Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol III (1901).djvu/271

 3 Nov. 1887, the foundation-stone having been laid by the Prince of Wales, as duke of Cornwall, on 20 May 1880. In this same year, 1880, Pearson received the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, on the council of which he at one time served, and was honoured by the full membership of the Royal Academy, having been an associate since 1874. In 1879 he had designed St. Alban's Church, Birmingham, in which town he also, in 1896, built the church of St. Patrick. St. Agues, Liverpool, dates from 1883, Speke in the same county from 1873, and Norley Church in Cheshire from 1878.

Of Pearson's works of restoration the best known is the north transept of Westminster Abbey, the front of which (though largely designed from fragments found in the old walls) he may be said to have rebuilt. The portals bad already been handled by Sir George Gilbert Scott. His other work in the abbey consisted of general repairs. Pearson's proposals for the restoration at Westminster Hall were the subject of a select parliamentary committee in 1885, before which the architect argued against much opposition, but with ultimate success, in favour of re-erecting between the buttresses on the west side a building such as in his opinion had once existed there before. This building was carried out, in Ketton stone, and the committee-rooms and other apartments of which it consists are approached by a staircase from the floor of Westminster Hall. Pearson's report to this committee was fully illustrated with plans and diagrams, and disclosed very completely the history of the building.

Other small works by Pearson in the same neighbourhood were the replacement of the nondescript porch of St. Margaret's Church by a new one of correcter Gothic, sundry alterations in Westminster School, and some new canons' houses.

Besides Lincoln, already mentioned, Pearson was engaged in cathedral restoration at Peterborough, Canterbury, Bristol, Rochester, Chichester, and Exeter. At the last-named he rebuilt part of the cloister and formed a chapter-library above it. The Chichester appointment came only just before his death, though he completed a design for the new tower. At Rochester he restored the Norman west front and ornamented the screen. At Canterbury he reinstated St. Anselm's Chapel. At Bristol, besides various repairs, he finished the western towers from the design of George Edmund Street [q.v.], rearranged the choir with a new marble floor, and designed the altar screen, sedilia, and choir screen, and restored the ancient gateway. At Peterborough he twice had to face the storm of criticism. The central tower was bound to come down, and it was restored on the numbered-stone system ; but controversy arose over the question whether the pointed arches of the tower piers should be restored as pointed arches, or whether the Norman character of the surrounding work should be a sufficient argument for making the new arches circular. The question was referred to the archbishop of Canterbury, who decided for the pointed form, and also gave his vote against Pearson's original design for a new tower. The later controversy, which concerned itself with the great narthex at the west front, began in 1896. A strong opposition, which took the form of newspaper correspondence (see Times, December 1896, January 1897), combated Pearson's intention of reconstructing the arches, which were evidently insecure, and argued for the retention in situ of all the existing external stones. With characteristic unconcern Pearson, who was sure of his ground, took no part in the controversy, if he even read the letters of his opponents, and before his death carried out a great part of the work, in which of course he preserved every possible portion of the ancient masonry. His interior work at this cathedral included the elaborate marble pavement of the sanctuary, the bishop's throne, the stalls, and the baldachino.

Pearson's art was neither exclusively Gothic nor wholly ecclesiastical. Treberfydd, a country house already mentioned, was of a late fifteenth-century type. Quar Wood (Gloucestershire), which followed, was certainly Gothic, but Roundwick (Sussex) was Tudor in character, and Lechlade Manor Jacobean. Westwood House, Sydenham, shows something of a Francois I treatment, while the offices for the Hon. W. W. Astor on the Thames Embankment display a free type of Renaissance work. This building is an excellent and rich design, exhibiting to the full the versatility of its author's genius. For the same employer Pearson carried out works at Carlton House Terrace and Cliveden, Buckinghamshire, previously owned by the Duke of Westminster.

Among Pearson's other works in London and neighbourhood should be mentioned the Catholic Apostolic Church, near the Regent's canal, noticeable externally for a deeply recessed west window ; the sedilia, font, and font-cover at St. Andrew's, Wells Street ; a chapel at the Middlesex Hospital ; the restoration of St. Mary-the-Less, Lambeth ; St. Helen's, Bishopsgate ; and All Hallows,