1842.] 



THE CIVIL ENGINEER AND ARCHITECT'S JOURNAL. 



933 



seeing them is concerned, might just as well have been hung withtlieir 

 faces towards the wall, and have had their titles written in large letters 

 on their backs. 



Having mentioned Mr. Barry, we will nowspeakof his two interiors, 

 Nos. 1030 and 1040, the intended Royal Gallery and St. Stephen's 

 Hall, in the New Houses of Parliament, which are admirable as archi- 

 tectural pictures, masterly in execution, carefully made out in detail, 

 without being prim or tame, and freely touched and full of effect, 

 ■without that effect being at all strained or exaggerated. On the other 

 hand, the architecture itself is pictorial and scenic ; rich, but chaste, 

 and consistent in character. Yet it is a question with us whether 

 these drawings will satisfy the expectations of all who look at them 

 for the effect of the proposed mode of decoration with fresco-paint- 

 ing,* the spaces intended to be so filled up being nothing more than 

 a series of moderate-sized compartments, in which oil pictures or 

 pieces of tapestry might be inserted. Except, then, those panels form 

 part of the architectural arrangement, and are provided for painting, 

 there is no pictorial embellishment. 



Nos. 1019 and 1055, two very forcible and clever perspective 

 drawings, sliowing the interior and exterior of the church now 

 erecting at Wilton near Salisbury, by Messrs. Wyatt and Brandon, are 

 sufficiently conspicuous, and are remarkable, not only on account of 

 the unusual style made choice of, but for the equally unusual liberality 

 with which the design seems to be carried out, so very different from 

 that of the "greatest accommodation at the minimum of cost" prin- 

 ciple adopted of late years, and which has covered the country with 

 cheap churches, which it would be complimentary to compare to barns, 

 they being far more unsightly — crammed with pews and galleries, for 

 the purpose of packing a congregation together within the smallest 

 possible compass. In proportion to the space it occupies, the Wilton 

 church affords comparatively very few sittings ; and is, besides, so 

 uniformly decked out, and that in a manner quite contrary to estab- 

 lished regulations, that we cannot for a mo?nent suppose the Church 

 Commissioners or other authorities to have been concerned with it, or 

 that there was any competition, and a programme from a committee 

 on this occasion. Whether the style — which is a mixture of the early 

 Italian or Lombardic with Norman — was suggested hy or suggested 

 to the architects, we know not, but they certainly appear to have had 

 a carle blanche afforded them, and to have been not at all stinted ; 

 ■whereas stinting and stinginess usually manifest themselves most 

 disagreeably in nearly all our recent ecclesiastical structures, for if 

 they make any pretension to architectural design externally, they are 

 chillingly naked and bare within, or vice versa ; else are they equally 

 insipid and mean throughout. There are no indications here of the 

 design having been pared down, and we hope that such operation will 

 not or has not taken place in the building itself. The design, indeed, 

 is not so entirely satisfactory that it would not have borne any addi- 

 tional study; but scarcely ever does it happen that the afterthoughts 

 adopted for a building during its progress are improvements or cor- 

 rections — rather quite the reverse. The omission of those ornamental 

 expletives which, whatever share they may have had in influencing 

 the first choice, are, on maimer comideration, rejected as superfluous 

 redundances, allowed to pass in the drawings, because nothing is 

 easier than to omit them in the building itself. The lofty square 

 campanile at the north-west angle, detached from the church itself, 

 except as connected with it below by a short corridor forming an in- 

 ternal communication between them, is not only a very marked feature 

 — one which gives variety as well as importance to the whole exterior 

 — but being so placed, serves to extend the front very much ; and we, 

 therefore, think its position in the plan better than that of the Streat- 

 ham church campanile, which is attached to the apsis end of the 

 building. The front itself has a good deal of rich and characteristic 

 detail: the decorated porch below, and the large wheel window above, 

 tell well in the design ; but we apprehend that the red tiling — 

 especially that strip of it forming a penthouse covering to the pro- 

 jection of the lower part of the front, within which the entrance or 

 porch is recessed — will produce a rather crude and disagreeable efl'ect 

 in execution, and have a too homely, if not a positively mean and 

 vulgar, look. 



With No. 1038, "The County Assize Courts erecting at Cambridge," 

 by the same architects, we are not so well satisfied. The style is 

 Italian, and the composition a Doric order in pilasters, with seven 

 intercolumns or compartments, five of which are filled in with open 

 arches resting upon detached columns of a lesser order. The loggia 



* In regard to fresco-painting, the present exhibition affords no symptoms 

 of our anista preparing for it. On tlie contrary, the lion in it, Maclise's 

 " Scene from Hamic!," indicali's a taste diametrically opposed to fresco, for 

 it is completely in the wax-work style of art— perfect deception, and nothing 

 higher. 



thus formed gives both character and picturesque expression ; still 

 the ensemble is neither particularly happy nor particularly original. 

