This blog provides a brief summary of a longer article to be published in November 2023 by the Sarum Chronicle, and a detailed publication planned for later in 2024, regarding Augustus Pugin's time in Salisbury, early in his career, where a number of significant achievements were to prove the foundation for so much of what he went on to achieve.
Augustus Pugin was England’s most influential architect and designer of the mid 19th Century, and the early leader of the Victorian Gothic Revival. Early in his architectural career, during the winter of 1834-35, Pugin moved to Salisbury in Wiltshire. He spent around three years living and working there
During the time he spent in the Wiltshire city, Pugin lived in his first designed and built residence, changed faith to Roman Catholicism, worked on competition-winning plans for the new Houses of Parliament, and published the first edition of what was to be his most controversial and influential book, Contrasts. As will be shown in my forthcoming 2023 article and 2024 publication, his achievements during his time there were so significant that they merit consideration as being more explicitly identified as a defined period of his work: Pugin’s Salisbury Period.
The house that Pugin built was St Marie’s Grange, which still stands today near Alderbury just outside of Salisbury. He chose the site as it provided an uninterrupted view across countryside to the spire of Salisbury Cathedral, a Gothic masterpiece, although Pugin struggled greatly with internal changes that had been made within the Cathedral in the past half century, by the architect James Wyatt.
Pugin worked himself on parts of the house, such as some of the stone carving and design of stained glass windows. He moved into St Marie’s Grange in late summer 1835 with his wife Louisa, and his young children Anne and Edward. The design of the house was almost unique at the time, and many aspects of it were subsequently copied. but perhaps the most significant part of it was a chapel, next to the library, reflecting a major change that Pugin was about to make which was to have such an influence on his future.
In the period before moving to Salisbury, Pugin had found himself drawn towards the Roman Catholic Church. For years before, he had visited old churches, cathedrals and castles, whose architectural beauty dated from the medieval period prior to the Reformation. Increasingly he came to value this era, not only because of the design of the buildings, but just as much due to the religious inspiration behind that, which was rooted in Roman Catholicism.
Once in Salisbury, although he initially took communion in the Cathedral, Pugin soon gravitated towards the small Roman Catholic community there. In June 1835, he converted to Catholicism, in a small chapel within the city. More than a decade later, after leaving the city, initially for London and then Ramsgate in Kent, Pugin returned two Salisbury briefly in order to design plans for a new Catholic church, St Osmund’s.
Of particular note in St Osmund’s is the off centre chancel arch. This reflects a stage of Pugin’s later career when he was experimenting with axial asymmetry.
Although St Marie’s Grange and St Osmund’s are the two most tangible examples in Salisbury of Pugin’s connection to the city, it was two other pieces of work he did whilst there which were to mark him out on the national stage and help define his career.
The first of these was the successful winning, with Charles Barry, of the competition to produce plans for a complete rebuilding of the Palace of Westminster, after the Houses of Parliament were burned down in October 1834. Although Barry led the entry, it is Pugin’s Gothic design that propelled it to success. Today, the exterior of the Palace of Westminster, and Big Ben, must be one of the most well known of all buildings in the world, and the inside of parts of it, such as much of the House of Lords, reflect some of Pugin’s greatest achievements.
Less public than the work with Barry, but in architectural terms probably even more influential, was the publication in 1836 in Salisbury of his first major work, Contrasts. This book was written as a historical polemic, criticising most architecture since the Reformation, including many of Pugin’s contemporaries. But what makes it stand out today are the numerous drawings within the book, in which Pugin contrasts a medieval design with a more modern one, with each comparison being judged in favour of the older style. For a modern reader, used to a world of film, websites and social media, Pugin’s approach feels very familiar. In the early 19th Century, many publications used images to demonstrate their points, but no one had done so with such vituperative criticism of the work over preceding centuries up to the present day. The book caused a storm in architectural circles and defined his position as an unequivocal supporter of design from the Roman Catholic inspired medieval period.
Pugin may have only lived for three years in Salisbury, and rarely returned afterwards, but his house design, conversion, work with Barry, and publication of Contrasts, were some of the most significant actions of his life. They were to prove a springboard for the rest of his career, with connections he started to form at that time, linked to Oscott Seminary, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Charles Scarisbrick, ensuring that he had strong patronage for much of his work that was to follow.
For a more detailed description of all the work mentioned in this blog, and other achievements Pugin made whilst in Salisbury, please see my forthcoming article in the Sarum Chronicle, or next year’s planned publication of a more detailed analysis of the same by the Pugin Society. For a wider view on Pugin’s life and his numerous achievements, readers are recommended to get a copy of Rosemary Hill’s masterpiece on his life: God’s Architect.
