OUTLANDISH, galumphing, ferocious, intriguingly perverse, quite grotesque: the words that Edmund Harris uses to describe the Rogue Goths reveal that they are still something of an acquired taste. Working in the 1860s, at the height of the Gothic Revival, the architects who form the focus of his study freely employed exaggerated neo-medieval details to create buildings that were always designed to impress and sometimes intended to shock. Long neglected or disparaged, they undoubtedly deserve this handsome and well-illustrated celebration.
Who or what was a Rogue Goth? It was not a term used at the time. Rather, it was invented in 1949 by the historian Harry Goodhart-Rendel to describe a loose collection of mid-Victorian designers who shared “a fairly savage temper architecturally”. Comparing them to erratic, troublesome bull elephants, he cited about a dozen — all idiosyncratic, each responsible for striking and very different designs. None was successful in creating a style that others sought to imitate. In this book, the first on the subject, Dr Harris has selected three of those Rogues to explore.
First comes Robert Lewis Roumieu. He had an undeniably good name, though not as splendid as another Rogue, Sextus Hexagon Dyball. He also had a curious and somewhat episodic career, experimenting in almost every possible architectural style. In part, this was simply an instance of following fashion. But his most notorious work, in Eastcheap, in London, shows that his ambition was greater than this modishness might suggest.
Roumieu’s 33-35 Eastcheap looks like a bad cartoon of Victorian architecture. A mix of red brick and white stone, wrought iron and colourful ceramics, gables, columns, plate-glass windows and elaborately carved projections, it defies brief description. It could have have been built only in the 1860s, and, within a few years, there were many who wished that it hadn’t been built at all.
Joseph Peacock, the second of our Rogues, was slower to develop as an architect, but eventually produced work that was no less strange. Edmund Harris observes that he combined “a tendency towards perverse complexity for its own sake” with “a love of exaggerating or distorting form for visual effect”. It is a disposition well illustrated at the church of St Simon Zelotes, in Chelsea, which seems to have been stretched upwards and outwards on some sort of torture device.
In the final section, we encounter E. Bassett Keeling, who burst into fame in the 1860s, burning brightly for a brief period before receding into obscurity. Only one of his projects survives in a recognisable state; the others have been demolished, bombed, or mutilated, or were simply never finished. But old photographs and drawings show just how bold he was. Bassett Keeling specialised in soaring, spiky, solid churches ornamented with iron and multi-coloured bricks. He was also the author of a fabulous failure: the outré Strand Musical Hall, which defied gravity, appalled critics, and closed within a couple of years.
Some are born rogues, some become rogues, but some have roguery thrust upon them. Given this mixed record of odd men producing peculiar buildings, it is a little unclear whether this actually amounts to a movement. Dr Harris is undoubtedly right, however, to see his trio as representative of a particular moment.
They represent the coalescence of several themes: architects’ anxiety about the future of the Gothic revival; clients’ desire to attract attention; and an economic upturn that paid for all this. By the 1870s, Gothic seemed old-fashioned, clients wanted something new, and the money was starting to run out. Several buildings, none the less, still remain — and, thanks to this book, we can now understand them better than before.
The Revd Dr William Whyte is a Fellow and Tutor of St John’s College, Oxford, and Professor of Social and Architectural History in the University of Oxford.
The Rogue Goths: R. L. Roumieu, Joseph Peacock and Bassett Keeling
Edmund Harris
Liverpool University Press £30
(978-1-83553-847-0)
Church Times Bookshop £27