Stories & People –
Paper 2
BUILDING - A VOCATIONAL
COMMUNITY
(REFORMED
AND ECUMENICAL)
Introduction
Some significant lay people
1. Built Environment
Educationalist Patrick Nuttgens Roman Catholic
2.
Structural Engineer Sir Edmund Happold Quaker
3. Architect Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson Presbyterian
4. Window Manufacturers Crittall
Family Congregationalist/Anglican
5.
Building Contractor George Myers Anglican/Roman Catholic
6. Public Undertaking –
7. Private Developer –
8.
House-builder Sir John Laing Brethren
Some
involved ministers
1. Edward Alexander Architect Episcopalian
2. Sir Halley Stewart Brick manufacturer Nonconformist (unspecified)
3.
Dawn
Waterton Building
contractor’s staff Anglican
4.
John Wates Trustee Anglican
5.
Bernard Thorogood Passer
by United Reformed
Discussion and Conclusion
In
Stories & People Paper 1, Building –
a project in ministry, I outlined my own story of working as a professional
in the world of building and being a minister, these two facets making up one
integrated experience.
Part
of the enjoyment of that experience has been discovering that all sorts of
other people are, or have been, travelling along a similar road, some building
or built environment professionals, some ministers. In my mind these people
have become a kind of ‘vocational community’.
.
The
main part of this paper summarises the work of eight significant Christian lay
people representative of various facets of the building world. They can be
envisaged in the form of an octagon representing the octagonal font or
baptistery, the origin of our vocation.
This
is followed by a small section on ordained ministers.
In
all cases I have confined myself to the use of published or publicly available
information, generally a single main source for each person.
1 Built Environment educationALIST – PATRICK NUTTGENS
Main source: Nuttgens,
Patrick (2000) The Art of Learning: A
Personal Journey
To me the most enlightening
and exciting story of a built environment educator is that of Patrick Nuttgens (PN) (1930-2004).
PN’s
family were Catholics, with deep involvement in arts and crafts. PN’s
formative childhood was spent at Ditchling in
PN
decided on architecture as his career and to study in
After
some years, PN moved on to the then new University of York where he was
appointed Director of the Institute of Advanced Architectural Studies, located
in the medieval church of St John Ousebridge, specially restored for such a
purpose. During his time there he organised summer schools, short courses and
lectures attended by some 5000 participants. This work included programmes
relating to old buildings, for which
PN’s
final professional appointment was as Director of the newly designated Leeds
Polytechnic (now
PN’s
concludes his own story thus: ‘The message of Christ – that we should all be
one and united in love – has been rejected throughout history. In the year that
records the two-thousandth anniversary of his birth, I finish my story hoping
that in a small and local way I have not increased those divisions but taken
part in mutual activities and possibly helped fellow students of life and
learning to find themselves and contribute to our culture and happiness’.
2 STRUCTURAL ENGINEER – SIR EDMUND HAPPOLD
Main source: Walker,
Derek and Addis, Bill (1997) Happold: The
Confidence to Build Happold Trust Publications Limited
Particularly during my time
with the CIOB it was a real privilege to work and talk with Sir Edmund Happold (EH) (1930-1996)
EH
was born into a Quaker family and remained deeply committed to it for
the whole of his life. His personality and sense of purpose were fashioned in
the demanding climate of his early life in
EH
studied first at University of Leeds Department of Geology and worked as a
labourer, truck driver, mechanic and drag line operator, joining Sir Robert
McAlpine for as a junior engineer. He continued studies at the University of
Leeds Department of Civil Engineering and joined Ove Arup and Partners, working
initially with Povl Ahm and John Hutton on designing the screen frames for
Coventry Cathedral.
EH
studied architecture at Regent Street Polytechnic in the evenings and so
developed a vision of an environment in which student architects and engineers
could learn in common some of the technical and aesthetic aspects of their
subjects and a little of each other’s languages. He wanted them to come to
understand each other’s problems and perhaps respect each other’s
professionalism rather more than was, and perhaps still is, the norm. EH believed
that ‘a world that sees art and engineering as divided is not seeing the world
as a whole’. His eventual Knighthood was for services to engineering and
architecture.
EH argued
that the engineering profession developed to serve the nonconformist
industrialists of the eighteenth century, who were the midwives to the
industrial revolution. These men, predominantly Quakers, were barred from the
established universities and professions. They valued creative opportunities
within their limited possibilities by turning to inventive industry. And
because they believed in the equality of mankind guided by individual
conscience, backed humanistic management and had very broad long-term aims.
They coped with persecution by forming close bonds with their fellow
industrialists and these inter-relationships and the pooling of ideas and
information facilitated the development of the industrial revolution.
EH’s
commitment to inter-professional working and his strong social motivations led
to his selection by Arups to work with the Borough Architect at Lambeth on a
long term basis in the field of public housing development. He thought that the
most satisfying building that his group at Arups worked on in 1964 was
Bootham’s, a Quaker school in
His
extraordinary professional journey took him to the Islamic world where over
some thirty years he developed friendships, cultural associations, a diversity
of projects and great personal satisfaction. ‘In a sense his combination of a
gregarious enthusiasm and the Quaker capacity for reflective contemplation was
perfectly suited for his introduction to
In
the
With
the collaboration of his old firm, Arups, and a broad selection of specialists
in the industry, he generated the enthusiasm to set up the Centre for Window
and Cladding Technology, one of the world’s leading institutes in this field.
