William Burges

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this article is about the Victorian architect. For the politician see William Burges (Australian politician). See also William Burgess (disambiguation).

William Burges
Portrait of William Burges by Henry Van der Weyde, 1881
Born	2 December 1827(1827-12-02) London, England
Died	20 April 1881(1881-04-20) (aged 53) London, England
Nationality	English
Notable work(s)	Cardiff Castle Castell Coch The Tower House

William Burges (2 December 1827 – 20 April 1881) was an English architect and designer. Amongst the greatest of the Victorian art-architects,^[1][2] he sought in his work to escape from both 19th-century industrialisation and the Neo-Classical architectural style and to restore the architectural and social values of a utopian mediaeval England. Burges stands within the tradition of the Gothic Revival, and his works echo those of the Pre-Raphaelites and herald those of the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Burges's career was short but illustrious;^[3] he won his first major commission for Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral in Cork in 1863, when he was 35, and he died in 1881, aged only 53, at The Tower House, the home he built in Kensington, London. His architectural output was small but varied. Working with a long-standing team of craftsmen, he designed churches, cathedrals, a university, a warehouse, houses and castles. Burges's most notable works, Cardiff Castle (1866–1928) and Castell Coch (1872–91) were undertaken for John Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute. Other buildings include Gayhurst House, Buckinghamshire (1858–65), Waltham Abbey (1859–77), Knightshayes Court (1867–74), St Michael's Church, Brighton (1868), the Church of Christ the Consoler at Skelton-on-Ure, Yorkshire (1870–76), St Mary's, Studley Royal, Yorkshire (1870–78), the Speech Room, Harrow School (1871–77) and Park House (1871–80).

Many of his designs were never executed or were subsequently eradicated: his competition entries for cathedrals at Lille (1854), Adelaide (1856), Colombo, Brisbane (1859), Edinburgh (1873), and Truro (1878) were all unsuccessful; he was beaten in the competition for the Royal Courts of Justice (1866–67) in The Strand by George Edmund Street. His prospectus for the complete redecoration of the interior of St. Paul's Cathedral (1870–77) was abandoned and he was dismissed from his post. Skilbeck's Warehouse (1865–66) was demolished in the 1970s, and work at Salisbury Cathedral (1855–59), at Worcester College, Oxford (1864-79) and at Knightshayes Court had been lost in the decades before.

Beyond architecture, Burges designed metalwork, sculpture, jewellery, furniture and stained glass. Art Applied to Industry, a series of lectures he gave to the Society of Arts in 1864, illustrates the breadth of his interests; the topics covered including glass, pottery, brass and iron, gold and silver, furniture, the weaver's art, and external architectural decoration. For most of the century following his death, Victorian architecture was almost universally despised and Burges's work was largely ignored. The 1970s to the present, however, have seen a renaissance in the study of Victorian art, architecture and design and Burges's position as "a wide-ranging scholar, an intrepid traveller, a coruscating lecturer, a brilliant decorative designer and an architect of genius"^[4] is again appreciated.

	Table of Contents 1 Early life and travels 2 Early works 3 St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork 4 Architectural team 5 Burges and Bute   5.1 Cardiff Castle   5.2 Castell Coch 6 Later works   6.1 Worcester College, Oxford   6.2 Skilbeck's Warehouse   6.3 Knightshayes Court   6.4 Park House   6.5 Christ the Consoler, St Mary's and St Paul's   6.6 Trinity College, Hartford   6.7 The Tower House 7 Metalwork and jewellery 8 Stained glass 9 Furniture 10 Personal life 11 Death 12 Legacy 13 Study of Burges 14 List of works 15 Buildings   15.1 Unexecuted designs   15.2 Major pieces of furniture and works with locations 16 Gallery of architectural work 17 See also 18 Notes 19 References

Early life and travels

Burges was born on 2 December 1827,^[5] the son of Alfred Burges (1796–1886), a wealthy civil engineer who worked in Cardiff for John Crichton-Stuart, 2nd Marquess of Bute, the father of Burges's later, greatest, patron, the 3rd Marquess. Alfred Burges made a considerable fortune, some £113,000 (£9,126,996 in 2012 adjusted for inflation)^[6] at his death,^[7] and this wealth enabled Burges to devote his life to the study and practice of architecture, without requiring that he actually earn a living.^[8]

Burges entered King's College London in 1839 to study engineering, his contemporaries at King's including Dante Gabriel Rossetti and William Michael Rossetti.^[3] He left in 1844 to join the office of Edward Blore,^[3][9] surveyor to Westminster Abbey. Blore was an established architect, being "Special Architect" to both William IV and Queen Victoria, and had made his reputation as a Gothic Revivalist. In 1848 Burges moved to the offices of Matthew Digby Wyatt.^[10] Wyatt was then almost at the height of his power and prominence, culminating in his leading role in the direction of the Great Exhibition in 1851. Burges's work on the Medieval Court for this exhibition was highly influential on the subsequent course of his career.^[11] During this period, he also worked on drawings of medieval metalwork for Wyatt's book, Metalwork, published in 1852.^[12]

Of equal importance to Burges's subsequent career was his travelling.^[13] Burges believed that all architects should travel, as it was "absolutely necessary to see how various art problems have been resolved in different ages by different men."^[13] Enabled by his private income, Burges moved through England, then France, Belgium, Holland, Switzerland, Germany and Spain, Italy and Sicily, Greece and finally into Turkey, studying and drawing on a prodigious scale.^[14] What he saw, and sketched, provided a repository of influences and ideas that he used, and re-used, for the whole of his career.^[15] The influence of the East, both Near and Far, was profound;^[15] his fascination with Moorish design found ultimate expression in the Arab Room at Cardiff Castle, and his study of Japanese techniques had a significant impact on his metalwork.^[16] Burges received his first major commission at the age of 35, but his subsequent career did not see the development that might have been expected. His style had been formed by his study, his thinking and his travelling and "once established, after twenty years' preparation, his 'design language' had merely to be applied, and he applied and re-applied the same vocabulary with increasing subtlety and gusto."^[17]

Early works

In 1856, Burges established his own architectural practice in London at 15 Buckingham Street, The Strand.^[18] Some of his early pieces of furniture were created for this office and later moved to The Tower House, Melbury Road, Kensington, the home he built for himself towards the end of his life.^[19] His early architectural career produced little although he won prestigious commissions for Lille Cathedral,^[20] the Crimea Memorial Church^[21] and the Bombay School of Art.^[22] None were built, at least not to Burges's designs. His unsuccessful entry for the Law Courts in the Strand, had it won, would have given London its own Carcassonne, "a re-creation of a thirteenth century dream world and a skyline of great inventiveness."^[23] In 1859, he submitted a French-inspired design for St John's Cathedral, Brisbane in Australia.^[24][25] He also provided designs for Colombo Cathedral in Ceylon and St Francis Xavier's Cathedral, Adelaide, without success.^[26] In 1855, however, he did obtain a commission for the reconstruction of the Chapter House of Salisbury Cathedral.^[27] Henry Clutton was the lead architect but Burges, as assistant, contributed to the restoration of the sculpture and the general decorative scheme.^[27] Much was lost in restorations in the 1960s.^[28] More lasting is Burges's work of 1858 onwards in the substantial remodelling of Gayhurst House, in Buckinghamshire for the second Lord Carrington.^[29] Rooms there contain some of his large, signature, fireplaces, with carving by Burges's long-time collaborator Thomas Nicholls, in particular those in the Drawing Room which include motifs from Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.^[29] He also designed a ventilated circular privy for Gayhurst, with "steeply arched dormer windows and surmounted by a growling Cerberus, each of his three heads inset with bloodshot glass eyes."^[30]

