The Abney Park Temple Lodges (1838–40) were designed by William Hosking as entrance lodges to the historic 18th century parkland associated with Isaac Watts and Lady Mary Abney.[1] The buildings were added to the parkland estate on its becoming laid out as the Congregationalists' novel non-denominational garden cemetery, arboretum and educational institution.
Rather than the usual forbidding high walls of contemporary cemetery design, William Hosking was briefed to work up a visually prominent design that would occupy a considerable frontage expanse. This provided open, inviting, views into the park, for appreciation of its botanical richness and landscape beauty since the Abney Park Cemetery project was, more so than any other of the ring of cemeteries at the time, designed as an early semi-public London park as well as a London burial ground.
Architecture
For buildings forming part of an English garden cemetery of the period, an unusual choice of architectural style was made at Abney Park: Egyptian Revival style. It had not previously been used on a large scale for a park or cemetery frontage; and for a prominent entrance onto one of the main roads into London, it was clearly designed to catch the eye and be symbolic of the novelty of a wholly non-denominational approach to cemetery layout and design, and the remarkable intention of also establishing a semi-public park.
William Hosking was already familiar with Egyptian temple architecture, as evidenced by his contributions to the Encyclopædia Britannica, but he took expert advice from fellow antiquarian scholar Joseph Bonomi junior to achieve higher standards of detailing for the hieroglyphics and other Egyptian facets of the final design.
Detail of Hosking, Bonomi, Loddiges' and Collisons' Egyptian Revival entrance showing its botanical approach using Lotus flower heads and sepals (photo: September 2005)
Hosking's carefully scaled "Egyptian-Revival" entrance ensemble comprised a carefully studied Temple Lodge or Lodges (with twin North and South components), with dramatic pylons, gates and railings in between. It is the earliest example in European architecture of a cemetery building (as opposed to monuments or gates) being designed and built in "Egyptian Revival" style.
The presence of George Loddiges, nurseryman and scientist, on the garden cemetery's design team, may account for Hosking's final choice of the Sacred Lotus flower for the decorative motifs at the tops of the Abney Park entrance pylons; a plant closely associated with the Nile and Egyptian religious symbolism. Botanical iconography was evidently preferred to "sphinxes" and other populist or polychromatic Egyptian revival designs; and from Bonomi's accurate studies and drawings in Egypt, both the "flower heads" / "seed heads" and petals/sepals of the Sacred Lotus could be perfectly carved as pylon decorations that survive to this day (see photo).
Public fascination with Egyptology was then in vogue, and with Bonomi's help, and the Cemetery Company's close control over the brief, Hosking is said to have produced "Egyptial Revival" entrance features more perfectly, and on a more complete scale, than at Mount Auburn Cemetery where the concept had originated. Importantly, Mount Auburn Cemetery, from which Abney Park's client representative, George Collison took much of his inspiration, still at that time had only a temporary Egyptial Revival structure (made of dusted wood and sand). Its permanent "Egyptian Revival" structure was not built until two years after the Temple Lodges at Abney Park were completed, more optimistically, in stone. In England only a small-scale "Egyptian Revival" gateway had yet been built at a cemetery for Nonconformists near Sheffield in 1836, William Hosking becoming the first to employ the style for English park or cemetery buildings.
Attempt at Comical Caricature of the "New General Cemetery for All Denominations" with Egyptian Design at Abney Park [PUGIN (1843), An Apology for the Revival of Christian Architecture
]
Pugin's caricature of the gates includes a "Shillibeer's Funeral Omnibus". George Shillibeer's invention was arousing some debate in 1843, as had the Newington Academy for Girls in its day (for which he had designed the world's first school bus), and now the new nondenominational park cemetery. All were seen by parts of London society as iconoclastic.
