Talks, Outings & Events
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9 December, 6pm: ‘Stupendous performances: the Pugins and the late-Georgian theatre’ - online lecture by Rosemary Hill
The lives of the Pugin family coincided with two of the great ages of British drama, the so called ‘Kemble era’ of Romantic theatre in the late 18th-century and the heyday of pantomime in the Regency. Pugin and his parents were all, in different ways, enthusiasts for the stage and Pugin’s life and work were permanently affected by his early years in the scenery department at Covent Garden.
Rosemary Hill, historian and author of God's Architect on the life of AWN Pugin, will give a talk online via Zoom on Wednesday, 9 December at 6pm GMT. The event is free and open to all, with members automatically receiving an email invitation to register 2 weeks prior to the event.
The lives of the Pugin family coincided with two of the great ages of British drama, the so called ‘Kemble era’ of Romantic theatre in the late 18th-century and the heyday of pantomime in the Regency. Pugin and his parents were all, in different ways, enthusiasts for the stage and Pugin’s life and work were permanently affected by his early years in the scenery department at Covent Garden.
Rosemary Hill, historian and author of God's Architect on the life of AWN Pugin, will give a talk online via Zoom on Wednesday, 9 December at 6pm GMT. The event is free and open to all, with members automatically receiving an email invitation to register 2 weeks prior to the event.
This year’s AGM will be held online via Zoom on Saturday 12th December at 11 o’clock. Agendas and reports will be circulated to members beforehand.
We will not be able to have the traditional format of the AGM followed by the annual lecture. So that we can make the meeting run smoothly we will be producing an annual report in advance of the meeting that will be circulated to members in advance. This will allow for any questions to be submitted in advance of the meeting so that the officers can answer on the day. For this year it will not be possible to raise issues on the day. We will ask you to register for the meeting and you will then be sent the link via email to join.
We will not be able to have the traditional format of the AGM followed by the annual lecture. So that we can make the meeting run smoothly we will be producing an annual report in advance of the meeting that will be circulated to members in advance. This will allow for any questions to be submitted in advance of the meeting so that the officers can answer on the day. For this year it will not be possible to raise issues on the day. We will ask you to register for the meeting and you will then be sent the link via email to join.
NOTE: The physical events below have been cancelled as a result of governmental advice surrounding social distancing and the spread of COVID-19. We hope to reschedule these once it is safe to do so, so the details remain below. Please check back for updates and take care.
14 May: 25th Anniversary Reception of the Pugin Society at the Palace of Westminster
We celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Society in style with a grand reception in the Palace of Westminster, termed by Pugin ‘the morning star of the great revival of national architecture and art'. We will be guests of Lord Cormack in the River Room, by kind permission of the Lord Speaker. There will be speeches, drinks and canapes. Rosemary Hill, the renowned historian, critic and author of the classic biography of Pugin, God’s Architect, will address the reception with ‘Contrasts and True Principles: the first twenty-five years of the Pugin Society’: 6.00 to 8.00. To receive an invitation, please send a donation of £45 and SAE.
We celebrate the 25th Anniversary of the Society in style with a grand reception in the Palace of Westminster, termed by Pugin ‘the morning star of the great revival of national architecture and art'. We will be guests of Lord Cormack in the River Room, by kind permission of the Lord Speaker. There will be speeches, drinks and canapes. Rosemary Hill, the renowned historian, critic and author of the classic biography of Pugin, God’s Architect, will address the reception with ‘Contrasts and True Principles: the first twenty-five years of the Pugin Society’: 6.00 to 8.00. To receive an invitation, please send a donation of £45 and SAE.
8 July: The Pugin Dynasty and Architectural Heritage in Ramsgate
Ramsgate, A.W.N. Pugin’s chosen hometown, is favoured with a wealth of Pugin dynastic architecture. This event provides an enriching introduction for new members and a delightful refresher course for the initiated. The morning begins at 11.30 at Ramsgate train station, where we will meet the 10.09 London train, with a welcome by Jayne Evelyn, Society member and Ramsgate resident, and a brief history of the seaside town’s 19C architecture from the Terry Prue of the Ramsgate Society. Terry will guide us on a minibus tour of the old town, majestic seafront and royal harbour, highlighting the many Victorian Gothic Revival additions to Ramsgate’s Regency Terraces, including Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Christ Church, Vale Square. We hope to make brief stops at Edward Pugin’s former industrial flour mill, now a handsome residential conversion, and his seafront Granville Hotel, where plans are afoot to restore the former ballroom. A two-course lunch follows at a reputable restaurant with glorious sea views.
