St Sophia's Church, Galston: 'The Vast Space of the Interior'

Abstract

It is a truism that, for the Victorians, Gothic was the dominant style of church architecture. From time to time however, other voices were heard. Sara Losh created a remarkable church in the Byzantine style at Wreay in Cumbria, consecrated in 1842. The Greek communities of Liverpool and London had Byzantine churches designed for them by British architects. John Patrick Crichton Stuart, third Marquess of Bute (1847–1900), one of the most important patrons of the domestic Victorian Gothic, also commissioned chapels in the Byzantine style. The first of these, constructed in a former servant’s bedroom at Mount Stuart House in 1873 by William Burges, had two Gothic arches, although most other details were either Romanesque or classical. For this chapel Burges drew on very early Byzantine forms, and Losh followed both Byzantine basilica and early British styles. Losh ‘may well have drawn on knowledge of the nearby church of St Leonard in Warwick, Cumberland or the famous church of St Mary and St David at Kilpeck, in Herefordshire’.