This, together with the firm he founded, Buro Happold, and the University
Department at
3 ARCHITECT – ALEXANDER
‘GREEK’ THOMSON
Main source: Stamp, Gavin (ed) (1999)
The Light of Truth and Beauty: The
Lectures of Alexander ‘Greek’ Thomson Architect 1817-1875
During my time with CIOB, NHBC and CIRIA there were
many opportunities to meet Scottish colleagues and learn something of the story
of building in
AT
came from a Scottish Presbyterian family, and his many brothers and
uncles were teachers, ministers and missionaries. He was an elder of the
church. Behind all his arguments about architecture and reason there was in
immanent sense of the Divine, of a Creator who was responsible for all that was
worthwhile and beautiful. For AT theology and architecture were inseparable
An
orphan by the time he was thirteen and destined for a lawyer’s office, AT was
rescued by the architect Robert Foote who took him as a pupil. AT would seem to
have been largely self-taught but with his wide learning and enquiring mind, AT
was an archetypal, Scot, a true son of the Enlightenment.
Although
AT never saw
One
of AT’s most practical discourses related to the improvement of masonry work in
the buildings of
His
most detailed criticism is of traditional, wasteful processes in stonework. He
argues the case for the reduction in thickness from the normal 2 feet used for
4-storey tenement work, the substitution of solid stone for stone-and-mortar
infill, and the greater use of derrick cranes and steam engines for handling
and lifting on site. The solid wall is simpler to measure and estimate. There
would be benefits for transferring the final cutting of the stone from quarry
to site, where the intelligent mason can cut his stuff for profit and to suit
circumstances. Perhaps most convincingly there is in fact precedent for the
solid wall: ‘I may mention that there are tenements in the older parts of our
city, four and five storeys high, built of ten-inch perpend stone, which have
stood the test for a hundred and fifty to two hundred years, without showing
any tendency to nod or tumble’.
AT addressed the question of what the
It is most desirable that all connected with building
- the representatives of the various trades - the measurer, the architect, the
client, and the general public, should meet on the same platform, that each
should understand the relation which he bears, and the duties he owes, to those
around him and to the whole, and by their united efforts to take architecture
to that position which it has occupied in the best periods of the world's
history. The tradesman ought not to be content with merely fulfilling his
contract, so as to secure his price - he should find his chief pleasure in his
calling, giving it the best attention that any worldly pursuit deserves. Let
everything be done honestly and satisfactorily. Let him make himself acquainted
with all scientific methods of construction, with the properties of the
materials with which he has to deal. He should understand as much of
architecture and architectural expression as enable him to bring out the spirit
of any work put into his hands.
The architect's education should embrace all these,
and it is incumbent on him that he practise them with great care. But he has,
besides, another class of duties to perform; and, first of all, he has to fill
his heart with wisdom, and to exercise his mind with great thoughts, for the
end and aim of his art is to express these. To aid him in so doing, let him
search the whole world of nature and art for modes of expression, not that he
may quote them entire and unchanged, but that he may learn from them something
of the nature and meaning of lines, of forms, of proportion, of light and
shade, and of colour. Let his imagination be filled with images rather than his
memory with modes. How often have we heard it said, that architecture was a
finished art - that every form of it had been wrought out. I have never allowed
myself to think so, and it is gratifying to observe, that during the last few
years, our illustrated periodicals bear evidence of the approach of an era of
life and progress, and I hope to see the day when it will not be considered
necessary to answer the question, "What style do you call that?" but
when every man will have his own style, as in literature…….
AT
put forward powerful arguments for the adoption of the classical style for the
design of new buildings for
I have admitted its [Gothic’s] merits, and the
interest which for various reasons attaches to it. And I have also shown that
it is not associated with learning in any way – that it is not national – that
the Christianity which it represents is not of the purest type – that it is
founded upon erroneous principles of construction – that it was the product of
uneducated men – that it does not teach us the highest principles of
architectural art – and that it is inconsistent with the best examples of
sculpture and painting. And I hold that, for these reasons, it is quite unfit
to express the character and purposes of the University – an institution the
object of which is to instil into the youthful mind a knowledge of the
principles and laws by which all things exist and are governed – where the
greatest and best examples of human attainments are exhibited and explained,
and where habits of mental discipline and refinement are expected to be formed.
.
4 – WINDOW MANUFACTURERS – CRITTALL
FAMILY
Main
source: Blake, David J (1989) Window
Vision: Crittall 1849-1989 Crittall Windows Private Publication
As students we were introduced to metal windows
including those manufactured close to my home in
When he first arrived in
In 1886 Francis Henry
realised that if the Company was to prosper it would need to specialise. He was
already manufacturing a number of metal window types without realising their
future significance. Fundamental to his philosophy was the view that providing
production was improved this should be rewarded both in rates of pay and
working conditions. By 1905, 500 men were employed, and many of these people
held Preference Shares in the Company. During that year the Government Health
Inspector noted that the most marked feature of the place had been the
improvement of the dwellings of the towns-people, due to the prosperity of the
various industries there. While window production was concentrated in
During the 1920’s and as the
company grew, many funds were started up with an initial grant from the Company
for the employees’ benefit, to take care of its people during sickness and to
help widows and old employees who could no longer work, and also to provide
death benefits. A savings scheme was introduced with a newly formed Crittall
Building Society to offer homes for its employees at the
By the 1950’s the housing
boom was well under way with over 300 000 houses a year being built. Although
Crittall’s dominated the metal window industry as the major manufacturer, the
Company under the Crittall family were anxious not to exploit the situation,
and made just enough profit to satisfy their shareholders and maintain steady
growth. Lord Braintree had long felt that the most pressing social need was to
clear the slums and provide people with decent affordable housing, and he
regarded the standard metal window as the best window on the market, and felt
that the industry was honour bound to produce it and sell it in the largest
quantities at the lowest possible cost. This, coupled to the belief that his
employees should be given good working conditions and fair reward for their
productive efforts, was at the heart of his business philosophy.
