Right: Chapel, Rugby, designed by Henry Hakewill (1771-1830), and built, together with the older part of the school, from 1818-21. Photographed in c. 1900 by E.H. Speight. Source: Bradby 119. Left: Rugby — School Chapel tower, with new west end designed by William Butterfield, and built in 1872, although with later work. Photographed in 2014 by David Bevis.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, H.C. Bradby was not at all impressed by Butterfield's new buildings at Rugby: "Their aim is to attain, by free use of different coloured bricks and slate, the richness of colours characteristic of some Italian building; but the aim has not been realized and the colour effect is irritating rather than rich..."(114-15). But later commentators have responded differently. Examining the way Butterfield transformed the original chapel, for instance, Nicholas Olsberg notes that he had to "work around seemingly impossible restraints," yet succeeded in producing "a design of astounding originality and effectiveness" (254). As for the polychromy in particular, Olsberg admires the "mosaic of predominantly yellow brick, interfused with blue and red brick and stone trim," colours that combine to "fuse into the eye as a burnt orange streaked with white" (255). Olsberg is far from alone in recognising the merits of the chapel, which has long been Grade I listed.
Scan of the Hakewill building by George P. Landow. Colour photograph by David Bevis, originally posted on the geograph website, kindly made available for reuse under the term of the Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic CC BY-SA 2.0 Deed. Text by Jacqueline Banerjee. Click on the images to enlarge them.
Links to Related Material
- Old Chapel, West End, by Hakewill
- Main school building, again, Hakewill (older) and Butterfield (Vicotrian)
- Thomas Arnold's Theories of Secondary Education
- The Portrayal of Thomas Arnold in Tom Brown's Schooldays
- "Judgments and Chastisements," a sermon preached in Rugby Chapel in response to England's first cholera epidemic
Bibliography
Bevis, Dave. "Rugby — School Chapel tower." geograph. Web. 30 January 2025.
Bradby, H. C. Rugby. Handbooks to the Great Public Schools series. London: George Bell and Sons, 1900. Internet Archive, from a copy in Robarts Library, University of Toronto. Web. 30 January 2025.
"Chapel at Rugby School." Historic England. Web. 30 January 2025.
Olsberg, Nicholas. The Master Builder: William Butterfield and His Times. With photographs by James Morris. London: Lund Humphries, 2024. [Review.]
Created 30 January 2025