The afternoon begins with a guided tour of Pugin’s personal church, Grade 1 Listed St Augustine’s Shrine, where AWP and his family are buried in the Chantry Chapel. This is followed by a guided tour of Pugin’s Grade 1 Listed home, The Grange, prototype of the English, modern, middle class family house, where Pugin and his sons worked to create their masterpieces of architecture and interior design. For participants already familiar with Pugin’s church and/or house, arrangements can be made to explore the Pugin Archives housed in the former chapel above St Augustine’s East Cloister Gallery. The day ends at 4.30pm when taxis will return members to the train station in time to catch the 5.05pm high-speed to London St Pancras. Members wishing to enjoy an evening meal at one of the many waterfront eateries or an overnight hotel stay with more leisure time to explore Ramsgate’s many delights, are very welcome to do so at their own expense. The excellent Pugin Town Trail and Ramsgate Military and Heritage Trail brochures are available free of charge from the Harbour Visitor Centre.
Cost £55, including the minibus tour, taxi transfer from restaurant to St Augustine’s and from the Grange to the train station, two course lunch, and donation to St Augustine’s. Full joining instructions and options for lunch will be sent to participants nearer the time.
Ramsgate, A.W.N. Pugin’s chosen hometown, is favoured with a wealth of Pugin dynastic architecture. This event provides an enriching introduction for new members and a delightful refresher course for the initiated. The morning begins at 11.30 at Ramsgate train station, where we will meet the 10.09 London train, with a welcome by Jayne Evelyn, Society member and Ramsgate resident, and a brief history of the seaside town’s 19C architecture from the Terry Prue of the Ramsgate Society. Terry will guide us on a minibus tour of the old town, majestic seafront and royal harbour, highlighting the many Victorian Gothic Revival additions to Ramsgate’s Regency Terraces, including Sir George Gilbert Scott’s Christ Church, Vale Square. We hope to make brief stops at Edward Pugin’s former industrial flour mill, now a handsome residential conversion, and his seafront Granville Hotel, where plans are afoot to restore the former ballroom. A two-course lunch follows at a reputable restaurant with glorious sea views.
The afternoon begins with a guided tour of Pugin’s personal church, Grade 1 Listed St Augustine’s Shrine, where AWP and his family are buried in the Chantry Chapel. This is followed by a guided tour of Pugin’s Grade 1 Listed home, The Grange, prototype of the English, modern, middle class family house, where Pugin and his sons worked to create their masterpieces of architecture and interior design. For participants already familiar with Pugin’s church and/or house, arrangements can be made to explore the Pugin Archives housed in the former chapel above St Augustine’s East Cloister Gallery. The day ends at 4.30pm when taxis will return members to the train station in time to catch the 5.05pm high-speed to London St Pancras. Members wishing to enjoy an evening meal at one of the many waterfront eateries or an overnight hotel stay with more leisure time to explore Ramsgate’s many delights, are very welcome to do so at their own expense. The excellent Pugin Town Trail and Ramsgate Military and Heritage Trail brochures are available free of charge from the Harbour Visitor Centre.
Cost £55, including the minibus tour, taxi transfer from restaurant to St Augustine’s and from the Grange to the train station, two course lunch, and donation to St Augustine’s. Full joining instructions and options for lunch will be sent to participants nearer the time.
