Wednesday 21 December 2011

Some Curious Voids in the City of London

Camomile Street. Not sure whats going on here:



The corner of Bishopsgate and Camomile Street, cleared for the 100 Bishopsgate development. That's the long-suffering church of St Ethelburga cowering in the background:



The last remains of Bucklersbury House. I think there's something by Norman Foster planned for the site: that's his Walbrook development on the right, so there'll be something of a Fosteropolis when it's all finished :



The corner of Ludgate Hill and Limeburner Lane. There was a building with an odd plasticky golden finish here before, like a slightly tarnished Quality Street wrapper:

Tuesday 24 May 2011

Entombment and Entomology

In 1834 Henry Inwood published a pamphlet entitled Of the Resources of Design in the Architecture of Greece, Egypt, and other Countries, obtained by the Studies of the Architects of those Countries from Nature, which advanced the theory that the architects of antiquity evolved their forms from a close study of nature, suggesting that that the flutings of Doric columns were taken from reeds, mineral crystallisations or seashells, that Egyptian mummies were wrapped up in imitation of the cocoons of moths and that the image of the sphynx was inspired by a butterfly chrysalis.

I haven't seen the book, but a contemporary review provides long extracts. There's a morbid visionary quality to some of Henry's ideas, which ties in well with the wholly original emphasis on the crypt entrances at St Pancras:
...it would require not much philosophical reflection to observe that the chrysalis of the insect kingdom seemed a state between one existence and another: and, by wishing to apply so beautiful a type to their own being, produced the prototype for converting, by bandages and painted decorations, the human body, as to resemble a pupa or chrysalis; under an impression of its awaiting, in that chrysali state, its period of entering and rising to another existence.
It seems rather a pity that he never attempted the Egyptian style. It's not inconceivable: PF Robinson's Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly was built as early as 1812, but the style never really caught on. The idea of modelling a church on an ancient Egyptian temple isn't really stranger than modelling one on a Greek temple, but I don't know that anyone ever has.

I was going to contrast the practical William with the doomed poetic Henry William. But this hardly stands up; a little poking around in the parliamentary accounts, courtesy of Google Books turns up the fact that Henry William took on his father's post as Clerk of the Works to the improvements to the surroundings of the Palace of Westminster, holding it from around 1811 to at least 1826. Which all sounds very responsible.

Monday 16 May 2011

A Pagan Place


St Pancras New Church, originally uploaded by Archimandrill.


William Railton's teacher, William Inwood, seems to have had a patchy career as an architect. According to the Dictionary of National he was born in around 1771, son of the bailiff at at Kenwood.He was trained as an architect and surveyor, and became steward to Charles Abbot, speaker of the House of Commons 1802-17, later created Lord Colchester. Inwood seems to have been a practical man. In 1811 he published a book called Tables for the Purchasing of Estates, Freehold or Copyhold Leasehold Annuities etc.. that went through many editions. The DNB tells us that he "designed numerous mansions, villas, barracks, and warehouses." This sentence seems to have been repeated unquestioningly from mid-nineteenth accounts of his life, but the actual locations of the mansions, villas, barracks, and warehouses remain obscure. From around 1806 he was clerk of the works to the "Commissioners for executing the several Acts for improvement of streets and places near to Westminster-Hall and the two Houses of Parliament". He was succeeded in this post by his son, Henry William Inwood, at the end of February 1812.

Inwood did some work on the church tower at East Grinstead - with which Abbot had close associations -  and built the Westminster National Free Schools on some of the land conveniently cleared in the Westminster improvements. Then came his most famous building, St Pancras New Church, designed in 1818 in collaboration with  Henry William Inwood, although only William's name is mentioned on the foundation stone. By the time of it's completion, however,  it was acknowledged as a joint effort . It was a prestigious contract for a low-profile architect : at a cost of over £76,000, it was said to be the most expensive church built in London since the rebuilding of St Paul's Cathedral. The Inwoods came up with a design heavily influenced by the Erectheum in Athens, which Henry William visited at around this time (though probably after the basic plans for St Pancras had been drawn up) and of which he later published a study. It was widely seen as a radical advance in the accurate imitation of ancient Greek architecture. For a while, no-one seems to have thought this an odd ambition for an ecclesiastical architect.

