james essex, cathedral restorer

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James Essex, Cathedral RestorerAuthor(s): Thomas H. CockeSource: Architectural History, Vol. 18 (1975), pp. 12-22+97-102Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568379 .

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James Essex, cathedral

restorer by THOMAS H. COCKE

This paper is published substantially as delivered at a symposium of the Society ofArchitectural Historians at Burlington House on 8 March 1975

The eighteenth-century church establishment was unromantic about religion. The efforts of its divines, from Archbishop Tillotson onwards, were devoted to proving the good sense and practical virtues of Christianity, not probing its mysteries. The

huge medieval churches it had inherited were almost embarrassing in their unsuit-

ability to the worship of that time. Wren had summed up the requirements for a cathedral - 'a Quire, Consistory, Chapter House, Library, Preaching-auditory'1.

Since the church viewed its requirements in such practical terms, there was

obviously much surplus 'plant' in a medieval cathedral. Side chapels were unneces-

sary, beyond, as at Lincoln, one for morning prayer, fitted with reading desk but no altar, and another for the Consistory Court. Transepts and crypts were equally superfluous. There was thus no shame in using this 'wasted space' as workshops - as happened at St Catherine's chapel in the south-west transept at Ely, or the Galilee at Lincoln - or, in the case of the crypt of the corona at Canterbury, as the first prebend's cellar. Even in a parish church, to have, like Long Melford, a school in the lady chapel would seem sensible and desirable; any notion that its

having been once built as a chapel made any other use degrading would be thought strange and Popish.

It is vital to remember that antiquaries whether clerical or lay could savour

Popery aesthetically but remain staunchly, even aggressively Protestant. They might enjoy the art of the medieval past but they abhorred its ways of thought and belief. Horace Walpole could explain away the gaudy Catholic dress which he and Chute planned for the chapel at The Vyne by saying 'we are so conscious of the

goodness of our Protestantism, that we don't care how things look'.2

Ironically, in their concept of a cathedral and its organization eighteenth- century clerics were closer to the Middle Ages than their ecclesiological successors. A cathedral was where the canons said their office, and therefore fundamentally their concern. The laity had little or no place in the building. At Ely it was not until the choir was moved in the 1770s that the space under the octagon was used as a 'sermon place', while as late as the mid-century the naves of Lincoln, Durham and Norwich were still used as common thoroughfares.

Medieval rights were still insisted upon with a thoroughly medieval disregard for the boundaries between spiritual and temporal. Prebends demanded the last penny of their stipends with no thought of return in the way of pastoral work. There was even a dispute at Carlisle in 1705 about the bishop's right of visitation. 12



COCKE: JAMES ESSEX, CATHEDRAL RESTORER

In other words, just as in an 'unrestored' church much more of the genuine untidy medieval past survives than after a purified 'Second Pointed' restoration, so the unreformed cathedral authorities preserved the attitudes and organization (or lack of it) of their Catholic predecessors more than the conscientious Tractarians.

An obvious consequence was that the choir received the bulk of any money spent in adorning the cathedral. The canons naturally thought first of the comfort and

elegance of their own quarters, so the choir would be repaved and the altar and reredos rebuilt as their first priority. Nearly every cathedral had its choir 're- decorated' after the Restoration; by 1750 it was often felt to be old-fashioned and so 'done over' again. Ely and Lincoln had their choirs renovated by Essex; West- minster Abbey asked for designs even from the 'infidel' Horace Walpole. Nor is it surprising that most work on the choirs was done in the contemporary style. They were as much rooms as eating or withdrawing rooms.

Why did more cathedrals not go the way of Llandaff and have a neat modern church built to house the choir, while the unwieldy medieval building was left to

decay as a picturesque setting? One answer of course is that it would have been far too radical a step for conservative-minded clerics in an age whose motto was

'quieta non movere'. The other reason is more to the point and fairer to the deans and chapters.