4-7 August: Study Tour to Staffordshire: Pugin, Minton and the Later Gothic Revival
This year the study tour takes us to Staffordshire and to the heart of Pugin Land where we will see, as well as the classic sites of Cheadle and Alton Castle, superb work by the next generation of Gothic Revivalists. At St Giles’s, Cheadle, thanks to the generosity of his patron, Lord Shrewsbury, Pugin was able to give full rein to his ideas of what a church should be, and how it should look. We shall also see St John’s Hospital in Alton which expresses the social dimension of Pugin’s Gothic, and the rebuilt castle nearby. Visitors flocked to both places, and among them were rising generations of architects and designers who took up Pugin’s ideas, some of the finest expressions of which are to be seen in North Staffordshire, and so we shall move on to look at those who caught the ‘Pugin flame’. There was of course his eldest son, Edward, and we shall be visiting one of his earliest churches – St Mary’s, Oulton – built in 1854 for a community of Benedictine nuns, and where the interior remains remarkably intact. In the nearby town of Stone is A.W. Pugin’s little church of St. Anne (1844), now in the grounds of the church which superseded it: The Immaculate Conception and St Dominic, by Charles Hansom and Gilbert Blount (1852-1863). Pugin’s influence is evident, and there is glass and much else by Hardman & Co.
Among the architects who readily acknowledged their debt to Pugin were G.F. Bodley and Norman Shaw, and we will be seeing acknowledged masterpieces of both: the Church of the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross, and All Saints’, Leek. One of Pugin’s avowed aims was the revival of opus anglicanum, the exquisite hand-embroidered vestments, altar-frontals and hangings for which England had been internationally famous in medieval times. He did not live long enough to see this, but he would have been delighted by the success of the Leek School of Embroidery which achieved just this in the last decades of the 19th century, using coloured silks and gold threads produced in the mills and dyeworks of the moorlands town of Leek. We shall visit All Saints’ Church, Leek, which has the finest collection, some designed by the architect of the church, Richard Norman Shaw. All Saints’ is in itself a triumph of Victorian Gothic (1887). Built of local stone, and with furnishings by W.R. Lethaby and Gerald Horsley, and stained glass by Morris & Co., it marks the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Pugin’s success depended to a great extent on his finding craftsmen and manufacturers who could execute his designs. Among the foremost was Herbert Minton, the Stoke-on-Trent potter who was able to revive the long-lost processes of encaustic tile making, and was able to produce tiles to Pugin’s designs for his churches and domestic buildings. On our last morning we will visit the church and school that Minton build for himself and his workers together with associated workers’ cottages. The tour ends with a visit to the superb Potteries Museum and Art Gallery which contains the finest collection of Stoke pottery in the world, including examples of the work of Minton.
The tour will be led by Michael Fisher, the distinguished expert on Pugin and author of numerous books including, Pugin-land, Staffordshire and the Gothic Revival and ‘Gothic Forever’: A.W.N.Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury and the Rebuilding of Catholic England. Catriona Blaker, a Trustee of the Pugin Society, will lead the morning focussed on the work of Minton.
We will be staying in the Moathouse Hotel, Staffordshire, a four star hotel linked to Etruria Hall, the former house of the Wedgwoods, and a taxi ride from Stoke railway station. Free parking at the hotel. The price includes: accommodation, dinner on two nights, two evening lectures, coach travel over three days, gratuities and donations to churches.
Cost: single occupancy £560; sharing a double room £450. To secure a place please send deposit of £100.
This year the study tour takes us to Staffordshire and to the heart of Pugin Land where we will see, as well as the classic sites of Cheadle and Alton Castle, superb work by the next generation of Gothic Revivalists. At St Giles’s, Cheadle, thanks to the generosity of his patron, Lord Shrewsbury, Pugin was able to give full rein to his ideas of what a church should be, and how it should look. We shall also see St John’s Hospital in Alton which expresses the social dimension of Pugin’s Gothic, and the rebuilt castle nearby. Visitors flocked to both places, and among them were rising generations of architects and designers who took up Pugin’s ideas, some of the finest expressions of which are to be seen in North Staffordshire, and so we shall move on to look at those who caught the ‘Pugin flame’. There was of course his eldest son, Edward, and we shall be visiting one of his earliest churches – St Mary’s, Oulton – built in 1854 for a community of Benedictine nuns, and where the interior remains remarkably intact. In the nearby town of Stone is A.W. Pugin’s little church of St. Anne (1844), now in the grounds of the church which superseded it: The Immaculate Conception and St Dominic, by Charles Hansom and Gilbert Blount (1852-1863). Pugin’s influence is evident, and there is glass and much else by Hardman & Co.