During 1958 the Company was
responsible for providing windows in at least three-quarters of all major
buildings in
Direct concern for design was
fostered by John Francis Crittall (b
By the 1980’s traditional
Crittall windows were within the domain of ‘heritage’ building products. The
story of Crittall’s as a discrete company ends with its merger with Hope
windows, and subsequent takeover by Slater Walker. The Silver End village was
ultimately sold to Witham Council. In June 1936 John Crittall and his wife had
chosen to be married by Courad Noel, a family friend of the Crittalls, at
Perhaps over the generations
the journey had been back to Francis Berrington Crittall’s original Anglicanism
but enriched by the Congregational and Chapel ethos experienced along the way!
5 BUILDING CONTRACTOR
– GEORGE MYERS
Main source: Spencer-Silver, Patricia (1993) Pugin’s Builder: The Life and Work of George
Myers The University of
The story of George
Myers (GM), (1803-1875) is well told by Patricia Spencer-Silver. A personal
connection for me is that he built the Warley mental hospital, located near my
grandparents’ home and which I passed in the train everyday when studying and
working in
GM, known as Pugin’s builder,
was born Kingston-upon-Hull in 1803 and was baptised in the Church of
England at Holy Trinity Hull where he was later to work and marry his first
wife Isabella in 1829. His second marriage in 1841 to Judith Ruddock was at St
Martin-le-Grand York. GM and Judith came to Southwark, living in opposite St George’s
Catholic Cathedral to which their son Ruddock Myers ‘was carried across the
road to be baptised in the still unfinished cathedral’
GM’s life as a building
contractor centred on London and included a small number of projects with Congregational
connections. The area now known as the Royal Borough of Kensington and
Chelsea boasted five complete Myers churches including the Congregational
Church, Markham Square, Chelsea (now demolished) for which the architect was
John Tarring. Tarring and Myers were also responsible for Clapham
Congregational Church, Mostyn Road Brixton, which again is now demolished. With
architect Sir Rowland Plumb, Myers built Stratford Congregational Church,
Newham which was bombed in World War II.
There was catholicity
to Myers’ work. He constructed or restored over ninety churches
in London and the Provinces. Although he had spent his youth restoring
beautiful medieval Beverley Minster and Holy Trinity, Hull, it was not until
1837, when he won the contract for St Mary's, Derby that we hear of him
actually building a church. From then on he averaged three a year, taking about
thirteen months to complete one of average size.
In 1818 the Government granted Ł1,000,000 to
encourage the `Building and Promoting the Building of Additional Churches in
(newly) Populous Parishes'. A similar grant was made a few years later. This
money was made available only to the Established Church, the Church of England.
As Government money was involved, the Church Commissioners set up a complex
bureaucracy with detailed application forms. `Commissioners' Churches' were
sometimes said to be unimaginatively designed and cheaply, but the contracts
undertaken by George Myers cannot be included in this category.
The Religious Revival and
Catholic Emancipation provided major components of his livelihood. He built the
monument to William Wilberforce in Hull in the year of the anti- slave-trader's
death; three of the asylums [including Warley, see below] which conformed with
the new lunacy laws with which Lord Shaftesbury's name is associated; several
hospitals including the Herbert Hospital whose plans were approved by Florence
Nightingale and Sidney Herbert; he sent prefabricated huts to the war zone in
the Crimea and carried out vast contracts for the Army at home. He worked for
the Royal
In the City of London GM
built offices, banks and warehouses for City merchants, and he built their
country houses too. In his later years it would have been impossible for him to
have driven through the streets of London without passing one of his own
buildings and most of the counties of England could display at least one
example of his work. His warehouses encircled Tower Hill overlooking the Tower
itself and, standing beside Samuel Wyatt's Trinity House, they played their
part in the expansion and increasing: prosperity of the City of London. There
was great variety in Myers' contracts', and those who think of him only as `Pugin's Builder' fail to appreciate
his versatility.
It has been said that,
without Myers, Pugin's buildings would not have stood up. Pugin's drawings of
ethereal churches enchant, but so often the reality fails to realize
expectations. His polemical writings inspired religious zeal and often rage in
his readers. He had time to write and travel because Myers was in charge of his
building sites all over the country. It is difficult to imagine Pugin's working
life without Myers. They were true friends, and the sense of affinity and understanding which existed
between these two remarkable people was not to occur again in GM's
lifetime.
Of particular interest is the Essex County Lunatic Asylum at Warley and
built by Myers. In August 1846 the Committee of Visitors advertised for a site.
Twelve offers were received and the
Brentwood Hall Estate of eighty-six acres
was purchased. The Estate was eighteen miles from London and close to the
Eastern Counties Railway. A competition was arranged between ten selected
architects to choose the best design for a hospital to house 450 patients. Mr H.E.
Kendall was the winner with F.G. Francis second and Daukes, who had built the
other two asylums, third. In July 1851 Myers' tender of Ł57920 was accepted. On
11 July, the Essex Standard reported the formal commencement of building.
C. G. Round Esq., chairman of the Committee ‘dug the first sod' and addressing
Mr Myers said:
I now on behalf of the
Committee authorise you to commence this great work. The Committee have as much
pleasure in receiving you as the builder as, I have no doubt, you will feel in
executing the work. From all we have heard and seen of you, we are perfectly
satisfied. I trust your artisans will have skilful heads and steady hands; and
may God prosper the undertaking.
But despite this trust, a
Building Sub-Committee was appointed with instructions to inspect the work
daily.
The style of the outside of
the building was medieval but the interior was modern with hot and cold running
water 24 hours a day, lavatories, bathrooms and gas supplied from the town
gasometer. Once again Myers' `patent windows' were installed. They were
described in The Builder on the 16 May 1857 as being `of cast iron fancy
patterns, the casement opening outwards above the transoms; but the frames
being double, when open, one of them remains in position unglazed so that
ventilation is combined with perfect safety'. The surrounding countryside was
beautiful and the buildings and gardens were circled by a ha-ha to prevent
stray animals from eating the newly planted shrubs.
