The Temple Church’s medieval architecture has been disrupted, reinterpreted and reimagined by architects throughout the centuries. This article analyses the refurbishment that was carried out under Christopher Wren in 1682-1683, which classicised the church’s chancel, and the post-war restoration by Walter Godfrey that sought to restore the Temple Church to its original form. It will also briefly discuss a controversial Victorian restoration that in its attempt to reconstruct the church as a gothic building, actually destroyed much of its medieval fabric. Driving this discussion is the central question of what the original architecture of the Temple Church is, and whether it is possible or even desirable to recover this from the various disruptions in its history. This article will thus not only provide a fuller understanding of the Temple Church’s post-medieval history, and how the gothic architecture of its chancel was perceived and valued at different times, but it also argues that an understanding of the chancel’s restorations is key to interpreting its original forms.
The history of London’s Temple Church (Fig. 1, Fig. 2 and Fig. 3) spans more than 850 years. In those centuries, the Temple Church has been perceived, treated and valued in different ways that reveal as much about its users as the building itself. Nevertheless, Andrew Ballantyne has rightly noted that scholarly attention tends to focus on ‘… the time between conception and birth’ of a building in an attempt to find its ‘… “true” meaning…’, understood as the original architect’s intention.[1] While the standard works on the Temple Church recount its later history, the building’s post-medieval life has rarely been discussed in depth.[2] This article, by contrast, will analyse two restoration campaigns that powerfully shaped the Temple Church’s thirteenth-century chancel: a refurbishment carried out under Christopher Wren (1632-1723) in the 1680s and the work done by Walter Godfrey (1881-1961) after the Second World War. How have these architects disrupted, reinterpreted and reimagined the fabric of the Temple Church’s chancel? How did the results of their building campaigns impact visitors’ experiences of the building? What do these restorations reveal about how the Temple Church’s architecture was seen and valued at different points in time?
Addressing these questions will illuminate the Temple Church’s post-medieval history, filling an important gap in the scholarship on this monumental building. At the same time, understanding the effects of Wren and Godfrey’s restorations is imperative to studies of the Temple Church’s medieval architecture. Authors like Zachary Stewart and Virginia Jansen acknowledge that restorations have significantly altered the building’s original fabric, but they do not critically engage with how this impacts their arguments about its architectural design.[3] While Stewart expertly substantiates his interpretations of the Temple Church’s medieval forms with archaeological discoveries and written sources, he merely states when discussing the restorations that ‘… because most of these interventions have been remarkably faithful, it is fair to say that the surviving building looks much as it did, with some minor exceptions, during the Middle Ages.’[4] And yet, Stewart does admit that ‘[v]irtually none of the visible stonework… is actually medieval.’[5] Indeed, careful study of the restorations shows that some were anything but faithful. Nevertheless, the authentic or true form of the Temple Church can also be understood as having incorporated these later changes.[6] Conservation practice has even started to rethink the importance attached to the concept of the ‘… “true nature”…’ of an object by acknowledging that the preservation of certain qualities – such as architectural style – is based on subjective cultural values rather than an objective truth that needs to be recovered.[7]
