Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/270

 and the church is remarkable for the dimensions of the chancel, which, owing to a peculiarity of the site, is made wider than the nave.

Pearson had already begun his work as a restorer on the churches of Lea, Lincolnshire, Llangasty Tallylyn, and others. He had also (1848) done his first domestic work, a house at Treberfydd. In 1863 he was elected a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries. Various works of church restoration belong to this period such as Exton in Rutlandshire, Braintree and Ashen in Essex, and Stinchcombe in Gloucestershire, the reseating of Fairford Church in the same county, and the reconstruction of the groining of Stow Church, Lincolnshire ; this last gave him an introduction to a branch of art in which he achieved great success. Pearson's second London church, St. Peter's, Vauxhall, begun about 1859, showed (like Freeland Church, Dalton Holme, Scorborough, Daylesford, and others) traces of the French study then in vogue with Sir George Gilbert Scott [q. v.] and his school. It has a nave and chancel equal in width and height, aisles, a baptistery, a narthex, and an apse. It draws its light almost entirely from the clerestory, is vaulted throughout with stone ribs and brick filling, and is said to have cost little more than 6,000l. Pearson was by this time in full practice, and works followed one another with rapidity. Yorkshire still supplied many opportunities, a new church at Broomfleet in 1857, and another with vicarage at Appleton-le-Moors (1863), restorations in the same year at Bishop Wilton and South Cave, shortly followed by Bishop Burton (1859), Hilston (I860), Lastingham (1862, a particularly interesting work), and both Riccall and Hemsworth in 1864.

Babworth, Nottinghamshire, was restored in 1858, Nibley, Gloucestershire, in the next year, and in 1860, the year in which Pearson became a fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architects, he designed the new church of Rhydydwmyn, and subsequently many similar works in Wales.

It was not till 1870 that Pearson received his first appointment as architect to a cathedral fabric. In that year he was consulted at Lincoln, where he restored the groining of the north transept, rebuilt part of the south-west tower, and repaired the chapter-house and cloister. About the same time he was engaged on the building of another great London church, that of St. Augustine, Kilburn, remarkable for its size, for its moderate price (11,200l. in the first instance), for its new treatment of the gallery problem, and for its highly successful use of stock-brick for the interior wall surface. It is of a thirteenth-century type, though not exclusively English in its plan. In 1872 Pearson built Wentworth Church, Yorkshire, for Lord Fitzwilliam, a good imitation of fourteenth-century work. In 1874 he built his fourth great London church, that of St. John, Red Lion Square, with its vicarage. Here Pearson showed his skill in occupying an unpromising site, and the church is as remarkable in point of plan as in the beauty of the Early English detail employed.

Horsforth Church, near Leeds, in the thirteenth-century manner, belongs to the same year, and Headingley Church in the same neighbourhood to 1885. In 1878 Pearson received a gold medal at Paris and the knighthood of the legion of honour. In 1879 he was selected as architect for the new cathedral of Truro; this appointment may be said to have coupled Pearson with Sir Christopher Wren as the only architects of English cathedrals consecrated since the middle ages. Except for the fact that a portion of the old parish church was incorporated as one of the south choir aisles, the building is an entirely new one, thus distinguishing the task from those works of alteration which have been undertaken in other towns to suit parish churches to the needs of new dioceses. It is the greatest ecclesiastical opportunity which has been offered to any modern architect, and it was used by Pearson in a manner which showed him a consummate master of the art of building according to mediaeval precedent.

The outer walls are faced with Penrhyn granite, the dressings being of Bath stone. The internal ashlar is also of granite, contrasted with columns of polyphant. The incorporation of the portion of old building (which in date is later than the style adopted for the main fabric) not only gives rise to interesting changes of level, but also controls the disposition of the columns in the choir which was made to follow the spacing of the bays in the old church. It was the necessity of supporting the south buttresses of the choir that gave rise to the picturesque double row of shafts which separate the old work from the new. The total length of the cathedral when completed will be three hundred feet, the height of the central spire 250 feet, the width of nave twenty-nine feet, and the height of vaulting seventy feet. The part first completed (which omitted all the nave except two bays and the upper part of the tower) cost 74,000l., and the fittings cost 15,000l. more. It was consecrated on