The appropriate architectural style for a place of burial was then a hotly debated issue. Not long before Hosking's commission at Abney Park, the neoclassical style (favoured in Georgian times) had been commissioned at Kensal Green Cemetery. Its use implied a greater preponderance towards Whig sympathies amongst its board of directors, rather than the emerging fashion amongst high church or Tory designers - the Gothic revival style. The latter had been favoured by board members such as Augustus Charles Pugin (1769–1832) and George Carden, and at Kensal Green Cemetery the board's decision to reject a Gothic revivalist approach was a key reason behind George Carden's departure. Soon afterwards, in 1836, the South Metropolitan Cemetery was founded in Norwood, South London; on its board of directors was Sir William Tite, an architect who chose the Gothic style for all the cemetery buildings, and thus Norwood became the first Gothic cemetery to wide public acclaim.
Hosking, Bonomi and Collisons' Egyptian revival gateway to Abney Park Cemetery: the first European use of Egyptianising architecture for Cemetery Design, c. 1840 (photo: September 2005)
In this heady climate, introducing a non-European style of design from Africa was a bold step. Advocates of Gothic revival architecture, notably the polemicist and Gothic architect Augustus W N Pugin (1812–52), proved particularly critical of Abney Park's Cemetery's novel approach which was implicitly sympathetic to a "New World" outlook.
By contrast, Abney Park's approach resonated perfectly with those who had close ties with America, principally Congregationalists and other nonconformist groups whose relatives had left for the New World to pursue political and religious freedom. For them, the proposed Egyptian Revival design symbolised the adoption of an architectural tradition from part of the African continent with an association with Great Pyramids and reflected the pioneering spirit embodied in Massachusetts' Mount Auburn Cemetery.
Though use of the style proved controversial in some quarters, others were impressed with the bold design at Abney Park and began to conclude that the "Egyptian Revival" should be taken further, mostly for purely stylistic reasons. In 1839 it had been used more discreetly at the entrance to the catacombs at Highgate Cemetery, but by 1842, two years after Abney Park opened, it was possible for the architect Thomas Wilson, a member of the General Cemetery Company board, to publish the most futuristic cemetery design ever in the Egyptian style. He envisaged the building of a brick and granite pyramid taller than St. Paul's Cathedral containing nearly a quarter of a million catacombs, on nearly a hundred levels, surmounting Primrose Hill, complete with a public observatory at the top.
Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin was an English architect, designer, artist and critic with French and Swiss origins. He is principally remembered for his pioneering role in the Gothic Revival style of architecture. His work culminated in designing the interior of the Palace of Westminster in Westminster, London, and its renowned clock tower, the Elizabeth Tower, which houses the bell known as Big Ben. Pugin designed many churches in England, and some in Ireland and Australia. He was the son of Auguste Pugin, and the father of Edward Welby Pugin and Peter Paul Pugin, who continued his architectural firm as Pugin & Pugin.
Gothic Revival is an architectural movement that after a gradual build-up beginning in the second half of the 17th century became a widespread movement in the first half of the 19th century, mostly in England. Increasingly serious and learned admirers sought to revive medieval Gothic architecture, intending to complement or even supersede the neoclassical styles prevalent at the time. Gothic Revival draws upon features of medieval examples, including decorative patterns, finials, lancet windows, and hood moulds. By the middle of the 19th century, Gothic Revival had become the pre-eminent architectural style in the Western world, only to begin to fall out of fashion in the 1880s and early 1890s.
Decimus Burton was one of the foremost English architects and landscapers of the 19th century. He was the foremost Victorian architect in the Roman revival, Greek revival, Georgian neoclassical and Regency styles. He was a founding fellow and vice-president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, and from 1840 architect to the Royal Botanic Society, and an early member of the Athenaeum Club, London, whose clubhouse he designed and which the company of his father, James Burton, the pre-eminent Georgian London property developer, built.
Egyptian Revival is an architectural style that uses the motifs and imagery of ancient Egypt. It is attributed generally to the public awareness of ancient Egyptian monuments generated by Napoleon's conquest of Egypt and Admiral Nelson's defeat of the French Navy at the Battle of the Nile in 1798. Napoleon took a scientific expedition with him to Egypt. Publication of the expedition's work, the Description de l'Égypte, began in 1809 and was published as a series through 1826. The size and monumentality of the façades discovered during his adventure cemented the hold of Egyptian aesthetics on the Parisian elite. However, works of art and architecture in the Egyptian style had been made or built occasionally on the European continent since the time of the Renaissance.