In 1859, Burges began work on the Maison Dieu in Dover with Ambrose Poynter, completed around October 1861.^[31][32] Burges's admiration of the original mediaeval style can be seen in such parts of his renovation as grotesque animals and in the coats of arms incorporated into his new designs.^[33] Burges later designed the Council Chamber at the end of the hall, added in 1867,^[33] and in 1881 began work on Connaught Hall in Dover, a town meeting and concert hall.^[31] The new building, on the site of the old prison which closed in 1877, contained meeting rooms and mayoral and official offices. Although Burges designed the project, most parts were completed after his death by Pullan and Chapple, his partners.^[33] In 1859–60, Burges took over from Poynter in the restoration and decoration of Waltham Abbey. He worked with Poynter's son Edward Poynter, who had been commissioned to design an intricate ceiling with the signs of the zodiac, and with furniture makers Harland and Fisher.^[34] Burges commissioned Edward Burne-Jones of James Powell & Sons to make three stained-glass windows for the east end, representing the Tree of Jesse.^[35][36]

In 1861–2, Burges oversaw the construction of All Saints Church, Fleet, commissioned by Charles Edward Lefroy, secretary to the Speaker of the House of Commons, as a memorial to his wife.^[37] She was the daughter of James Walker, who established the marine engineering company of Walker and Burges with Burges's father Alfred, and this family connection brought Burges the commission.^[38] Pevsner says of Fleet that "it has no shape, nor character nor notable buildings, except one,"^[37] that one being All Saints. The church is of red brick and is "astonishingly restrained."^[37] The interior too is simply decorated but the massive sculpture, particularly of the Lefroy's tomb and of the gabled arch below which the tomb originally stood, is quintessentially Burges, "not so much muscular (gothic) as muscle-bound."^[39]

St Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork

Despite early competition setbacks, Burges was sustained by his belief that Early French provided the answer to the crisis of architectural style that beset mid-Victorian England; "I was brought up in the 13th century belief and in that belief I intend to die";^[40][41] and in 1863, at the age of 35, he finally secured his first major commission for St Fin Barre's Cathedral Cork.^[42][43] Burges's diary records his delight at the result; "Got Cork!"^[44]

The competition for St Fin Barre's occurred as a result of widespread dissatisfaction with the existing church of 1735, which the Dublin Builder described as "a shabby apology for a cathedral which has long disgraced Cork."^[45] It was to be the first new cathedral built in the British Isles since St Paul's.^[39] The proposed budget was low, at £15,000, but Burges ignored this constraint, producing a design that he admitted would cost twice as much.^[46] Despite the protestations of fellow competitors, it won, although the final cost was to be in excess of £100,000.

Burges had worked in Ireland before, at Carrigrohane, at the Holy Trinity Church Templebreedy, at Frankfield and at Douglas^[47] and enjoyed strong local support, including that of the Bishop, John Gregg. In addition, as the Ireland Handbook notes, Burges "combined his love of medievalism with a conspicuous display of Protestant affluence"^[48] which was an important factor at a time when the established Anglican Church in Ireland was seeking to assert its predominance.^[46]

For the exterior, Burges re-used earlier plans, the overall design from the Crimea Memorial Church and St John's Cathedral, Brisbane, the elevations from Lille Cathedral.^[49] The problem of the building was its size. Despite the prodigious efforts of its fundraisers, Cork was "never to be able to afford a large cathedral."^[46] Burges overcame this obstacle by using the grandeur of his three-spired frontage to offset the "modesty" of the remainder of the building.^[50] The building is faced in white Cork limestone which "on gloomy days .. takes on a luminous quality, (and) in sunshine sparkles like salt."^[50]

Although the building was modest in size, it was very richly ornamented. As was his usual practice, from his office in Buckingham Street, and in the course of many site visits, Burges oversaw all aspects of the design, including the statuary, the stained glass and the furniture, charging 10% rather than his usual 5%, owing to the high level of his personal involvement. He drew designs for every one of the 1260 sculptures that adorn the West Front and decorate the building inside and out.^[51] He sketched cartoons for the majority of the 74 stained glass windows. He designed the mosaic pavement, the altar, the pulpit and the bishop's throne.^[52] Lawrence and Wilson consider the result "undoubtedly [Burges's] greatest work in ecclesiastical architecture"^[53] with an interior that is "overwhelming and intoxicating."^[54] Through his ability, by the careful leadership of his team, by total artistic control, and by vastly exceeding the intended budget of £15,000,^[43] Burges produced a building that in size is little more than a large parish church but in impression is indeed "a cathedral becoming such a city and one which posterity may regard as a monument to the Almighty's praise."^[55]

Architectural team

Burges was not unique among Victorian architects in building a team of assistants but the loyalty he inspired, and the consequent longevity of the partnerships, perhaps was.^[56] John Starling Chapple was the office manager, joining Burges's practice in 1859.^[57] It was Chapple who completed the restoration of Castell Coch after Burges's death and designed most of its furniture.^[58] Second to Chapple was William Frame,^[57] who acted as clerk of works. Horatio Walter Lonsdale was Burges's chief artist,^[59] contributing extensive murals both for Castell Coch, and for Cardiff Castle. His main sculptor was Thomas Nicholls who started with Burges at Cork, completing hundreds of figures for St Fin Barre's Cathedral, worked with him on his two major churches in Yorkshire, and undertook all of the original carving for the Animal Wall at Cardiff.^[60] William Gualbert Saunders joined the Buckingham Street team in 1865 and worked with Burges on the development of the design and techniques of stained glass manufacture, producing much of the best glass for St Fin Barre's.^[61] Ceccardo Egidio Fucigna was another long-time collaborator who sculpted the Madonna and Child above the drawbridge at Castell Coch, the figure of St John over the mantelpiece in Lord Bute's bedroom at Cardiff Castle and the bronze Madonna in the roof garden. Lastly, there was Axel Haig, a Swedish-born illustrator, who prepared many of the watercolour perspectives with which Burges entranced his clients.^[62] Crook calls them "a group of talented men, moulded in their master's image, art-architects and medievalists to a man – jokers and jesters too – devoted above all to art rather than to business."^[63]

Burges and Bute

In 1865, Burges met the 3rd Marquess of Bute. The connection may have occurred as a result of Burges's father's own connection with the 2nd Marquess, Alfred Burges's engineering firm, Walker, Burges and Cooper having undertaken work on the East Bute Docks at Cardiff in 1855, but this is uncertain.^[64] John Patrick Crichton-Stuart, 3rd Marquess of Bute was a landed aristocrat, industrial magnate, antiquarian, scholar, philanthropist, High Tory, Roman Catholic convert and became Burges's greatest architectural patron.^[65] Both Burges and Bute were men of their times, both had fathers whose industrial endeavours provided the means for their sons' architectural achievements, and both sought to "redeem the evils of industrialism by re-living the art of the Middle Ages".^[66] On succeeding to the Marquessate at the age of one, Bute inherited an income of £300,000 a year,^[67] and, by the time he met Burges, he was considered the richest man in Britain.^[68] Bute's wealth was important to the success of the partnership as Burges was not a cheap architect. As he himself wrote, "good art is far too rare and far too precious ever to be cheap."^[69] But, as a "fervent Celt, an enthusiastic builder, and an inveterate antiquarian",^[70] Bute brought more than money to the relationship and his resources and his interests allied with Burges's genius to create "Bute's most memorable overall achievement."^[71]

However occasioned, the connection lasted the rest of Burges's life and led to his most important works. To the Marquess, and his wife, Burges was the "soul-inspiring one",^[72] and the relationship between them was "a prime example of the partnership of aristocratic patron and talented architect produc(ing) the marvels of Cardiff Castle and Castell Coch." ^[73] Burges's re-building of Cardiff Castle and the complete reconstruction of the ruin of Castell Coch, north of the city, represent his highest achievements.^[67] In these buildings, Burges escaped into "a world of architectural fantasy"^[17] that makes them "amongst the most magnificent the Gothic Revival ever achieved."^[74] His contemporary, the architect Edward William Godwin said of Burges that "no one of the century of this country or any other that I know of, ever possessed that artistic rule over the kingdom of nature in a measure at all comparable with that which he shared in common with the creator of the Sphinx and the designer of Chartres.^[75]