The work progressed satisfactorily and was finished
just over two years two months and two weeks after the starting date. Kendall
wrote a report which ended:
... from the turning of the first sod to the laying of
the last brick everything has gone very smoothly, notwithstanding a quicksand
on the site which occasioned much extra work. Everything was completed
singularly free of extras ... with punctuality and success ... nor should the
contractor be forgotten who has acted throughout with great liberality and
laboured in every way for the benefit of the work.
Myers gained an artist's satisfaction from the
fulfillment of his contracts. Monetary gain was never his prime objective. He
was comfortably off, but his wealth did not compare with the large sums
accumulated bv other Master Builders of the day. At Colney Hatch, he had fitted
up the committee room very sumptuously' at his own expense, and at
Beverley he accepted a reduced offer in settlement of his account because the
churchwardens had on all occasions treated him with great kindness and it is
said that with his last breath he cancelled the large debt still owed to him by St George's Catholic Cathedral in
Southwark . He died on 25 January 1875.
6 PUBLIC UNDERTAKING: London Transport – FRANK
PICK
Main
source: www.designmuseum.org
Frank
Pick is an outstanding example of someone from a provincial Congregational
background coming to London and making a major impact on the constructed
infrastructure. As a commuter over 30 years, I value his underground map very
highly.
As head of the London Underground in the 1910s and 1920s and of the
newly merged London Transport in the 1930s, Frank Pick (FP) (1878-1941)
was instrumental in establishing the world’s most progressive public transport
system and an exemplar of design management.
FP’s designs included the red, white and
blue roundel that has symbolised the London Underground since the 1910s and the
first diagrammatic map of the Underground.
FP’s
modesty, drive and diligence stemmed from his childhood in a devout
Congregationalist family in Spalding Lincolnshire, where he was born in 1878. He studied law at London University and joined the
North Eastern Railway as a management trainee. He joined Sir George Gibb when
he was appointed chairman of the Underground Group in 1906 FP was appointed publicity officer with
responsibility for the marketing of the Underground Group. He set aside some of
the advertising poster hoardings in Underground stations for the company’s use.
He installed illuminated boards at the entrances for London Underground’s own
posters and maps
FP took many initiatives on poster design
seeing them as part of the network’s responsibility of educating the public. To
this end he organised exhibitions of modern art and design, including the
posters, in the booking hall at Charing Cross Underground station. “No
exhibition of modern painting, no lecturing, no school teaching can have
anything like so wide an influence on the educable masses as the unceasing
production and display of London Underground posters over the years,”
pronounced Nikolaus Pevsner.
FP’s achievements were recognised not only
within the UK but internationally. He was invited to advise foreign governments
on the construction of underground networks, including Stalin’s regime in the
then-Soviet Union, which awarded Pick an honorary badge of merit in 1932 for
his work on the Moscow Metro.
For years, the Underground Group had taken over
smaller companies running bus and tram networks in London. In 1933, all the
city’s transport companies – five underground railway companies, seventeen
tramways and sixty-six bus companies – were merged into one, the London
Passenger Transport Board and Frank Pick was appointed as managing director.
The challenge of merging these companies into a coherent network, which could
then expand to meet the fast-growing city’s future transport needs, gave him an
even bigger canvas to work on.
A priority was helping passengers to
navigate the new network. By the early 1930s, the London Underground network
had expanded so much that it was increasingly difficult to squeeze all the new
lines and stations into a geographical map. Passengers complained that the
existing map was crowded, confusing and hard to read. Having decided that the
network was too big to be represented geographically, Pick commissioned Harry
Beck (1903-1974), who worked for London Underground as a draughtsman, to devise
a new diagrammatic means of doing so. Basing his map on an electrical circuit,
Beck represented each line in a different colour and interchange stations as
diamonds.
Throughout his time at the Underground Group
and then London Transport, Pick championed the network’s expansion by building
new lines and new stations out into the suburbs wherever new housing
developments emerged. At a time when public buildings in Britain were still
designed in a traditional monumental style, Pick was determined that the
architecture of the new stations should reflect the modern, progressive spirit
of the rest of the network. Working closely with the architect Charles Holden
(1875-1960), he commissioned a succession of landmark stations in the modern
style. He and Holden travelled in Germany, Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands
to seek inspiration there and to define a modern architectural style for
Britain.
Their showpiece was the extension of the
Piccadilly Line to the north and west from 1930. The new stations at Sudbury
Town, Arnos Grove, Southgate, Oakwood and along the rest of the Piccadilly Line
adapted the geometric detailing, exposed brickwork and sweeping curved,
cylindrical and rectangular structures that Pick and Holden had admired on
their travels. Other stations were rebuilt and expanded, notably Hammersmith,
which was designed by Stanley A. Heaps with the walls, columns and ceiling of
the ticket hall made from exposed concrete – a daringly modern statement for
the time.
Firmly of the belief that every element of a
building should be coherent in its design, Holden ensured that the ticket
kiosks, lighting, benches and even the litterbins at the stations were
integrated with the architecture. Pick also commissioned state-of-the-art
trains, trams and buses for the network, each of which was more spacious and
streamlined than its predecessors with wider doors and windows, more storage
space and more comfortable seats.
In 1940 FP was appointed director of the
Ministry of Information, an important post in Britain’s war effort. He held the
post for just a year before his death in 1941, after the publication of his
book, Paths to Peace, a personal manifesto of his beliefs and approach to
planning.
7 – PRIVATE DEVELOPER – JAMES BURTON
Main source: Baines, J Mainwaring (1956, 1990) Burton’s St Leonards Hastings Museum and
When
working as an NHBC Regional Manager for a while, my area included the Sussex
coast, also very familiar through personal visits. Hence, the development of St
Leonard’s is of interest.