 It looks too much like a mere architectural reminiscence, without any 

 attempt at individuality, and without much study as to detail. It 

 strikes us, also, that the whole facade is by far too low — at least, such 

 is the idea conveyed by the drawing, which, it must be owned, is not 

 a particularly agreeable one, being exceedingly heavy in its shadows. 



Nos. 1027 and 1050, are drawings of the Moorshedabad Palace. 

 An elevation and plan of the Palace appeared in the Journal for May 

 last. 



No. 1037 shows us Mr. Elmes' building for the Law Courts at 

 Liverpool, from the same point of view as the outline wood-cut draw- 

 ing of it in the last volume of the Companion to Ihe Jllmanac, but with 

 some subsequent alterations in the design, the chief of which is that 

 the southern portico will now be octastyle, diprostyle, instead of hexa- 

 style, monoprostyle. It further appears, from the small plan, that the 

 semicircular projection at the North end — a drawing of which we 

 should like to have seen here — is considerably enlarged. But if so 

 far there is some improvement and amplification, we perceive also 

 that there is now some retrenchment in regard to decoration, for in- 

 stead of the screen between the square pillars in the lateral divisions 

 of the East front, having panels with subjects in bas-relief, there will 

 be no other sculpture there than a single large wreath in each com- 

 partment, and even that may probably be eventually omitted. We 

 regret this change in the design, for we would rather have seen some- 

 thing added in regard to sculpture and embellishment than the con- 

 trary. Of display with columns there is enough, a very unusual and 

 striking degree of it, so much so that something is wanted to produce 

 consistent richness in other respects. Therefore, if instead of adding 

 more columns to the South portico, its pediment had been filled with 

 sculpture, and the reliefs on the other parts abovementioned had been 

 retained, the whole would have been materially better, a much finer 

 piece of architecture, and of very superior quality, whereas now the 

 quality at first promised will, we fear, be greatly abated. However, 

 although it will not be made so much of, as the drawing and descrip- 

 tion in the " Companion " led us to expect, there will, at any rate, be 

 one novel and happy idea in the composition, namely, the square pil- 

 lars with screens between them, which, as may be seen by the present 

 drawing, will produce a piquant eftect, and serve to carry on the order 

 uninterruptedly throughout, at the same time avoiding that wearisome 

 monotony which it is so difficult to avoid or get rid of in Grecian ar- 

 chitecture, without breaking up the composition, or introducing irre- 

 levant features that more or less jar with the colonnaded portions of 

 the design. 



No. 1068 is interesting as a representation of the so-much-talked-of 

 embellishments of the Temple Church, and certainly the vaulting of 

 the roof is splendidly decorated in a mode almost unique in this coun- 

 try; yet rich and tasteful as it is in itself, we do not think it either 

 accords with the style of the edifice, or is particularly appropriate to 

 its character. Its gaiety and luxuriance recommend it rather for a 

 ball or banqueting room tlian for a church, at least not for one which 

 is in other respects almost bare of ornament of any kind. In the 

 building itself the eftect may, perhap?, be different — very much better; 

 if not, the cost so incurred might have been sparetl, and the money 

 more judiciously applied to the im])roving and embellishing the ex- 

 terior of the Gothic building in the Temple, facing the garden, which, 

 if it does not need being repaired, certainly stands in very great need 

 of being reformed. 



The two drawings by Mr. Ferrey marked Nos. lOSl and 1092, are 

 both, we presume, views of the same building, viz. a house erecting 

 for Chas. Porcher, Esq., at Cliff, near Dorchester, although 1092 is 

 merely called a Design — a mistake, probably, in the catalogue, or in 

 the earlier impressions of it — and it is to that side of the building, or 

 its entrance front, that we give the preference, as being more piquant 

 in character than the other, which, owing to their being so many win- 

 dows, all very spacious and nearly uniform in size and design, is some- 

 what too monotonous, and seems to require breadth and repose. Upon 

 the whole, however, it is a very pleasing specimen of the Tudor do- 

 mestic style. 



Of the three drawings sent by Mr. Donaldson, one is so remarkable 

 that we give its title at length from the catalogue; "View of the 

 jirincipal part of an approved design for rebuilding Hallyburton House, 

 Augusshire, N. B., the seat of the late Lord Douglass Gordon Hally- 

 burton, composed in the style of the Florentine palaces and villas, at 

 the express desire of his Lordship." From this explanation it appears 

 that the peculiar style here adopted was entirely of his Lordship's 

 own choosing, and so far the architect is not at all responsible for 

 what we cannot help considering a very unhappy selection, for even 

 what are the merits of the early Florentine palazzo style, discom- 

 mend it almost more than any other for a modern country mansion. 