Cardiff Castle

In the early 19th century, the original Norman castle had been enlarged and refashioned by Henry Holland for the 2nd Marquess, Bute's father. The 2nd Marquess occupied the castle on visits to his extensive Glamorgan estates, during which he developed modern Cardiff and created Cardiff Docks as the outlet for coal and steel from the South Wales Valleys. Bute despised Holland's efforts, describing the castle as having been "the victim of every barbarism since the Renaissance",^[76] and, on his coming of age, began re-building on a "Wagnerian scale."^[71] Almost all of Burges's usual team were involved, including Chapple, Frame and Lonsdale,^[77] creating the "most successful of all the fantasy castles of the nineteenth century."^[78]

Work began with the 150 feet high Clock Tower, in Burges's signature Forest of Dean ashlar, in 1868.^[79] The tower forms a suite of bachelor's rooms, the Marquess not marrying until 1872. They comprise a bedroom, a servant's room and the Summer and Winter Smoking Rooms.^[79] Externally, the tower is a re-working of a design Burges used for the unsuccessful Law Courts competition. Internally, the rooms are sumptuously decorated with gildings, carvings and cartoons, many allegorical in style, depicting the seasons, myths and fables.^[80] The Summer Smoking Room is the tower's literal and metaphorical culmination. It rises two storeys high and has an internal balcony that, through an unbroken band of windows, gives views to Cardiff docks, one source of Bute's wealth, the Bristol Channel, and the Welsh hills and valleys. The floor has a map of the world in mosaic. The sculpture is by Thomas Nicholls.^[81]

As the castle was developed, work continued with alterations to Holland's Georgian range, including his Bute Tower, and to the medieval Herbert and Beauchamp Towers and the construction of the Guest Tower and the Octagonal Tower.^[77] In plan, the castle follows the arrangement of a standard Victorian house quite closely. The Bute Tower includes Lord Bute's bedroom and ends in another highlight, the Roof Garden, with a sculpture of the Madonna by Fucigna. Bute's bedroom has much religious iconography and a mirrored ceiling. The Marquess's name, John, in Greek, is repeated all along the ceiling beams.^[82] The Octagon Tower followed, including the oratory, built on the spot where Bute's father died, and the Chaucer Room, the roof of which is "a superb example of Burges's genius in the construction of roofs."^[83] The Guest Tower contains the site of the original kitchen at its base and above, the Nursery, decorated with painted tiles depicting Aesop's Fables and characters from nursery rhymes.^[77]

The central block of the castle comprises the two storey banqueting hall, with the library below. Both are enormous, the former to act as a suitable reception hall where the Marquess could fulfil his civic duties, the latter to hold part of his vast library. Both include elaborate carvings and fireplaces, that in the banqueting hall depicting the castle itself in the time of Robert, Duke of Normandy, who was imprisoned there in 1126–1134.^[84] The fireplace in the library contains five figures, four representing the Greek, Egyptian, Hebrew and Assyrian alphabets, while the fifth is said to represent Bute as a Celtic monk.^[85] The figures refer to the purpose of the room and to the Marquess, a noted linguist. The decoration of these large rooms is rather less successful than in the smaller chambers; much was completed after Burges's death and the muralist, Lonsdale, "was required to cover areas rather greater than his talents deserved."^[83]The central portion of the castle also included the Grand Staircase. The staircase, shown in a watercolour perspective prepared by Axel Haig,^[86] was long thought never to have been built but recent research has shown that it was in fact constructed, only to be torn out in the 1930s.^[77] The Arab Room in the Herbert Tower remains, however, the last that Burges completed. He was working on this room when he died and Bute placed Burges's initials together with his own, and the date 1881, in the fireplace as a memorial.^[87] The room was completed by Burges's brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan.

Following Burges's death, further areas of the castle were developed along the lines he had set including extensive reconstructions on the outlines of the walls of the original Roman fort.^[82] The Animal Wall, completed in the 1920s by the 4th Marquess, originally stood between the castle moat and the city and has nine sculptures by Thomas Nicholls, with a further six being sculpted in the 1930s. The Swiss bridge, which once crossed the moat to the pre-Raphaelite garden encompassed by the Animal Wall, was demolished in the 1930s.^[88] The stables, which lie to the north, on the edge of Bute Park, were designed by Burges in 1868–69.^[89]

Burges's interiors at Cardiff have "rarely [been] equalled".^[90] Although "he executed few buildings as his rich fantastic gothic required equally rich patrons (..) his finished works are outstanding monuments to nineteenth century gothic,"^[91] the suites of rooms he created at Cardiff being amongst "the most magnificent that the gothic revival ever achieved,"^[92] "three dimensional passports to fairy kingdoms and realms of gold. In Cardiff Castle we enter a land of dreams."^[93] From the park, all five towers appear in enfilade to produce a silhouette "that has become the skyline of the capital of Wales. The dream of one great patron and one great architect has almost become the symbol of a whole nation."^[94]

The Castle was given to Cardiff City Corporation by the 5th Marquess of Bute in 1947.^[95]

Castell Coch

In 1872, whilst work at Cardiff Castle was at its height, Burges presented a scheme for the complete reconstruction of Castell Coch,^[94] a ruined thirteenth century fort to the north of Cardiff on the Bute estate. Burges's report on the possible reconstruction was delivered in 1872^[96] but construction was delayed until 1875, in part because of the pressure of works at Cardiff Castle, and in part because of an unfounded concern on behalf of the Marquess's trustees that he was facing bankruptcy.^[97] But in August 1875 work began in earnest. The exterior comprises three towers, "almost equal to each other in diameter, [but] arrestingly dissimilar in height."^[98] Burges's main inspiration was the work of the almost contemporaneous French architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc^[99] who was undertaking similar restoration and rebuilding for Napoleon III. Le Duc's work at the Chateau de Coucy, the Louvre and particularly at the Château de Pierrefonds is echoed at Castell Coch, Burges's Drawing Room roof drawing heavily on the octagonal, rib-vaulted chambre de l'Imperatrice at Pierrefonds.^[99] Burges's other main source was the Château de Chillon, from which his conical, and conjectural, tower roofs are derived.^[99]

Castell Coch was built on the site of a 13th-century castle. Severely damaged during Welsh rebellions in the early fourteenth century, ^[100] the castle fell into disuse and by Tudor times, the antiquary John Leland described it as "all in ruin no big thing but high."^[101] A set of drawings for the planned rebuilding exists, together with a full architectural justification by Burges. The castle reconstruction features three conical roofs to the towers that are historically questionable. Burges sought to defend their use with references to a body of doubtful historical evidence: "the truth is that he wanted them for their architectural effect."^[102] He did admit that they were "utterly conjectural" although "more picturesque and (...) affording much more accommodation", contending that:

"It is true that some antiquaries deny the existence of high roofs in English Mediaeval Military Architecture, and ask objectors to point out examples. As nearly every Castle in the country has been ruined for more than two centuries...it is not surprising that no examples are to be found. But we may form a very fair idea of the case if we consult contemporary (manuscripts) and if we do we find nearly an equal number of towers with flat roofs as those with pointed roofs. The case appears to me to be thus: if a tower presented a good situation for military engines, it had a flat top; if the contrary, it had a high roof to guarantee the defenders from the rain and the lighter sorts of missiles. Thus an arrow could not pierce the roof, but if the latter were absent and the arrow was fired upright, in its downward flight it might occasion the same accident to the defenders as happened to Harold at Hastings."

