THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECTS JOURNAL. 



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market it most assuredly does not amouat to that of " transcript" or copy, 

 ZZ, ,;. ,o that of an " indifferent" one, since the " Hayn.ar.a w.^ 

 it. common.place straddling portico stuck up before a parcel of ordinary 

 doors and windows, is in barbarously vile and vulgar taste. The drawing 

 ^e are speaking of is not treated very happily as to colour, and we thmK 

 it roust be exceedingly incorrect in one respect, for according to the >..ze o 

 the figures, the columns must be forty feet or more in height, which is no 

 very likely, the portico not being the centre height of the edilice. In all 

 drawings of the kind, the only use of dgures is to serve as a scale, there- 

 fore, unless they are strictly according to scale, they are neither more uor 

 less than falsifications— sometimes even ludicrous ones, as, for instance, in 

 the view of Sir R. Peel's new Picture Gallery, last year, where the figures 

 in the room were only half the size of those representing the portraits on 

 the walls ; therefore, either the former were dwarfs, or the latter were co- 



1oSS3.1 



Critics differ ; and it is, perhaps, but right that they should do so, since 

 one opinion frequently helps to correct another, and where with dissent on 

 some points there happens also to be conformity on some one other, the 

 judgment passed in regard to the latter becomes tolerably well confirmed. 

 Differ we do from the critic-one apparently very eager to get through his 

 task with all possible dispatch-who, besides detecting in the preceding 

 .ubiect an unlucky resemblance to the Haymarket Theatre, regards with 

 complacency such a production as No. 1174, « one of the designs submit- 

 ted to the grand jury of the county of Clare for the Ennis Courts, as 

 possessing claims on the score of originality of treatment. If not remark- 

 ably original, the treatment may be allowed to be unusual, jet hardly ap- 

 propriate ; neither the particular species of " Italian" adopted, nor the 

 irregularity of the composition, befitting a public building in a town, es- 

 pecillly one that ought to command attention by an expression of sober 

 dignity, without playing at the picturesque. Let us hope that the design 

 actually chosen is some degrees better than this " submitted" one. The 

 two subjects just mentioned are almost the only designs this year for what 

 can be called public buildings— that is, secular ones, and in other style 

 than Gothic. We have, indeed, in No. 1214, what rather innocently calls 

 itself a " Gothic design" for a town-hall and public assembly-room in the 

 West of England, but as to its exact " whereabouts" we are left in most 

 comfortable uncertainty, since it would be anything but comfort to be 

 assured that there was any likelihood of so preposterous an affair being 

 perpetrated anywhere. In this scarcity of designs for public buildings— 

 except those which are evidently merely visionary ones-we may refer to 

 No. 1217,—" The Lord Warden's hotel, &c., now erecting at Dover," (J. 

 Beazley)-a3 a ?uasi-pubUc structure, and what will certainly be a suffi- 

 ciently conspicuous one-more so than it merits to be by the taste dis- 

 played in it. The main idea must, however, be a very favourite one with 

 Mr. B., it being a repetition of what he showed us last year in what was 

 then called a design for the Carltoa Club House. What may be the dif- 

 ferences between the two designs we are unable to say, but the principal 

 portion is the same in both, and consists of a large Corinthian order above 

 the ground floor, in coupled columns, with arches springing from their en- 

 tablatures. (See our last Vol., p. 214.) It might have been thought that 

 revision of the first design would have led to the adoption, for an arcade of 

 the kind, to the more compact and legitimate combination of arches spring- 

 ing immediately from the capital of single columns.* The display affected 

 by this columnar-arcade is, besides, far too pretensions for the building 

 itnelf, which is so decidedly— don't print it " deucedly"— poor and unstu- 

 died in style, that the ostentatious decoration affected for it strikes as vul- 

 gar, tawdry, in buutiquier taste. When will architects learn to give more 

 attention to what Cockerell calls "eurytliym of quantities," ar.a to con- 

 si, tency of expression, be it that of richness or plainness, or of any inter- 

 mediate degree between the one and the other ? 