Before discussing Wren’s refurbishment, it is useful to outline the building’s history. The Knights Templar, a crusading order founded in 1119, constructed the Temple Church and used it from 1161 onwards. However, it was only consecrated by the Patriarch of Jerusalem in 1185.[8] At this time, the Temple Church consisted of a round nave and a small chancel. In medieval churches, the chancel was typically reserved for the clergy and separated from the nave by a screen to ensure that the laity could not enter this sacred space near the altar. In the Temple Church, however, the eastern part of the nave was likely the ritual heart of the church as the nave emulates the Anastasis Rotunda, the round building of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem which houses the sacred tomb of Christ.[9] The Temple Church’s original chancel was replaced in the thirteenth century by a larger structure (Fig. 3) that was consecrated in 1240.[10] Less than a century later, in 1312, Pope Clement V (1264-1314) dissolved the Knights Templar by his bull Vox in excelso. He subsequently granted all their property, including the Temple Church, to the Knights Hospitaller, a military order founded in 1099.[11]However, the Crown seized the church and initially gave it to several aristocrats before finally entrusting the building to the Hospitallers.[12]
Much of the Temple Church’s medieval history remains shrouded in mystery, as its records were destroyed at the Templars’ suppression and by Wat Tyler’s men during the Peasants’ Revolt in 1381.[13] When exactly the lawyers of the Inner and Middle Temple began to use the church remains, for instance, unknown.[14] In 1608, however, James I (1566-1625) granted the Benchers – the lawyers who govern the Inner and Middle Temple – freehold of the Temple Church in perpetuity on the condition that they would maintain the building.[15] Consequently, the Benchers have been responsible for the church’s upkeep, instigating and funding the restoration campaigns that this article will discuss with the exception of Godfrey’s, which was financed by the War Damage Commission.[16] The Temple Church’s first grand refurbishment took place in 1682-1683 under Wren’s supervision, yet three campaigns in 1826-1828, 1840-1842 and 1861-1862 removed his alterations and effectively rebuilt the church.[17] Their work was, in turn, largely destroyed when the Temple Church was bombed in 1941, prompting Godfrey’s restoration that culminated in the chancel’s reconsecration in 1954.[18]
Classicising the Chancel
In 1675, John Playford, a clerk of the Temple Church, informed the Benchers that there were ‘… several matters in the church which want speedy repair’:
First, the doors in the screen, which parts the church, are at this time so much decayed and broken… Second, the pulpit is so rotten at this time and decayed… Third, there is at this time great want of a good bell in the steeple… Fourth, the two surplices at this time belonging to the church are both worn out…[19]
The Temple Church’s dilapidated state worsened in 1678-1679 when the building was damaged by fire, prompting the Benchers to agree that restoration work was necessary.[20] Wren was subsequently appointed as the responsible architect. After the Fire of London (1666), which the Temple Church had luckily escaped, Wren was tasked with rebuilding many of the city’s medieval parish churches and became Surveyor General of Saint Paul’s Cathedral, giving him extensive experience of working on gothic ecclesiastical architecture. Wren surveyed the Temple Church in 1682, reporting that it was ‘… very ruinous for want of repair…’ and ‘… that the said charge will amount to no less than 1400li…’.[21] In the following refurbishment, which focused on the chancel, Wren addressed both Playford’s concerns and the damage wreaked by the fire.[22] Wren also took this project as an opportunity to classicise the chancel, resulting in a church that looked remarkably different than before.
Throughout his architectural career, Wren was directly involved in the works on several medieval buildings, including Old Saint Paul’s, Salisbury Cathedral and Westminster Abbey, shaping his understanding of the gothic style.[23] In Wren’s time, many writers and architects saw the gothic in a negative light, although Jules Lubbock has pointed out that in certain contexts the style retained its appeal.[24] Wren’s close friend and contemporary John Evelyn (1620-1706), for example, derided gothic as:
… a certain Fantastical and Licencious [sic] manner of Building, which we have since call’d Modern (or Gothic rather) Congestions of heavy, dark, melancholy and Monkish Piles, without any just Proportion, Use or Beauty, compar’d with the truly Antient…[sic][25]
Wren, by contrast, did not condemn gothic outright, acknowledging that the style was the product of a particular time and place.[26] Rather than simply adopting the common belief that the classical style surpassed the gothic, Wren critically examined each.[27] Nevertheless, he concluded that classical architecture was superior because of its greater structural stability and, in his mind, natural beauty.