There was a continuing tradition of care for the fabric from before the Reform- ation, even where like Ely there were no estates or endowments set apart for the fabric fund. It is difficult to determine in detail what was done before the Civil War, since the accounts, where they survive, are not informative, but certainly at the Restoration all the cathedrals needed and received much money spent on them, whether in rebuilding the nave aisles as at Ely or Rochester or in even more radical work at the extensively damaged Lichfield. While it seems to be true that the large capital sums spent from about i670 onwards usually relate to the choir and only routine maintenance was carried out on the less important parts of the fabric, the reaction was prompt when disaster occurred. The north-west corner of the north transept of Ely, which collapsed in 1699, was rebuilt with admirable care. The dean and chapter of Westminster Abbey in the last years of the seventeenth century successfully petitioned for its repair to be financed from the funds raised for St Paul's and, later, for the Fifty New Churches: the comprehensive programme took almost half a century to complete. The list in Bentham's Ely of all the cathedrals restored in his time confirms the impression of a quickening of the pace in restoration work. York, Lincoln, Peterborough, Ely, Norwich, Chichester and Salisbury are all mentioned as having been restored in 'the last 30 or 40 years', i.e. c. 1720 onwards.3

The main problem which beset the church authorities was, as always, money. Some cathedrals, like Hereford or Lincoln, had an endowed fabric fund, but it could never cover more than routine maintenance. Raising a brief was one solution, more commonly employed for parish churches, but the expenses of collection could eat up two-thirds of the proceeds. A general subscription could be tried, as at Lincoln in 1726, although that method too was uncertain of profitable results.

The most effective answer was found to be a 'self-denying ordinance', whereby I3



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY I8: 1975

the dean and chapter gave a certain proportion of their income either from rents or from the fines due when leases fell in. At Lincoln it was one-tenth. Peterborough, poor as it was, put aside ?700oo a year in the 1720s. Between 1731 and 1737 more than ?4000 was spent on Westminster Abbey and the other buildings of the

precinct, three times the income from burial fees &c. over the same period. The

bishops usually adopted a positive role, sometimes even initiating a restoration

programme. Bishop Thomas of Lincoln had prompted the 'self-denying ordinance'

by offering one-tenth of his income from fines, provided this example was followed

by the dean and chapter: his predecessor Bishop Reynolds had given not only a donation but also stone from the ruined bishop's palace towards Gibbs's western screen wall. Bishop Mawson similarly offered ?Iooo towards the removal and

refurbishing of the choir at Ely, provided the sum was matched by the dean and

chapter. He also promised to pay for a new pavement in the choir and for stained

glass in the great east window.4 James Essex was thus not attempting anything unique when he undertook

cathedral restoration. The importance of his work lies in its scale and its care for

authenticity, not in its rarity. Moreover, we can for once have some idea of what were his general ideas about medieval architecture, since many of the notes he took on tours or for surveys have been preserved. Even more valuable are the drafts for his projected history of Gothic architecture, where he attempted chron-

ologies and characterizations of the various medieval styles with a wealth of detailed technical observation.5 Contemporaries certainly put a high value on these notes: Tyson wrote to Gough not long before Essex's death, 'I cry when I think that Essex's materials must be lost to the world in a few years ... Can't you beg, borrow or steal them?'6

The two cathedrals Essex worked on extensively were Ely and Lincoln. He started at Ely in 1757 and at Lincoln in 1761 and continued as surveyor of the works (de facto, even if the title was not spelled out formally) until his death in

1784. It is probable that he did some work at Peterborough cathedral; the city he visited frequently. As to Canterbury, W. M. Fawcett in the detailed introduction to his edition of Essex's Journal of a Tour through Part of Flanders and France7 said he could find no evidence of a survey of the cathedral. Essex's letter of 1760 to the local antiquary William Gostling describing a recent visit and the analysis he had then made of the building shows he was there only as a tourist.8 However, William Cole told Walpole in 1776 that Essex had called at Canterbury, on the

way back from his annual trip to Margate, as the chapter wanted a draft for a new roof.9 So far there seems no evidence that any work was actually executed there to Essex's design.

Of course his restoration work was not confined to cathedrals. At Cambridge he was concerned with King's College Chapel and Great St Mary's and did at least a paper restoration of the Round Church.1o In 1772 he was summoned as far as Winchester to deal with the fifteenth-century tower on the south side of the college chapel.11 Clearly it was not only Horace Walpole who appreciated his talents in Gothic architecture.