William Inwood had two or possibly three sons who were also architects - Henry William born in 1794, and Charles Frederick, born in 1798 are well recorded. I've also come across a passing reference to a third, called Edward . William and Henry designed two more classical churches together - St Peter's, Regent Square (since demolished) and the Camden Chapel (later All Saints), Camden Town. They also collaborated on one in a sort of Gothick; St Mary's Somers Town, about which no architectural critic has ever had much positive to say. All three were in the parish of St Pancras. With Charles Frederick, William designed the Westminster Hospital of 1834-4, in a similarly basic Gothic.

Information about any other work seems hard to come by. He's credited with a house called Woburn Lodge which once stood next to St Pancras New Church, but Henry also claimed that in a letter to the father of a potential pupil.

Charles Frederick Inwood died in 1840 and William himself on March 16th 1843, at his house in Upper Seymour Street, Somers Town. Around this time - the exact chronology is obscure - Henry, whose career is said to have been hampered by illness, sold his collections of antiquities to the British Museum and sailed for Spain. He never arrived: the ship - the name of which I can't find mentioned anywhere - sank with the loss of all on board on March 20th.

Wednesday 6 April 2011

The Tired Hunter

Just thought I'd share this image from the box under my bed. It's one half of a stereoview of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham. The statue on the left is - as examination of the lettering on the pedestal with a magnifying glass reveals - "The Tired Hunter" by Edward Hodges Baily, of Nelson-on-the-Column fame. Actually, it's probably a just a plaster cast. The original marble was carved for Joseph Neeld of Grittleton House, Wiltshire. It was shown at the Royal Academy in 1851, under the title 'A Youth and his Dog', while a plaster cast was shown at the Great Exhibition at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park. And no doubt it was the cast that followed the Palace south to Sydenham, where it was shown in the 'Mixed Fabrics Court ', while Neeld enjoyed the original in the privacy of his own home.

Wednesday 16 February 2011

Columnist

Before I leave the subject of William Railton I note that in an interview in the Independent, the present Director of the National Gallery is no admirer. He says Nelson's column is " an architectural disaster, but you have to work around it."

Saturday 5 February 2011

William Railton, Thomas Morris and Style

I haven't found any published writings by William Railton, but some comments in a book by his admiring assistant Thomas Morris might throw some light on his attitudes to style. A House for the Suburbs is an odd work, full of curious asides and poetic flights .Obviously it would be wrong to view Morris merely as a mouthpiece for Railton - he is a man of decided views. But the passages on style seem to accord with Railton's practice.

The insecurity which made strength so exclusive a consideration down to Henry VI. had been succeeded by a gradual change in circumstances; and architecture was not slow in assuming the improvements available from augmented intercourse and more intimate continental relationship; and the "prodigal bravery in building" attained in the time of Elizabeth is especially noticed by Camden, " verily to the great ornament of the kingdom," though he simultaneously complains of the concomitant "riotous banquetting", and the decay of the "glorious hospitality of the nation."

The innovations in building at that time occurred most rapidly; the chief elements of modern houses were introduced; and from the engrafting of Italian scions on the old Gothic stock, arose that picturesque hybrid, which, not wholly indigenous nor altogether exotic we cheerfully accept as a national variety of art.

It may be divested of uniformity with unimpaired effect; the joint employment of brick and stone is an agreeable characteristic; and the interior decorations may be applied with a sparing or more liberal hand; while the predominating quaintness, the slight intrusion of the grotesque is favourable to richness, and a foil to criticism.