James Burton (JB) (1761-1837) has a
family history traced back through the name Haliburton to Roxburghshire in
Scotland. First in line was a minister, Revd James Haliburton (1681-1756). His
son William Haliburton (1731-1785) was a builder who left the family home at
Kelso to work in London. James (1761-1837), who became founder of St Leonards,
was baptised in the Presbyterian Chapel, Soho.
JB
was articled to a surveyor, Mr Dalton, for six years, his duties taking him to
Bury St Edmunds, Sudbury and Ipswich. Bridewell designs were among the projects
with which he was concerned. On completion of his articles he went into
partnership with Mr Dalton until 1783. A diary note of 1786 indicates that in
August he ‘Went on Andrew Gage’s business to Chelmsford’.
Subsequently,
from his base in London he carried on a flourishing property development
business both in London itself and around the south-eastern counties including
Sussex. The business was ‘vertically integrated’ as he notes that while in 1800
he made 8,140,000 bricks in 1801 the number increased to 10,368,000. In the
years up to 1823 he was responsible for superintending the development of 2366
properties, mainly in London on the Foundling, Bedford, Regent Street and other
estates and having a rateable value of Ł1,848,900.
It
is appropriate to note the public responsibility aspect of his work:
Not content with building houses, it was typical of
the man that he should endeavour to improve the lot of those who might live in
them. in December 1831, he issued ‘Cottage Regulations recommended for the
Preservation of Health’, including such suggestions as regular washing of
floors, opening of windows, removal of refuse and even personal items of
clothing and diet, including abstention from ‘indulgence in spirituous
liquors’.
The
practicalities of building are explained: ‘The first building to be completed
was Burton’s own house, No 57 Marina, the timber framing of which had been
prepared in London and brought down in readiness. As the roads of that period
were poor, all materials had to come by sea to Hastings and then be carted
along the coast. The Sussex Advertiser, April 7th, reported that
great quantities of scaffolding and materials had been unloaded from a sloop
and conveyed along in wagons’.
The
economic and social value of the work was perceived as important: ‘Many of the
workmen employed belong to different parishes and we should hope that this may
operate in some measure to lessen the parochial rates, while it will hold out
cheering prospects to the labourers, and enable many of them to procure a
livelihood in their own country, without being under the necessity of seeking
it in a foreign land’.
A
further indication of the controversial and complex nature of the works is this
comment dating from 1872:
As time went on it became more and more difficult to
get the necessary stone. The railway excavations at West Marina proved most
helpful, but in 1872 the Commissioners turned their attention to the beach and
ordered the surveyor to take enough rock between high and low watermarks to
"such spots as will least interfere with the present picturesque
appearance of the shore" to put the whole length of the roadway along the
front in good condition. This raised a great local uproar, as it was rumoured
that this would endanger the natural deposit of shingle and expose the front to
the action of the sea. Among the Commissioners was Dr. J. S. Bowerbank, the
marine zoologist, and he had known the coast at St. Leonards since 1825. He
maintained that their action would make no difference, but when the Ministry of
Trade was informed and the question of the foreshore being Crown Land was
raised it was decided to give up the idea. So 100 tons of Kentish Rag stone
were ordered from Maidstone at 4s. 6d. per ton to be delivered by barge. This had
to be broken to pass through a 14in. mesh.
As regards church buildings in St Leonards, Baines
comments first on that for the Dissenters: The growth of religious toleration in the early part
of the 19th century is shown by the erection of a chapel for the Independents
at St. Leonards within its first few years. Twenty-five years earlier no local
tradesman had dared to tender for the erection of such a place in Hastings, and
so the little chapel in the Croft had had to be made of wood and transported
from London. ‘The Chapel for the use of the Protestant Dissenters, usually
called Independents, but more properly Congregationalists, is about 50 feet long and 30 feet wide, and will seat about 400 persons. It is built by voluntary contributions.
Attached are excellent rooms, 20 feet by 15 feet each, intended for day and Sabbath schools, for
children of the poor of both sexes. This building is of Grecian architecture,
and forms the north end of a quadrangle. One half the sittings will be
appropriated to the use of the poor; from the sittings of the other half the
income of the minister arises’.
It was known as the
Quadrangle Chapel ..... [However] within a few years financial difficulties
arose and eventually the buildings were purchased and turned into dwelling
houses.
Turning to the parish
church, Baines says: A church had always formed
part of Burton's original designs and he had settled on a site at the top of
West Hill. His friends however objected to the climb and so a spot was chosen
midway between two blocks of houses on the Marina, but standing apart from them
and off the immediate front line. The cliff had to be excavated to provide
space. He revived his plan for a crescent with the church at the centre, but
later abandoned it.
Early in 1831 he obtained the necessary Act of
Parliament to build a private chapel and as there was a royal visitor staving
in St. Leonard’s at the time, the Princess Sophia Matilda of Gloucester,
daughter of the Duke of Gloucester and niece of George III, she was prevailed
upon to lay the foundation stone. This was done on September 8th and the
building was completed in the following year. .... The year 1837 however had
seen a disaster, a sudden fall of cliff destroying the whole of the chancel and
endangering the building. As a result the new chancel had to be much shortened.
Since that date services were held there steadily, the chapel having become the
parish church and the incumbent thenceforward the rector by Act of Parliament
in 1868, until the Second World War, when it was finally destroyed by a flying
bomb on July 29th, 1944. The church was rebuilt post-war. JB and his wife Elizabeth
are buried in a vault in the burial ground behind the church.
8 HOUSE-BUILDER – SIR JOHN LAING
Main
source: Coad, Roy (1979) Laing: The
Biography of Sir John W. Laing London: Hodder and
For
this section one could have chosen house-builders such as Janes of Luton or
Leech of Newcastle, to name but two. But it is Laing whom many would call to
mind when thinking of a specifically Christian commitment.
