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This Side of Heaven

It was one of the more singular Anglican Communion Services we have attended. Amidst dustsheets and below scaffolding, a breeze blowing up the nave from the open door, Canon Mark Gardner resolutely led the congregation of five in worship on the Third Sunday in Lent. Dublin’s oldest Protestant church was mid restoration by the Office of Public Works but that didn’t stop Godly business as usual. John Bunyan’s To Be a Pilgrim never sounded so good. Now reduced to a chapel, the Canon explained afterwards, in medieval times, “St Audeon’s was larger than Christ Church Cathedral next door in medieval times.”

A wedge of land set back one block to the south of the River Liffey contains St Audeon’s Church of Ireland Church and St Audeon’s Catholic Church. Remnants of Dublin City Walls stand to the rear of the churches; the Catholic Presbytery to the front. A millennium of built heritage on a site measuring 180 metres at its widest. A thankfully small carpark outside the Catholic church portico, a park and herb garden fill the remainder of the land.

St Audeon’s Catholic Church is the supermodel of buildings: looks good from any angle. Paris has Louis-Hippolyte Lebas’ Notre Dame de Lorette (beautifully newly restored in that French manner somehow retaining the patina) of 1823 to 1836. Decades later comes George Ashlin’s equally photogenic architecture. Masterful reworkings of the classical temple front. Both are Corinthian tetrastyle.

Behind the south facing façade of the Catholic church the gradient slopes steeply downwards away from busy High Street to quiet Cook Street and with every metre drop, the architecture emerges from its Classical carapace to reveal a forerunner to Brutalist minimalism. In contrast to the decorated entrance front, the plain sides and rear are mainly windowless except for the clerestory. Only a granite string course relieves the vast expanses of limestone resembling impenetrable cliff faces. The permanence of the architecture is tempered by a temporary looking timber gallery perilously protruding over St Audeon’s Terrace to the east.

Patrick Byrne (circa 1782 to 1864) who was an architect for the Wide Streets Commissioners of Dublin designed the cruciform plan block of the Catholic church in 1841. Cast iron columns support the ground floor to reduce the weight of masonry on this sloping site. The portico was added at the end of the 19th century by George Ashlin (1837 to 1921), a pupil of Edward Welby Pugin (1834 to 1875). George entered professional partnerships with the architectural dynasty and even married Mary Pugin (1844 to 1933), the daughter of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852). During his long career he designed around 60 churches.

It’s now the Polish Catholic Church of Dublin. We went to Mass one Saturday evening last winter. The very fine neoclassical interior with its wealth of design, craftmanship and materials is distracting. Behind that blank exterior are plastered walls decorated with ground floor blind arches and first floor niches separated by double height Corinthian pilasters. Below the clerestory lunettes is a heavy dentilled entablature. The powerful interior architecture continues overhead. A coffered barrel vaulted ceiling covers the nave. A vast ceiling rosette radiates over the crossing in front of the marbled based reredos which has paired polished granite Ionic columns supporting a pediment.

The square plan presbytery – three bays wide by three bays deep by three storeys high – was also designed by Patrick Byrne and was built after the other two buildings (although predating the portico) while granite detailing visually links it to the Catholic church. Roundheaded ground floor windows, flat headed first floor windows and segmental headed top floor windows give a wonderful sense of order.

The Protestant church is included in Dublin A Grand Tour illustrated by Jacqueline O’Brien and written by Desmond Guinness (1994), “The importance of St Audeon’s is attested to by the successive efforts over the years to ensure its survival. The Office of Public Works is at present engaged in routine restoration work, pointing the stonework in the ruined part which is now in their care. With the building of apartments in the vicinity the congregation is on the increase again.” Not so much of late.

“St Audeon’s is the only surviving medieval church in Dublin as well as being the city’s oldest parish church in continuous use. It was built within the City Walls, probably by the men of Bristol who had been granted the City of Dublin by Henry II in 1172. It replaced an earlier church on the site said to have been dedicated to St Columba. St Audeon, who died in 686 AD, was Bishop of Rouen and is the patron saint of that city. In northern France there are many churches dedicated to him, besides a chapel in Canterbury Cathedral, and, significantly, a church in Bristol.”

“The nave dates from 1190 and is the only part of the church that is still roofed. As the population of Dublin grew, a chancel was added to the east in 1300, with a sanctuary beyond. Beside the nave and parallel to it is the Guild Chapel of St Anne, added in 1431. In 1455 the Portlester Chapel was added to the south side of the chancel and named after Sir Roland FitzEustace, Lord Portlester, Chancellor and Treasurer of Ireland. The tower dates from the 17th century.” A sign attached to the ground floor exterior claims the tower is 15th century and the porch doorway is late 12th century. The gloriously talented Jacqueline O’Brien (1927 to 2016) once gave us some photography tips in a letter, long lost.

The Hearth Rolls of the 1660s prove St Audeon’s Parish was a fashionable area. St Audeon’s was the church of the Lord Mayor and Corporation of Dublin. However by the 18th century the area started to decline and depopulate. Henrietta Street to the north of the Liffey and St Stephen’s Green and Merrion Square to the southeast would become the more desirable addresses. In 1773 the Portlester Chapel, south aisle of the nave and the chancel were unroofed followed by St Anne’s Chapel in 1820. Six years later the tower was remodelled by Henry Aaron Baker and in 1848 the remaining church was restored by the Ecclesiastical Commissioners for Ireland. A visitors’ centre was carved out of the reroofed St Anne’s Chapel in 1999.

The urban island of St Audeon’s must hold the most ecumenical architecture in Ireland: a Protestant church and a Catholic church sharing a saint and a party wall.