In other words, the Tudor style was practical, because it was not academic, or doctrinaire. The word "picturesque" seems to hark back to an earlier phase of the gothic revival. Tudor was appropriate because it was a native style; but then again not too native:

It is a natural and laudable impulse, which gives priority in choice to native features, without excluding the agreeable modifications and adventitious graces derivable from foreign observation.

Gothic correctness can be taken too far, it could become too Catholic:

The reaction in favour of Gothic art matured in a great degree by the felicitous pencils of Blore, Pugin and Scott, has been occasionally perverted into a sort of pre- Anglican counterpart of the pre-Raphaelite in painting. There is an example at W * * * where neither in church, school, or parsonage, a single feature calls to mind that a dynasty of Tudors have existed, or that the great event of Henry's life ever took place, and light continues to be shed from the lamp-makers version of a Papal tiara!

A little later he takes a sideswipe at the excesses of ecclesiology:

In throwing off a condition of sloth it was not necessary that zealous churchmen should adopt a style of rank exotic medievalism.

Rediscovering Mr Railton



The revised version.

Recently, I've become curious about the architect of Nelson's Column, and how the designer of such a landmark could have become so strangely invisible - even the National Portrait Gallery, only yards from his most famous work has no image of him. I've pieced this account together from number of sources, mostly contemporary.

William Railton (c1801-1877) was a London architect, with offices at Carlton Chambers, 12, Regent Street for most of what was a comparatively short career.

He had been a pupil of William Inwood (1771-1843). Inwood worked both as a surveyor and an architect. The Dictionary of National Biography credits him with designs for "numerous mansions, villas, barracks, and warehouses", but he really only enters architectural history with a number of church designs done in collaboration with his son, Henry William Inwood. These were done in two styles - an academic, archaeologically researched classicism, typified by St Pancras New Church (1819-22) and a naïve, unhistorical gothic, at St Mary, Somers Town (1824-7). It was this latter tendency that Railton followed, at least in the beginning, in his ecclesiastical work.

In 1825 Railton set off for what the New Monthly Magazine described as "a professional tour in Greece and Egypt". On his way he stopped off at Corfu, where he watched the excavation of the Temple at Cardachio. On his return to England in 1829 he prepared drawings of the temple which were published as a supplementary volume to Stuart's Athens. The "professional tour" doesn't seem to have had a great impact on his career; Nelson's column may well have been his only executed classically inspired work.

He exhibited at the Royal Academy for the first time in 1829, showing a design for Magdalene College Chapel, Oxford. This must have been made as part of an entry for the competition held that year for designs for the restoration of the chapel. It was won by L.N. Cottingham.

His earliest traceable executed buildings date from around 1830. Randalls was a neo-tudor house, since demolished, built near Leatherhead for Nathaniel Bland. St Peter's Church at Duddon, Cheshire, from about three years later is a cheap, simple brick church, in a vaguely Early English style, with lancet windows.

During the mid 1830s, Railton came into contact with Ambrose March Phillipps (1809-1878). He was the son of Charles March Phillipps, a Leicestershire landowner, who lived at Garendon Park, near Loughborough. Ambrose had coverted to catholicism at an early age, and had a vision of restoring England to it's medieval faith. On his marriage in 1833 his father had presented him with an estate of his own, known as "Grace Dieu" after the ruined monastery on the land. Ambrose had already shown a worrying interest in monasticism, and CM Phillips must have been relieved by his marriage. At Grace Dieu Railton built a stuccoed neo-Tudor mansion, complete with a private chapel. Meanwhile Ambrose Phillipps bought - with borrowed money - a tract of land in nearby Charnwood Forest to build a monastery for a community of trappist monks. This - Mount St Bernard - was to be the first monastery built in England since the reformation. For it, Railton designed a church, with monastic buildings, the latter once again in a neo-Tudor style. Railton's buildings were replaced a couple of years later with a much more ambitious monastic complex to plans by AWN Pugin. They were in fact overambitious plans, as funds were never sufficent to complete them to the original design. Pugin was also invited to improve Grace Dieu, adding a tower and a service wing, and refitting the chapel. Though rejected by Ambrose Phillipps in favour of Pugin, who must have brought a certain religious enthusiasm to his task, Railton continued his connection to the Phillipps family, designing gatehouses and lodges for CM Phillipps at Garendon Park: these survive, though the house is gone.