Wren and Evelyn’s conceptions of style were not only governed by aesthetics, but they were also key to their understandings of architecture’s moral function in society. They believed that the style that is now called English baroque, incorporating classical features such as the orders, was more suited to public and monumental buildings because its regularity, balanced proportions and simplicity would promote and induce order, good governance and harmony in the viewer.[28] Whereas classical buildings created civilised citizens, the irregularity and excessive decoration of gothic architecture debauched the mind and by extension the nation.[29] In his report on Old Saint Paul’s, for instance, Wren referred to the ‘… good Roman Manner…’ and ‘… Gothick Rudeness…’.[30] Indeed, Wren and his contemporaries regarded the classical as the architectural style of the greatest civilisation of the past, the Roman Empire.[31]Incorporating classical motifs in the public architecture of London would thus refashion the city as a second Rome, with Charles II (1630-1685) as its Augustus.
Wren therefore often classicised medieval buildings to make them, in his view, more beautiful, civilised and edifying. Nonetheless, he could build in both the baroque and gothic styles and despite his criticism of the latter, he used gothic forms in his own designs.[32] Wren sometimes felt ‘… oblig’d to deviate from a better Style…’ when working on a medieval structure, using the gothic idiom to achieve the classical ideal of ‘… a Harmony of Objects…’.[33] Wren had, for example, designed a gothic steeple for Westminster Abbey:
I have made a Design… still in the Gothick Form, and of a Style with the rest of the Structure, which I would strictly adhere to throughout the whole Intention: to deviate from the old Form, would be to run into a disagreeable Mixture, which no Person of good Taste could relish.[34]
However, even when Wren used gothic forms, he would give his building the order and uniformity that he regarded as important characteristics of classical architecture.[35] He, for example, employed flying buttresses at Saint Paul’s Cathedral but hid them behind the screen walls so that they did not detract from the building’s geometrical beauty.[36]Wren surely saw the Temple Church, with its pointed arches and Purbeck marble piers (Fig. 3), as a prime example of the gothic style. Nonetheless, he created such ‘… a disagreeable Mixture…’ in this building by classicising its chancel.[37]
Wren achieved this classicisation through altering the proportions of the chancel and replacing its old, dilapidated furnishings. The Inner Temple’s General Account Book notes that in 1682-1683, workmen were paid for ‘… carrying earth into the Temple Church…’ to raise the chancel’s floor.[38] According to Edward Hatton’s description of the Temple Church in his A New View of London (1708), the chancel was two steps higher than the nave, while in the original building they had been on the same level.[39] Consequently, the chancel’s soaring height was reduced (compare Fig. 3 and Fig. 4). Wren considered verticality a key characteristic of the gothic style and by lowering the Temple Church’s internal height, he made the chancel conform more to classical proportions, as he often did in his works on gothic buildings.[40]Master of the Temple Robin Griffith-Jones, in his detailed article on Wren’s refurbishment that focused on the Benchers’ political and ideological motivations behind this project, failed to mention that the raising of the chancel’s floor resulted in hiding the medieval encaustic tiles from view.[41] Wren ordered the chancel to be repaved with a more classical floor of black and white marble, as can be seen in John Boydell’s engraving (1750) and George Shepherd’s drawing of the Temple Church (1811, Fig. 4).[42] These images also show that the chancel’s walls were wainscoted and that new pews for the Benchers were erected, features of the church that Hatton lauded in 1708.[43] Boydell’s engraving further classicises the chancel through its dramatic frame of sweeping curtains, a recurrent motif in his church interiors as can be seen in his prints of Saint Stephen Walbrook (1750) and Saint Clement Danes (1751), both in the British Museum.