Among the architects who readily acknowledged their debt to Pugin were G.F. Bodley and Norman Shaw, and we will be seeing acknowledged masterpieces of both: the Church of the Holy Angels at Hoar Cross, and All Saints’, Leek. One of Pugin’s avowed aims was the revival of opus anglicanum, the exquisite hand-embroidered vestments, altar-frontals and hangings for which England had been internationally famous in medieval times. He did not live long enough to see this, but he would have been delighted by the success of the Leek School of Embroidery which achieved just this in the last decades of the 19th century, using coloured silks and gold threads produced in the mills and dyeworks of the moorlands town of Leek. We shall visit All Saints’ Church, Leek, which has the finest collection, some designed by the architect of the church, Richard Norman Shaw. All Saints’ is in itself a triumph of Victorian Gothic (1887). Built of local stone, and with furnishings by W.R. Lethaby and Gerald Horsley, and stained glass by Morris & Co., it marks the beginnings of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
Pugin’s success depended to a great extent on his finding craftsmen and manufacturers who could execute his designs. Among the foremost was Herbert Minton, the Stoke-on-Trent potter who was able to revive the long-lost processes of encaustic tile making, and was able to produce tiles to Pugin’s designs for his churches and domestic buildings. On our last morning we will visit the church and school that Minton build for himself and his workers together with associated workers’ cottages. The tour ends with a visit to the superb Potteries Museum and Art Gallery which contains the finest collection of Stoke pottery in the world, including examples of the work of Minton.
The tour will be led by Michael Fisher, the distinguished expert on Pugin and author of numerous books including, Pugin-land, Staffordshire and the Gothic Revival and ‘Gothic Forever’: A.W.N.Pugin, Lord Shrewsbury and the Rebuilding of Catholic England. Catriona Blaker, a Trustee of the Pugin Society, will lead the morning focussed on the work of Minton.
We will be staying in the Moathouse Hotel, Staffordshire, a four star hotel linked to Etruria Hall, the former house of the Wedgwoods, and a taxi ride from Stoke railway station. Free parking at the hotel. The price includes: accommodation, dinner on two nights, two evening lectures, coach travel over three days, gratuities and donations to churches.
Cost: single occupancy £560; sharing a double room £450. To secure a place please send deposit of £100.
4 November: Private Visit to Watts and Co, Westminster
Watts and Co dates back to 1874, when it was established by three key figures of the Late Gothic Revival, G.F Bodley, Thomas Garner and George Gilbert Scott junior, to provide textiles, vestments and fittings to beatify the new and restored churches that proliferated in the period. With its unrivalled archive of designs and textiles, including silks by Pugin, it remains the premier supplier of vestments and church fittings. We will be welcomed by the Director, Robert Hoare, a descendant of the Scott dynasty. The showrooms, richly filled with beautiful objects, are located in Tufton Street, near Westminster Abbey. Limited numbers. Visit starts at 4.15 followed by wine: £15.
Watts and Co dates back to 1874, when it was established by three key figures of the Late Gothic Revival, G.F Bodley, Thomas Garner and George Gilbert Scott junior, to provide textiles, vestments and fittings to beatify the new and restored churches that proliferated in the period. With its unrivalled archive of designs and textiles, including silks by Pugin, it remains the premier supplier of vestments and church fittings. We will be welcomed by the Director, Robert Hoare, a descendant of the Scott dynasty. The showrooms, richly filled with beautiful objects, are located in Tufton Street, near Westminster Abbey. Limited numbers. Visit starts at 4.15 followed by wine: £15.
Booking: please send cheques payable to The Pugin Society, and enclosing a SAE or email address for confirmation, to Professor Julia Twigg, 9 Nunnery Road, Canterbury, CT1 3LS |
Cancellation policy: we regret that refunds cannot be made less than 14 days before an event. There is a handling charge of £5. In the case of overnight events where accommodation may have been booked, there may need to be an additional charge to cover losses to the Society. |
