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

The proof of this came with his practice. Willson worked on several medieval
churches, restoring and largely reconstructing a number of them with great tact, notably
Holy Trinity Messingham in 1817-18 and St Mary Hainton, both in Lincolnshire, where
he worked in 1846-7 and where he chose eventually to be buried. Where possible he
incorporated the remains of the older fabric within the new. In his own buildings he was
able, at least once, to realise a piece of modern Gothic developed straight from the
Examples. The first subject in Volume Two, which was published, after much delay, in
1836 Willson having taken five years to produce the text, was the Slipper Chapel at
Houghton in Norfolk [fig: 17]. This small building, dating, as Willson knew, from the
mid-fourteenth century was ruinous in the 1830s having been converted at one point into
a cottage and then used as a barn. Willson wrote with something approaching tenderness
about the ‘curious little fabric’ with its ‘beautiful west window…the ramifications of its
mullions being adjusted very gracefully’. 145
Figure 17 The Slipper Chapel at Walsingham and (right) Willson's church at Melton Mowbray
145
Pugin and Willson, Examples of Gothic Architecture, 2, p.2.
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