The Keep Tower, the Well Tower and the Kitchen Tower incorporate a series of apartments; of which the main sequence, the Castellan's Rooms, lie within the Keep. They begin weakly, the Banqueting Hall, completed well after Burges's death, being "dilute (...), unfocused"^[103] and "anaemic."^[104] It does contain a colossal, signature, chimney piece, carved by Thomas Nicholls.^[105] The identity of the central figure is uncertain; Girouard states it is King David whilst McLees suggests it depicts St Lucius. The Drawing Room is a double-height room with decoration illustrating the "intertwined themes (of) the fecundity of nature and the fragility of life."^[106] A superb fireplace by Thomas Nicholls features the Three Fates, spinning, measuring and cutting the thread of life.^[107] The murals around the walls draw on Aesop's Fables with exceptionally delicate drawings of animals in the Aesthetic Movement style.^[108]

The octagonal chamber with its great rib-vault, modelled on Viollet-Le-Duc's chambers at Councy and Pierrefonds, is "spangled with butterflies and birds of sunny plume in gilded trellis work."^[109] Off the hall, lies the Windlass Room, in which Burges delighted in assembling the fully functioning apparatus for the drawbridge, together with "murder holes" for expelling boiling oil.^[110] The Marquess's bedroom provides some "spartan"^[111] respite before the culmination of the castle, Lady Bute's Bedroom. The room is "pure Burges: an arcaded circle, punched through by window embrasures, and topped by a trefoil-sectioned dome."^[111] The decorative theme is 'love', symbolised by "monkeys, pomegranates, nesting birds". ^[111] The decoration was completed long after Burges's death but his was the guiding spirit; "Would Mr Burges have done it?" William Frame wrote to Thomas Nicholls in 1887.^[111] Burges's original design for the castle included a chapel, to be built on the roof of the Well Tower.^[112] It was never finished and the remains were removed in the late nineteenth century.

Following Burges's death in 1881, work on the interior continued for another ten years. The castle was little used, the Marquess never came after its completion, and its main function was as a family sanatorium, although the Marchioness and her daughter, Lady Margaret Crichton-Stuart, did occupy it for a period following the death of the Marquess in 1900. In 1950, the 5th Marquess of Bute handed the castle over to the Ministry of Works.^[113] It remains "one of the greatest Victorian triumphs of architectural composition,"^[113] "recreating from a heap of rubble a fairy-tale castle which seems almost to have materialised from the margins of a medieval manuscript."^[111]

Later works

Bute's commissions formed the major corpus of Burges's work from the 1860s until his death. However, he continued to accept other appointments.

Worcester College, Oxford

The interiors of the Hall and Chapel of Worcester College, Oxford had been designed by James Wyatt in 1776–90.^[114] In 1864, Burges was commissioned to overhaul Wyatt's "sordid, woe begone and dismal" designs.^[114] Burges's patron was the Reverend H C O Daniel, a member of the College's Senior Common Room and future Provost, who had known Burges when they were contemporaries at King's College London.^[115] Burges's work in the Chapel remains and "does not obliterate Wyatt's .. work but .. swamp(s) it."^[116] The extensive iconography envelopes the building, "rivalled only by George Edmund Street's American Church in Rome."^[117] Burges's mosaic flooring astonished his contemporaries, drawing on a knowledge of medieval techniques "unique to his generation,"^[117] and creating a room "almost unique amongst High Victorian ecclesiastical interiors."^[118]

Burges also undertook a redecoration of the College's Hall as a natural sequel to the decoration of the Chapel. The funds needed for the Hall were raised by an appeal in which the decorated wooden panels on the walls were individual gifts, incorporating the crests and shields of the donors. In some cases, where there were no known crests or shields, those of former members were substituted. The large window at the end of the Hall was also filled with the armorial bearings for which room had not been found in the panels. A fireplace on the dais was also inserted.^[119] All of the work on the Hall was lost in a redevelopment of the 1960s in which Wyatt's designs were resuscitated, although the fireplace was removed to Knightshayes Court. Pevsner wrote "Exit Burges. [The college fellows] will be sorry in fifty years."^[120]

Skilbeck's Warehouse

Skilbeck's Warehouse, formerly at 46 Upper Thames Street, London, and now demolished, was a drysalter's warehouse constructed by Burges in 1866 and is important as his only foray into industrial design. Burges was commissioned by the Skilbeck Brothers to re-model an existing warehouse; the result was hugely "influential",^[121] representing "probably the most successful attempt ever made to unite the requirements of art and mercantile convenience."^[121] Burges's re-modelling used "twin pointed bays under a single Gothic relieving arch and gable".^[122] The use of exposed cast iron was revolutionary with "... good use of ironwork in the window frames (and) the iron girder which stretch(ed) across the front of the building (was) painted, the bolt heads being gilt."^[123] The use of modern materials and technologies was combined with Gothic iconography, "the great crane supported by a corbel carved into a bust of a fair Oriental maid, symbolising the clime from which so much of the drysalter's materials are brought, and over a circular window in the gable (a) ship bringing in its precious freight."^[124] The total cost of the work was £1,413.^[125]

Knightshayes Court

The commission for the brand new house of Knightshayes Court was obtained in 1867. The house was for Sir John Heathcoat-Amory and the foundation stone laid in 1869. By 1874, the building was complete, although not to Burges's original designs, and work had begun on the interior. However, the relationship between architect and client was not successful, Heathcoat-Amory objecting to Burges on the grounds of cost and of style. "Heathcoat-Amory (had) built a house he could not afford to decorate, by an architect whose speciality was interior design."^[126] This disagreement led to Burges's sacking in 1874 and his replacement by John Dibblee Crace. Nevertheless, Knightshayes Court remains the only example built of a medium-sized Burges country house, to the "standard" Victorian arrangement. Early French Gothic in style, it follows a "standard neo-Tudor"^[127] plan of a large central block with projecting gables. The signature tower Burges planned was never built.^[127] The interior was to have been a riot of Burgesian excess but "not one of the rooms was completed according to Burges's designs."^[128] Of the few interior features that were fully executed, much was dismantled or covered over by Heathcoat-Amory and his successors, Burges's "magical interiors remain(ing) a half-formed dream."^[129]

Since the court passed to the National Trust in 1972, major works of restoration and re-creation have been undertaken and a number of pieces of Burges furniture, mostly not original to the house, are displayed. These include a bookcase from Buckingham Street and a chimney piece from the Hall at Worcester College, Oxford, where, in the 1960s, some decorative works by Burges were removed,^[120] although his redecoration of the college Chapel remains.^[116] The aim is, as far as possible, to re-instate the work of Burges and Crace.^[127]

Park House

Park House, Cardiff was built by Burges for Lord Bute's engineer, James McConnochie between 1871 and 1875.^[130] The style of the house is Burges's signature Early French Gothic,with triangle and rectangle to the fore, although it is without the conical tower Burges considered appropriate for both his own home and for Castell Coch.^[130] Burges used various building stones for Park House; Pennant Sandstone for the walls, Bath stones around the windows, entrance porch and plinths, while the pillars are pink Peterhead granite from Aberdeenshire.^[131] The external frontage comprises four gables, the windows of the last gable concealing the "major peculiarity of the interior. On entering, one is immediately confronted by the underside of the staircase, and has to skirt round it to reach the rest of the house."^[130]The arrangement was not repeated at The Tower House, which is an almost, reversed, replica, with added conical tower. With its steep roofs and boldly textured walls, Park House "revolutionized Cardiff's domestic architecture", and was widely imitated, in Cardiff and beyond.^[130] This can be evidenced in any of Cardiff's inner suburbs, where faint and not so faint traces of Burges's influence can be seen. CADW described Park House as "perhaps the most important 19th century house in Wales".^[132]

Christ the Consoler, St Mary's and St Paul's

Burges's two "finest Gothic churches"^[133] were also undertaken in the 1870s, the Church of Christ the Consoler at Skelton-on-Ure and St Mary's, Studley Royal. His patron, George Robinson, 1st Marquess of Ripon, although not as rich as Bute, was the Marquess's equal in "romantic medievalism"^[134] and had been a friend of Bute's at Oxford, which may account for the choice of Burges as architect. Both churches were built as memorial churches for the Marquess's brother-in-law, Frederick Grantham Vyner, who was murdered by Greek bandits in 1870.^[135] Vyner's mother commissioned the Church of Christ the Consoler and his sister St Mary's. Both begun in 1870, Skelton was consecrated in 1876 and Studley Royal in 1878.

