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

towards academic architectural history, was to be, if more dignified, then also more
intellectually and socially exclusive than the old.
Sara Losh and the creation of analogous sensations
Before discussing the implications of this new phase there is one more
antiquarian architectural project to be considered, one which must stand alone but which
can, nevertheless, stand for much else. This is the church of St Mary at Wreay in
Cumbria, designed by Sara Losh as a memorial to her sister Katherine (1788-1835). Losh
is the only woman to figure in this thesis. Even among the small number of female
antiquaries of the time she is a rarity. The pursuits considered as suitable for women in
the field generally excluded any kind of manual work or anything that involved
collaboration with men except with a husband or father. Even libraries seem to have been
out of bounds. Although the Reading Room of the British Museum was open to women,
only one woman is known to have used it in the whole of the eighteenth century. 165
Ballad collecting and folklore studies were the most usual topics for those unusual
women who were counted as antiquaries. Losh has not previously been considered as
such, indeed it is only recently that she has been admitted to be an architect. 166 The
reluctance to consider her in either category undoubtedly came from considerations of
gender and to some degree class, for as a gentlewoman her contemporaries would not
have cared to associate her with a trade or profession and women were not admitted to
the Society of Antiquaries.
The eldest child in a well-established and close-knit gentry family, Losh was born
at Wreay probably in 1786. She was a gifted girl whose abilities were encouraged by a
165
Sweet, Antiquaries, pp. 69-79 gives an excellent account of the scope for female antiquarianism and its
limitations.
166
Losh’s professional standing has improved through the literature. Pevsner, ‘Sarah Losh’s Church’, p. 67
states that ‘Miss Losh … had no architect.’ Wood, ‘A Memorial to Two Sisters’, p.1230, calls her a ‘gifted
amateur architect’. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography describes her simply as ‘architect’.
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