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Originals or apprentice copies? — a postscript

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 April 2016

Paul Jeffery
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Extract

In an earlier paper a group of four drawings by an unknown draughtsman of steeple designs by Nicholas Hawksmoor were identified as for the church of All Saints, Oxford and dated to about the year 1700. There is no reason to doubt this identification; the drawings are clearly related and one of them shows the west end of All Saints as built. However, certain features of the designs give an uncomfortable feeling that there is more to the story than this identification provides. All the drawings in the portfolio containing these four seem to date from about 1700. If this small group was produced solely for All Saints, it represents a great deal of work completed in a very short time, soon after March 1700 when the spire of the existing church collapsed. The base of the tower — 30 feet square — is unusually large for a parish church. Few even of the London City churches had towers on such a base, aside from, notably, St Mary-le-Bow and St Bride, Fleet Street. One of the four designs shows a combined tower and steeple rising to a height of about 250 feet. This too would have been unusual, exceeding that of all the City churches, although St Mary-le-Bow and St Bride, Fleet Street come close.

Type
Research Article
Information
Architectural History , Volume 36 , 1993 , pp. 46 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 1993

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References

Notes

1 Jeffery, Paul, Architectural History, 35 (1992), 118–39, pp. 131-32 (Figs 9-12)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Possibly Edward Strong, jun.: see text note 1.

3 The heights are given as 225ft (St Mary-le-Bow) and 234 ft (St Bride, Fleet Street) in Wren Society X (1933), pp. 12-13.

4 The City churches rebuilt after the Great Fire of 1666, commonly known as the Wren churches, were the responsibility of a Commission appointed under a rebuilding Act of 1670 (22 Charles II, c. 11), renewed in 1685 and again in 1697. The so-called Queen Anne churches were built by a separate Commission appointed under the Act of 1711 (9 Anne, c. 17). The rebuilding of St Michael’s tower was started by the 1670 Act Commissioners but when the funding was exhausted, work stopped. It was completed by the 1711 Act Commissioners.

5 Norman, Philip, Trans. St Paul’s Ecclesiol. Society, 8 (1917), p. 3 Google Scholar.

6 Guildhall Library, St Michael vestry minutes, MS 4072/1, pt. 2, 13 Sept. 1692.

7 Ibid., MS4072/3, 27 Oct. 1703.

8 Hooke received his last payment from Wren for his work on the City churches in 1693. Oliver does not seem to have been involved in the design of the churches and Dickinson’s designs appear after Hawksmoor’s, which cease soon after 1700.

9 Downes, Kerry, Burlington Magazine, 95 (1953), pp. 332-35Google Scholar.

10 Lambeth Palace Library (LPL), MS 2691, 24 April 1718.

11 4 George I, c 5, 1717-18.

12 Commons J., 18 (1714-18), p. 688.

13 There are two drawings for the tower in the British Library, K. Top. XXIII.29.a and b.: Wren Society, X (1933), pl. 9. One is autographed by Dickinson and the other may also be by him.

14 LPL, MS 2717, f. 57.

15 Undated letter to Joseph Wilcox, Dean of Westminster Abbey; Wren Society, XI (1932), p. 33.