Essex probably obtained his commission at Ely through James Bentham, 14



COCKE: JAMES ESSEX, CATHEDRAL

RESTORER

historian and later canon of that church. His first survey, of 1757, shows that at

thirty-five he still lacked some of the proper feeling for medieval architecture.12 He noted that the Galilee porch and the south-west transept (St Catherine's chapel) were so ruinous that they were not worth preserving. The latter in particular had 'much useless work on it' - a distaste for superfluous ornament typical of the man and of the century. Although he commented on the structural problems caused

by the addition of the Gothic octagonal top to the Romanesque west tower, he did not advocate, as could be done in 1846, its removal for the sake of stylistic unity.13 Essex's major concern was with the roofs, particularly over the north aisle of the nave and at the east end, an emphasis typical of the eighteenth-century surveyors' reports, where a sound roof was far more important than a few pinnacles.

Essex's work at Ely began in 1757 and lasted five years. It involved major structural repairs to the east end. He found that the roof timbers had forced the wall 2ft out of true, so he had to rebuild the roof and screw the wall back to the

perpendicular. Presumably he adopted the method used on the Beverley north

transept almost forty years earlier - cradling the wall in a giant frame while it was cut at the bottom and slowly screwed back. At Beverley two prints were made of the operation, but, unfortunately, at Ely no pictorial record seems to have been taken and detailed information is disappointingly scarce. He was also obliged to rebuild the octagon and lantern extensively. Although he did not reproduce all the finials and tracery on the grounds of expense and again, presumably, superfluity, his work harmonized well enough with the rest of the church and did not lack a certain charm of its own (Figs9a& b).

It was, however, the removal of the choir from under the octagon to the extreme east end which earned Essex the greatest praise at the time and obloquy later. The enthusiasm for the project shown by the bishop and chapter, including the anti-

quary Bentham, suggests that it was not Essex's idea originally, although in a letter of 1759 he was almost aggressive in advocating it.14 Although the scheme was clearly planned by 1759, it was not formally decided upon until 1768 and not executed until 1770, probably for lack of funds (Figs oa&b). The move had obvious practical advantages. In the crossing most of the sound and undoubtedly all the warmth went up into the octagon. The centre of the church was cluttered

up, while the whole eastern part was wasted space. The only contemporary criti- cism so far traced is that 'by an eminent Architect' (unfortunately unidentified) which Essex indignantly countered in his 1759 letter with, firstly, the sound archaeological argument that the choir's position was merely a survival from the first, shorter Norman church and, secondly, the modern analogy with St Paul's where a choir in the crossing would be neither beautiful nor practical.

The destruction involved, mercifully not too great, must remain the responsi- bility of the dean and chapter. The most serious loss was the twelfth-century stone pulpitum, which formed a picturesque and historically interesting but extremely inconvenient wall across the nave. At least Essex recorded its general appearance, made drawings of some of its details and incorporated some fragments in his own screen15 (Figs iia&b). Bentham completely ignored this particular antiquity, as he welcomed the 'tidying-up' of the medieval monuments. 15



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 18: 1975

The new choir was an acceptable if unevocative structure which incorporated the medieval stalls and used their style as the model for the rest of the woodwork

(Fig. I2a). The only controversial item was the placing of the organ. Essex did not wish to spoil the new vista opened up right through the church with an organ on the gallery, neither did he consider that there was room for one in the triforium. He preferred to place it at the east end behind the altar on the model of the chapel at Versailles as an 'Elegant Termination'.16 This original idea not surprisingly sparked off a dispute into which even Horace Walpole was drawn.

At Ely the only records we have of Essex's work are a few prints and drawings, since everything he did was swept away by George Gilbert Scott. We should therefore leave Ely with the testimony of William Cole - no blind lover of modern

'improvements' - that the cathedral 'by Mr. Essex's skill is now made one of the

noblest, grandest and finest things of the sort in England. It is in short like no one cathedral besides.'17

At Lincoln Essex's work was even more extensive. Not only was the cathedral

yet larger, but it was also richer. Luckily, too, Essex found two most able coadjutors in William Lumby, the carpenter who rose to be clerk of the works, and James Pink, the nonconformist mason, who worked for decades on the most intricately carved and Catholic parts of the cathedral.

