CONTEXT 184 : JUNE 2025 29 LEADERS OF CONSERVATION THOUGHT Octavia Hill was one of the influential Peterborough petitioners. (Drawing by Rob Cowan) forget that it has been known to the Dean and Chapter for several years that the West Front wanted examination, and probably important and expensive structural repairs, but all that time money which should have been used for ensuring the safety of the building has been spent on ecclesiastical upholstery in the interior of the church. All I ask is that this kind of thing should not happen again and again till the words “too late” have to be written on this great work of art, as on so many others.’ John Ruskin (1819–1900) lived a long and very productive life, writing several hugely influential art and architecture books of the 19th century, most notably for heritage-lovers, The Seven Lamps of Architecture (1849) and The Stones of Venice (1851–1853). Ruskin’s impact on architects, artists and the wider public of the time was considerable, and those books are still in print more than 170 years on. The ideas they contained did not just deepen people’s appreciation of the subtleties of the historic buildings around them, they ensured that those old structures had a much better chance of survival in something close to their original form than had previously been the case. Ruskin had a considerable passion for art and a deep appreciation of aesthetic beauty. It is notable, however, that when it came to the practicalities of managing change for historic buildings, he very clearly chose authenticity over aesthetics. This was, arguably, his most controversial proposition. It came in an era where architectural appearance was increasingly an aesthetic choice, rather than purely practical. Engineering and design innovation was allowing more design freedom, an explosion of wealth fueled major redevelopment, and tidiness and civic responsibility were admired as desirable virtues. The penultimate of Ruskin’s seven lamps was the Lamp of Memory, which stated that work to an old building should respect its cultural and historic context: ‘Do not let us talk then of restoration. The thing is a Lie from beginning to end. Take proper care of your monuments, and you will not need to restore them. Watch an old building with an anxious care; guard it as best you may, and at any cost, from every influence of dilapidation. Bind it together with iron where it loosens; stay it with timber where it declines; do not care about the unsightliness of the aid; better a crutch than a lost limb; and do this tenderly and reverently, and continually, and many a generation will still be born and pass away beneath its shadow.’ The Peterborough petitioners were an influential group. Alongside Ruskin and Morris were many other luminaries of the day, including W Holman Hunt, Walter Crane, Edward Burne Jones, John Lubbock, John James Stevenson, Prince Frederick Duleep Singh, Octavia Hill and Philip Webb. However, the conservation campaign failed to persuade the Dean and Chapter to alter their architect’s (John Loughborough Pearson) damaging restoration plans. One hundred and thirty years on, it can be hard to work out which bits of the building are medieval and which are Victorian. This is not to suggest that the Victorian work is not highly skilled nor beautiful in its own right, but it is not the ancient stonework most casual viewers probably think it is. Ruskin’s and then Morris’ codification of an approach to repairing old buildings, which put great emphasis on original fabric and authenticity, pushed back against more physically destructive approaches. To Ruskin restoration to a previously imagined form meant ‘the most total destruction which a building can suffer; a destruction out of which no remnants can be gathered: a destruction accompanied with false description of the thing destroyed. False, also, in the manner of parody.’ Ruskin’s philosophical approach was followed closely in the drafting of SPAB’s 1877 Manifesto, written by William Morris and Philip Webb, who were great admirers of Ruskin. It was prepared to set out battle lines as clearly as possible. In the opposing restoration camp was the ecclesiological movement. It had grown rapidly from the 1840s and predated the rise of the Ruskin/Morris view of the world. Its supporters favoured a return to an idealised perception of the architectural beauty of medieval church buildings. This gothic revival rapidly became a powerful societal and architectural force. Its supporters genuinely felt that restoration was an important and necessary objective. They did not believe the often picturesque untidiness of many centuries-old churches, which is very visible in SPAB’s extensive collection of early church photographs, made them fit for purpose. The Ecclesiologist (the movement’s principal publication) noted: ‘We must, whether from the existing evidences or from supposition, recover the original scheme of the edifice as conceived by the first builder’ and sincerely believed that this was perfectly possible. Other forces in the restoration camp tended not to be ideological but were nevertheless very powerful. These were principally business interests which fuelled the remarkable, if often destructive, construction boom in the second half of the 19th century. There were also those many people in positions of some authority in society who resented the loss of their power and influence as legislation and social change slowly gave more of a voice to a much wider range of opinions, and journalists were very keen to
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