Another fitting that Wren introduced to the Temple Church was a new reredos, carved by William Emmett.[44] Emmett’sovertly baroque reredos is decorated with festoons, a broken pediment and entablature, as well as Corinthian pilasters and engaged columns (Fig. 4). The same references to classical forms can be seen in the new pulpit, which was carved by Thomas Lowe. This pulpit featured festoons alongside carvings of winged angels, ‘… Enrichments of Cherubims…’ in the words of Hatton, who carefully described and praised the pulpit.[45] Hatton also noted that the pulpit stood near the east end of the chancel’s central aisle, where it was fixed to the floor (Fig. 4).[46]
The furnishing introduced by Wren that shaped the chancel’s appearance most profoundly was his organ screen, positioned in the three arches between the round nave and chancel (Fig. 1 and Fig. 5). There had been a screen in this location before Wren’s was installed, as Playford had complained that ‘… the doors in the screen, which parts the church, are at this time so much decayed and broken as they are no security to the church…’.[47] David Lewer and Robert Dark have suggested that this old screen is depicted in an engraving of the interior of the Temple Church made by William Emmett in 1682 (Fig. 6), a few years before Wren’s structure was erected.[48] Although Emmett’s engraving is stylised, unifying the architecture of the chancel and nave, it does suggest that the old screen was low enough to allow for a relatively uninterrupted view within the church.[49] Wren radically changed this, almost completely filling the arches separating the nave and chancel with a fitting that again used classical forms such as columns and pediments (Fig. 5). As a consequence, the nave and chancel became two distinct spaces. One justification for this partition was that the nave had become ‘… a convenient rendezvous for lounging, conversation, and commercial transactions…’ – in other words a secular space – whereas the Benchers used the chancel for religious services.[50] It also allowed Wren, however, to classicise the chancel without completely losing the Temple Church’s ‘… Harmony of Objects…’.[51] Griffith-Jones rightly argued that Wren ‘… abandoned the irremediably unclassical Round and made of the chancel, squared off by the screen, as classical a space as possible.’[52] Thus, the screen made the different architectural styles of the nave and chancel seem less incongruous.
Nevertheless, the viewer would have noticed this difference as they moved through the church. They came into the building through the nave’s west door, entering a dark, gothic structure (Fig. 1). The nave’s interior was ill-lit because its windows were blocked by a group of buildings that were erected against its exterior and Wren’s organ screen obstructed most of the light coming in from the chancel. An impression of this gloominess is given in William Woolnoth’s engraving of the nave (1826, Fig. 5) which shows three figures carrying out some illicit activity, perhaps a grave robbery, under the cover of darkness. From the nave, visitors could enter the chancel through the organ screen’s doors, thereby passing into a bright and baroque space that housed the altar (Fig. 1 and Fig. 4), the culmination of their journey through the Temple Church. The chancel’s importance was further emphasised by the raising of its floor, as it was now two steps higher than the nave. As a result, Wren, the Benchers and their contemporaries could perceive the church’s architecture as reflecting its sacred topography: the secular nave was clad in gloomy gothic forms, while the sacred chancel was literally elevated and enlightened.
This sacred topography was not original to the Temple Church and therefore constituted a significant change in how the building was experienced by its medieval users. As previously suggested, the round nave was the religious heart of the medieval church because it emulated the Anastasis Rotunda, but the nave had clearly lost this symbolic function in the seventeenth century when it was used as a secular meeting space.[53] Although Wren did not cause the change in balance between sacred and secular that prioritised the chancel over the nave, his refurbishment visually articulated and cemented this shift through contrasting the dark nave with the brightly lit chancel. The hierarchy of the Temple Church’s two spaces was thus reinforced by the perceived hierarchy of their different architectural styles, even though this resulted in the loss of internal harmony that Wren had claimed to value as a key characteristic of classical architecture in his writings.[54]
From a stylistic point of view, Wren’s refurbishment reflects his preference for the English baroque style. As this was the popular architectural idiom of the time, it may come as no surprise that Wren’s contemporaries tended to view his work favourably in the following decades. The aforementioned Edward Hatton, writing in 1708, deemed the church ‘… very beautiful in its Finishing…’.[55] He described the Temple Church’s architecture briefly, merely stating that ‘… [i]t is built of the ancient Gothic Order…’.[56] Instead, he lavished much more attention on Wren’s reredos, pulpit and organ screen, noting their baroque features such as ‘… Pilasters… and Columns, with Entablature of the Corinthian order; also Enrichments of Cherubims… several carved Arches, a Crown, Festoons, Cherubims, Vases, etc’ (Fig. 4 and Fig. 5).[57]This description was later copied in William Maitland’s The History and Survey of London (1756), suggesting he agreed with Hatton’s praise.[58] The disruption of the building’s medieval forms was not lamented, revealing an indifference towards the church’s original architecture. Wren’s goal was not to preserve or restore the Temple Church to its original condition, but to improve upon its architecture by hiding the chancel’s gothic character as much as possible without altering its structural fabric. Indeed, the Temple Church largely remained in the state that Wren left it in for more than a century, indicating that the Benchers also approved of his work on their church, until the Victorians took issue with the changes that he had effected.