John Laing (JL)
(1879-1978) from Carlisle followed on in his family’s dual commitment to
stonemasonry and other aspects of practical building, and strong religious
anchors in the Brethren tradition. Following a grammar school education
‘JL set himself a deliberately hard schooling in the trade’ recalling his
father’s insistence, ‘My father believed in his son having three years
practical training, so as to get a knowledge of humanity, of the British
weather, and of the difficulties of doing work and overcoming these
difficulties’. The Brethren sought a simple, untrammelled fellowship, refusing
an appointed ministry on the grounds that the spiritual gifts of all their
members should flourish. JL combined a simplicity of outlook with empathy with
Darwin’s insights and a Christology, summed up towards the end of his life in
the verse ‘Whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to
them..’
JL came to London and established
what was to become one of the largest and most respected groups of contractors
and house-builders rooted in quality and science rather than speculation. The
essence of that business philosophy, and an associated social philosophy, can
be discerned in Coad’s account of JL’s approach to building houses for sale.
The basis of JL’s approach
to housing was a simple one. 'Would I wish to live in this house?' He had great
sympathy with ordinary people, and his own tastes were straightforward and
uncomplicated. Having decided to go into private-housing development, he threw
himself into it with great enjoyment ..... and he wrote at the end of his life,
'Our experience in housing was one of the happiest and most successful parts of
our business.' If he sold a
thousand houses, he hoped to have gained a thousand friends. `Every class in
the country wants a house,' he said in 1948. 'Once a man owns his house, he has
a stake in his country. Else he is rootless . . . The man who is tenant of a
house and garden can be very happy but never altogether satisfied ...'
His standards were high, and
this meant that his houses were more expensive than others on the market at the
same time. Yet he was concerned that people could afford to buy the houses he
built:
My great desire was to build some houses in which the
purchaser could pay a Ł50 deposit, and then his expenses for rates and interest
would cost him only one pound a week. On one estate we achieved that. At one
part ... we let the houses and charged Ł1 a week, and that was the total
payment the tenant had to make, but we had to increase that because the rating
authorities said that if we agreed to let the houses for such a cheap rent they
were not going to assess them on that and they put the rates up beyond what the
Ł1 a week justified, and we had to increase the rent a little.
The advent on the London
building scene at this time of the powerful new Company, with high standards of
construction, was of extreme importance. They brought with them, from the more
testing climate of the north-west, standards that were by no means normal in
the south-east. The common nine-inch solid brick wall of the south-east was
unreliable, and liable to damp penetration. Most builders of the time dealt
with this by rendering the external surfaces. John Laing (and he had only a few
companions in this at that time) insisted on the eleven-inch cavity wall that
he knew from Carlisle. Foundations demanded especial care, with deep concrete
foundations to the walls, including partition walls, and ballast concrete under
the whole house. The unfamiliar London clay had brought him special problems
and he took no risks. Damp courses had his close attention for quality, and
roofs had wide eaves; thev were adequately felted and of over-size timber;
there was none of the inadequately protected roofing that marred so much of the
speculative building of this period and inflicted annual winter misery on the
occupants of the houses.
One man, later a director of
some of the Group Companies, told of a visit by John Laing to the Woodford
estate; dissatisfied with the bracing of the roofs, he sacked all the
carpenters and ordered the remedying of the work (the men were re-instated the
following day). Another, later to be a director of the main Company, was in
charge of a site, and was reproved by John Laing on inspection, as he
considered the roofing unsatisfactory. The man pointed out that he had
consulted the architect, and that the architect would not authorise payment
beyond the specification. 'That does not matter,' John Laing had replied; 'the
firm's reputation will suffer if in twenty years' time these roofs are seen to
sag.’
1
- Edward Alexander - Architect
Main source: Lowrey, John
(1987) ‘A Man of Excellent Parts’:
Alexander Edward – Minister, Architect, Jacobite 1651-1708 University of St
Andrews: The Crawford Centre for the Arts
Today we are inclined to
think in terms of built environment professionals becoming ministers. With
Edward Alexander in the 17th-18th century it is for
political reasons the other way round.
Edward
Alexander
(EA) (1651-1708) was a Jacobite whose professional activity started as that of
Episcopalian Clergyman and proceeded to that of Architect and garden designer.
He was born 10th June 1651, his father Robert Alexander being
Episcopalian minister of Murroes in Angus. EA graduated in St Andrews 1670 and
in 1682 became Minister at Kemback near Cupar. It is possible that the 1670’s
may have been spent on non-religious work. The practicalities of building
confronted him in relation to his kirk and manse; ‘… he found the kirk, manse
and parish in general in a poor state. His efforts to improve matters led
firstly, in August 1686, to a commission appointed by the archbishop visiting
the parish with a mason, wright and slater to assess the cost of repairs to the
buildings and to stent the heritors of the parish accordingly. With the
Glorious Revolution in 1688 he was dismissed from his parish and took up architecture
and garden design as his profession, his final removal from his parish taking
place in 1695.
It
may be that EA’s technical skills were learned from his father. There is
evidence of possible involvement with building work and improvements at Panmure
House, home of the Earl of Panmure, the family patron. On removal from his
parish in 1695 EA resumed an association with Sir William Bruce for whom he had
worked in 1684-85 as a draughtsman and surveyor at Kinross house which Bruce
was then building for himself. In 1697 Bruce and Edward worked for the Earl of
Melville at Melville House. In a further project at Kinnaird Castle for the
earl of South Esk,,Edward undertook some responsibility for design as well as
draughtsmanship. His specialist and considerable contribution to garden design
in relation to landscape are notable. By 1700 he was acting as independent
architect for work at Rossie House in Angus.
