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He's a great Briton honoured on a first-class stamp, | 0:00:04 | 0:00:08 | |
as designer of the Clock Tower | 0:00:08 | 0:00:10 | |
and interiors of the Houses of Parliament. | 0:00:10 | 0:00:13 | |
He inspired generations of church architects. | 0:00:13 | 0:00:17 | |
Without him, there would be no fun at Alton Towers. | 0:00:19 | 0:00:22 | |
But, sadly, his own short life was a roller coaster ride | 0:00:25 | 0:00:29 | |
of illness, poverty and bereavements. | 0:00:29 | 0:00:32 | |
Yet, at the heart of everything he did | 0:00:32 | 0:00:34 | |
was his deep-rooted Christian faith, | 0:00:34 | 0:00:36 | |
which is why Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin | 0:00:36 | 0:00:40 | |
is known as God's architect. | 0:00:40 | 0:00:42 | |
This is Pugin's 200th anniversary year. | 0:00:45 | 0:00:47 | |
So tonight, from churches | 0:00:47 | 0:00:49 | |
which inspired or were inspired by his architecture and design, | 0:00:49 | 0:00:53 | |
congregations from all over the country sing out the faith | 0:00:53 | 0:00:57 | |
that motivated his every thoughts. | 0:00:57 | 0:00:59 | |
I've come to Kent to St Augustine's in Ramsgate, | 0:01:10 | 0:01:14 | |
Pugin's last church, | 0:01:14 | 0:01:15 | |
which he built for his own community, | 0:01:15 | 0:01:17 | |
next door to his own house, | 0:01:17 | 0:01:19 | |
and this is where he is buried. | 0:01:19 | 0:01:20 | |
People really remember Pugin | 0:01:22 | 0:01:24 | |
mostly as a church architect, | 0:01:24 | 0:01:25 | |
though he was very, very innovative as a domestic architect | 0:01:25 | 0:01:28 | |
and a secular architect as well. | 0:01:28 | 0:01:29 | |
But for Pugin his faith was the framework | 0:01:29 | 0:01:32 | |
within which everything else happened. | 0:01:32 | 0:01:33 | |
So, for Pugin, everything is for the glory of God. | 0:01:33 | 0:01:36 | |
When we speak of a church, we don't simply mean the physical building. | 0:01:36 | 0:01:43 | |
Pugin's principal aim is to create | 0:01:43 | 0:01:45 | |
living architecture, architecture with soul, | 0:01:45 | 0:01:48 | |
architecture that is decorated according to its function. | 0:01:48 | 0:01:53 | |
And its function is for the people of God, for the worship of God. | 0:01:53 | 0:01:57 | |
Pugin influenced an entire generation of architects | 0:02:00 | 0:02:03 | |
as well as being the father of an architectural dynasty. | 0:02:03 | 0:02:06 | |
And our first hymn comes from a building that was designed, | 0:02:06 | 0:02:09 | |
like this chapel, by his eldest son, Edward. | 0:02:09 | 0:02:11 | |
Once at the heart of industrial Manchester, | 0:02:14 | 0:02:17 | |
Gorton Monastery fell into disrepair in the 1990s. | 0:02:17 | 0:02:21 | |
But it was saved from dereliction by the local community, who loved it. | 0:02:21 | 0:02:25 | |
In 1812, when Augustus Pugin was born, | 0:04:53 | 0:04:55 | |
the only child of a French artist father and English mother, | 0:04:55 | 0:04:58 | |
the height of fashion in art and architecture was very different from this. | 0:04:58 | 0:05:02 | |
It was the Georgian, neoclassical style. | 0:05:02 | 0:05:05 | |
It wasn't British, it wasn't Christian. | 0:05:07 | 0:05:10 | |
The Greeks and the Romans were not Christians. | 0:05:10 | 0:05:13 | |
It was built for pagan gods, as he called them. | 0:05:13 | 0:05:17 | |
And also, it must be said that when Pugin was growing up, | 0:05:17 | 0:05:19 | |
the neoclassical architecture of the Regency was pretty flimsy, | 0:05:19 | 0:05:23 | |
a lot of stucco, a lot of plaster, | 0:05:23 | 0:05:26 | |
everything that he most disliked about the architecture and also the society, | 0:05:26 | 0:05:29 | |
which he felt was rather upfront and hypocritical as well. | 0:05:29 | 0:05:32 | |
Gothic architecture was the architecture of the Middle Ages in Europe | 0:05:34 | 0:05:38 | |
