Parliament’s Pugin Plaque in Salisbury
A special plaque has been unveiled at Salisbury’s St Osmund’s Church.
It commemorates the renowned architect and Gothic revivalist Augustus
Welby Northmore Pugin (1812 to 1852) who designed St Osmund’s and the
Houses of Parliament.
Pugin was received into the Catholic Church in Salisbury in 1835 and designed St Osmund’s in 1847 and 1848 while simultaneously working on the Houses of Parliament.
The Mayor of Salisbury and other civic dignitaries attended a special thanksgiving service prior to the unveiling of the plaque. Father Andrew Goodman of St Gregory’s, Salisbury conducted the service which was attended by representatives of other city churches. The homily was given by Monsignor Canon Jeremy Rigden, Vicar General of the Clifton Diocese.
Dean of Salisbury and St Osmund’s Parish Priest, Canon Michael Fitzpatrick, said, “The parish community is very pleased to worship in and enjoy St Osmund’s. We often think of, and thank Pugin for our church.
“It was wonderful for us to welcome Lord Congleton, President of the Salisbury Civic Society, to unveil the plaque. It is a fitting tribute to Pugin which will highlight his legacy in Salisbury.”
Pugin was born into a Britain that was changing rapidly as the Industrial Revolution made its impact. Population was to double in the first half of the nineteenth century and double again in the second half. The focus of attention was shifting from the countryside to the towns and cities and the factory was replacing the rural workshop. With all this change went great wealth and a profusion of industrial production, but also a rise in the number of poor and a supposedly less satisfying life. Dickens railed against the life in the industrial towns in his ‘Hard Times’, Carlyle did much the same in Past and Present, and in time this movement against modernism and change fuelled, what became known as, the Gothic Revival.
A W N Pugin was key to this process; lambasting the architectural manifestations of a society he felt had lost its way, and instead advocating a return to medieval Gothic and the ways of life that had existed before the Reformation. For Pugin it was the Reformation that had started the rot; the true Catholic faith had been replaced by a debased religion; the country had lost its religious and architectural way.
Pugin lived in the outskirts of Salisbury for a few influential years in his short life. Having buried his first wife in Christchurch Priory in 1832, he married again in 1833 and bought a small plot of land at Alderbury where he started to build a house for himself and his new wife. It was while he was at Alderbury that he published the first edition of his Contrasts, a volume that rejects everything modern and espouses the wonders of things medieval. It was also while he was at Alderbury that he converted to Roman Catholicism, and no other single event could have had as much impact on his thinking as this. On 6 June 1835 he became a member of the Roman Catholic Church and the following day he assisted at Mass ‘as an acolyte having no youth in our congregation capable of serving with becoming decorum’.
However, his stay in the Salisbury area turned out to be short lived; it was too far away from the action for an aspiring young architect. However, while in Salisbury Pugin had made many friends within the small Catholic community, and when, in 1847, the Catholics of Salisbury decided to build a new church, it was to Pugin that they turned for plans and inspiration. The result is St Osmund’s which is still one of the Catholic churches for Salisbury’s Catholics. The small flint and stone church stands in Exeter Street, just outside the Cathedral wall, and was Pugin’s attempt to create an ‘inexpensive minature’, and to ‘replace the Cathedral as a home for the Mass’.
Though much altered and extended over the ensuing century and a half, St Osmund’s is still very much a Pugin church; simple, not straining for effect, and with some spectacular stained glass made to his design. Though supplemented by two more modern churches, it struggles to cope with the current 1,000 strong Catholic community of Salisbury. On high days and holy days there is a video link to an adjacent hall, and it pays to always come early.
The anniversary of Pugin’s conversion to Catholicism was selected by the Salisbury Civic Society as the day for the erection of a Blue Plaque commemorating Pugin and what he had achieved. While the sun shone the Civic and religious leaders of Salisbury gathered for a small service, a talk and then the unveiling of the plaque to celebrate on of Salisbury’s greats.
Pugin was received into the Catholic Church in Salisbury in 1835 and designed St Osmund’s in 1847 and 1848 while simultaneously working on the Houses of Parliament.
The Mayor of Salisbury and other civic dignitaries attended a special thanksgiving service prior to the unveiling of the plaque. Father Andrew Goodman of St Gregory’s, Salisbury conducted the service which was attended by representatives of other city churches. The homily was given by Monsignor Canon Jeremy Rigden, Vicar General of the Clifton Diocese.
Dean of Salisbury and St Osmund’s Parish Priest, Canon Michael Fitzpatrick, said, “The parish community is very pleased to worship in and enjoy St Osmund’s. We often think of, and thank Pugin for our church.
“It was wonderful for us to welcome Lord Congleton, President of the Salisbury Civic Society, to unveil the plaque. It is a fitting tribute to Pugin which will highlight his legacy in Salisbury.”
Pugin was born into a Britain that was changing rapidly as the Industrial Revolution made its impact. Population was to double in the first half of the nineteenth century and double again in the second half. The focus of attention was shifting from the countryside to the towns and cities and the factory was replacing the rural workshop. With all this change went great wealth and a profusion of industrial production, but also a rise in the number of poor and a supposedly less satisfying life. Dickens railed against the life in the industrial towns in his ‘Hard Times’, Carlyle did much the same in Past and Present, and in time this movement against modernism and change fuelled, what became known as, the Gothic Revival.
A W N Pugin was key to this process; lambasting the architectural manifestations of a society he felt had lost its way, and instead advocating a return to medieval Gothic and the ways of life that had existed before the Reformation. For Pugin it was the Reformation that had started the rot; the true Catholic faith had been replaced by a debased religion; the country had lost its religious and architectural way.
Pugin lived in the outskirts of Salisbury for a few influential years in his short life. Having buried his first wife in Christchurch Priory in 1832, he married again in 1833 and bought a small plot of land at Alderbury where he started to build a house for himself and his new wife. It was while he was at Alderbury that he published the first edition of his Contrasts, a volume that rejects everything modern and espouses the wonders of things medieval. It was also while he was at Alderbury that he converted to Roman Catholicism, and no other single event could have had as much impact on his thinking as this. On 6 June 1835 he became a member of the Roman Catholic Church and the following day he assisted at Mass ‘as an acolyte having no youth in our congregation capable of serving with becoming decorum’.
However, his stay in the Salisbury area turned out to be short lived; it was too far away from the action for an aspiring young architect. However, while in Salisbury Pugin had made many friends within the small Catholic community, and when, in 1847, the Catholics of Salisbury decided to build a new church, it was to Pugin that they turned for plans and inspiration. The result is St Osmund’s which is still one of the Catholic churches for Salisbury’s Catholics. The small flint and stone church stands in Exeter Street, just outside the Cathedral wall, and was Pugin’s attempt to create an ‘inexpensive minature’, and to ‘replace the Cathedral as a home for the Mass’.
Though much altered and extended over the ensuing century and a half, St Osmund’s is still very much a Pugin church; simple, not straining for effect, and with some spectacular stained glass made to his design. Though supplemented by two more modern churches, it struggles to cope with the current 1,000 strong Catholic community of Salisbury. On high days and holy days there is a video link to an adjacent hall, and it pays to always come early.
The anniversary of Pugin’s conversion to Catholicism was selected by the Salisbury Civic Society as the day for the erection of a Blue Plaque commemorating Pugin and what he had achieved. While the sun shone the Civic and religious leaders of Salisbury gathered for a small service, a talk and then the unveiling of the plaque to celebrate on of Salisbury’s greats.
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