EA’s
clients, the earls of Mar, Hopetoun, Panmure, North and South Esk, Loudon and
Strathmore in 1701 financed a visit to England and the continent. For a
subscription of Ł10 sterling each they required him to ‘make draughts of the
most curious and remarkable houses, edifices, gardings, orchards, parks,
plantations, land improvements, coal works, mines, waterworks and other
curiosities of nature and art.’ He was bound to visit each of his clients at
his home for three days in each of the first three years after his return
probably to render his professional services. His death in 1708 cut short extensive
work at Hamilton Place utilising the studies made during his travels.
EA
can be seen as ‘a man of excellent parts’. One cannot judge the relative extent
to which things architectural and religious interested and motivated him. The
reality is that as an Episcopalian living in an era adverse to them, it was in
architecture and landscaping that he could earn the living not available to him
in the church.
2
- Sir Halley Stewart – brick manufacturer
Main source: Jeremy, David
J (1990) Capitalists and Christians:
Business Leaders and the Churches in Britain 1900-1960 Oxford: Clarendon
Press
Sir Halley Stewart over a
very long life practised as nonconformist minister, brick manufacturer,
politician and philanthropist – connectedness indeed!
Sir Halley Stewart (HS) (1838-1937) had
varied life consisting of periods as preacher, politician, business man and
philanthropist. In 1853 he started work as bank clerk. After ten years, in1863,
he became the Minister of the first nonconformist church in Hastings. In1877 he
left ministry in Islington for politics and in 1888 was elected Liberal MP for
Spalding. He became Involved in the brick industry in 1899. He held the strong
belief in the provision of safe and healthy working and living conditions. This
led to the establishment of the town of Stewartby at the centre of what was to
become the largest brickworks in the world. Stewartby United Church had its
origins in the village Methodist chapel. A sharing agreement between Anglican,
Methodist, United Reformed and Roman Catholic churches was entered into in1981.
3 - Dawn Waterton – building
contractor’s staff
Main source: Waterton Dawn
(undated) Ministry in the Construction
Industry in Reflections on Ministry
in Secular Employment Coventry Diocese
Dawn Winterton shows us clearly the human face of the
construction industry and the contribution og f the Minister in Secular
Employment (MSE)
Dawn Waterton
(DW) has been working in the Construction Industry since 1970 as Sales Office
Manager and Sales Representative, She begun to feel that she was being called
to ordination around 1990 but had no sense of being called to parish
ministry. After a time of searching she
identified herself with those preparing for Ministry in Secular Employment.
She
has come to see that Construction is a 'caring' industry’, not different from
‘the caring professions’. Building, she emphasizes, speaks clearly about
Creation. As anyone who has spent time out 'on site' will tell you, the nature
of the work is such that it involves a many different people working together
to make something happen. That 'something' could be a 3000 seat Multiplex
Cinema or a suspension bridge, it could be new supermarket or a pub. The wonder
and risk of Creation are reflected on any building project. A vast range of
skills is needed and each person involved needs the others to complete their
part of the work for the project to be a success. At Creation, God gave us
everything we need to work with and took the risk that we would do it right. We
don't of course. On a building site everything needed to do the job is
available but it doesn't always work as it should. Things can and often do go
wrong. But if all goes well and the contract is completed on time then
something good is created and those involved care that the building is good.
Good building can bring new life to a community
if it is done sensitively and well. Building also involves issues of
stewardship, looking after resources of materials, land, minerals and
environment. People care that resources are used properly and not wasted. In a
recent survey, her company identified wasted resources as one of the main
concerns that employees have about the industry.
People care about each other. They celebrate
good things, new homes, new jobs, new relationships and we mourn the bad things
and the sad things, the loss of a colleague through illness perhaps or the loss
of a relationship or a bereavement. Ministry is pastoral. The significant
conversations may be at the tea machine instead of at the back of church but
they are no less a building up of fellowship and community for all that. The
silence following a discussion in the office about any one of a number of
issues currently affecting people, may not be prefaced by 'Let us pray' but it
happens, there in the silence. And the support offered to one another through
listening and sometimes grumbling together is vital because for many this
community is their primary community. The place where someone notices if they are
not there and cares enough to find out if they are OK.
The people Dawn works with may not attend
church, may not know the liturgy or the theology of sacrifice or redemption,
but, make no mistake, they 'do' the theology every day. The church has authorized
her presence there as a Priest to do the theology with them.
4
- John Wates – Trustee
Main source: www.watesfoundation.org.uk
Many founders and owners of
building businesses have established charitable trusts to support various
strands of community and social work in the UK and elsewhere. The Wates
Foundation is one of these. Its list of trustees includes Revd John Wates
Rev John Wates (Chairman). A qualified solicitor. Served as a
magistrate in Croydon for 21 years where he was Vice Chairman of the Youth
&
5
- Bernard Thorogood – passer by
I guess many ministers pass
by buildings when on holiday. Bernard Thorogood stopped, sketched, thought and
wrote.
Main source: Thorogood,
Bernard (1991) Looking at Leisure: A
European View London: The United Reformed Church
Bernard Thorogood (BT) Minister and one-time
General Secretary of The United Reformed Church, did something different
from his normal line of work when he went on holiday to Europe: he sketched
buildings for pleasure.
With
some of the sketches there are indirect biblical allusions. ‘Whose inscription
is on these coins?’ asks BT as he draws a town gateway in Verona where taxes
would have been paid. And he adds the comment, ‘Right then pay up’. The
humility aspect of the Gospel comes through in this thought-picture of a Venice
canal: ‘But it is the little canals which provide corners for reflection where
you can watch the rubbish cart or the wine merchant or the undertaker sail up
and down’.
Alongside
his sketch of surviving columns at Olympia, BT reflects: ‘Here the Olympic
flame begins its journey… What enormous influence derives from such a little
corner of a rather poor land. It says something to me about vision and
dedication and quality counting for more than wealth in the bank’.