A survey of the cathedral (not signed, alas)18 had been drawn up in 1755 in connection with the 'self-denying ordinance' of that year by the bishop and dean and chapter, giving one-tenth of their fines to the rebuilding fund. The survey gave the cost of repairs as ?12,oo000 and that of 'beautifying' (i.e. cleaning and

polishing) at ?300ooo, which turned out to be not an inaccurate estimate. In 1761 Essex was called in, presumably as a result of his work on the other side of the Fens. His report here, as at Ely, dealt chiefly with the roofs and the vaults.19

Fortunately he reckoned that although there was much to be done, e.g. at the west end of the nave, 'few Great buildings are better covered'. He complained that much of the damage had been caused by careless workmen - the roofs over the two south

transepts and over the south aisle had only been repaired ten years before but so

badly that they had to be redone - and by the nefarious habit of propping rafters

directly on the vaults. The chapel of St Mary Magdalene (now called St Hugh's) was cracked from top to toe and should, like the north end of the west transept, be taken down and rebuilt. The west front had lost many small pillars and other

ornaments; more seriously, as in the Ely west tower, the later Gothic work had settled away from the Romanesque, a problem not entirely solved by Gibbs's screen walls of 1726-27 and aggravated by the shaking of the towers by the fierce Lincolnshire winds and by the bells in the north-west tower.

Although his tone throughout was completely neutral and practical, it is clear that he was still not entirely on the side of the angels. He referred without protest to a project to take down the cloisters and, worse, because executed, recommended the reconstruction of the chapter house roof in a domestic three-pitched form like a flat-bottomed bowl instead of the original cone, in order to save timber and lead. This was the negative side of the eighteenth-century concern for utility and economy. 16




Three years later, in 1764, he surveyed the building again and complained that

many of his recommendations had either not been carried out or had been executed

badly.20 Beams were still being rested on the vaults, while too much iron was

being used on the roof timbers. He added the sound practical advice, to be reiter- ated endlessly in the nineteenth century, to keep the damp out by digging away the earth from the base of the walls, putting arches between the buttresses to

prevent it seeping back and inserting air holes. Essex's next major project in the cathedral, the work on the choir, came towards

the end of the decade. Luckily a scheme to move the choir Ely-like into the extreme east end was abandoned, and it was decided to 'recondition' the existing one. In

1768 it was reported that the seventeenth-century wainscoting had been stripped off behind the high altar to reveal how much of the medieval stone altar screen survived.21 Essex was asked 'to see what he can make of it so as by addition to make it more handsome'. Both chapter and architect were anxious that the new

design should be 'agreeable to the stile of the building and in some degree answer- able to the Magnificence of the church'.22 Essex remodelled the outer faces of the return walls of the screen with blind arcading, which he continued on the 'wings' of the reredos; for the central part, he surmounted the altar with a triple gable based on bishop Luda's tomb at Ely (Fig. I2b). The decorated tracery in the back and much of the carving was added by Buckler in 1857, but even the nineteenth

century felt that Essex had succeeded well enough for the reredos to stand 'until one could be sure of getting a better'.23

Essex's other important contribution to the choir was the bishop's throne, erected in 1778. The general form fits very well with the other choir stalls, although Pearson in the late nineteenth century added 'enrichments'. Possibly its success owes much to the quality of the carving by Lumby, whose genuine feeling for Gothic design can be seen in the church he and his father built about this time at

Doddington, not far from Lincoln. From the mid-176os onwards he seems to have acted as clerk of the works, which may account for the generally high standard of detailing. Essex thought very well of him, writing in his 1775 survey of the western screen wall, 'I doubt if there is a man in the County of Lincoln who is so

good a judge of the work that is wanting in the Cathedral'.24 Essex was also fortunate in his other chief craftsman, James Pink the mason.

Pink's most elaborate work was the restoration of the medieval pulpitum. Not

surprisingly, there is no documentary evidence by which to check the extent of his work, but nineteenth-century critics and the evidence of the eye suggest that most of the upper part of the diaper work is his.25 The little figures of bishops inset among the carving also seem eighteenth-century. Canon Binnall has also

pointed out that the trefoils in the spandrels above the aisle portals must date from the same time. The smoothness of the carving and the disposition and form of the motif all make a medieval origin most unlikely.

