Precocious Pugin

Pugin's tower

ANW Pugin was the writer and architect who created the Gothic revival in Victorian Britain. That revival, says Roger Scruton, “was an attempt to re-consecrate a land that had been desecrated by industry” and create a circle of belonging.

Born in 1812 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin grew up surrounded by his father’s architecture students. He had very little formal schooling, but spent his time copying the medieval prints he loved in the British Museum. When he was eight, he designed his first chair. When he was fifteen, he received his first commission – from George IV - for a Gothic standing cup now known as the Coronation Cup.

Pugin also loved the sea and the theatre. After designing furniture for the King, he designed stage sets. The deaths of his young wife, father and mother within the space of a year left him unsure of what he should do. When his aunt died and left him a legacy, he decided to become an architect, though his training consisted of little more than detailed sketches of medieval buildings in Britain and northern Europe (DNB)

Pugin had keen grey eyes, a mind that never forgot what it learned, and boundless good humour. He “would work from sunrise to midnight with extraordinary ease and rapidity. His short thick hands. . .performed their delicate work even under such unfavourable circumstances as sailing his lugger off the south coast of England” (Catholic Encylopaedia). Pugin was also ingenious, and enjoyed turning awkward architectural problems into brilliant building features.

He taught the workers he employed, and entrusted the building of his designs to them. They adored him.

In 1835 Pugin became a Roman Catholic, an unpopular move at the time, but one closely connected with his passion for Gothic architecture. In 1836 he published his most famous book, Contrasts - its beautiful, satirical drawings compare splendid types of medieval buildings with their meagre early nineteenth-century counterparts (Oxford DNB).

The father of eight children, a self-contained whirlwind of energy – once asked why he kept no clerk to help him, Pugin replied: “Clerk, my dear sir, clerk, I never employ one. I should kill him in a week” - Pugin designed dozens of Gothic churches and their interiors as well as houses, hospitals, and schools. Many parishes lacked sufficient funds for his towers or interior decoration, but St Giles, Cheadle, Staffordshire, built at the expense of the earl of Shrewsbury, had a magnificent red sandstone tower and spire, sumptuous colours inside and a chapel that was a blaze of light.

In 1834 the Houses of Parliament were gutted by fire, and Charles Barry was asked to design the new houses in a Gothic style. That Gothic was chosen was largely the result of Pugin’s architecture and writing. Working with Barry, Pugin produced thousands of construction drawings for the new buildings, and designed the tower that houses Big Ben.

The challenges of the eight-acre project were enormous. Quicksands were found during excavations, and part of the structure had to be erected on land reclaimed from the Thames. In the 1840s Pugin created all the interiors of the Houses of Parliament, designing the chambers, libraries, committee rooms, furniture, stained glass (destroyed in the Second World War) and every gas lamp, doorknob, and umbrella stand.

Pugin designed according to two principles - ‘1st, that there should be no features about a building which are not necessary for convenience, construction or propriety; 2nd, that all ornament should consist of enrichment of the essential construction of the building’ (True Principles). It is a modern manifesto, except that unlike many modern buildings his seem to have a soul – a tender, sacred, brave and festive soul.

Pugin worked closely with a number of artisans. They included Herbert Minton, who created the decorated tiles in the Houses of Parliament, and John Hardman, the Birmingham button maker and medallist who became Pugin’s close friend and manufactured metalwork and stained glass to his swiftly drawn designs.

Queen Victoria formally opened the Houses of Parliament on 11 November 1852. Pugin, just 40 years old, had died in September, sinking into madness due almost certainly to mercury poisoning.

Gothic architecture enchanted Britain. It may be that like a wise, kind soul it still has something to tell us.

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