BT
homes right in on the New Testament in Rome: ‘Back to the ruins of the Forum
where some of the remains are impressive, and for me particularly this
triumphal arch by Titus in AD 70. This links us very directly with the New
Testament. Here is the Babylon of Revelation and we can still run our hands
over the stones’.
Still
in Rome, BT sketches the dome of St Peter’s and perhaps reveals his love of the
simplicity of English chapel building when he says: ‘Somehow the size and the
grandeur are too much… I wonder if the focus of the world church ought to be a
very simple room, quiet and modest ……’.
The eight significant lay people have appeared
above in the order in which I found myself wanting to introduce them, rather
than in a historical or other sequence.
Patrick Nuttgens (PN) was a lifelong
educationalist, investing his own life in the people of the future. He was not
afraid to move from the relatively high status of Edinburgh and York
universities and their communities of architectural specialists, to Leeds
Polytechnic where his energies became available across the whole institution,
with its variety of departments, disciplines and people, both students and
staff from wide-ranging streams and strata. His story seems to me to have been
a good one sustained by a devout Catholicism.
Sir Edmund Happold (EH) is the only one of
these eight whom I knew personally. He signifies for me modern buildings and
structures at their most technically innovative. He is not only an innovative
engineering designer but also in part an educationalist. His active Quakerism
is of a piece with his openness to architecture in partnership with
engineering, to the organisational affairs of the building industry, and to the
multi-faith, multi-national context of today and tomorrow. It is good to have
been on his path in a small way.
In introducing Alexander
‘Greek’ Thomson (AT) I take a step back into the 19th century.
His stage was largely that of Scotland but in his perception of the role of the
Glasgow Society of Architects he, like Happold, touches the enduring issues of
the building industry. He is equally at home discussing the economic minutiae
of building masonry walls as he is in advocating, albeit unsuccessfully, the
classical style for Glasgow University’s buildings. In this caring, challenging
and integrating professional life he demonstrates what Eldership in the church
can mean, that is to be an exemplar of lay vocation.
My instinctive link to the Crittall business is that it belongs, as I do, firstly to Essex. It
exemplifies that genre of applied or lived Christianity revealed by what a
family does over several generations. It is there for the long-term, providing
good employment conditions and well-designed estates in which to live. While
that was paternalistic and, as an era, reached its natural end, arguably while
it was there it was good. Additionally, Crittall is important because it
reminds us that the building industry is not only the exciting deign office and
readily seen site but also the hidden factories where standard products are the
every day diet.
If the Crittall’s were a dynasty, George Myers (GM) was the individual,
strong business man working on widespread sites throughout his lifetime. While
undoubtedly his enterprise skills contributed much to his industry, it was his
ability and willingness to bring Pugin’s designs into the world of built
reality that he contributed to the achievement of architecture. In his building
work for both Congregationalists and Catholics he displayed an ecumenical
openness, whether for business or spiritual reasons.
Frank Pick (FP) travelled, made the
pilgrimage from his devout Congregationalist home in rural Lincolnshire to the centre
of London Transport and a fast developing urban world. I feel the man was the
sum of his sensitivity to design, his ability to lead and manage and that
quiet, solid rural background, which I encountered when working in Norfolk;
possibly the whole was more than the sum of the parts. His clients were the
travelling public, impossible to know individually, yet every one important.
As the designer and developer of St Leonard’s, James Burton (JB) was the creator of a
whole place for a specific and whole community. His output was not simply
individual sites but whole streets and, most enduringly, a seafront; not just
housing and accommodation but the churches and other facilities. There is
something here about the whole of life being embraced and a particular
environment and location being brought to be. I do not know whether his
churchmanship went much further than his Presbyterian baptism in Soho but for
some it is enough to have been an effective business man and professional.
There is no doubt or mystery about Sir John Laing (JL), his Christian
commitments being as visible as his skills in developing a business, soundly
based both economically and in terms of its human values concerning employees
and house-buying customers equally. There is something that feels right about a
business, whether of Laing’s size or much smaller as with my own family, that
devotes at least some of its resources simply to the building of ordinary
houses to become homes for ordinary families.
These are only eight out of
many thousands, most of whom will never be known or would want to be known
except to their own small networks of family members, colleagues and friends. I
think the eight give us some insight into what must go on in the lives of the thousands.
They signify something of the nature of the larger community across centuries
and continents. There is a sense of belonging with them.
The ordained ministers are a much more restricted
group. Edward Alexander (EA) moved
from Scottish Episcopalian parish ministry to an early form of architectural
practice because of political restrictions imposed on him. The move was not,
one surmises, a free choice. Nevertheless, in a single life he seems to have
combined competence in both fields. There is a complementariness here of value.
Going further, in the days before the formalisation of professions it was
possible for versatile people to vary their fields of activity. That in itself
is a witness to a wholeness for which in our own time we search. Sir Halley Stewart (HS), approaching
200 years later, was another with a varied life in terms of professional roles,
yet perhaps with an underlying unity of purpose. A yet further century on we
find Dawn Waterton (DW) weaving
together 20th/21st century professional concepts of
contracting and priesthood. The closeness of her weaving is distinctive by
comparison with those of EA and HS. Construction and building is a
wealth-creating industry. John Wates
helps utilise wealth that originated in building, while Bernard
Thorogood uses his holiday sketching to prompt questions about what and how
we build and with what priorities.
These ministerial
contributions do not have the magnitude of the lay ones. But that is precisely
the point; they should not. Yet they remind us that our contemporary
separations of things are not inevitable. There are lives which carry within
themselves the seeds of unity.
This study has been largely
retrospective, drawing its examples from my own and some earlier generations. I
have not gone round trying to dig out what is happening in the present and
still less have I tried to see into the future. That is for another time.
I would maintain that past,
present and hopefully future, there is a community to which it is good to
belong.