HUNGERFIELD TO GOSPORT

 

First two churches by A W Blomfield. One in brick with a small bell turret, obviously cost conscious. It was a new church on the edge of Hungerford, responding to population growth in the early industrial age. Now converted to residential use.

 

The other a little further south, a rural location and sponsored by the owner of the West Woodhay Estate. Positioned half way between the village and the manor, it replaces an earlier church next to the manor house which is thought to have been designed by Inigo Jones. The footprint is smaller, but the effect much more grand. Rusticated stone with ashlar trimmings and a find bell tower.

 

 

The placement of the tower is quite interesting, on the south side of the chancel just where it meets the nave. Adding to the artistic flair of the whole is stained glass by Morris & Co, including the East Window possibly by Burne-Jones. The estate belonged to the Cole family for many years, London merchants with connections to the Bank of England.  All-in-all a fascinating pair with sharp contrasts of materials and massing, but both firmly within the Victorian Gothic tradition and well suited to their context.

 

Gosport, across the harbour from Portsmouth. Church of St John, Forton Road. Architect Alfred Blomfield. It’s another no-frills red brick design suited to a rapidly growing urban area. But this one is much bigger than the Hungerford example. In terms of massing it could almost be a factory shed, but there is just enough Victorian Gothic detailing to establish a spiritual aura.

 

Church of St John, Forton Road, Gosport

As before, the darker brown areas represent urban fabric in 1900, and the paler brown the current extent. There are medieval churches across the water in Portsmouth, lots of Victorian establishments on both sides, the occasional Georgian edifice in the classical idiom marking the start of a cultural transition lead up to the Industrial Revolution.

 

History expressed in the Way We Build. For the moment focusing on the work of a single architect and the contexts around his buildings. So far I have discussed three out of ten. Meanwhile modelling proceeds on three more. 

Blomfield collection in progress

 

SUBSET OF TEN

Here are the ten churches within my study area (roughly Hampshire) by A. W. Blomfield. This is a drafting view in Revit. Select the image used on my map sheets, choose manage links, then place instance and you can reuse those images, already in the project rapidly, and without duplication.

The titles are copy-pasted from the folders where I keep all the research material I have collected for this project. The schedule is from an Excel sheet. I will add new shared parameters once this format settles down. Still considering how to record materials (walls, roof) bell structures, porch, vestry, etc.

 

The second drafting view displays fresh research to highlight the breadth of Blomfield’s career. Did he ever visit those churches in other countries. Maybe Denmark, but the Falkland Islands? I suspect the fees ran to a single drawing sheet, probably beautifully composed and coloured by hand.

The interior of St George’s Anglican Cathedral in Georgetown, Guyana really caught my eye. Fantastic use of timber framing to create a spiritual atmosphere. His secular buildings veer away from straight Gothic towards Flemish and Elizabethan styles. You have to be impressed by both the quantity and quality of this guy’s work.

Also note his connection to Thomas Hardy which remained strong after Hardy became a successful novelist.

 

 

First pass modelling of St Saviour, Eddington just to the North of Hungerford. Quite a modest brick structure and no longer a church. It seems to have been built in anticipation of population expansion to the North, across the river and up the hill. And there was some, but in the event the main thrust of development was to the south. The church did have quite a large graveyard however which still exists. So perhaps it was more of a mortuary church.

One of the great features of Revit is the ability to duplicate a view and reformat. What knocked me out as a new user, twenty years ago, was that both views remain live and update as the model evolves. Old hat now, but in those early days at GAJ, experimenting with this new toy it was an instant sell.

Here I have taken my Hampshire map, removed most of the colour (hidden line view) half-toned a bunch of stuff and applied a filter that selects by Architects name = A W Blomfield. Then once again place instances of the image files for his 10 churches. Now I can visualise the distribution of his work within my study area.

Simple but effective.

REGINALD, CHRISTINE & ARTHUR

 

This space is off to the side of my map of Hampshire Churches, a Revit project file. It’s somewhere in Surrey and bounded by a section box. Here I can place the family files that I have created for individual churches. Simplified forms assembled directly with solid modelling tools. They are all one-offs, so no need for parametrics.

Along the back I have added a wall, and copies of the few nested components I have used so far, which are Parametric because they occur multiple times with different sizes and proportions. The “windows” are labelled in quotes because although the families are Window Category, they use the Face-Based template and could be doors, archways, louvred openings of Bell towers, or blind recesses.

 

The first phase was mapping and data collection. Some 400 churches identified, placed on the map and assigned data in predefined fields. Now we are in the second phase. Creating massing models of the first 20 or so churches. Refining the methodology for this process.

For the past few days I have been making a second pass through these churches, bringing the models up to a consistent level of detail. Call it LOD100 if you like. The windows and doors are recesses with material parameters painted on the back surface (wood, glass, louvres).

 

 

Different in height but similar in outlook. Christine Espinosa took this selfie during my most recent visit to GAJ head office. I guess we have known each other almost 20 years now and how she has blossomed into a key player at the practice and a prominent voice on the Dubai architectural scene.

It's such a pleasure for me to stay in touch with the office that has meant so much to me, now that I am approaching retirement. Kind of 👀

 

 

Schedules are a very powerful weapon in Revit’s armoury. Once you have a decent amount of data input into the model, sorted and filtered schedules are a great way to discover gaps and anomalies

Filtering my Hampshire Churches for “Architects name exists” generates a subset of mostly Victorian Gothic Revival buildings. Grouping these immediately reveals a handful who designed several. Seems like an interesting way to narrow the field and make some comparisons.

Arthur William Blomfield comes up first, thanks to his initials. Ten churches by him in my dataset. He was uncle to Reginald Blomfield a name I knew better. Classicist, author and fierce critic of Modernism. Sir Arthur died in 1899. The Arts and Crafts Movement was probably the closest thing to Modernism that he witnessed. Possibly Art Nouveau sneaked into his peripheral vision.

 

 

I spent a morning mapping out 5 generations of the family. Quintessential Victorians emerging from Georgian roots. Arthur’s grandfather was a near comtemporary to John Soane. Large families with high infant mortality. We tend to forget how recently this was the norm.

The church looms large in their history although they started humbly as provincial school teachers. I will review Arthur’s work in a separate post, but his output was prodigious, mostly churches but not exclusively.