and it was more or less characterised | 0:05:38 | 0:05:41 | |
in the 19th century - people talked about Gothic or pointed architecture. | 0:05:41 | 0:05:44 | |
So it's all those churches and cathedrals with pointy spires and crockets and pinnacles. | 0:05:44 | 0:05:49 | |
-And Pugin was a big fan? -Pugin loved Gothic architecture. | 0:05:49 | 0:05:52 | |
He thought that it was the right architecture for this country, | 0:05:52 | 0:05:55 | |
because it was a native architecture. | 0:05:55 | 0:05:57 | |
It was more practical, because, as he said, | 0:05:57 | 0:06:00 | |
if you import classical architecture from Greece and Rome | 0:06:00 | 0:06:02 | |
designed for a Mediterranean climate, whereas, as he said, | 0:06:02 | 0:06:05 | |
the pinnacles in England keep off the rain. | 0:06:05 | 0:06:08 | |
Contrasts was the first book you could call an architectural manifesto. | 0:06:11 | 0:06:14 | |
What he was trying to say and indeed succeeded very well in saying | 0:06:14 | 0:06:18 | |
was that English society had reached a crisis point. | 0:06:18 | 0:06:22 | |
There were slums, factories, workhouses | 0:06:23 | 0:06:27 | |
and Contrasts compares the modern state of society, | 0:06:27 | 0:06:30 | |
especially the workhouses which were new, | 0:06:30 | 0:06:33 | |
and were coming under the new Poor Law, | 0:06:33 | 0:06:35 | |
with the way that things were organised in the Middle Ages, | 0:06:35 | 0:06:38 | |
in which you had, Pugin believed, a much more integrated society | 0:06:38 | 0:06:41 | |
in which the poor would be looked after in a humane manner. | 0:06:41 | 0:06:45 | |
And that was his main point, | 0:06:45 | 0:06:47 | |
to suggest that through architecture, | 0:06:47 | 0:06:50 | |
you achieve a different kind of society. | 0:06:50 | 0:06:53 | |
Pugin saw Gothic buildings as physical symbols | 0:06:56 | 0:06:59 | |
of an idealised Christian community. | 0:06:59 | 0:07:02 | |
Many of his contemporaries followed in his footsteps. | 0:07:02 | 0:07:05 | |
One of these, George Gilbert Scott, | 0:07:07 | 0:07:09 | |
claimed he was a new man after Pugin had awaken him | 0:07:09 | 0:07:13 | |
to how architecture could give dignity to the human condition. | 0:07:13 | 0:07:16 | |
Such as the mill-workers' houses Scott designed at Akroydon, near Halifax. | 0:07:16 | 0:07:22 | |
Scott also restored and repaired what is now Halifax Minster, | 0:07:22 | 0:07:26 | |
returning the ancient church of St John The Baptist, | 0:07:26 | 0:07:29 | |
whose feast we celebrate today, | 0:07:29 | 0:07:31 | |
to what was as near as possible to its former medieval splendour. | 0:07:31 | 0:07:34 | |
He learned to draw from his father, | 0:09:43 | 0:09:45 | |
who was an architect and an architectural draftsman, | 0:09:45 | 0:09:49 | |
but he never learned architecture per se. | 0:09:49 | 0:09:51 | |
I mean, he learned on the job, and he learned by trial and error. | 0:09:51 | 0:09:54 | |
-And there were some quite big errors. -Really? | 0:09:54 | 0:09:56 | |
Yes. Absolutely. | 0:09:56 | 0:09:57 | |
At the Church of St Anne's in Keighley, | 0:09:57 | 0:09:59 | |
there is a little note in his diary which says, "Belfry fell down." | 0:09:59 | 0:10:03 | |
-Oops! -Oops! | 0:10:03 | 0:10:04 | |
He practised architecture like a romantic artist. | 0:10:07 | 0:10:09 | |
His own favourite church while he was building it was St Giles, Cheadle, | 0:10:09 | 0:10:14 | |
which was paid for by his great patron, the Earl of Shrewsbury. | 0:10:14 | 0:10:17 | |
The money wasn't too short there for once. | 0:10:17 | 0:10:20 | |
It is a romantic work of art because every single surface, | 0:10:20 | 0:10:24 | |
and every medium - the glass, the metalwork, the ceramics on the floor, | 0:10:24 | 0:10:30 | |
the painted wall, carved stone, is all to his design. | 0:10:30 | 0:10:33 | |
