Renfield St Stephens a brief introduction

Transcription

1 Renfield St Stephens a brief introduction

2 Renfield St Stephens

3 Of buildings by other English architects, J T Emmett s St Matthew Blythswood (1849), built for an Independent Congregation, is certainly the best, with its excellently detailed graceful spire rising to 220 feet among the sober tenements of the west end of Bath Street - a much needed punctation and landmark which has not been allowed to disappear in a careful detailed idiom of the English fourteenth century - a surprising choice for an Independent church; and it can hardly be claimed that the Camdenian principles out of which the design grew fit the Congregational worship for which the church was intended. Gomme and Walker - the Architecture of Glasgow (1st Edition 1968)

4 Bath Street context - Illustrated London News 1864

5 Bath Street context - Thomas Annan (1870s)

6 The elegance of Emmett s spire is after all not surprising and not much to his credit, for it is an almost exact copy of Pugin s St Giles Cheadle. Gomme and Walker - the Architecture of Glasgow (2nd Edition 1987)

7 Renfield St Stephens - condition of spire in 2018

8 Renfield St Stephens - how the spire should look: St Giles Cheadle (1846)

9 Renfield St Stephens - ornament removed by Monro and Partners in 1968

10 Emmett seems not to have had much idea of what he was doing in bringing Pugin s Catholicism to the Independents of Glasgow. Gomme and Walker - the Architecture of Glasgow (2nd Edition 1987)

11 Fashion David Bowie - from the Album: Scary Monsters and Super Creeps (1980)

12 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin ( )

13 He gave the nineteenth century a new idea about what architecture could be and mean. He saw it as a moral force in society and as a romantic art. Rosemary Hill - Pugin and the building of Romantic Britain (2007)

14 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin - Contrasts (1836)

15 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin - a brilliant propagandist

16 We are not Italians, we are Englishmen. Our climate remains of course precisely the same as formerly and we are governed by nearly the same laws and same system of political economy as in the Middle Ages: church, law, monarchy, parliament, schools and universities were all still essentially medieval. Therefore, the Gothic revival was warranted by religion, government, climate, and the wants of society. It is the perfect expression of all we should hold sacred, honourable and national, and connected with the holiest and dearest associations England is certainly not what it was in 1440 but the thing to be done is to bring it back to that era Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin ( )

17 Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin - prolific

18 The Eglinton Tournament - its a sign of the times

19 In his early years William Young confessed to being a Gothicist of the deepest dye a Goth of the Burges school Like most of that generation, however, he lost his Gothic commitment round about 1870, There are merits in every style, each one has its fit and proper place. The great art of architecture is neither Classic nor Gothic nor good Queen Anne, but all of these, and much more J Mordaunt Cook - The Dilemma of Style (1987)

20 William Young - Glasgow City Chambers

21 J.T. Emmett, in particular, offered a critique of contemporary architecture which was as devastating as it was rude. As a disillusioned former architect he was well informed and well placed to infuriate his colleagues. His 1872 essay The State of English Architecture took the attack to a new height. Indeed, it caused a sensation. He argued, and in the most offensive terms, that throughout the nineteenth century the population had been forced to accustom itself to the most hideous extent of building that the world ever saw supercilious, conceited and debased. With neither artists to build, nor critics to discuss, nor a public worthy to approve of any work, Emmett saw little cause for optimism that things would improve. His faith in fourteenth-century art and society was touching, but William as awhyte way - forward Oxford Jackson it had (2006) little to recommend it.

22 St Matthew's Church - Salmon & Black ( )

23 CRPG s documentation of Renfield St Stephens storm damage in 1998

24 Canmore s documentation of Renfield St Stephens re-build in 1999

25 Norman MacLeod MacDougall s stained glass - installed in 1905

26 The Forrest and The Rose by artist Susan Laidler, installed in 1984

27 Renfield St Stephens - the fountain from the Glasgow Garden Festival

28 Thank you!