Victorian Vandals?
The nineteenth-century restorations of the Temple Church have been amply treated in scholarship and it is therefore unnecessary to discuss them in detail here.[59] The restoration of 1826-1828 caused major disruption to the church’s original fabric, including the controversial demolition of the medieval Chapel of Saint Anne, which had been positioned on the south side of the church.[60] In the 1860s, the Temple Church underwent some general repairs and the nave was given a conical roof.[61] One restoration carried out under James Savage (1779-1852), Sidney Smirke (1797-1877) and Decimus Burton (1800-1881) in 1840-1842 warrants a fuller discussion since it essentially acted as a response to Wren’s refurbishment, revealing how his alterations were viewed in the Victorian era.
While Wren’s refurbishment had been lauded in the eighteenth century, writers in the 1840s condemned his work.[62]Charles Addison, for example, complained in 1843 that:
… the Temple Church has remained sadly disfigured by incongruous innovations and modern embellishments, which entirely changed the ancient character and appearance of the building, and clouded and obscured its elegance and beauty.[63]
By modern, Addison meant anything introduced after the Reformation and he singled out Wren’s altar, wainscotting, pews, pulpit and organ screen for criticism as they obstructed the medieval character of the building. The Battle of the Styles commenced shortly after the 1840s and while this cannot be extensively addressed here, it must be noted that the discussions on the integrity and authenticity of the Temple Church’s architecture were part of a larger concern for architectural style and its moral qualities.[64] Augustus Pugin (1812-1852) and the Cambridge Camden Society, founded in 1839, advocated for studying and building in the gothic style as they saw this architectural idiom as emblematic of Christianity, while they regarded classical-inspired buildings as pagan.[65] However, William Whyte has argued that these concerns did not inform the Temple Church’s restoration of the 1840s, which was instead motivated by a search for the historical accuracy of the original, medieval building.[66]
The Gothic Revival was gaining popularity in the 1840s and the search for the medieval appearance of the Temple Church can be considered part of this movement.[67] Addison indeed rejoiced that:
The puritanic and revolutionary spirit which in bygone times led to the desecration and disfigurement of our ancient churches has happily passed away; a brighter day of purer taste and more correct feeling in all matters relating to ecclesiastical architecture has dawned upon us, and an earnest and increasing disposition has been manifested… to restore the noble ecclesiastical edifices handed down to us by our pious forefathers to their pristine beauty and magnificence.[68]
Addison here referred to the restoration of the Temple Church that had finished in 1842. He lauded the three men who had led this project, which aimed to correct what they saw as Wren’s vandalism of the building. Savage was initially appointed as the architect responsible for the restoration, but he was replaced by Smirke and Burton after the Benchers discovered that Savage’s expenditure exceeded the estimates of the cost.[69] The architects’ goal was to return the Temple Church to its medieval forms, as can be gleaned from Smirke’s remark that ‘[t]he whole of the former interior fittings were removed, together with the screen and every vestige of modern [post-medieval] work throughout the building.’[70] Wren’s reredos and organ screen were sold to the Bowes Museum in Barnard Castle and his pulpit went to Christ Church in Newgate Street.[71] The architects also restored the chancel’s medieval proportions as ‘[t]he pavement was lowered fifteen inches, down to its original level…’, thereby undoing Wren’s alterations.[72]