The year 1812 in architecture involved some significant events.
William Wilkinson Wardell (1823–1899) was a civil engineer and architect, notable not only for his work in Australia, the country to which he emigrated in 1858, but for a successful career as a surveyor and ecclesiastical architect in England and Scotland before his departure.
Joseph Bonomi the Younger was an English sculptor, artist, Egyptologist and museum curator.
Abney Park cemetery is one of the "Magnificent Seven" cemeteries in London, England.
A pylon is a monumental gate of an Egyptian temple. The word comes from the Greek term πυλών 'gate'. It consists of two pyramidal towers, each tapered and surmounted by a cornice, joined by a less elevated section enclosing the entrance between them. The gate was generally about half the height of the towers. Contemporary paintings of pylons show them with long poles flying banners.
The Hub is a public arts and events building in the centre of Edinburgh, Scotland. Located at the top of the Royal Mile, it is a prominent landmark as its tall Gothic spire is the highest point in central Edinburgh, and towers over the surrounding buildings below Edinburgh Castle.
Abney Park is in Stoke Newington, London, England. It is a 13-hectare (32-acre) park dating from just before 1700, named after Lady Abney, the wife of Sir Thomas Abney, Lord Mayor of London in 1700 and one of the first directors of the Bank of England and associated with Isaac Watts, who laid out an arboretum. In the early 18th century it was accessed via the frontages and gardens of two large mansions: her own manor house and Fleetwood House. Both fronted onto Church Street in what was then a quiet mainly Nonconformist (non-Anglican) village. In 1840, the grounds were turned into Abney Park Cemetery, where 200,000 people were buried. Since 1978, the grounds have served as a cemetery open only to burials in a few remaining paid-up plots; an enclosed woodland park and events venue open to the public managed by the London Borough of Hackney, and since 1993, as a Local Nature Reserve, too.
William Hosking was an English writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and development of London in Victorian times. He became the first Professor of Architecture at King's College London, and associated this discipline in a scholarly fashion with interests in town planning, civil engineering, history and antiquities.
Abney Park Chapel, is a Grade II Listed chapel, designed by William Hosking and built by John Jay that is situated in Europe's first wholly nondenominational cemetery, Abney Park Cemetery, London.
Garendon Hall was a country home near Shepshed, Leicestershire, England. It was demolished in 1964.
John Jay (1805–72) was a building contractor and, earlier, a skilled stonemason, who owned a construction company located in the central City of London within Metropolitan London, England, during the 19th century and its period of rapid civic and railway expansion in the middle of the 19th century. Jay's varied body of works included building the Victorian clock tower and city clock of the British Houses of Parliament after the Westminster Palace had been damaged by a fire in 1833. Jay was also responsible for constructing many smaller architectural projects, such as the notable Abney Park Chapel and the Trinity Independent Chapel.
Dissenting Gothic is an architectural style associated with English Dissenters - Protestants not affiliated with the Church of England. It is a distinctive style in its own right within Gothic Revival architecture that emerged primarily in Britain, its colonies and North America, during the 19th century.
Glendale Cemetery is a historic rural cemetery located in Akron, Ohio. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 2001.
Joseph John Scoles (1798–1863) was an English Gothic Revival architect, who designed many Roman Catholic churches.
The Bishop's House in Birmingham, England was designed by Augustus Pugin as the residence of Thomas Walsh, the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham. It was situated opposite St Chad's Cathedral, on the corner of Bath Street and Weaman Street in Birmingham City Centre.
Egyptian Revival architecture in the British Isles is a survey of motifs derived from Ancient Egyptian sources occurring as an architectural style. Egyptian Revival architecture is comparatively rare in the British Isles. Obelisks start appearing in the 17th century, mainly as decorative features on buildings and by the 18th century they started to be used in some numbers as funerary or commemorative monuments. In the later 18th century, mausoleums started to be built based on pyramids, and sphinxes were used as decorative features associated with monuments or mounted on gate piers. The pylon, a doorway feature with spreading jambs which support a lintel, also started to be used and became popular with architects.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