The Church of Christ the Consoler is a Victorian Gothic Revival church built in the Early English style.^[136] It is located in the grounds of Newby Hall at Skelton-on-Ure, in North Yorkshire, England. The exterior is constructed of grey Catraig stone, with Morcar stone for the mouldings and is in an Early English style.^[136] The interior is faced with white limestone, and richly fitted out with marble^[137] by members of Burges's usual team, Gualbert Saunders undertaking the stained glass, from cartoons by Lonsdale, and Nicholls undertaking the carvings.^[138] It is particularly interesting as representing an architectural move from Burges's favourite Early French style to an English inspiration. Pevsner considers it: "Of determined originality; the impression is one of great opulence, even if of a somewhat elephantine calibre."^[136]

The Church of St Mary, Studley Royal is also in the Early English style and is located in the grounds of Studley Royal Park at Fountains Abbey, in North Yorkshire, England. As at Christ the Consoler, the exterior is of grey limestone, with a two stage west tower topped with a soaring spire.^[139] The interior is equally spectacular, exceeding Skelton in richness and majesty.^[140] The theme, previously used at Gayhurst, is Paradise Lost and Paradise Regained.^[65] The stained glass, by Saunders & Co, is of particularly high quality. Pevsner describes St Mary's as "a dream of Early English glory"^[136] and Crook writes, "[although] Cork Cathedral may stand as Burges's greatest Gothic work, Studley Royal is his 'ecclesiastical' masterpiece."^[141]

In 1870, Burges was asked to draw up an iconographic scheme of internal decoration for St. Paul's Cathedral, unfinished since the death of Sir Christopher Wren. In 1872, he was appointed architect and over the next five years produced a "full-blown scheme of early Renaissance decoration" ^[142] for the interior which he intended would eclipse that of St Peter's in Rome. However his plans were "rather too creative for most Classicists"^[142] and these artistic, and linked religious, controversies led to Burges's dismissal in 1877 with none of his plans undertaken.^[143]

Trinity College, Hartford

In 1872 Abner Jackson, the President of Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut, visited Britain, seeking models, and an architect, for a planned new campus for the college.^[144] Burges was chosen and he drew up a four-quadrangled masterplan, in his Early French style.^[144] However, the estimated cost, at just under one million dollars, together with the sheer scale of the plans, "thoroughly frightened the (College) Trustees."^[145] Only one sixth of the plan was executed, the present Long Walk, with F H Kimball acting as local, supervising, architect, and Frederick Law Olmsted laying out the grounds.^[144] Crook considers the result, "unsatisfactory ..(but important).. in its key position in the development of late nineteenth-century American architecture."^[144]

The Tower House

From 1875, although he continued to work on the completion of projects already begun, notably those undertaken for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, Burges received no further major commissions, and the construction, decoration and furnishing of his own home, The Tower House, Melbury Road, Kensington occupied much of the last six years of his life. Burges designed his home in the style of a substantial 13th century French townhouse. Of red brick, and in an "L" plan, the exterior is plain. As was usual with Burges, many elements of earlier designs were adapted and included. With its street frontage from the McConnochie House, its cylindrical tower and conical roof from Castell Coch, its interiors from Knightshayes, Gayhurst and Cardiff, the house was the "synthesis of his career and a glittering tribute to his achievement."^[146] Upon completion, the Tower House was sensationally received. In a survey of the architecture of the past fifty years, undertaken and published by The Builder in 1893, it was "the only private town house to be included."^[147]

The Tower House in Burges's day also illustrated his skill as a jeweller, metal-worker and designer,^[148] containing some of his best works of furniture including the Zodiac Settle, the Dog Cabinet and the Great Bookcase, the last of which Charles Handley-Read described as "occupying a unique position in the history of Victorian painted furniture."^[149] Within the Tower House Burges placed some of his finest metalwork, including goblets, decanters, claret jugs, the Mermaid Bowl and the Cat Cup, chosen by Lady Bute as a memento after his death, and the Elephant Inkstand, which stood on his drawing room table but has since been lost, of which Mordaunt-Crook writes "it is (Burges's) answer to the dilemma of style."^[150] Of Burges's metal-work the artist Henry Stacy Marks wrote "he could design a chalice as well as a cathedral...His decanters, cups, jugs, forks and spoons were designed with an equal ability to that with which he would design a castle."^[151]

The Tower House was "the most complete example of a medieval secular interior produced by the Gothic Revival, and the last."^[152]

Metalwork and jewellery

"Burges's genius as a designer is expressed to perfection in his jewellery and metalwork."^[153] Burges was more than an architect, indeed his buildings have been described as "more jewel than architecture."^[154] He began with religious artefacts; candlesticks, chalices, pectoral crosses, as individual commissions or as part of the decorative scheme for buildings over which he had complete artistic control. Examples include the chalices for St Michael's Church, Brighton,^[155] the statue of the Angel which stands above St Finn Barre's and which was his personal gift to the cathedral, and the Dunedin Crozier. This item, made for the first Bishop of Dunedin, New Zealand, depicts St George slaying the dragon, carved in ivory. In 1875 Burges published the design in a French magazine as a 13th century original,^[156] an example of his delight in tricks and jokes. Later he undertook the creation of works as gifts for or commissions from patrons such as the Sneyd dessert service or the Bute claret jug.

Some of his most notable works, however, were those he created for himself, often with the proceeds of the winning of an architectural competition. Examples include the Elephant Inkstand, "the very epitome of its creator's special genius",^[157] the pair of jewelled decanters funded by the fees for the plans for the Crimea Memorial Church and for his series of lectures, Art Applied to Industry,^[158] and the Cat Cup, created by Barkentin in commemoration of the Law Courts competition, of which Crook writes: "Its technical virtuosity sets standards for the Arts and Crafts phase. But the overall conception, the range of materials, the ingenuity, the inventiveness, the sheer gusto of the design, is peculiarly, triumphantly Burges."^[159]

The whereabouts of some of Burges's most important pieces, in particular the Elephant Inkstand, are unknown, but discoveries are sometimes made. A brooch he designed as a wedding present for his friend John Pollard Seddon was identified on the BBC television series Antiques Roadshow and subsequently sold at auction for £31,000 in August 2011.^[160]

Stained glass

Burges played an important role in the renaissance of High Victorian stained glass.^[161] Working with some of the best craftsmen, Burges designed with "a vibrancy, an intensity and a brilliance which no other glass maker could match."^[162] Lawrence considers Burges was particularly indebted to Gualbert Saunders: "his technique [gave] Burges's glass its most distinctive characteristic, namely the flesh colour. This is unique, had no precedents and has had no imitators."^[163] Lawrence and Wilson's history of St Fin Barre's has detailed commentaries on the glass there, of which Lawrence writes, "The impact created by all these glowing, coloured religious images is overwhelming and intoxicating. To enter St Fin Barre's Cathedral is an experience unparalleled in Ireland and rarely matched anywhere." ^[164] Burges also undertook significant work in glass at Waltham Abbey with Edward Burne-Jones, but much of his work there was destroyed in the Blitz.^[49] Crook writes, "At Waltham, Burges does not copy. He meets the Middle Ages as an equal." ^[165]