He influenced everybody in the 19th century whether they liked him or not, | 0:10:36 | 0:10:41 | |
whether they knew it or not. | 0:10:41 | 0:10:43 | |
All Saints Church in Cheltenham has Gothic, Pre-Raphaelite | 0:10:47 | 0:10:52 | |
and also Arts And Crafts interiors - | 0:10:52 | 0:10:55 | |
all revealing elements of how Pugin's principles influenced later designers. | 0:10:55 | 0:11:00 | |
All Saints was begun by local architect John Middleton back in 1865, | 0:11:03 | 0:11:07 | |
the very same year that Cardinal John Henry Newman wrote and published | 0:11:07 | 0:11:12 | |
his poem, The Dream Of Gerontius, | 0:11:12 | 0:11:14 | |
the origin of one of our best-loved hymns. | 0:11:14 | 0:11:16 | |
People in Ramsgate and Thanet are very proud that the Gospel | 0:13:21 | 0:13:25 | |
first landed here. | 0:13:25 | 0:13:27 | |
Pugin moved to Ramsgate because, as he writes, | 0:13:27 | 0:13:30 | |
"blessed Austen" had "landed nearby". | 0:13:30 | 0:13:32 | |
This captivated his romantic imagination | 0:13:32 | 0:13:36 | |
and he was fascinated by the figure of Augustine. | 0:13:36 | 0:13:39 | |
In 596 AD, Pope Gregory the Great sent a mission to England. | 0:13:41 | 0:13:46 | |
40 monks arrived and landed on the Isle of Thanet. | 0:13:48 | 0:13:51 | |
Augustine was their leader. | 0:13:53 | 0:13:54 | |
The meeting between St Augustine | 0:13:56 | 0:13:57 | |
and King Ethelbert who was the leading king | 0:13:57 | 0:13:59 | |
amongst the Anglo-Saxon peoples of the time is, in a sense, | 0:13:59 | 0:14:03 | |
the birth of English Christianity, | 0:14:03 | 0:14:05 | |
and, to some extent, the birth of the English nation. | 0:14:05 | 0:14:08 | |
It began a whole history of civilisation, art, architecture, literature, law - | 0:14:08 | 0:14:14 | |
all represented in that meeting. | 0:14:14 | 0:14:17 | |
It seems fitting that there is another church | 0:14:18 | 0:14:21 | |
dedicated to King Ethelbert in Ramsgate. | 0:14:21 | 0:14:24 | |
It is also fitting that this was created by a Pugin, | 0:14:24 | 0:14:28 | |
this time not Augustus Welby, | 0:14:28 | 0:14:30 | |
but his youngest son Peter Paul Pugin | 0:14:30 | 0:14:33 | |
who, in his own right, is a great architect. | 0:14:33 | 0:14:36 | |
In 1538, the shrine of St Augustine in Canterbury, | 0:14:36 | 0:14:40 | |
which drew pilgrims from all over the country and beyond was sadly destroyed. | 0:14:40 | 0:14:46 | |
It got caught up in the political turmoil of the age, | 0:14:46 | 0:14:48 | |
but now that has been rectified. | 0:14:48 | 0:14:52 | |
This year, on 1st March, | 0:14:52 | 0:14:54 | |
the Archbishop of Southwark declared the Church of St Augustine in Ramsgate, Pugin's church, | 0:14:54 | 0:14:59 | |
dedicated to the saint as a new shrine | 0:14:59 | 0:15:02 | |
to honour the beginnings of Christian England, the coming of the Gospel to our land. | 0:15:02 | 0:15:06 | |
It's a great responsibility to be custodian of such church with such a legacy, | 0:15:07 | 0:15:13 | |
and, in a sense, continuing Pugin's dream with honouring the English saints | 0:15:13 | 0:15:18 | |
who captivated his own imagination. | 0:15:18 | 0:15:20 | |
It's the worship of Jesus | 0:15:22 | 0:15:23 | |
by saints of all nations which is the subject of her next hymn, | 0:15:23 | 0:15:28 | |
from Edward Pugin's monastery at Gorton. | 0:15:28 | 0:15:31 | |
My great-great-grandparents were Augustus Welby Pugin | 0:17:47 | 0:17:50 | |
and his third wife Jane Knill. | 0:17:50 | 0:17:53 | |
They had a daughter called Margaret, Matty. | 0:17:53 | 0:17:55 | |
She, in turn, had my grandfather Charles. | 0:17:55 | 0:17:59 | |
Charles was the last architect in the Pugin & Pugin business. | 0:17:59 | 0:18:03 | |
He was a man who loved his family. | 0:18:05 | 0:18:07 | |
He loved having the children around him | 0:18:07 | 0:18:08 | |