Much of Railton's work was in this part of Leicestershire. In 1837-8, he built two identical churches at Copt Oak and Woodhouse Eaves - the Gentleman's Magazine saw them as a welcome counterbalance to the growth of Catholic influence, exemplified by the new monastery. From 1842, he built a house at Beaumanor, Woodhouse Eaves for the Herrick family. The medieval mansion there - refaced in about 1615 by Sir William Herrick- had been replaced with a classical house in the early 18th century, and it seems that the Herricks wanted to reconnect with their past by rebuilding it in a neo-tudor style, albeit on the square plan of the classical house. Railton’s assistant, Thomas Morris was later to describe it as his master’s “crowning work.”

He designed further nearby Anglican churches at Groby (c 1840), and Thorpe Acre (1845), the latter on land donated by Charles March Phillipps.) He also carried out alterations at the church at Sheepshed, where CM Phillips was patron, and minor work for the Reverend Robert Martin -whose parish included Groby- at his mansion Anstey Pastures.

In 1836 he entered the competition to design new buildings for the Houses Of Parliament, to replace those destroyed by fire winning the fourth prize of £500 The first prize was won by Charles Barry, who was later to design the layout of Trafalgar Square .Barry did this in full knowledge of Railton's plans for Nelson's Column, but still felt the Square would be better without it.

In April 1838 his design was accepted, from a list of three submissions, to build a palace for the Bishop of Ripon. It was an ambitious building. The initial budget was £10,000, but the final cost was over £12,000.It was in Railton's interest to build as lavishly as possible; he received 5% commission. The foundation stone was laid in April 1838, as the band of the Yorkshire Hussars played the National Anthem. By the end of 1841 it was ready for the Bishop to move in. In 1845 Railton was asked to add a chapel, slightly separate from the palace, to allow the local population to worship there. In deference to the Tudor style of the palace, he chose the perpendicular style, battlemented like the house.

Also at Ripon he carried out restoration on the cathedral from 1841, which included, to the horror of purists, the construction of transept vaults out of plaster, or, as some of his detractors claimed, papier-mâché. These, since removed,are generally attributed in modern literature to Blore's restoration of the 1820s. Howeve,r Frederick Paley, writing in 1846 says they are by Railton, and the catalogue of the Cathedral archives lists " papers concerning the groining of the North transept of the Cathedral, including contracts, correspondence, etc " dating from 1843-44.

At some point during 1838, he was appointed Architect to the Ecclesiastical Commission, a post he would hold for ten years. In 1839 the Commissioners bought (in slightly murky circumstances) a house and estate at Riseholme to provide a palace for the Bishop of Lincoln. The house itself - an early 18th century building- was valued at £2,000; Railton proposed a plan for improvements he said would cost around £7,000; eventually more than £12,000 was spent. There can't have been much of the original building left, but Railton chose retain its Italianate style, rather than use his habitual Tudor. The Civil Engineer and Architect's Journal said "it possesses no great architectural interest, though it certainly looks like a very enviable residence, and shows that bishops have no disrelish for the comforts and luxuries of this world. " As well as being extravagant, the building suffered severely from damp. Perhaps it was implicit criticism of Railton, during questioning of the Bishop of Lincoln by a parliamentary select committee in 1848 led to his departure from his post as Architect to the Commissioners in that year.

In 1841 he persuaded the Commissioners to accept his plans for alterations to Stapleton House, as a palace for the Bishop of Bristol and Gloucester, following the merger of the two sees. He claimed that those commissioned by the Bishop himself, from a Mr Pope, could not possibly be carried out for the estimated cost of £3,000. The commission seems to have been outmanoeuvred by the Bishop however, and the work was executed by Pope, and Decimus Burton, at an eventual cost of more than £12,000 which seems to have been the going rate for an Episcopal palace.

