Antiquaries in the Age of Romanticism: 1789-1851 - Queen Mary ...

importantly, public buildings. Even Robert Willis, whose interest was more strictly
confined to questions of dating and construction and who eschewed almost entirely the
romantic associationalism of his contemporaries, built a little cemetery chapel at Wisbech
in Cambridgeshire in the Gothic style, while for Sara Losh and Edward Willson, as will
become apparent, building was at the heart of their antiquarian activities.
Milner’s intentions for his chapel can be read from the relationship in which he
placed it to its actual, intellectual and historical surroundings. It stood in St Peter’s Street
on the spot where, ‘except during a few stormy intervals’ there had always been a
catholic chapel 64 but it was in marked contrast to its predecessors and to the ‘modern
style’ of catholic chapels ‘which are in general square chambers, with small sashed
windows… hardly to be distinguished… from common assembly rooms’. 65 As in
Salisbury cathedral, albeit on a miniature scale, the purpose was to produce ‘a certain
degree of those pleasing and awful sensations’ aroused by the Gothic and appropriate, for
Milner, to a state of spiritual elevation. 66 An important part of this was the chapel’s
connection to the past, and not merely the associations of its particular site. It was to be
approached, quite literally, by way of its historic origins. On St Peter’s Street itself,
leading into the churchyard, stood a ‘Saxon portal’ which Milner had reconstructed after
it had been removed ‘by piecemeal, from the church of St Magdalen’s hospital’ which,
Milner was careful to point out, had been allowed to fall into ruin and the fragments
legally sold off. 67 This ‘exceedingly good specimen of the Saxon style; the mouldings,
undercut and pillars, with their capitals and bases…both well designed and well wrought’
was to be admired for itself but ‘Its chief merit…is, that it is a genuine antique’. 68 The
intrinsic quality of antiquity was what gave it its resonance.
64
Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester , 2, p.340.
65
Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p.241.
66
Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p.241.
67
Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p. 242.
68
Milner, The History Civil and Ecclesiastical and Survey of the Antiquities of Winchester, 2, p. 242.
52