Windows by Burges continue to be discovered. In 2009, a stained glass window found in the vaults of Bath Abbey was confirmed as a design by Burges. The window, which was commissioned by Mallet and Company, featured on the Antiques Roadshow in early 2010^[166] and is currently on display at the Bath Aqua Theatre of Glass.^[167] In March 2011, two glass panels designed by Burges were purchased for £125,000 by CADW.^[168] The panels were part of a set of twenty Burges designed for the chapel at Castell Coch but were removed when the unfinished chapel was demolished. Ten of the panels were put on display at Cardiff Castle, and eight were used in the model of the chapel in the attic room of the Well Tower at Castell Coch; the two purchased by CADW were considered lost until they failed to sell at auction in Somerset in 2010.^[168] Rick Turner, Inspector of Ancient Monuments for CADW, speaking after their purchase, said "The panels show a variety of Welsh and British saints and key biblical figures and are of the highest quality Victorian stained glass. William Burges' work attracts enormous worldwide attention and the price reflects the artistic genius of the man and the rare quality of these glass panels."^[168]

Furniture

Burges's furniture was, second to his buildings, his major contribution to the Victorian Gothic Revival; "More than anyone, it was Burges, with his eye for detail and his lust for colour, who created the furniture appropriate to High Victorian Gothic." ^[169] Enormous, elaborate and highly painted, Burges's "art furniture" was "medieval in a way no other designer ever approached."^[170] The first detailed study of Burges's work in this area was by Charles Handley-Read in his article in The Burlington Magazine of November 1963, Notes on William Burges's Painted Furniture.^[171] Despised as much as his buildings in the reaction against Victorian taste that occurred in the twentieth century, his furniture came back into fashion in the latter part of that century and now commands very high prices.^[172]

Burges's furniture is characterised by its historical style, its mythical iconography, its vibrant colours and, often, by rather poor workmanship. The Great Bookcase collapsed in 1878 and required complete restoration^[173] and many of the pieces had crude pine carcasses. The designs were frequently collaborative, with artists from Burges's circle completing the painted panels that they mostly comprise. The contributors were often notable, Vost's sales catalogue for the Mirrored Sideboard suggesting that some of its panels were by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and Edward Burne-Jones.^[174]

Much of his early furniture, such as the Great Bookcase and the Zodiac Settle, were designed for his offices at Buckingham Street and subsequently moved to the Tower House. The Great Bookcase was also part of Burges's contribution to the Medieval Court at the Great Exhibition. ^[169] Others were created as commissions, such as the Yatman Cabinet. Later pieces, such as the Crocker Dressing Table, and the Golden Bed and its accompanying Vita Nuova washstand, were specifically made for suites of rooms at the Tower House.^[175] The Narcissus washstand was originally made for Buckingham Street and subsequently moved to Burges's red bedroom at the Tower House. The piece was purchased by the poet John Betjeman. He gave the washstand to the novelist Evelyn Waugh who made it the centrepiece of his novel, The Ordeal of Gilbert Pinfold, in which Pinfold is haunted by the stand.^[176]

Examples of Burges's painted furniture can be seen in major museums including the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Detroit Institute of Arts, the National Museum of Wales and the Manchester Art Gallery. The Cecil Higgins Art Gallery & Bedford Museum holds a particularly fine collection, begun with a large number of purchases from the estate of Charles and Lavinia Handley-Read, including the Narcissus washstand,^[177] Burges's bed and the Crocker Dressing Table.^[178] The most recent acquisition by the Bedford Museum is the Zodiac Settle (1869–70). The Museum paid £850,000 for the settle, comprising a £480,000 grant from the National Heritage Memorial Fund, £190,000 from the Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery and £180,000 from the Art Fund^[179] after the British government imposed an export ban on the work. The re-developed Gallery & Museum will re-open in Spring 2013 with a new William Burges Gallery.

Personal life

Eccentric, unpredictable and over indulgent,^[180] Burges was physically unprepossessing, described by the wife of his greatest patron as "ugly Burges."^[181] Short, fat, and so near-sighted that he once mistook a peacock for a man,^[182] he never married.^[183] Burges appears to have been sensitive about his appearance and very few images of him exist.^[184] The known portraits are: a painting on a panel of the Yatman Cabinet by Edward John Poynter of 1858, a photograph from the 1860s by an unknown author showing Burges dressed as a court jester, a sketch by Theodore Blake Wirgman in The Graphic of 1871, a pencil drawing in profile by Edward William Godwin of 1875, a caricature by Edward Burne-Jones of 1881 and three posed photographs from 1881 by Henry Van der Weyde.^[184]

Whatever his physical shortcomings, his personality, his conversation and his sense of humour were attractive and infectious, "his range of friends running the whole gamut of pre-Raphaelite London."^[185] Contemporaries referred to Burges's child-like nature, Dante Gabriel Rossetti composing a limerick about him that ran:

"There's a babyish party called Burges,

Who from childhood hardly emerges.

If you hadn't been told,

He's disgracefully old,

You would offer a bull's-eye to Burges."

Robert Kerr's novel of 1879, The Ambassador Extraordinary, involves an architect Georgius Oldhousen, whom Crook considers to be clearly based on Burges; he is "not exactly young in years but is in an odd way youthful in appearance and in manners Georgius can never grow old...His strong point is a disdain for Common Sense...His vocation is Art.. (a) matter of Uncommon Sense."^[186]

Burges was a "clubbable man".^[187] Elected to the Institute of British Architects in 1860, in 1862 he was appointed to its Council and in 1863 was elected to the Foreign Architectural Book Society, the FABS, which comprised the RIBA elite and was limited to fifteen members.^[188] He became a member of the Athenaeum in 1874, was a member of the Arts Club, the Medieval Society,^[3] the Hogarth Club, and was elected to the Royal Academy in the year of his death.^[189] Burges was a fanatical collector,^[190] particularly of drawings and metalworking. He was also a Freemason.^[191] Other pursuits included ratting and opium.^[192] The influence of drugs on his life and his architectural output has been debated, Crook speculating that it was in Constantinople, on his tour in the 1850s, that he "first tasted opium"^[193] and the Dictionary of Scottish Architects stating with certainty that his early death was brought about "at least partly as a result of his bachelor lifestyle of smoking both tobacco and opium."^[194] In England's Thousand Best Houses Simon Jenkins speculates as to why Sir John Heathcoat-Amory chose as his architect "an opium-addicted bachelor Gothicist who dressed in medieval costume..."^[195] Burges's own diary of 1865 includes the reference "Too much opium, did not go to Hayward's wedding" ^[196] and Crook concludes that "it is hard to resist the conclusion that [opium] reinforced the dreamier elements in his artistic make-up".^[197]

Death

Burges died, aged 53, at The Tower House on 20 April 1881. He caught a chill while undertaking "a long ride in a dog cart" overseeing works at Cardiff and returned to London, half-paralysed, where he lay dying for some three weeks.^[198] Among his last visitors were Oscar Wilde and James Whistler.^[198] He was buried in the tomb he designed for his mother at West Norwood. London. On his death, John Starling Chapple, Burges's office manager and close associate for over twenty years, wrote "a constant relationship...with one of the brightest ornaments of the profession has rendered the parting most severe. Thank God his work will live and ... be the admiration of future students. I have hardly got to realize my lonely position yet. He was almost all the world to me."^[199] Lady Bute, wife of his greatest patron, wrote, somewhat more prosaically, "Dear Burges, ugly Burges, who designed such lovely things – what a duck."^[181]

In St Fin Barre's, together with memorials to his mother and sister, there is a memorial plaque to Burges, designed by him, and erected by his father. It shows the King of Heaven presiding over the four apostles, who hold open the Word of God.^[200] Under the inscription "Architect of this cathedral" is a simple shield and a small, worn, plaque with a mosaic surround, bearing Burges's entwined initials and name. Legal complications obstructed Burges's wish to be buried in the cathedral he had built.^[201]