A significant part of the role of Architect to the Commissioners seems to have been the design of parsonages. In 1843 he produced two "model" designs -one plain and one "gothic" - and the RIBA library has his plans for several specific parsonages.

In January 1839, a completion was held to design a memorial in to Lord Nelson to stand in Trafalgar Square. By this time the idea of a column to commemorate Nelson was hardly new. Examples had already been built in Montreal. Dublin and Great Yarmouth. Unsurprisingly a number of competitors submitted proposals for columns, and Railton's fairly simple design was chosen. There was immediate controversy, and the competition was re-run, but Railton resubmitted a slightly revised version, and was once again declared the winner.

His victory didn't bring Railton a great deal of public acclaim. The reaction of the Art Journal was typical. It didn’t think Railton’s design was really a design at all. “being an absolute and mere copy of a Corinthian column. " Other architects and sculptors had gone to the trouble of inventing elaborate schemes while the selection committee had seen fit to choose a plan “which never cost its author an hour’s thought.” The magazine described it as a "monstrous nine-pin, ” and later expressed the desire that a strong wind might topple it into the National Gallery. They also warned that the unpopularity of the design would lead to difficulties in raising the necessary public subscriptions. There may have been some truth in this, as eventually the government had to take over the finance of the project. Construction began in August 1839, but it didn't prove a smooth or uncontroversial. The proposed height of the column was reduced by thirty feet, and the flights of steps at the base, already constructed and visible in Fox Talbot's photograph, removed.

Railton also submitted several ideas for the layout of the ground between the Column and the National Gallery, but in the event the work was carried out to plans by Charles Barry.

In 1840, he designed another monument, an obelisk in memory of Admiral Sir Harry Neale. A lithograph was published, and indeed an obelisk was built, near Lymington in Hampshire, but not to Railton's design, but that of George Draper of Chichester.

During the 1840s he built three churches in east London. Two were completely new buildings, in his usual lancet-windowed style; St Bartholomew-the- Less, Bethnal Green, of brick with stone facing, consecrated in 1844, and Holy Trinity, Hoxton of stone, consecrated in 1848 . The third - now completely destroyed- had a more complicated, and slightly farcical history. The church of St Mary, Bromley-by-Bow consisted of the partial remains of the Norman priory church of St Leonard. Efforts to restore it snowballed into it's complete reconstruction to a design by Railton. It used a round-arched style, but resemblance to it's predecessor was otherwise minimal. It was completed in 1843.
In 1844 he was one of 15 architects invited to submit plans for the enlargement and remodelling of the Carlton Club, and was one of only six who actually did so, but without success.

Railton built at least two more churches, both in his favoured lancet- windowed mode, and both on a cruciform plan with a crossing tower . They were also both funded by private patrons Theodosia Hinckes at St Mary, Stafford Street Wolverhampton, consecrated 1842, and Mary and Elizabeth Beckett at Holy Trinity, Meanwood, Leeds, built on a budget of £4300 and consecrated in 1849.

The church at Meanwood seems to have been near the end of Railton's architectural career. He exhibited at the Royal Academy as late as 1851 when he showed designs for Bromley- by- Bow church, completed eight years before. In 1855 his work was shown at the Paris Universal Exhibition, but once again the designs were old ones for Beaumanor, Bromley, Ripon and Meanwood. According to the DNB, he designed nothing for the last 27 years of his life, though the English Heritage listing dates Winscombe House to 1855.

He lived from around 1858 to the end of his life at 65 Onslow Square with his wife, Amelia. A neighbour wrote in her diary one Sunday in 1872 of "the quiet and sadness of Onslow Square, the trees outside shivering in such a bitter winter wind and the architect's wife next door playing over and over again “a few more years shall roll, a few more seasons pass,” always wrong at the same chord!’ The Railtons had at least two children; Florence, and Mary Margaret Amelia, who, after her father's death, married the local curate. Nelson's column was finally completed in 1867, with the addition of the lions; their sculptor, Carlo Marochotti also lived in Onslow Square, and made them at his studio nearby. Railton is said not to have attended the opening ceremony. He died on a visit to Brighton in 1877.

