William Venn Gough
"William Venn Gough cannot have been anyone's favourite architect", wrote Professor Gomme, "but he was employed so widely that it is impossible to ignore him". The latter part of this assertion is undoubtedly true, for Gough designed some of Bristol's best known Victorian buildings, including one of its most prominent landmarks, the Cabot Tower. He also had a hand in the Welsh Back granary, although authorities attribute most of the work to his partner Archibald Ponton. I must take issue with the opening part of the Professor's statement, for Gough is one of my favourites among local architects. About this building, Colston Girls' School (1891), in Cheltenham Road, there is "something maniacal", splutters Professor Gomme, "it appears at first sight to be made from gigantic liquorice allsorts".
My trouble is, I suppose, that I like maniacal architecture, and the Victorians were very good at it. Yet it makes me sad. Nothing happens for no reason and the mania was a symptom. If you compare this seething, pullulating building to the ordered, harmonious façades of 150 years earlier, it is plain that something drastic has happened. As the human psyche atomised in the spiritual chaos brought about by industrialism, population growth, new discoveries, new dogmas, social experiments and a rate of change unprecedented in human experience, so architecture fragmented into a chaos of manners and styles. Like the society that produced it, this building is neurotic, just managing to keep the lid on its insanity. The explosion into madness was not long delayed. European civilisation's suicidal two-part civil war was the defining event of the next century. Its architectural expression was the grim, self-punishing ugliness and austerity of Modernism.
It's best to try to cast all these associations from your mind if you wish to enjoy a building such as this. Miss Crick points out the incongruity of quattrocento windows beneath northern Renaissance gables in a building of Jacobean plan. The gables are identical I think, but the fenestration of the two wings is entirely different. It may not be very good architecture but, as the professor concedes, "it has a gaudy cheeriness" Quite so. It sizzles and crackles like the streaky bacon it somewhat resembles.
William Venn Gough
"William Venn Gough cannot have been anyone's favourite architect", wrote Professor Gomme, "but he was employed so widely that it is impossible to ignore him". The latter part of this assertion is undoubtedly true, for Gough designed some of Bristol's best known Victorian buildings, including one of its most prominent landmarks, the Cabot Tower. He also had a hand in the Welsh Back granary, although authorities attribute most of the work to his partner Archibald Ponton. I must take issue with the opening part of the Professor's statement, for Gough is one of my favourites among local architects. About this building, Colston Girls' School (1891), in Cheltenham Road, there is "something maniacal", splutters Professor Gomme, "it appears at first sight to be made from gigantic liquorice allsorts".
My trouble is, I suppose, that I like maniacal architecture, and the Victorians were very good at it. Yet it makes me sad. Nothing happens for no reason and the mania was a symptom. If you compare this seething, pullulating building to the ordered, harmonious façades of 150 years earlier, it is plain that something drastic has happened. As the human psyche atomised in the spiritual chaos brought about by industrialism, population growth, new discoveries, new dogmas, social experiments and a rate of change unprecedented in human experience, so architecture fragmented into a chaos of manners and styles. Like the society that produced it, this building is neurotic, just managing to keep the lid on its insanity. The explosion into madness was not long delayed. European civilisation's suicidal two-part civil war was the defining event of the next century. Its architectural expression was the grim, self-punishing ugliness and austerity of Modernism.
It's best to try to cast all these associations from your mind if you wish to enjoy a building such as this. Miss Crick points out the incongruity of quattrocento windows beneath northern Renaissance gables in a building of Jacobean plan. The gables are identical I think, but the fenestration of the two wings is entirely different. It may not be very good architecture but, as the professor concedes, "it has a gaudy cheeriness" Quite so. It sizzles and crackles like the streaky bacon it somewhat resembles.