and that was one of the reasons he designed the grange so well, | 0:18:08 | 0:18:11 | |
so it was surrounding the family | 0:18:11 | 0:18:12 | |
and became an example for future housing. | 0:18:12 | 0:18:16 | |
He was married three times. | 0:18:16 | 0:18:19 | |
Unfortunately, he lost his first two wives and was desolate by that. | 0:18:19 | 0:18:22 | |
He needed company and Jean Knill became his third wife. | 0:18:22 | 0:18:27 | |
He regarded her as the true Gothic woman. | 0:18:27 | 0:18:29 | |
He was warm, he was ebullient. | 0:18:31 | 0:18:34 | |
He wasn't particularly refined in his manners. | 0:18:34 | 0:18:37 | |
He wasn't particularly deferential. | 0:18:37 | 0:18:40 | |
He was a very driven man. | 0:18:40 | 0:18:42 | |
He had a great attention to detail. | 0:18:42 | 0:18:44 | |
Perhaps, sometimes people would say he was a perfectionist. | 0:18:44 | 0:18:47 | |
During his very short life, | 0:18:47 | 0:18:49 | |
he produced an incredible amount of work. | 0:18:49 | 0:18:51 | |
He worked very fast. He had done three cathedrals by the time he was 30. | 0:18:51 | 0:18:56 | |
It must be said that he relied very heavily indeed | 0:18:56 | 0:18:59 | |
on a good builder, George Myers. | 0:18:59 | 0:19:01 | |
He understood the structure of medieval buildings | 0:19:01 | 0:19:03 | |
so he could put in the right kind of foundations | 0:19:03 | 0:19:05 | |
so that things didn't fall down. | 0:19:05 | 0:19:08 | |
For Pugin, there was no difference between professional relationships and personal relationships. | 0:19:08 | 0:19:12 | |
Everyone was a friend as well as a colleague - he certainly was not a snob. | 0:19:12 | 0:19:15 | |
Also, it is much more practical once you have got a team together - | 0:19:15 | 0:19:19 | |
a builder, a metal-worker, a decorator, | 0:19:19 | 0:19:22 | |
Minton up in Stoke doing the tiles. | 0:19:22 | 0:19:25 | |
You all know each other very well. | 0:19:25 | 0:19:27 | |
Our next hymn comes from a church | 0:19:30 | 0:19:33 | |
built by another of his contemporaries, Joseph Hansom. | 0:19:33 | 0:19:37 | |
Pugin often complained that Hansom stole his ideas, | 0:19:37 | 0:19:41 | |
and the design of St Walburge's in Preston | 0:19:41 | 0:19:44 | |
is certainly impressive, | 0:19:44 | 0:19:46 | |
topped, as it is, by the tallest spire | 0:19:46 | 0:19:48 | |
of any parish church in England. | 0:19:48 | 0:19:50 | |
What you think his greatest legacy is? | 0:21:55 | 0:21:58 | |
I think it is the idea | 0:21:58 | 0:22:00 | |
that architecture is a social and moral force. | 0:22:00 | 0:22:04 | |
It's not just about putting up a building. | 0:22:04 | 0:22:06 | |
It's not just about function. | 0:22:06 | 0:22:08 | |
It has a role to play in the way that we live our lives. | 0:22:08 | 0:22:12 | |
And if we feel there's something wrong with our cities, | 0:22:12 | 0:22:15 | |
there's probably something wrong with ourselves, | 0:22:15 | 0:22:18 | |
and you can't separate these things out. | 0:22:18 | 0:22:20 | |
'He believed in Christianity in an active way,' | 0:22:20 | 0:22:22 | |
affecting the whole community, | 0:22:22 | 0:22:24 | |
enhancing the whole community, | 0:22:24 | 0:22:25 | |
blessing the whole community. | 0:22:25 | 0:22:27 | |
'I think we all feel very privileged for the life that we've had. | 0:22:29 | 0:22:32 | |
'And I think that, in return for that, | 0:22:32 | 0:22:34 | |
'it's fundamental that people are able to offer something' | 0:22:34 | 0:22:38 | |
to enable others to reach their potential. | 0:22:38 | 0:22:40 | |
I think Pugin had the same through the buildings that he built, | 0:22:40 | 0:22:44 | |
insofar as, if people could belong in these churches, | 0:22:44 | 0:22:48 | |
if they felt safe and secure, the likelihood is | 0:22:48 | 0:22:51 | |
that they would then be able to contribute | 0:22:51 | 0:22:53 | |
and in the end, through their prayer, through the combined use | 0:22:53 | 0:22:58 | |