I’ve assembled a flicker gallery of some of his surviving work for you to look at while meditating on the vicissitudes of fame

Tuesday 25 January 2011

People You Don't Want to Get on the Wrong Side Of No.1

FOLIA. a woman of Ariminium, famous for her knowlege of poisonous herbs and for her petulance.

Lempriere's Classical Dictionary.

Tuesday 4 January 2011

William Railton's Churches



In case anyone is interested, I've listed here all of William Railton’s Church designs I could find. Of the twelve listed, three are completely lost, and two converted to residential use.


St Peter, Duddon, Cheshire.
Built as a chapel of ease to St Andrew, Tarvin. A plain boxy with brick structure with lancet windows, 51 feet long and built at a cost of £603, raised by subscription by the local nobility and gentry, with the addition of grant from the Society for Promoting the Building of Churches and Chapels. Pevsner quotes Goodhart-Rendel’s opinion “’Of all the mean box-like chapels this is nearly the meanest.'' Some contemporary opinion was more positive. The British Critic, and Quarterly Theological Review called it:
..on the whole an elegant structure, on the simple model we have been recommending. We will here notice one great advantage of having walls of dignified elevation - the windows may, without themselves being curtailed, be placed so high as to prevent any roofs, chimneys, trees or any such familiar objects, which may chance to be near the church, from obtruding themselves on the attention of the congregation.
The unfortunate congregation was not even allowed the sight of a chimney to distract them from the sermon. But the British Critic had reservations about what few architectural features Railton actually allows us:

..we do not like the double buttress at the corner, and nowhere else; and we prefer to see the triple lancet reserved as the peculiar right of the east end.

The Church and Monastery of Mount St Bernard

Railton designed the original buildings for this Trappist monastry in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire, built on land donated by the catholic convert Ambrose Phillips de Lisle, for whom he also built the nearby mansion of Grace Dieu. Funds were clearly limited as Phillips de Lisle had to borrow the £4000 necessary to buy the land. The History Gazeteer and Directory of Leiestershire records:
The charitable gifts of their co-religionists enabled the monks to erect and make fit for habitation, though not complete, a small portion of an intended monastery, in the Elizabethan style, from designs by Mr. Railton. By the same architect, the chapel or church for the monastery was shortly afterwards finished, and opened for divine service, 11th October, 1837.
But a generous benefactor soon allowed the replacement of Railton's buildings by something grander. In October 1839, Phillipps de Lisle wrote to his father, dismissing Railton's work:

Lord Shrewsbury is going to build a new Monastery for the Monks at Mount St. Bernard under Pugin's direction. He has given three thousand pounds for this object, and will give more later. Their present monastery, which you remember an ugly unfinished building, is to be converted into farm buildings for their use, and their present church is to be made into a greatbarn.

The monks moved into their new accommodation in 1844.


St Paul, Woodhouse Eaves
St Peter, Copt Oak.
These two stone-built churches in Charnwood Forest, Leicestershire were constructed to the same design and consecrated within two days of each other in September 1837. The Gentlemans magazine reported:
Two new Churches are being erected in Charnwood Forest, one at Woodhouse Eves, and another at Charley, [i.e. Copt Oak] near Whitwick, from a uniform design by Mr. Railton. The Act of Inclosure provided for the erection of two churches in the Forest, one of which was built about twenty years ago; but by the assistance of the neighbouring gentry, the Trustees are now enabled to erect two instead of one more, and thus more effectually to withstand the spirit of popery, diffused from the Roman Catholic establishment at Gracedieu, where Mr. Ambrose Phillipps has erected a large chapel, and has laid plans for establishing a monastery of Trappists.
Both the Catholic and Anglican buildings metioned were to Railton’s designs. He seems to have had good connections among the local gentry of all religious persuasions.