The early i770s saw two important structural alterations. The northernmost chapel of the transept, then usually called St Mary Magdalene's but now St Hugh's, had been enlarged in the late thirteenth century from its original apsidal form to a rectangular building twice as large, presumably to house St Hugh's relics en 17



ARCHITECTURAL

HISTORY 18: 1975 route for the Angel choir. As Essex had pointed out in his 1761 survey, the newer work had, as so often, settled away from the old and the building was cracked from the crown of the vault to the ground. His economical and aesthetically quite acceptable solution was to demolish the addition and rebuild the east end in imitation of the surviving apses in the transept, using as much as possible of the old materials. The chapter adopted his advice in 177o, although it seems that the work, not untypically, was only carried out after some delay in 1772. It would be hard for even the most acute archaeologist to spot the rebuilding (except when a

dry summer reveals the former foundations of the extension), let alone guess its date.

The same skill was displayed in the other major work of these years, the re-

fashioning of the western screen wall. This had been erected in 1727 to Gibbs's

design one bay east of the west wall, to support the towers from the east. Three vestibules had thus been created, with neat ashlar walls pierced by round-headed Tuscan doors and oculi above. (John James, who had given a second opinion, specifically objected to the clash of styles.26) In March 1775 Essex surveyed the wall to correct both its structural and aesthetic faults. In his report he laudably said: 'In order to correct the disagreeable appearance of this wall, I was desirous of tracing the original state of this part of the church, and if possible restoring it to the state which the builders intended it.'27

Essex's solution was both practical and cheap. He only estimated ?300, includ-

ing the blocking of the cavities by the wall passages. The side bays were left almost untouched. Only the Tuscan imposts of their arches on the nave side were recut with leaf foliage in imitation of the fourteenth-century work behind them in the vestibule: the round arches were left untouched (Fig. I3a). The reconstruction of the central bay was more ambitious. Essex had toyed with the idea of a

soaring arch rising almost to the crown of the vault, but ended up with a sturdier and probably less expensive solution. He made the arch much smaller, rising not even to triforium level, and inserted two blind lancets on either side (Fig. i3b). The detail was copied from the thirteenth-century work of the west end of the nave, including the use of Purbeck shafts. The resulting effect, far from spoiling the prospect, even enhances it.

At the same period Essex managed to prevent a far bolder, not to say foolhardy, project. The dean, James Yorke, like Wren at Westminster Abbey, had the idea of erecting a stone Salisbury-type spire on the central tower. He was inspired probably more by the eighteenth-century liking for completeness, if not symmetry,28 than by any antiquarian desire to replace the great medieval spire which had collapsed in the winter of 1547-48. In a letter of 1774 Essex pointed out that the lack of suitable foundations and the exposed nature of the site ruled out a stone spire. He suggested instead four corner pinnacles with a traceried parapet in between them, at a cost of ?1967, or even ? i8o if he reused the old vanes. As in his project for the screen, he specifically 'made the design as near as I could agreeable to the Ideas of the architect who built the tower'.29 The result as executed, like the western screen, is sufficiently authentic and effective in proportion and detail to conceal its true age from all but the most knowledgeable visitor (Fig. 14a). x8




Finally, what about his work on the exterior of the building, particularly on the west front (Fig. 14a)? It is far harder to determine its extent, let alone dating, than it is for the interior. The general restoration programme begun in 1755 certainly included the repair of the walls, over and above the routine maintenance which had to go on from year to year; but we also know of extensive work in the 1740s, such as the rebuilding of St Hugh's pinnacle on the west front by the then clerk of the works, Sympson, who was a keen antiquary and friend of Browne Willis.30 All such work depended far more on the overseers on the spot than on the recommendations of an outside architect.

Repairs to the west front do not seem to have started until late in Essex's career at Lincoln. His estimate for repairs dates only from 1778, and Lumby's further

report of 1787, after Essex's death, makes it clear that much still remained to be done.31 The 1778 estimate included both detailed instructions such as taking down two triangular battlements and resetting them, and more general ones such as for 'Cog'd or tooth stone work' between the columns, or, slightly sinister, 'making good' the capitals and bases of columns and the heads of the arches. On the upper part of the west faqade, not even the next century could detect any glaring anachronisms, so presumably the repairs and replacements were reasonably tactful.

