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

measured details of medieval buildings made by A C Pugin and his pupils intended,
specifically, for copying. There were no perspectives or picturesque views in these books.
Britton, who claimed to be the originator of the idea, though Pugin later contested this,
was the overall editor. He wrote in his Preface that ‘It is hoped and believed that every
form and member here represented can easily be executed, either on a scale equal to the
original, and for similar purposes, or reduced to any other scale’. 131 Both volumes were
dedicated to eminent practising architects, John Nash, George IV’s favourite architect, for
volume one and Robert Smirke for volume two.
The title of Willson’s essays, ‘Remarks on Gothic Architecture and on Modern
Imitations’ underlines the theme of a direct connection between past and present. Willson
was a Roman Catholic. His view of medieval Gothic and its decline was, like Milner’s,
tendentious, and will be discussed elsewhere. 132 The greater part of the first essay,
however, deals with post-medieval architecture. Willson wrote both as an antiquary and
as an architect evaluating his peers. He shared the general contemporary dislike of Wren
and Hawksmoor’s attempts at Gothic and saw everything since, rather as Pevsner did
later, as an unsteady progress towards archaeological accuracy or, as Willson put it,
towards James Essex, ‘the first professional architect whose works displayed a correct
taste in imitations of ancient English Architecture’. 133 Willson had no qualms about
condemning Wyatt’s interventions at Salisbury or indeed, in the second volume of
Specimens, which was not dedicated to John Nash, Nash’s own palace for George IV,
‘highly decorated with cupolas and minarets of eastern taste [*rather oddly designated
‘The Pavilion’ at Brighton]’. 134
If John Carter was arguably the first architectural critic in the modern sense then
Willson, in a more minor key, was perhaps the second. He voiced the complaint that was
to become general later in the decade about the novelty styles, popular since the Regency,
131
Pugin and Willson, 1821-23, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 1, Preface, np, unsigned but apparently
written by Britton, as editor.
132
See Chapter 5.
133
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 1, p. xvi.
134
Pugin and Willson, Specimens of Gothic Architecture, 2, p. xix and footnote.
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