Smirke insisted that they stayed true to the original structure in their designs, yet this raises a difficult question: what is the original Temple Church? The Victorians clearly considered this to include the chancel that was consecrated in 1240, even though this section of the building was not part of the Templars’ first building campaign in the twelfth century, when a smaller chancel was erected. In fact, Smirke and Burton did not even closely adhere to the forms of the surviving thirteenth-century chancel. While Smirke claimed that the ‘… architects’ duty was that of simple restoration’, the restorers introduced many new features to the church and often based these on other medieval examples.[73] The new encaustic tiles that the architects commissioned for the chancel were, for instance, inspired by those in Westminster Abbey’s chapter house.[74] These tiles, alongside wall paintings and a reredos designed by Thomas Willement, were meant to make the chancel fit the Victorian idea of what gothic should be, as can be seen in a lithograph of the Interior of the Temple Church(ca 1850, Fig. 7). Paradoxically, this restoration actually destroyed much of the chancel’s medieval fabric, as the original tiles, windows and Purbeck marble columns were removed because the restorers felt confident that they could produce perfect or superior facsimiles.[75]
Although Smirke and Burton may have intended to restore the Temple Church, they effectively rebuilt it. Nevertheless, writers like Addison did believe that the Temple Church’s reconstruction was accurate and faithful. Addison celebrated that viewers could finally ‘… see it once again presenting the appearance which it wore when the patriarch of Jerusalem exercised his sacred functions within its walls…’, seemingly unaware that in 1185, when the patriarch had consecrated the Temple Church, the thirteenth-century chancel had not even been erected.[76]
The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (SPAB) was founded in 1877 by the artist William Morris (1834-1896) in reaction against the restoration practices of architects like Savage, Smirke and Burton, advocating for the preservation and conservation of medieval structures rather than their rebuilding.[77] In their manifesto, Morris and other founding members wrote that although in previous centuries repairs or new additions to buildings were made in whatever architectural style was fashionable at the time, as had happened during Wren’s refurbishment, at least those changes attested to the building’s long life and did not hide that they were part of later interventions.
But those who make the changes wrought in our day under the name of Restoration, while professing to bring back a building to the best time of its history, have no guide but each his own individual whim to point out to them what is admirable and what contemptible; while the very nature of their task compels them to destroy something and to supply the gap by imagining what the earlier builders should or might have done. … in short, a feeble and lifeless forgery is the final result of all the wasted labour.[78]
The work on the Temple Church by Godfrey, which will be discussed next, can be seen as a continuation of the SPAB’s reaction against early-Victorian restorations.
Destruction and Resurrection
The night of 10 May 1941 witnessed one of the most intense bombings of London during the Second World War, demolishing much of the City, including the Temple Church. The building’s roof was set on fire, destroying all the woodwork inside and splitting the Purbeck marble piers.[79] Photographs taken soon after the bombing show that the building had become an empty shell. William Dove, Godfrey’s agent and foreman, recounted that ‘[o]nly the walls, the stone columns (all badly damaged) and the stone-vaulted ceiling (partly damaged) remained – a very sorry sight indeed.’[80] Others, by contrast, found joy in this destruction. Frank MacKinnon, member of the Inner Temple, asserted that:
… seeing how dreadfully the Church had been despoiled by its pretended friends a century before, I do not grieve so very acutely for the havoc now wrought by its avowed enemies… If the Church is now once again truly restored, it can hardly fail to be far more beautiful than the Victorian vandals made it for us.[81]
MacKinnon’s wish would be granted, as the post-war restoration virtually undid the aforementioned Victorian work. Nevertheless, because Godfrey had to remove a considerable portion of the building’s remaining original fabric, his project can, in a sense, be seen as having completed the destruction caused by the bombing.
