C. F. A. Voysey
ROOM IN A HOUSE AT BIRKENHEAD C. F. A. VOYSEY, ARCHITECT
shows a tile-roofed building of red brick, with white were the factors which primarily contributed to
stone string-courses and dressings. The character- make the buildings our fathers built what they are.
istic feature is the brickwork, which Mr. Voysey And it is because we violate these first principles
proposed to carry out in bricks of narrow calibre, in our productions of the present day, that we have
giving six courses to the foot, instead of the made ourselves unfit to replace a single stone of
modern standard size bricks of four courses. their venerable handiwork. If ever (which God
Mr. Voysey contends, and rightly of course, that forbid !) Westminster Abbey were to disappear by
if one wants a building to have the character of old any such accident as that which destroyed the
work, one must, as nearly as may be, build it in the neighbouring Houses of Parliament, not all the
same manner and with the same standard of pro- boasted wealth of the British Empire, nor the
portions as those adopted by the old builders. It united wealth and skill of the whole world, could
is because we do not attend to these and such-like avail to rebuild it again as it was before,
elementary matters that we go' astray; or, if we do An antique-looking design on paper may give a
chance to remark them in ancient work, in the highly satisfactory impression, and architects have
blindness that we flatter ourselves is knowledge, we a triok of manipulating and colouring their
misunderstand them and attribute to them some drawings so as not to fail in conveying the desired
preposterously far-fetched symbolic or mystical sig- impression ; but when the actual building comes to
nification, of which the single-hearted masons of be finished, with modern appliances and mathemati-
old were as innocent and as unconscious as we cally uniform blocks and courses—even if free
ourselves have hitherto been of the existence of from the contemptible artifice of sham joints or
radium. A vivid apprehension of scale, and of the sham construction—the result has a mechanical,
right relation of parts; a commonsense use of cast-iron effect that the cultivated sense abhors,
material; a practical though, belike, unformulated The monstrous Tower Bridge, with its iron frame-
observance 01 acoustic and dynamic laws—these work belied by a superficial mask of stone, is a
131
ROOM IN A HOUSE AT BIRKENHEAD C. F. A. VOYSEY, ARCHITECT
shows a tile-roofed building of red brick, with white were the factors which primarily contributed to
stone string-courses and dressings. The character- make the buildings our fathers built what they are.
istic feature is the brickwork, which Mr. Voysey And it is because we violate these first principles
proposed to carry out in bricks of narrow calibre, in our productions of the present day, that we have
giving six courses to the foot, instead of the made ourselves unfit to replace a single stone of
modern standard size bricks of four courses. their venerable handiwork. If ever (which God
Mr. Voysey contends, and rightly of course, that forbid !) Westminster Abbey were to disappear by
if one wants a building to have the character of old any such accident as that which destroyed the
work, one must, as nearly as may be, build it in the neighbouring Houses of Parliament, not all the
same manner and with the same standard of pro- boasted wealth of the British Empire, nor the
portions as those adopted by the old builders. It united wealth and skill of the whole world, could
is because we do not attend to these and such-like avail to rebuild it again as it was before,
elementary matters that we go' astray; or, if we do An antique-looking design on paper may give a
chance to remark them in ancient work, in the highly satisfactory impression, and architects have
blindness that we flatter ourselves is knowledge, we a triok of manipulating and colouring their
misunderstand them and attribute to them some drawings so as not to fail in conveying the desired
preposterously far-fetched symbolic or mystical sig- impression ; but when the actual building comes to
nification, of which the single-hearted masons of be finished, with modern appliances and mathemati-
old were as innocent and as unconscious as we cally uniform blocks and courses—even if free
ourselves have hitherto been of the existence of from the contemptible artifice of sham joints or
radium. A vivid apprehension of scale, and of the sham construction—the result has a mechanical,
right relation of parts; a commonsense use of cast-iron effect that the cultivated sense abhors,
material; a practical though, belike, unformulated The monstrous Tower Bridge, with its iron frame-
observance 01 acoustic and dynamic laws—these work belied by a superficial mask of stone, is a
131