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

within the last half century, in England, in the arts and sciences, than during any one, or
even five, centuries before’. 151
Figure 39 The New Palace of Westminster
Britton made this remark in the book he produced about Tracy’s house, Graphic
Illustrations with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Toddington, Gloucestershire,
the Seat of Lord Sudeley, published in 1840. This ‘full and impartial review of the
architectural character of the New House at Toddington’, which was largely paid for by
Tracy and boasted a subscription list headed by Queen Victoria, found, unsurprisingly,
that the house was ‘eminently successful’. 152 Britton pointed out that it was expressive of
its function in so far as it could not possibly ‘be mistaken for a church or a prison, for a
manufactory or for a farm-house’ and Tracy had not been so jejune as to call it an Abbey
or a Priory. 153 Even Britton must have squirmed at trimming his antiquarian sails so
drastically and having made these references and given a description of the details of
Toddington village and the new house, he seems to have been at something of a loss to
fill more than fifty pages. As so often he turned to himself as a subject of abiding interest
and to the ‘Architectural Antiquities [which] … have engaged my especial attention and
151
Britton, Graphic Illustrations with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Toddington, p.xiii.
152
Britton, Graphic Illustrations with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Toddington, p. 33.
153
Britton, Graphic Illustrations with Historical and Descriptive Accounts of Toddington, p.3.
78