Godfrey’s restoration of the Temple Church has been neglected in scholarship as his documents pertaining to the project were only recently discovered in the Inner Temple’s archives.[82] The detailed drawings made for the builders and craftsmen are unfortunately not part of these records, although Godfrey’s archived notebooks contain some of his sketches. Scholar Catherine Gardam does mention his work in her article Restorations of the Temple Church, London, yet her focus is firmly on establishing how much of the building’s surviving fabric is original and she therefore merely discusses the consequences of Godfrey’s restoration, not his motivations.[83] As a result, the main sources on this project were written by those involved who are understandably not as critical of their own work as they perhaps should be.[84]
Godfrey was appointed as the architect leading the post-war restoration of the Temple Church in 1947.[85] He was not only a practicing architect who specialised in conserving historic buildings, but he was also an antiquary and architectural historian, writing extensively on English architecture and founding the National Buildings Record, the basis of today’s Historic England Archive. His interest in and wish to preserve historic architecture starkly contrasts him with an architect like Wren, who rebuilt and refurbished churches in a different architectural style to suit his own, and his contemporaries’, tastes. Godfrey’s preservationist agenda also makes it unsurprising that he deplored the Victorian project that had essentially rebuilt the Temple Church. He wrote that ‘[n]othing could have been more thorough than the way in which every ancient surface was repaired away or renewed so that in the end the result was a complete modern simulacrum of this superb monument.’[86] Yet, Godfrey was relieved that ‘… behind the restorer’s veneer there is sufficient of the old fabric still remaining to make one feel there is still a life to be prolonged and much that is significant to be preserved.’[87]This would be the purpose of his restoration: removing the Victorian additions and repairing the damage caused in 1941.
Godfrey started his project in 1948, beginning with the chancel.[88] In theory, Godfrey’s approach seems to resemble that of Savage, Smirke and Burton, which was to restore the Temple Church to its twelfth- and thirteenth-century form. He did so by basing his designs on drawings by Frederick Nash, made in 1818 and published in volume V of Vetusta Monumenta (1835, Fig. 8) before the intrusive restorations of the nineteenth century took place.[89] However, partly because the interior of the chancel was still clad in Wren’s wainscotting in the early nineteenth century, these drawings did not record every architectural detail in the Temple Church. What casts further doubt on the accuracy of these drawings is that they were made after centuries of alterations, including Wren’s. Gardam briefly notes this in the introduction to her article but does not engage further with this issue, even concluding her analysis of the Temple Church’s restorations with the assertion that the surviving building faithfully replicates its original forms.[90] Although Godfrey worked with the most seemingly reliable visual evidence available to him, it cannot be fully assumed that Nash’s drawings, and by extension Godfrey’s reconstructions, accurately reproduce the Temple Church’s medieval architecture.
While the Victorian restorers were only too happy to replace original fabric with designs that fitted their idea of what gothic should be, Godfrey specified in the contract of the builder involved in the project that:
It must be clearly understood that the work to be carried out is a preservation and restoration only. Every endeavour is to be made to keep the original portions of the building in position. Pulling down any part of the original work or the insertion of new work in old must not be undertaken except on the definite instructions of the Architect and in cases where safety of the building absolutely demands such treatment.[91]
Indeed, a meeting held in 1949 determined that ‘[o]nly defective stones were to be reinstated. A general policy of retaining undisturbed as much sound stone as possible was to be followed.’[92] This suggests that whereas Wren had little interest in the Temple Church’s gothic forms, and Smirke and Burton considered it appropriate to remake its medieval architecture, Godfrey valued the original structure above all else.
Nevertheless, Godfrey was forced to remove much of this structure as a result of the extensive damage inflicted on the building. This destruction must have been anticipated from the start, as his project was referred to as a ‘… reconstruction of the Temple Church…’ in 1947.[93] All Purbeck marble, for example, needed to be replaced as it had been split by the fire’s heat, rendering it incapable of supporting the vault. Indeed, this work was so urgent that it was given ‘[a]bsolute priority…’.[94] The new piers (Fig. 3), however, could be based on drawings by Nash (Fig. 8) and rebuilt on their original foundations, which were found to be structurally sound.[95] The sketches in Godfrey’s notebook betray a close looking at the piers, painstakingly recording their forms and dimensions in an attempt to reproduce them as accurately as possible.