Crook says of Burges; "[He was] the most dazzling exponent of the High Victorian Dream. Pugin conceived that dream; Rossetti and Burne-Jones painted it; Tennyson sang its glories; Ruskin and Morris formulated its philosophy; but only Burges built it."^[202] His own words on St Fin Barre's, in his letter of January 1877 to the Bishop of Cork, sum up his career, "Fifty years hence, the whole affair will be on its trial and, the elements of time and cost being forgotten, the result only will be looked at. The great questions will then be, first, is this work beautiful and, secondly, have those to whom it was entrusted, done it with all their heart and all their ability." ^[69]

Legacy

Burges's death came as the Gothic Revival was already waning as an architectural force. Within twenty years his style was considered hopelessly outdated and owners of his works often sought to eradicate all traces of his endeavours.^[127] From the 1890s to the middle of the twentieth century Victorian art was under constant assault, critics writing of "the nineteenth century architectural tragedy"^[203], ridiculing "the uncompromising ugliness"^[204] of the era's buildings and attacking the "sadistic hatred of beauty"^[205] of its architects. Of Burges, they wrote almost nothing. His buildings were disregarded or altered, his jewellery and stained glass were lost or ignored, and his furniture was given away. "He founded no school,..had few adherents outside the circle of his practice..and trained no further generation of designers."^[206] In comparison with more prolific contemporaries, he completed relatively few works and lost quite a large number of architectural competitions. Burges's collaborator, the artist Nathaniel Westlake, lamented "competitions are seldom given to the best man – look at the number poor Burges won, or should have won, and I think he executed only one."^[207] Almost his sole champion in the years after his death was his brother-in-law, Richard Popplewell Pullan. Primarily an illustrator, as well as a scholar and archaeologist,^[59] Pullan trained with Alfred Waterhouse in Manchester, before coming to Burges's office in the 1850s. In 1859, he married Burges's sister. Following Burges's death in 1881, Pullan lived at The Tower House and published collections of Burges's designs, including Architectural Designs of William Burges (1883) and The House of William Burges (1886).^[208] Given Burges's long-standing interest in Japanese art, it should be noted that he did have some adherents in Japan. Josiah Conder studied under him, and, through Conder's influence, the notable Japanese architect Tatsuno Kingo was articled to Burges in the year before the latter's death.^[209][210]

The years from 1970 to the present have seen a renaissance in the study of Victorian art, architecture and design^[211] and Burges's place at the centre of that world as "a wide-ranging scholar, an intrepid traveller, a coruscating lecturer, a brilliant decorative designer and an architect of genius"^[212] is again appreciated. In a relatively short career of twenty years he established himself as "the most brilliant architect-designer of his generation",^[213] his "own strange genius turn(ing) the Middle Ages into magic".^[214] Beyond architecture, his achievements in metalwork, jewellery, furniture and stained glass place him as Pugin's only "rival(.) as the greatest art-architect of the Gothic Revival."^[215] To enter any one of his buildings is to enter "an architecture of dreams."^[216]

Study of Burges

Burges's limited output, and the general unpopularity of his work for much of the century following his death, meant that he was little studied. In a seventy-page guide to Cardiff Castle, published in 1923, he is referenced only twice, and on each occasion his name is misspelt as "Burgess".^[217] Pevsner's 1951 volume on the exhibits at the Great Exhibition, High Victorian Design, makes no mention of him, despite his significant contributions to the Medieval Court. The last thirty years, however, have seen a significant revival of interest. His rehabilitation can be dated to 1981, the centenary of his death, when a major exhibition on his life and works was held, firstly at The National Museum of Wales Cardiff, until October 1981, and then at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from November 1981 to January 1982.^[218] The catalogue to that exhibition, entitled The Strange Genius of William Burges, was edited by J. Mordaunt Crook. In the same year, the only full study of Burges was published, Crook's William Burges and the High Victorian Dream. In the dedication to that volume, "In Mem. C.H.-R",^[219] Crook acknowledges his debt to Charles Handley-Read, perhaps the first serious scholar of Burges, whose notes on Burges were bequeathed to Crook following Handley-Read's suicide.^[220] Other sources include articles on Cardiff Castle and Castle Coch in Mark Girouard's The Victorian Country House and John Newman's The Buildings of Wales: Glamorgan. The current (2012) curator of Cardiff Castle, Matthew Williams,^[221] has also written a number of Burgesian/Bute articles for the architectural press. The Cathedral of Saint Fin Barre at Cork, by David Lawrence and Ann Wilson covers Burges's work in Ireland.

List of works

The list of Burges's major buildings is complete, although some minor works, or minimal additions to pre-existing structures, have not been included. The list of furniture and other works is selective. No listing is given of his extensive creations of jewellery and stained glass. Crook has a comprehensive, chronological, appendix of Burges's work with indications as to whether the work is still in situ, was never executed, has been removed elsewhere, has been demolished or where the present location is unknown.

Buildings

Unexecuted designs

Major pieces of furniture and works with locations

Gallery of architectural work

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: [//commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:William_Burges William Burges]

The gallery follows the themes chosen by J. Mordaunt Crook to represent, firstly, Burges's ecclesiastical works, then his domestic commissions from wealthy patrons, and lastly his architectural and decorative fantasies.

