Paul Waterhouse

“ Moreover Wren was unconscious of the future growth of London and imagined a concentration of functions which subsequent history has proved impossible.
We may understand from this illustration that even a supreme mind with a mass of data to work upon cannot form a scheme for a city which will hold its own as long as the buildings he erects endure. The very stones that Wren handled are smiling down on the accumulated facts which would have impaired his scheme in eight generations.
No one knows to what size a city will grow. ”

“ Blomfield admitted the possibility of individuality in ecclesiastical art, and even held that 'where convenience is at stake we ought not to be too much confined by the precedent of mediaeval architecture.' In the matter of materials he felt that architects ought not to allow blind adherence to tradition to deprive them of the benefits of modern discovery. ”

“ These give way to residences without shops, less mean but more dreary. Then follows a tract of desecrated country waiting to be eaten up in building lots, then a derelict farm, then a hideous market garden, next villas, beyond them a village, once rural, now aping town manners, beyond it, more villas and horrible new-laid roads, and last of all, very shyly and very slowly, with a gradual diminution of the apologetic sale-boards, unrural fences, mutilated hedges, and general sense of town oppression, you are welcomed by that fair and desirable thing, the country. ”

“ One of the main duties of the town planner in an old city is to make sure that no disrespect is done to anything which is old and beautiful or historic. And this avoidance of disrespect means, not merely preservation, but such an arrangement of the new surroundings as will insure that these treasures of the past may look their best and may seem at home in their surroundings. ”

“ He solved the puzzle which all Vitruvius's commentators had found insoluble by identifying the 'scamilli impares' with those top and bottom blocks of the columns which, by virtue of the inclination of the column or the curvature of stylobate and architrave, are 'unequal' (i.e. they have their upper and lower faces out of parallel) . Some important conclusions relating to the Roman temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens Penrose laid before the Institute of British Architects in 1888. ”

“ Blomfield, who was a rowing man when young, and had occupied the bow seat in his college eight, when head of the river, was fond in middle life of taking recreation in acting, in which his fine voice, expressive clean-shaved face, and real dramatic talent made him unusually successful. ”

“ With his partner Bodley, Gamer was regarded for many years as an authoritative ecclesiastical artist. Together they were responsible not only for many new buildings but also for the decoration, often the transformation, of buildings of earlier date. In 1902 Garner designed the cope worn by the dean of Westminster at the coronation of Edward VII. In his later years Gamer joined the Church of Rome, and after the death of Edward Hansom he was appointed architect to Downside Priory, Bath, where he designed the choir in which his own interment was to take place. ”

“ Except for the fact that a portion of the old parish church was incorporated as one of the south choir aisles, the building is an entirely new one, thus distinguishing the task from those works of alteration which have been undertaken in other towns to suit parish churches to the needs of new dioceses. It is the greatest ecclesiastical opportunity which has been offered to any modern architect, and it was used by Pearson in a manner which showed him a consummate master of the art of building according to mediaeval precedent. ”

“ Every town, however small its beginnings, and however large its developments is the subject of its own servants, I mean its roads.
In every kingdom certain towns establish themselves early in history as road centres. They may have sprung up at the junction of cross roads already existing as routes to other more important places—or they may as in the case of London be the object, the main and primary object, to which the roads tend.
At all events there came a time, early in our civilization, when London was a comparatively small centre of a comparatively large road radiation. ”

“ The aim is indubitable, but does the method, does the craft exist?
Please believe me, I speak in no mockery of town-planning, and if I am about to suggest to you that it is impossible to lay down a general code or science which under that name can be said to have universal application, it is not because I ignore the need of such a science but because I have some facts to put before you which show how impossible it is to secure that uniformity of circumstance upon which alone a science can be built. ”

“ Like Wren himself Penrose found relief from the disappointment in astronomical study, which had already attracted him at Cambridge' and in Paris. He was an adept at mechanical inventions, and an instrument for drawing spirals won him a prize at the Great Exhibition of 1851. A theodolite which he had bought in 1852 primarily for use in measurement of buildings, he applied at the suggestion of Dr. G. Boole to such astronomical purposes as accurate determination of orientation and time in connection, for example, with the fixing of sundials. ”

“ In his professional work he was unfailingly industrious and an excellent draughtsman. In spite of the fact that his large practice necessitated the employment of a good staff of assistants and pupils, he drew a large proportion of his working drawings with his own hands, and even wrote the whole of his own correspondence in a handwriting which to the last retained exceptional beauty. ”

“ But we may relieve our minds with the thought that the entire rebuilding of Manchester or of London is as unlikely as it is undesirable. A physician is not, thank heaven, called upon to invent a new man, but he does keep before his mind's eye a vision of what he believes to be the perfect man and is able, for a fee, to do a good deal of useful work in patching up imperfect humanity.
The town-planner's work in old towns is similarly a remedial rather than a creative work. ”

“ But in the later years of the union the two architects adopted methods of divided labour and gave individual control to separate works. On joining Garner, Bodley, by a spontaneous impulse and not by the prompting of his partner, developed in his work a freer and richer style which was later in its mediaeval prototypes. The two churches most typical of their style at this epoch are those of the Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, and of St. Augustine, Pendlebury. Outwardly the latter church (1874) owes its effect to its giant simplicity. ”