What could induce either Hopper or Railton to thrust forward into notice 

 this year, their respective designs for the Nelson Monument, (No's. 1171 

 and 1»13) we cannot imagine. Hardly can it have been any particular 

 admiration which the former obtained at the time of the competition, that 

 encouraged its author to bring it into notice again ; yet, whether the draw- 

 ing itself attracts notice or not, he has taken care that the subject shall 

 not be overlooked in the catalogue, where it is spoken of more lengthily 



* Tht church at Sacrow. ghowa ia Our preteot aumber, «empllfl«8 luch eompoucd 

 ^plicatioa of eoluma and axcti. 



than intelligibly, it being impossible to make out how the little Ua-^arde, 

 esoue temple which constitutes the design, can possibly form part of a 

 group of buildings for picture-galleries and exhibition-rooms. By singu- 

 L coincidence, Kailton's " Nelson Colun,n"-too well known to require 

 any remark, from us here-makes a gallant show in the catalogue but n 

 absolutely a nonentity in the Exhibition in comparison with his Beau 

 Manor Park," last season, of which mansion we should very thankful y 

 have received an additional view this year. As to his " R.seholme Hall, 

 adapted and enlarged for the Bishop of Lincoln" (No. 1194), it possesses 

 no -reat architectural interest, though it certainly looks like a very envi- 

 able residence, and shows that bishops have no disrelish for the comfort, 

 and luxuries of this worid. No. 1306, " The garden-front of Chfton Hall, 

 Notts" (L. N.Cottingham), did not impress us at all favourably. In 

 fact while as to composition it isalmost a nullity,-tbe house being a mere 

 lumpish mass,-as to the style affected for it, it shows the worst exlrem. 

 of the latest Elizabethan, when our renaissance had become prematurely 

 exhausted and worn out, and had fallen into all the forced conceits and 

 drivelling of blasi imagination. Whatever it has recommended itself by on 

 this occasion, it can hardly be by its economy, since its criukum-crankum 

 ugliness must be of a rather expensive kind. Neither is it any advantage 

 to this garden front that instead of being raised upon a terrace, it has a 

 terrace rising up immediately before it. However, the painter has done 

 all lie could to command admiration by a bravely showy display of flower* 

 and peacocks.— Infinitely more to our taste is No. 1326, " Laraboaro 

 Place, Berks, the seat of H.Hippesley, Esq., (F. L. Donaldson). If cot 

 very striking, this subject is a very agreeable and satisfactory one, both 

 for its execution as a pictorial drawing, and for its unaffected yet suffi- 

 ciently marked character as a design in the more sober style of the Eliza- 

 bethan Tudor period. To say the truth, the'style of house is rather that 

 of a former period than of what any one might be likely to build at the 

 present day, there being more of ancient gentility about it than of modern 

 refinement.— As the immediately preceding No. is by the same archi- 

 tect, (almost the only member of the Institute who exhibits) we will speak 

 of it here although it belongs to a different class of subjects. It is entitled 

 the " Elevation of a design for an Insurance Office, being an attempt to 

 adapt the cinque-cento style to the street architecture of the metropolis :" in- 

 stead of " to adapt," the more suitable expression would have been " to intro- 

 duce," because, as it seems to us, there is very little that indicates adaptatioD 

 of the style to modern town-architecture in general, too much of what bear* 

 an antiquated and exolic look in it, being retained, for instance, in the form 

 of the windows. There might have been more freedom, and less timidity 

 and dryness of treatment ; nor would it have been amiss had the drawing 

 ifelf, which is now merely slightly shaded in India ink, been such as to 

 ensure attention to the subject. Still it must be confessed that its utter 

 want of pictorial attraction of any kind serves to distinguish it rather 

 markedly from the subjects around it. 



To return to mansions— Capernwray Hall, near Lancaster, shown ia 

 Nos. 1263 and 1310 (Sharpe and Paley), is one of the most ambitious, and 

 shows careful attention to detail and individual parts, yet for a modern re- 

 sidence it looks but a gloomy sort of pile, with too much of the castle in iti 

 character. Of mansions or villas in the regular Palladian style there ar« 

 none, but No. 1187, " Allenheads, now erecting on the property of T. J. 

 Beaumont, Esq., in the county of Northumberiand" (E. B. Lamb), is an 

 application of what may be called the rural Italian villa style, that shows 

 very great talent of a peculiar kind-the talent of accomplishing much 

 with exceedingly limited means, for though the structure itself is simple 

 even to plainness, it is rich in picturesque effect, and in well expressed 

 character of an excellent kind, without artifices and affectations.— There 

 are four designs for villas by Mocatta, small and rather showily coloured 

 drawings, so unfavourably placed, however, that we did not give them 

 much attention.— Of suburban villas and mansions similar to the " Ken- 

 sington Garden" ones in last year's exhibition, there are none this season, 

 although one since erected at Kensington would have furnished a subject. 

 With respect to town and street architecture, designs for it are almost in- 

 variably confined to those for public buildings ; we, however, get some- 

 thing so denominated in No. 1275 (W. H. Leeds), a design for a house- 

 front, unusually ornate, though far from being violently showy, still it i» 

 what we must not hope to find the least favour with those ultra-orthodox 

 and rigidly puritanical critics who turn up their noses at the Travellers 

 and Reform Clubhouses, and who look upon Barry as being scarcely a 



