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Category: English Gothic

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Thinking big

Canterbury Cathedral, view of the Western Towers, engraved by J.LeKeux after a picture by G.Cattermole, 1821, showing the entrance before it was rebuilt.
I work predominantly in two different art forms—the fast painting and the short essay. I like the immediacy of laying paint and words down quickly. In that, I am very much a child of my time. Ours is an age of fast assault.
Ten years ago, I planted a beech tree at a local church, knowing it would never reach maturity in my lifetime. That was frustrating enough. The centuries-long effort required to build the medieval cathedral is completely beyond my conception.
“I am particularly struck by the perseverance required to bring these incredible places to light and life,” Rev. John Nicholson messaged. “To think of my grandchildren attending a dedication service for something I began is mind-boggling. I am sure our paltry, microwavable theology would not sustain such an effort.”
Canterbury Cathedral: the Corona, shrine to Thomas Becket, David Iliff, License: CC-BY-SA 3.0
The visionary who conceived a cathedral had no guarantees that his work would endure. Consider Canterbury Cathedral. Founded in 597 by Augustine, it originally consisted of an Anglo-Saxon nave, narthex and side chapels. It was destroyed by fire in 1067 and completely rebuilt from 1070 to 1077 under the first Norman archbishop, Lanfranc. The east end was immediately demolished by his successor and the nave doubled in length.
The murder of Thomas Becket turned the cathedral into a place of pilgrimage, necessitating another enlargement of the east end to accommodate his shrine.  This and the choir were then rebuilt in the Gothic style following a fire in 1174. The Norman nave and transepts survived until the late fourteenth century, which is also when the massive crossing tower was added. During the Dissolution of the Monasteries, Becket’s shrine was pillaged and most objects of value carried off by the Crown.
Canterbury Cathedral: West Front, Nave and Central Tower, Hans Musil, 2005
We modern evangelicals live in mini-mansions and go to church in graceless buildings that look like barns. The medieval mind thought it appropriate to live in barns and worship in celestial mansions.  “They had a much clearer vision of the difference between themselves and God,” messaged Laura Turner.
“Our God is too small,” added John Nicholson.

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Building great things

Choir at Canterbury Cathedral, photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
The prevailing WASP culture of mid-century America reflexively recoiled against the pomp of the European church. The argument was that the resources of the church would be better spent on the poor than on accumulating treasures in a church building. It’s an old argument, echoing from Matthew 26:9 (where it’s in fact hypocritical).
This viewpoint undermined my attitude toward my work for a long time. In a world where service is the highest expression of humanity, art and music are a frivolous waste of time.
Cloisters at Canterbury Cathedral, photo by David Iliff. License: CC-BY-SA 3.0.
The 26 medieval cathedrals of England date from about 1040 to 1540. In the great era of cathedral-building, a sizable portion of the British population was living in wattle-and-daub hovels. The twentieth-century impulse would have been to use that money to build them warmer houses. That would have been a great loss for western culture.
The Anglo-Saxon conversion is traditionally dated from 597 AD, when Augustine arrived in Canterbury, but no systematic program of religious building started until the Normans showed up. There is not a single example of Saxon secular architecture left in Britain. They simply didn’t have the technical skill or social organization for large-scale building projects until they were colonized.
Parliament Hill in Ottawa is an example of how English Gothic influenced world architecture.
English cathedral builders borrowed extensively from the Norman culture from which their masters came. Since they were built over centuries, most cathedrals incorporated several styles and made no effort to integrate them. This storm of creativity fused together a uniquely English architecture.
American Gothic, Grant Wood, 1930, features an example of American Carpenter Gothic architecture. He liked the house and wanted to paint it along with “the kind of people I fancied should live in that house.”
Could that have happened had the impulse to build been directed into housing the poor? There are echoes of English Gothic and Tudor architecture all over the world, including in the neighborhood in which I live. Has anyone ever consciously tried to copy a public housing project?


Message me if you want information about the coming year’s classes and workshops.