Late Georgian Churches: ‘Absolutely Wretched’ or the Triumph of Rational Pragmatism?

Abstract

AbstractThis article considers the late Georgian church and argues that this huge group of buildings, involving almost all the country's major architects, has never been properly assessed by historians. This is principally a result of the opprobrium heaped on these churches by the Ecclesiologists who needed them to be marginalised in order to promote their own agenda of church design and worship, and the view that they are largely worthless lives on in places, even today. The article proposes their re-evaluation, suggesting that judging them by the standards the Ecclesiologists applied retrospectively is both illogical and inevitably destined to produce verdicts of failure. Instead, it seeks to place these buildings within the context of late Georgian society, religious attitudes and especially the period's building world. It argues that the best of them, especially the big ‘town’ churches, display a high degree of intelligent, functional planning and a fascinating exploitation of new materials and structural innovations that do great credit to their designers.