Gothic

West end, St Mary's, Studley Royal

Church of Christ the Consoler,Skelton-on-Ure

West Front, Saint Fin Barre's Cathedral, Cork, Ireland

Waltham Abbey, end window and wall by Burges

Feudal

Cardiff Castle

Cardiff Castle from Bute Park

Entrance front, Knightshayes Court

Entrance Front, Castell Coch

Fantastic

Chimney-piece, Winter Smoking Room, Cardiff Castle

Three Fates, above Drawing Room fireplace, Castell Coch

The Drawing Room, Castell Coch

Detail of the ceiling, Lady Bute's Bedroom, Castell Coch

See also

• Victorian architecture
• Gothic Revival architecture

Notes

References

• Aldrich, Megan (2005). Gothic Revival. Phaidon Press. ISBN 978-0-7148-3631-7. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=tfNPAAAAMAAJ&q=Gothic+Revival&dq=Gothic+Revival&hl=en&sa=X&ei=MDFBT8aEB6qG0AWSkJSPDw&ved=0CDgQ6AEwAQ. 
• Aldrich, Megan Brewster; Atterbury, Paul (1995). A.W.N. Pugin: Master of Gothic Revival. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-06656-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=RfBpd-OZ7e4C&pg=PA372. 
• Bradley, Simon; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2002). The Buildings Of England: London 1: The City of London. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09624-8. http://www.amazon.co.uk/London-Pevsner-Architectural-Buildings-England/dp/0300096240. 
• Betjeman, Sir John; Surman, Richard (2011). Betjeman's Best British Churches. HarperCollins UK. ISBN 978-0-00-741688-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=nYBxakyHRs8C&pg=PT1337. 
• Burges, William (2009). Art Applied to Industry: A series of Lectures. Bibliobazaar. ISBN 978-1-115-19362-7. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=9phLmpynAosC&source=gbs_book_other_versions. 
• Burton, Lawrence (1978). A choice over our heads: a guide to architecture and design since 1830. Talisman Books. ISBN 978-0-905983-06-6. http://books.google.com/books?id=Zj9IAQAAIAAJ. </ref>
• Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (1991, 2002). London 3: North West. Penguin Books. ISBN 978-0-14-071048-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=8utUAAAAMAAJ. 
• Cherry, Bridget; Pevsner, Nikolaus (2004). The Buildings of England:Devon. New Haven, CT; London: Yale University Press. ISBN 0-300-09596-1. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=5wd_Pw4L3zcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Devon+Pevsner&hl=en&ei=CjpBT4WEIInF0QXqgeGPDw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=book-thumbnail&resnum=1&ved=0CDkQ6wEwAA#v=onepage&q=Devon%20Pevsner&f=false. 
• Clark, Kenneth (1983). The Gothic Revival: An Essay in the History of Taste. John Murray. ISBN 0 7195 3102 0. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=iBtGQwAACAAJ&dq=The+Gothic+Revival+Kenneth+Clark&hl=en&sa=X&ei=wBh4T4vWEKHN0QWouPGhDQ&ved=0CEsQ6AEwBA. 
• Cooper, Jeremy (May 1998). Victorian and Edwardian decor: from the gothic revival to art nouveau. Abbeville Press. ISBN 978-0-7892-0446-2. http://books.google.com/books?id=HZMXAQAAMAAJ. 
• Crook, J. Mordaunt (1981a). William Burges and the High Victorian Dream. John Murray. ISBN 978-0-7195-3822-3. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=nSdpQgAACAAJ&dq=William+Burges+and+the+High+Victorian+Dream&hl=en&sa=X&ei=6zxBT_OIPIHH0QXpybCPDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA. 
• Crook, J. Mordaunt (1981b). The Strange Genius of William Burges. The National Museum of Wales. ISBN 978-0-7200-0259-1. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=Pg2TAAAAIAAJ&q=The+Strange+Genius+of+William+Burges&dq=The+Strange+Genius+of+William+Burges&hl=en&sa=X&ei=nT1BT8SsKcrD0QXG36CPDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA. 
• Crook, J. Mordaunt (1980). William Burges and the Completion of St. Paul's. Oxford University Press. ISBN as a reprint from Volume LX Part II of The Antiquaries Journal, the item does not have an ISBN number. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=y3VftwAACAAJ&dq=William+Burges+and+the+completion+of+St+Paul's&hl=en&sa=X&ei=YUBBT-XcEqPD0QW3uLyPDw&ved=0CDEQ6AEwAA. 
• Crook, J. Mordaunt (2003). The Architect's Secret: Victorian Critics and the Image of Gravity. John Murray. ISBN 0 7195 6057 8. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=PBKCQgAACAAJ&dq=The+Architect's+Secret&hl=en&sa=X&ei=k_BxT8e2KoLe8QOesL1u&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA. 
• Crook, J.Mordaunt; Lennox-Boyd, C. (1984). Axel Haig and the Victorian Vision of the Middle Ages. George Allen and Unwin. ISBN 978-0-04-720029-8. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=ed2wAAAAIAAJ&dq=Axel+Haig+and+the+Victorian+Vision&hl=en&sa=X&ei=qkFBT4LPOZO00QWrpZCQDw&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAA. 
• Curl, James Stevens (1995). Book of Victorian churches. B.T. Batsford. ISBN 978-0-7134-7490-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=kfNIAQAAIAAJ. 
• Dakers, Caroline (11 December 1999). The Holland Park circle: artists and Victorian society. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-08164-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=gCg7HL0z9PwC&pg=PA174. 
• Dixon, Roger; Muthesius, Stefan (1993). Victorian Architecture. Thames and Hudson. ISBN 978-0-19-520048-5. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=yVcs9z4-rzUC&q=Victorian+Architecture&dq=Victorian+Architecture&hl=en&sa=X&ei=TUVBT9-XCobR0QWJieGODw&ved=0CD0Q6AEwAA. 
• Eastlake, Lady Elizabeth Rigby; Sheldon, Julie (15 September 2009). The letters of Elizabeth Rigby, Lady Eastlake. Liverpool University Press. ISBN 978-1-84631-194-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=k7MW4LajLCcC&pg=PA494. 
• Finn, Dallas (1995). Meiji Revisited: The Sites of Victorian Japan. Weatherhill. ISBN 978-0-8348-0288-9. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=EB_qAAAAMAAJ&q=Meiji+Revisited&dq=Meiji+Revisited&hl=en&sa=X&ei=KUpBT7rOH8it0QWGuuWPDw&ved=0CD4Q6AEwAA. 
• Girouard, Mark (1995). The Victorian Country House. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-02390-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=SyN3QgAACAAJ. 
• Graham, Clare (2003). Ordering law: the architectural and social history of the English law court to 1914. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. ISBN 978-0-7546-0787-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=MNhb_at-klkC&pg=PA370. Retrieved 19 February 2012. 
• Hall, Michael (2009). The Victorian Country House from the Archives of Country Life. Aurum Press. ISBN 978-1-84513-457-0. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=pHJJAQAAIAAJ&q=The+Victorian+Country+House+from+the+Archives+of+Country+Life&dq=The+Victorian+Country+House+from+the+Archives+of+Country+Life&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EktBT4_DIIHH0QXpybCPDw&ved=0CDcQ6AEwAA. 
• Hallett, Anna (2008). Almshouses. Osprey. ISBN 978-0-7478-0583-0. http://books.google.com/books?id=3EBDQm-QJtkC&pg=PA25. 
• Harrison, Martin; Waters, Bill (1989). Burne-Jones. Barrie & Jenkins. ISBN 978-0-7126-2193-9. http://books.google.com/books?id=4WbsAAAAMAAJ. 
• Jenkins, Simon (2003). England's Thousand Best Houses. Allen Lane. ISBN 978-0-14-103929-9. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=SQJLPwAACAAJ&dq=England's+Thousand+best+houses&hl=en&sa=X&ei=0UtBT8KZJ8TS0QW3uIiPDw&ved=0CDsQ6AEwAA. 
• Johansens (2000). Historic Houses, Castles and Gardens - Great Britain and Ireland. Johansens. p. 251. ISBN 978-1-86017-716-3. http://books.google.com/books?id=UGBOAAAAYAAJ. 
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• Lawrence, David; Wilson, Ann (2006). The Cathedral of Saint Fin Barre at Cork: William Burges in Ireland. Four Courts Press. ISBN 978-1-84682-023-6. http://books.google.co.uk/books/about/The_Cathedral_of_St_Fin_Barre_at_Cork.html?id=pRfqAAAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y. 
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• Pevsner, Nikolaus; Williamson, Elizabeth (2003). Buckinghamshire. The Buildings of England. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-09584-5. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=BlI3AQAAIAAJ&q=The+Buildings+of+England:+Buckinghamshire&dq=The+Buildings+of+England:+Buckinghamshire&hl=en&sa=X&ei=fllBT7LqIYnM0QWDhcGPDw&ved=0CFUQ6AEwBA. 
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• Sargent, Pauline (1977). Catalogue of the Exhibition of Stained Glass Cartoons from Cardiff Castle. Cardiff City Council. ISBN as a pamphlet, the item does not have an ISBN number. 
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• Sutcliffe, Anthony (2006). London: an architectural history. Yale University Press. ISBN 978-0-300-11006-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=ONC1UsSpS4AC&pg=PA135. 
• Turnor, Reginald (1950). Nineteenth Century Architecture in Britain. Batsford. ISBN The book does not have an ISBN Number. http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=xmRNAAAAMAAJ&q=Nineteenth+century+architecture+in+Britain+Reginald+Turnor&dq=Nineteenth+century+architecture+in+Britain+Reginald+Turnor&hl=en&sa=X&ei=Ohl4T4e-JOel0AXRp-yhCw&ved=0CDUQ6AEwAA. 
• Vost's Fine Art Auctioneers (1999). The Mirrored Sideboard - designed by William Burges. Vost's Fine Art Auctioneers and Valuers. ISBN as a sales catalogue, the item does not have an ISBN number. 
• Weinreb, Ben; Hibbert, Christopher (1983). The London Encyclopaedia. Macmillan. p. 367. ISBN 978-0-333-32556-8. http://books.google.com/books?id=4IJnAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 19 February 2012. 
• The Arts and Crafts Home - William Burges

Persondata
Name	Burges, William
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	2 December 1827
Place of birth	London, England
Date of death	20 April 1881
Place of death	London, England