My super-best thanks to Barry Qualls, for suggesting, yesterday, that if I'm teaching my grad students about the Gothic Revival, that I should show them pictures of All Saints, Margaret Street. Er - hmmmm - I don't know how I've managed never to have been to this extraordinary Victorian jewel, hidden away just behind Oxford Street. It was, somewhere, in my consciousness - but I had never been. And given that this year I plan to start making a dent on all the British Victoriana that I have never seen, it's a fabulous place to start. Designed by William Butterfield in 1849-50, it was consecrated in 1859. "It is the first piece of architecture I have seen, built in modern days, which is free from all signs of timidity or incapacity...it challenges fearless comparison with the noblest work of any time. Having done this, we may do anything: there need be no limits to our hope or our confidence," said Ruskin - so in fact, it'll fit in with this week's theme of The Contemporary, too, very happily ... Yet even thought that some of it, notably the floor, was too bright ...
Then the red brick outside - it might look like a myriad of Victorian town halls, or for that matter suburban pubs, now - but it was highly innovative in the 1850s. Again, I wonder - why haven't I been here before?
It was pouring with rain today, and the numerous street people who were crowded at the back of the church keeping dry did rather make me wish that there'd been some high Anglican incense swirling around. On the other hand, it did seem like a suitable act of charity that they were hanging out there, untroubled.
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