In Part 3 we looked at Pugin’s St. John the Baptist “Hospital,” Alton Castle, and Lodging for Stonemasons, all in Alton, as the first of Pugin’s built works that evidenced the social vision in his Contrasts. We continue.

Pugin’s Home (“The Grange”) and St. Augustine’s Abbey Church, Ramsgate (1843-44)

Pugin designed his home (“the Grange”) in Ramsgate[i] on a cliff overlooking the North Sea, consciously aware that it was located just a few miles from the landing spot of the missionary St. Augustine of Canterbury in 597 A.D. The home had space for a chapel, space for his wife and six (eventually eight) children, and space for an apprentice, a priest, and servants. He also designed an outbuilding (called a “cartoon room”) where he worked with craftsmen to create mock-ups (“cartoons”) of stained glass windows. Pugin had intended to operate a school in his home as well. He started the school but subsequently closed it.

In the outside wall of his home, Pugin engraved words from Psalm 127: “Unless the Lord builds the house, they labor in vain who build.” The words were interpreted by Pugin to refer not only to individual buildings but to ensembles. Thus, Pugin designed and paid for the rectory adjacent to his home, St. Edward’s Presbytery, and the adjacent St. Augustine’s Abbey Church.[ii] Pugin constructed a churchyard cemetery as well — for priests, family, parishioners and foreign sailors. Pugin’s “bird’s-eye” perspective of his home and the adjacent church, which was exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1849, is here. The drawing includes a floor plan upper left, ten smaller drawings, and a legend.

William J.R. Curtis, an architectural historian, wrote on April 24, 2012, in the Architectural Review:

Taken together the Abbey Church and Grange corresponded to Pugin’s ideal of a country priory dedicated to the virtues of charity and communal existence, as well as to the soundness of a Catholic family life. They embodied his vision of an integrated society in the face of materialism and alienation. It was as if he had constructed one of the plates from Contrasts but adjusted it to the particular site on top of the cliffs at Ramsgate.

Nine years after Pugin’s death, Benjamin Ferrey (1810-1880), who had been a fellow student of Pugin’s in Pugin’s father’s home drawing school in London, wrote a memoir in which he described Pugin’s hospitality, that is, charity, emanating out of The Grange home, in the following words:

In his generosity he spared neither money nor personal exertion, and relieved all, without distinction of country or religion. For this end he had in his hall a chest filled with entire suits of clothes, and one of his greatest pleasures in life was to send away clothed and fed those who came to him ragged and hungry. His active benevolence originated the Sailors’ Infirmary at Ramsgate, the embryo of which was to be found in two small houses he hired [rented] in King-street, where he engaged nurses to attend the fever-stricken sailors who were left destitute in port.

*  * *

…Visiting one Sunday afternoon the captain of his lugger [a boat], who had sprained his leg, and finding him destitute of what he considered necessary for his comfort, he [Pugin] at once returned home, and finding no man about the place he sallied forth, to the astonishment of all who met him, with a mattress, blankets, &c., on his shoulder, and bag of provisions in his hand, for the use and comfort of the damaged sailor.

On another occasion when 200 German immigrants were detained in port by stress of weather this thoughtful and kind-hearted friend of the friendless not only attended to their corporeal wants, but at his own expense invited the priest from the German chapel from London to come down and look after their spiritual necessities. On the morning of their departure, a deputation of 30 of their principal men waited upon him [Pugin], and being unable to make themselves understood, their chief and would-be spokesman, threw himself on the ground and placed his head under Pugin’s foot in token of gratitude, and as an expression of homage towards their kind-hearted benefactor.[iii]

St. Joseph Almshouses, St. Joseph Primary School, St. Mary’s Church, Chelsea (1847)

St. Joseph Almshouses (now called St. Joseph Cottages) are part of an ensemble that includes St. Joseph Primary School and St. Mary’s Church, all located near two additional buildings, an orphanage and a chapel for retirees.[iv] The website for St. Mary’s Church observes the following about the benefactors’ plan for the ensemble that Pugin designed:

When the Abbé died in 1840 after 40 years of service to his parish, his work was continued by many dedicated people including, especially, Joseph and Mary Knight. They planned a Catholic foundation in the parish and purchased, for £5,000, two and a half acres of land which had formerly been the Wellington Cricket Ground. This is now the Cadogan Street/Draycott Terrace site which contains the current Church together with St Joseph’s Primary School, St Thomas More Language College and the St Joseph’s Almshouses. Theirs was a comprehensive scheme to build a church, a convent, schools, almshouses and a cemetery, resembling in some ways a mediaeval conception of parish life. These were mostly built in the 1845-55 period.[v]

Mercy Convent (“House of Mercy”; 1841), Church of St. Mary (1846, destroyed in WWII), Handsworth, Birmingham

This ensemble of a convent providing social services and a church is a short walk from Pugin’s St. Chad’s Cathedral (1839).

In his Present State of Ecclesiastical Architecture in England, Pugin described Mercy Convent as consisting of a “chapel, cloisters, oratory, cemetery, sacristy, refectory, noviciate [sic] parlour, community room, work room for religious, twenty cells, school-room, dining room for poor children, dormitory and playing-room for ditto [poor children], kitchen and other offices.”[vi] He provided a drawing in Present State of its exterior.[vii] Online one can find many pictures of the convent’s exterior and interior. The portion of the building for housing and schooling for young women and children was in a distinct wing from that for the religious women.

The Pugin-designed Church of St. Mary[viii] was destroyed in World War II and not rebuilt. Its ruins have not been removed.[ix]

Anne’s Bedehouse, Lincoln (started in 1847)

St. Anne’s Bedehouse is an ensemble designed by Pugin consisting of 14 homes for the poor and a chapel. A detailed description is provided by British Listed Buildings here.

Conclusion

We have reviewed Pugin’s social vision in his book Contrasts and his “Imaginary Town.” We’ve discussed his “topographical drawings.” And, finally, we’ve described five of the buildings he designed and built. I have no doubt that, had Pugin lived beyond age 40, he would have designed more noble buildings and ensembles of buildings that would comport with the vision he expressed in Contrasts, namely, buildings that reflect the dignity of the people who live, work and worship in them. They would integrate love of God and love of neighbor by including places of worship and places of service.

[A link to Part 1 is here, Part 2 is here, and Part 3 is here.]

[i] The Grange is now owned and operated by the Landmark Trust and is available for overnight rental.

[ii] The church was designated on Pugin’s 200^th birthday, March 1, 2012, a Shrine to St. Augustine of Canterbury.

[iii] Benjamin Ferrey, Recollections of A.N. Welby Pugin and His Father, Augustus Pugin, pp. 179-180 (1861), available online.

The buildings in this ensemble in Ramsgate expanded after Pugin’s 1852 death. Pugin’s son, Edward (1834-1875), completed Pugin’s plan by designing the Benedictine abbey (1861) across the street. In 1865, St. Augustine’s College, a college preparatory school, opened in a large, nearby home and, about 1870, Edward designed the expansion of this building. In 1904, Pugin’s youngest son, Peter Paul Pugin (1851-1904), designed an entire new wing of the abbey and, in 1926, a Pugin grandson, Charles Henry Cuthbert Purcell (1874-1958), designed the Bergh Library. Current images of these buildings are available online, for example, here. The Grange is now owned and operated by the Landmark Trust and is available for overnight rental.

[iv] Shown here, here, and here.

[v] History — St Mary’s Cadogan Street

[vi] Page 104.

[vii] After page 104.

[viii] Not to be confused with a church now known as Handsworth Old Church (or the “Cathedral of the Industrial Revolution” and resting place of James Watt), which survived World War II.

[ix] Images of the ruins appear on Facebook.