St Philip and St James. Groby, Leicestershire
Attributed to Railton by Pevsner and the English Heritage listings. A stone church, built out of the local granite. It has a west tower, with some rather oddly placed lancet windows in it's west wall. It was built in around 1840 as a chapel-of- ease for Ratby. Railton is also recorded as having done some work around this time for vicar of Ratby, Robert Martin, at his mansion Anstey Pastures.

St Mary, Stafford Street Wolverhampton
Consecrated Oct 15, 1842, erected and endowed at the sole expense of Miss Hinckes, of Tettenhall Wood. The Gentleman’s Magazine described it as
…. a revival of the style prevailing during the 13th and 14th centuries. The form of the building is cruciform, surmounted at the intersection by a tower and steeple; the latter, which is of a shape common in Normandy and other parts of the continent, terminating with an encircled cross.
Architecturally it seems to have been rather plain; the Gentleman’s Magazine puts a positive spin on this:

… Mr. Railton, has added to his already high character by having produced so solemn and beautiful an effect by the mere power of proportion and moulding, without any architectural enrichment than the carved work in the pulpit, desk, and chancel.
It was furnished with old German and Flemish glass, a Norman Font, and an organ previously in a church at Stratford-upon-Avon

The church was closed in 1948 and demolished some years later.

St Mary, Bromley by Bow
This seems initially to have been conceived as a restoration of the ancient priory church of St Leonard. In the event, only some monuments were preserved from the old church, within a completely new brick structure of 1842-3. It was a simple building in a round-arched style, in tribute to the Norman features of it’s predecessor, with an aisle only on the South side, an open timber roof, and a tower in the south-west corner. The Illustrated London News reassured it’s readers that:
…with the exception of the chancel for which funds were furnished by the munificence of a highly respected parishioner, the restoration has been carried out with the most scrupulous attention to economy.
Railton must have been proud of his work there, because he exhibited a drawing of the church at the Royal Academy not only in 1844, and two more as late as 1851, then another at the Paris .Universal Exhibition of 1855.

The church was bombed in 1941 and later levelled; in 1968 the Blackwall Tunnel northern approach road was driven through the site.

St Bartholomew the Less Bethnal Green
Consecrated June 1844, at which time the tower was still unfinished for lack of funds. Built of brick with stone facings, in an Early English style with a south-west tower. It seated 1058.

The church closed in 1977 and was later converted into flats under the name "Steeple Court"

Holy Trinity, Hoxton.
Described by the Ecclesiologist in 1846, when the church was under construction, as “a huge pretending First-Pointed pile with stinted sacrarium, exaggerated windows and thin walls". The stone used was Kentish ragstone. It was constructed without galleries, and could accommodate around a thousand people . Consecrated on the 7th of March, 1848


Thorpe Acre, Leicestershire.
An Anglican church built in 1845 at a cost of £1000, on land given by Charles Phillipps, father of Railton’s catholic patron, Ambrose Phillipps de Lisle. Stone-built with a slate roof, and a bellcote rather than a tower.


Chapel at the Bishops Palace, Ripon
The Palace of the Bishop of Ripon was built to Railton’s designs in 1838-41, and included a small chapel. However some years later, the Archbishop of York provided £3000 for the construction of a separate building, ostensibly to allow residents of a nearby hamlet to attend services. It is in a perpendicular style, with battlements. The foundation stone was laid in June 1846.

It has been converted for residential use.

Holy Trinity, Meanwood, Leeds.
Funded with a budget of £4300 by Miss Mary and Miss Elizabeth Beckett, and consecrated in 1849. A cruciform church with a crossing tower, in Railton’s favoured early English style. It is 110 feet long and 42 feet wide at the transepts. The Ecclesiologist reported that “the church presents a strange mixture of ornament and plainness” The magazine found much to complain about, but felt the tower and spire were the building’s best feature.