of the community within the church, to thrive. | 0:22:58 | 0:23:03 | |
That Christians should follow Jesus's example | 0:23:03 | 0:23:06 | |
in actively supporting justice and peace | 0:23:06 | 0:23:08 | |
is at the heart of our next hymn. | 0:23:08 | 0:23:10 | |
The words are by Catholic convert, | 0:23:10 | 0:23:12 | |
writer, and social commentator, GK Chesterton, | 0:23:12 | 0:23:15 | |
and are sung to an old English folk tune, | 0:23:15 | 0:23:17 | |
adapted by Ralph Vaughan Williams. | 0:23:17 | 0:23:19 | |
The hymn was first published in English Hymnal, | 0:23:19 | 0:23:24 | |
founded at the Gothic Revival Anglican church | 0:23:24 | 0:23:26 | |
of St Mary the Virgin, in London's Primrose Hill. | 0:23:26 | 0:23:30 | |
He'd always loved the sea. He was a keen and very skilled sailor. | 0:25:58 | 0:26:03 | |
He also had a lugger, a boat that took tourists out in the summer, | 0:26:03 | 0:26:08 | |
and went out salvaging for wrecks in the winter. | 0:26:08 | 0:26:12 | |
And he had a very affectionate and enduring admiration for sailors. | 0:26:12 | 0:26:17 | |
There were frequent shipwrecks here on Goodwin Sands. | 0:26:17 | 0:26:21 | |
Occasionally he would bring sailors, if they had drowned, | 0:26:21 | 0:26:24 | |
he would arrange for them to have a Catholic funeral here. | 0:26:24 | 0:26:27 | |
Pugin himself left this storm-tossed life | 0:26:30 | 0:26:32 | |
for his eternal rest on September 14th, 1852. | 0:26:32 | 0:26:38 | |
His doctor said that he'd done the work of 100 years in just 40. | 0:26:38 | 0:26:41 | |
Among Catholics and Protestants, Pugin's legacy helped | 0:26:43 | 0:26:47 | |
to revive a renewed respect for our shared Christian heritage | 0:26:47 | 0:26:51 | |
and holy sites like Wolsingham, once a place of English pilgrimage, | 0:26:51 | 0:26:56 | |
second in importance only to Canterbury, | 0:26:56 | 0:26:59 | |
and now home to both Anglican and Catholic shrines to the Virgin Mary. | 0:26:59 | 0:27:04 | |
The Gothic architecture popularised by Augustus Pugin | 0:29:44 | 0:29:48 | |
captured the imagination of Christians of all denominations, | 0:29:48 | 0:29:52 | |
and although stone, bricks and mortar may decay, | 0:29:52 | 0:29:55 | |
Pugin's legacy and the faith that inspired him lives on. | 0:29:55 | 0:30:00 | |
Deep down, what inspires me most is that this will be a shrine, | 0:30:01 | 0:30:06 | |
a place of pilgrimage, a monument to Christianity, | 0:30:06 | 0:30:09 | |
and it's wonderful to be able to welcome people from all over the country and beyond | 0:30:09 | 0:30:14 | |
and to be able to tell our story, our English story, | 0:30:14 | 0:30:17 | |
about Christianity and about Pugin. | 0:30:17 | 0:30:19 | |
I think sometimes it's very difficult to verbalise your own faith, | 0:30:22 | 0:30:26 | |
but I believe that God is our creator, | 0:30:26 | 0:30:28 | |
that, hopefully, he's our teacher and our friend, | 0:30:28 | 0:30:32 | |
but, ultimately, he's our saviour, | 0:30:32 | 0:30:34 | |
and that the work we do, we need to strive | 0:30:34 | 0:30:36 | |
to be able to use the talents effectively that we have. | 0:30:36 | 0:30:39 | |
Our final hymn comes from Arundel Cathedral, | 0:30:42 | 0:30:45 | |
built by Pugin's contemporary and rival, Joseph Hansom. | 0:30:45 | 0:30:49 | |
Whatever their professional differences, | 0:30:49 | 0:30:51 | |
their shared mission was to bring Christian architecture to the world. | 0:30:51 | 0:30:56 | |
Next week, Sally Magnusson is in Dunblane in central Scotland, | 0:33:25 | 0:33:30 | |
home of the UK's only boarding school | 0:33:30 | 0:33:32 | |
for the children of the military. | 0:33:32 | 0:33:34 | |
And Dunblane's cathedral is the wonderful setting for our hymns. | 0:33:37 | 0:33:41 | |
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd | 0:34:01 | 0:34:03 |