The situation is of course different in the lower parts. The figure sculpture seems to have been untouched. Essex commented on the twelfth-century reliefs, believing them to come from the previous church on the site, but it was a later hand which

tampered with the 'Expulsion of Adam and Eve' and restored one of the Torments

panels so ludicrously. However he did interfere drastically with the three great portals (the two giant niches at the end having long been blocked up). Buckler, the architect in charge of the much more thorough restorations of the mid-nineteenth century, claimed that Essex had put plain pillars in place of the elaborately carved ones, had reworked fragments of old work into a new pastiche, had insensitively ashlared the lower parts of the pier between and replaced carving in the beakhead and the moulded bases.32

Firstly it must be said that Essex may well have been dead before much of this work was done. Three years after his death Lumby reported that several columns were still wanting in the 'entrances' and elsewhere. The general programme of renewal was not finished until 1817. However, the process Buckler described would be quite in keeping with Essex's aesthetic of restoration. He felt that, 'there being generally a superfluity of ornament in Gothic architecture it will be often found that where [?] one is defaced another may be taken away to preserve the symmetry without spoiling the appearance of the work'.33 This stray note among his Lincoln papers probably refers to the screens in the east transept whose removal he had recommended in the 1761 survey, but it could very well apply to the columns of the west porches. Where Essex found a pair surviving, or enough to reconstruct a pair, he would restore the old work. If he did not, he preferred to discard the carved originals and insert plain ones.

As to the much discussed column figures which Essex discerned on the central porch, one can but say that there is no other record of their existence. The 1791 article by Lumby in Vetusta Monumenta illustrating his plates of the cathedral 19



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY I8: 1975

expressly says: 'The supposition of statues being placed each side of the great door, as Mr. Essex thought, is inconceivable.'34 The unconvincing appearance of the column figures depicted by Essex need not, though, form an objection. His drawing of the Rochester column figures makes them seem equally unauthentic. The precision of his drawings of beakhead or billet mouldings deserted him when he had to cope with the human figure.

Essex's last work for the dean and chapter was the repaving of the nave - no minor work, for the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries took what might seem to us an inordinate interest in paving. Writers commented much more frequently on the new black and white marble floors than on the architectural detail after any refashioning of the church. Essex showed no antiquarian zeal for preserving the tombs, although he preferred to use the old gravestones on the grounds of expense. Even intelligent contemporaries such as Dean Yorke's wife felt that while the old pavement had ruined the cathedral's 'exquisite beauty', the new one 'completed its elegance'.35 So pleased were the dean and chapter that in 1784, the year of Essex's death, they voted him a silver salver 'in token of their respect for his Abilities and in acknowledgement of his assistance, which he so readily lent, in settling the mode of the new Pavement and other repairs of the Cathedral Church of Lincoln'. It is tempting, though unfair, to see the emphasis on the pavement as reflecting the dean and chapter's order of priorities, and indeed their level of appreciation of Essex's achievements at Lincoln.

To sum up, can we detect any guiding principles in Essex's restorations? Or did he merely work pragmatically from one problem to another?

It is clear that he had no Puginian view of Gothic as the only style of truth and beauty. We have noted earlier his distaste for the 'superfluity of Gothic ornament'. Moreover, quite apart from the fact that his own original works are nearly all classical, he specifically denied in his draft treatise that everything built in the past was good architecture 'any more than in the present age'.36 It was no sin against the Holy Ghost to alter or remove a medieval feature for good reasons, since medieval builders were not endowed with infallible skill or infallible taste. What set Essex apart from his contemporaries in his appreciation of Gothic was his understanding of the construction of medieval buildings. We have seen how, when faced with the problems of the central tower and the western screen, he tried to think himself into the mind of the original builder. The chapters in his draft treatise on vaults, windows, buttresses &c. prove his sympathetic attention to technical details.

Possibly he was in one respect more Puginian than has hitherto been suspected. In the notes he made on a tour through part of Flanders and France in August 1773 (his only recorded trip abroad) he was clearly fascinated by Roman Catho- licism, by its religious orders, its elaborate ceremonies and its gorgeous altars. His fellow traveller Tyson even wrote to Richard Gough on their return that 'Essex and myself returned home delighted with Popery and Popish churches'.37 Could this be a foreshadowing of the fateful nineteenth-century identification of medieval forms of architecture with medieval forms of religion ?38

Surprisingly it was Essex's successor at Lincoln, Buckler, who gave one of the 20




shrewdest if not the most charitable summaries of Essex's attitude to restoration: 'He went straight to his work with intelligence and singleness of mind and purpose. He made no discoveries of defects or deficiencies of costly character before unheard

of, but bent the energies of his eminently practical mind to the task. He...

