Pugin and Charles Barry was chosen for the new Houses of Parliament in 1836. A similar philosophy was adopted by the Camden Society when it formed in Cambridge in 1839 ‘to promote the study of ecclesiastical architecture and antiquities, and the restoration of mutilated architectural remains’. Its journal The Ecclesiologist was highly effective in disseminating the study of gothic design and in influencing new design work. The style dominated the new wave of church building that followed in the mid-19th century, with the most lavish decoration commissioned by Tractarian members of the clergy. In his teens Street had developed an interest in medieval church architecture and when his father died his mother sent him off to develop his drawing skills with a cousin, Thomas Haseler in Taunton. By the age of 17 he had joined the architectural practice of Owen Browne Carter in Winchester, first as an articled pupil and latterly as his assistant. Three years later (1844) he left to work for George Gilbert Scott, who had recently embraced the philosophy of the Camden Society and who was beginning to make a name for himself as a pioneer of the Gothic Revival. Almost immediately, Scott went off to Germany to make drawings of German gothic churches for a competition to replace
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