St Augustine’s Grange + St Edward’s Presbytery Ramsgate Kent

All Saints

It’s the 172nd anniversary of the death of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, an important day to arrive at St Augustine’s Grange, Ramsgate, where he died on 14 September 1852. Despite his considerable contribution to architecture, he was only 40. But there is nothing morbid about our sun soaked visit to the Gothic Revivalist’s home and adjoining property, St Edward’s Presbytery, high above the shoreline of east Kent. This Grade I Listed enclave has been pristinely preserved and rationally revived as holiday accommodation by The Landmark Trust, that keeper of follies and other quirks of built heritage.

The interrelationship of the two houses set in the wider context of St Augustine’s Church next door (by Augustus) and St Augustine’s Monastery opposite (by Augustus’ eldest son Edward) is best experienced from the viewing platform of the tower (which houses water tanks and WCs) of The Grange. It’s a complex and clever Gothic jigsaw. Glorious built form, glorious urban scenery. Excitement of architecture is matched by thrill of geography: a sweep of coastline takes in Sandwich Bay and a distant Deal.

In his Introduction (2003) to The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture and An Apology for The Revival of Christian Architecture (1841 and 1843) Dr Roderick O’Donnell writes, “Pugin was to be at his most influential in reforming the practice of the Gothic Revival and domestic architecture of what, in another context, he called the ‘middle class’ home, and his revolutionary influence on its construction, planning and decoration was first demonstrated in his own house, St Augustine’s Grange, Ramsgate (1843). Pugin thus stands at the wellspring of 19th century architectural and design reform, which was to be reflected in the institution that would become the Victoria and Albert Museum, the publications of Ruskin, and the architecture and decorative programme of William Morris … the paternity of the 20th century Modern Movement can be tracked back to Pugin and to True Principles.”

To the early 21st century eye The Grange and The Presbytery may appear to be simply high quality Victorian architecture, but to the mid 19th century eye the elevational subservience to the plan would have appeared as a radical reversal of the neoclassical norm. A striking honesty is at work: no blind windows or screen walls; instead a proliferation of asymmetric window arrangements and visible buttresses. Augustus’ work is the antithesis of the contemporaneous symmetrical Italianate pair of villas closer to Ramsgate Royal Harbour called Vale and likely built by the developer William Saxby.

The Grange, a family house, looks across to the English Channel over the West Cliffs. The Presbytery, a secular priest’s house which came seven years later, is tucked between The Grange and St Augustine’s Road. Both were designed by Augustus; both have light filled additions by Edward. The porch of The Grange and the first floor studio of The Presbytery, each glazed above dado height, are second generation Pugin.

There is weight to the choice of materials: the unknapped flint of The Presbytery symbolically straddles the secular and religious: St Augustine’s Church is built of knapped flint and Whitby stone; The Grange, of London stock brick with Caen stone dressings. Dr Anna Keay, Director of The Landmark Trust, sums up the two properties as “Gothic heaven and available to all of us to book for a stay”. Upon entering through Edward’s gates to be greeted by a pair of heraldic stone lions on top of the gateposts, we’re enjoying Augustus’ oft quoted “delight of the sea with Catholic architecture and a library”.

The internal layout of The Grange was just as quietly groundbreaking as the exterior. A practical arrangement of main rooms clustered around a central staircase hall without any servants’ corridors would prove to be the forerunner of later Victorian suburban housing. Subsequent architects like Sir Edwin Lutyens would be inspired by Augustus’ thoughtful design such as the positioning of windows based on capturing the optimal light and framing the best views.

The family chapel, reception rooms and bedrooms are richly decorated with a wealth of pattern and colour provided by stained glass windows, wallpaper and encaustic tiles. In contrast, the uncontrived simplicity and solidity of the kitchen dresser would herald the honesty of workmanship of the Arts and Crafts movement led by among others Philip Webb and Charles Voysey. Augustus believed features should be decorated but must be functional. According to Stephen Coote in William Morris His Life and Work (1995), “Pugin declared, ‘Ornament should be no more than enrichment of the essential composition.’” This dedication to functionality as a starting point would sew the seeds of Modernism in the following century.

Dr Roderick O’Donnell wrote the entry for Edward Welby Pugin in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004): “Edward Welby Pugin (1834 to 1875), architect, was born on 11 March 1834 at Ramsgate, the eldest son of Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852) and his second wife, Louisa Burton (circa 1813 to 1844). He was trained by his father and at the age of 18 found himself in charge of his father’s practice, which he developed with many pupils and various partnerships, most importantly with his brother-in-law George Coppiner Ashlin in Ireland (1859 to 1869) and his brother Peter Paul Pugin (1851 to 1904) … Edward Pugin’s practice was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic. He worked initially in his father’s preferred Decorated Gothic style … From 1856 his style became more elaborate but his church plans simpler by widening the span of the arcades, diminishing chancel arches, and abolishing rood screens, so as to achieve simple sightlines set in shallow apses.”

Edward died unmarried in the arms of his brother Cuthbert Welby Pugin at his home on Victoria Street, Westminster. He was more outgoing than his father, frequenting Turkish baths and attending charitable functions. Roderick argues he was less important an architect than his father yet notes his style and plans became normative for Roman Catholic churches in the British Isles in the latter half of the 19th century. We reckon Edward’s surviving additions provide another layer of interest to The Grange and The Presbytery. The family firm continued as Pugin and Pugin.

Surrendering to the familial draw of Ramsgate, Cuthbert retired to The Grange where he died unmarried on 25 March 1928, outliving the combined age of his father and older brother by five years. The Landmark Trust decisively removed most of Edward’s additions to The Grange including a drawing room extension, conservatory and several chimneypieces. Cuthbert’s 1880s alterations to The Presbytery were also demolished. We depart Ramsgate with a newfound understanding and appreciation of Pugin the Elder and Pugins the Younger.

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