thought only of the work he had in hand, and never ran wild among the profuse gatherings of architectural splendour in any cathedral. His taste and his parsimony were nearly equally matched.'39

NOTES

I C. Wren, Parentalia (1750, reprint Farnborough 1965), p.274. 2 In a letter to Mann of 16 July 1755, H. Walpole (ed. W. S. Lewis), Correspon- dence, xx (I960), p.485- 3 J. Bentham, History and Antiquities of the Conventual and Cathedral Church of Ely .. .from 673-1771 (1771), p.43, n. i. One should set against this Gray's advice to Bentham that he should qualify his praise with 'a little reflection on the rage of

repairing, beautifying, whitewashing, painting and gilding and (above all) the mixture of Greek (or Roman) ornaments in Gothic edifices. This well-meant fury has been and will be little less fatal.., .than the reformation and the civil wars'.

Correspondence (ed. P. Toynbee & L. Whibley), ii (1935), p. 862.

4 Unfortunately the bishop's death, his executors' pusillanimity and Pearson the

glazier's indolence prevented the completion of the window.

5 BM Add. MSS6762,6765. 6 J. Essex (ed. W. M. Fawcett), Journal of a Tour through Part of Flanders and France in August 1773 (i888), Introduction p. xxxii.

7 Ibid., p.xxiii. 8 BM Add. MS5842, p.352. 9 H. Walpole (ed. W. S. Lewis), Correspondence, ii (1937), p.26. Io Archaeologia, vi (paper delivered in 1781), p. 163. i i Miss Corinne Wilson tells me that Essex also made a survey of Winchester Cathedral at the same time, preserved in a volume 'Surveyors Reports 1775-1816' in the cathedral library. 12 BM Add. MS6769. 13 Anon., Ely Cathedral as it is and as it was - a brief history and description (1846), p.9- 14 BM Add. MS5842, p.350. 15 A collection of the surviving evidence can be found in W. St John Hope, 'Quire Screens in English Churches', Archaeologia, lxviii (1917), pl. ix, pp. 85-87. i6 D. Stewart, 'James Essex', Architectural Review, cviii (1950), p.318. 17 H. Walpole (ed. W. S. Lewis), Correspondence, i (i937), p.214. 18 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/I3. 19 BM Add. MS6761, pp.72 et seq. 20 B M Add. MS 6772, ff- 271 et seq. 21 BM Add. MS6772, f.282r 22 B M Add. MS 6772, f.282v. 21



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 18: 1975

23 Precentor Venables, 'Architectural History of Lincoln Cathedral', Archaeo- logical Journal, xl (1883), p.413, n.2.

24 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/I3- 25 Venables, op. cit., p.414, n. i. 26 PRO, State Papers Domestic 35, Vol.63, No.51. 27 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/I3- 28 The west towers still had their wooden and lead spires whose attempted removal, on Gibbs's advice, in 1727 had provoked riots.

29 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/I3- 30 Lincolnshire Notes ' Queries,

ix (1907), PP-72-73, 83. 31 Lincoln Cathedral Archives A/4/I3. 32 J. C. Buckler, Description and Defence of Restorations on the Exterior of Lincoln Cathedral (1866), p. 83. 33 BM Add. MS6772, f.267. 34 Vetusta Monumenta (1781), P.4 of notes to plsX&XI. 35 Bedford Record Office L/30/9. 36 BM Add. MS6762, f. I6v. 37 J. Nichols, Literary Anecdotes of the Eighteenth Century (1814), viii, p.607. 38 Essex's notes show that England was, to say the least, no worse than the Continent in the care of medieval buildings. The cathedral at Antwerp had windows blocked or missing their tracery, while at Courtrai they were still (1773) using marble and stucco to hide the Gothic church behind a classical guise. 39 Buckler, op. cit., pp.258-259.

22



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Fig. 12b James Essex: Lincoln cathedral, reredos to high altar, c. 1768



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Fig. i3a Lincoln cathedral: doorway in west screen wall ofnorth nave aisle from the east; by James Gibbs, 1727, modified by James Essex, 1775

Aff Fig. 13b Lincoln cathedral: nave, west screen wall by James Essex, 1775



Fig. I4a J. Buckler: Lincoln cathedral, exterior from the south-west, c. 1820

Fig. I4b Champ de Mars, Paris: preparations for the Federation



james essex, cathedral restorer

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