Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/423

 period the gothic structures of England had neither been efficiently recorded nor 'restored.' Pugin was practically the only gothic architect of the day, and Rickman's 'catalogued examination of English churches was a useful pioneer no more' (E. I. B. A. Journal, 1900, vii. 241). Butterfield's inclinations led him naturally into collaboration with the Cambridge Camden Society, among whose founders he had many personal friends, especially the Rev. Benjamin Webb [q. v.], on whose advice in church matters he placed a high value, and in consultation with whom he prepared a great number of illustrations for the 'Instrumenta Ecclesiastica' (London, 1847, 4to), a repertory of church design.

Under the auspices of the Cambridge Camden Society, a scheme was started in 1843 for the improvement of church plate and other articles of church use, and Butterfield, whose offices were then, as throughout his career, at 4 Adam Street, Adelphi, was appointed the 'agent.' He was, in fact, not merely the receiver of orders but the designer of the goods and the superintendent of their execution (Ecclesiologist, 1843, p. 117).

In 1844 Butterfield designed for Coalpit Heath, near Bristol, a small church to seat four hundred (ib. 1844, p. 113), and in the next year he undertook for Alexander James Beresford-Hope [q. v.] his first important work — the re-erection of St. Augustine's, Canterbury, as a missionary college. This building {ib. vii. 1) shares with the church of St. Matthias, Stoke Newington (1853), and with the collegiate church (now cathedral) of Cumbrae, a certain simplicity and adherence to type which is absent from Butterfield's later and more individual works. The chapel at Balliol College, Oxford (1856-1857), a small but characteristic building, shows the beginning of his unusual methods in colour; but the first church which made his reputation as an architect of undoubted originality was All Saints', Margaret Street, London, which, with its adjoining buildings (1859), forms a significant and admirable group of modern ecclesiastical architecture (ib. xx. 184;, English Cathedrals of the Nineteenth Century, pp. 234, 250). The type of gothic adopted here is, so far as it follows precedent, that of the fourteenth century, but there is great freedom in the handling of forms and mouldings, and an exuberance in the colour decoration. One of the striking features of the church is the, then novel, use of exposed brickwork, both external and internal.

All Saints' was followed in 1863 by St. Alban's, near Holborn [see ], a building of singular majesty, in which the fine proportions more than counterbalance the idiosyncrasies. A sketch (Builder, xlvi. 1884), made by Mr. A. Beresford Pite, when the houses in Gray's Inn were demolished, shows an aspect of the building generally invisible. The new buildings at Merton College, Oxford (Ecclesiologist, xix. 218), with restoration of the chapel, were entrusted to Butterfield in 1864, and in 1868 he carried out the Hampshire county hospital, which, with St. Michael's Hospital, Cheddar, is among the chief of his non-ecclesiastical works. His next important design was for the chapel and other school buildings at Rugby (1876), and about the same time there came the great opportunity of his life, the commission to build Keble College at Oxford. Of this undertaking the chapel, completed in 1876 at a cost of 60,000l., was intended to be the point of central interest. Its proportions and forms are good; but its colour, whether in marble, glass, or other materials, is generally acknowledged to be unfortunate. It is only fair to mention that the chapel has undergone certain alterations by another hand.

Butterfield's chief interest lay essentially in his ecclesiastical buildings; but he designed various domestic works, chiefly for his personal friends. Henth's Court, near Ottery St. Mary, erected in 1883 for Lord Coleridge, is one of his best houses, and Milton Ernest in Bedfordshire another. He made the plans for the laying out of Hunstanton, and designed several houses for Mr. Le Strange.

Among his later designs are the chapel and other buildings at Ascot Priory [see art. ], completed in 1885, and the church at Rugby in 1896.

Butterfield's works of restoration were not as happy as his original designs. It is strange that one who based all his knowledge upon original study and who had a genuine love of old buildings should have produced such misinterpretations of antiquity. At Winchester College, where he built certain new buildings, he incurred criticism by destroying the seventeenth-century stalls of the chapel (which may perhaps have been decayed); at St. Cross Hospital he employed, in the name of restoration, a very startling scheme of colouring; at St. Bees he made additions incongruous to the fabric, including a costly iron screen. At Friskney, Lincolnshire, and Brigham, Cumberland, there are further examples of his somewhat unsympathetic attention to old churches.

Butterfield had several commissions for colonial work, designing churches (mostly