Godfrey also decided to retain the tilt of the chancel’s piers, yet not necessarily to maintain the building’s original form:
It is not uncommon in medieval buildings to find that the walls and the piers have settled unequally, causing them to lean to some degree out of upright. Where this has occurred in the whole building, and especially where a triple vault such as that in the Chancel of the Temple Church has accommodated itself to the original movement, it is generally safer not to alter it.[96]
Practical considerations also motivated Godfrey to construct a new south porch (Fig. 2).[97] Until the 1950s, the Temple Church’s only entrance was the west door that led into the nave, but creating an alternative entry would protect the west porch’s medieval sculptures (Fig. 1).[98] Erecting this new south porch, however, significantly changed the visitor’s movement through the building. While in Wren’s time viewers moved from the nave to the chancel, establishing his English baroque chancel with its classically inspired fittings as the culmination of their journey, today they enter the Temple Church in the middle of the building at the chancel’s west end (Fig. 1 and Fig. 2). Consequently, the two spaces of the church are perceived by the visitor as equally important, thereby disregarding not only the sacred topography that Wren had visually articulated, but also the nave’s medieval function as the symbolic and liturgical heart of the church.
Godfrey thus significantly altered the Temple Church’s medieval structure, yet he determined in the builder’s contract that if original fabric had to be replaced or amended, ‘[t]he new work will be designed in all cases to be in harmony with the old work and no attempt should be made to give it an appearance other than of modern work.’[99] The new south porch (Fig. 2), for example, blends in with the rest of the Temple Church’s exterior, creating the ‘… Harmony of Objects…’ that Wren had so valued yet disrupted in his own refurbishment of the building.[100] Godfrey’s treatment of the chancel’s internal stonework also betrays this approach. According to Godfrey, ‘[t]he original stone used in the church was Caen stone and it was now proposed to use Farmington stone on account of its matching the present quality of texture of the walls’, while still being different enough to be identifiable.[101] As a result, the Temple Church’s visual harmony was reconciled with allowing viewers to distinguish the restoration work from the original fabric.
Godfrey’s attempt to retain as much of the original structure as possible testifies to his interest in the Temple Church as a work of medieval architecture. His interest in the building’s original fabric is also evident in the excavation work that he carried out while restoring the chancel. He recounted that ‘[w]hen the damaged pavement of the choir was removed my first desire was to discover if there remained any foundations of the original apsidal termination of the old chancel.’[102]Godfrey was thus aware that the chancel that he was restoring was not, in fact, original to the Temple Church. However, it would have been impossible to reconstruct the Temple Church to the forms of this twelfth-century structure as there is no visual evidence of its appearance. While its foundations may still exist, they are covered by the thirteenth-century chancel and could only be recovered by destroying this major work of gothic architecture. In addition, the original chancel was far too small to serve the congregation and purposes that the Temple Church needs to cater to today. While an awareness of the existence of this earlier chancel is certainly important to understanding the Temple Church’s material history, these considerations show that reconstructing a building to its original forms is not always desirable, if at all possible.
While Godfrey did not unearth the foundations of the twelfth-century chancel, he found a room that he thought had functioned as the Knights Templars’ treasury.[103] During this excavation, Godfrey also discovered the grave of John Selden (1584-1654), an English lawyer, and recorded its dimensions in a sketch in his notebook.[104] Dove explained that a glass plate was placed over Selden’s monument ‘… so that it is possible to see the grave and read the inscription. These finds bring to light more of the history of this ancient Church.’[105] It was even decided to install lights that would illuminate Selden’s grave to improve its visibility.[106] This suggests that in contrast to Wren, Smirke and Burton, Godfrey wanted to display several layers of the Temple Church’s history, which was also achieved through re-instating Wren’s reredos in the chancel’s east end.[107] The Victorian additions, however, were removed from the chancel. The encaustic tiles were relocated to the triforium and the chancel was given a plain, marble floor instead (Fig. 3 and Fig. 7).[108] Dove boasted that he had convinced the Choir Committee to not restore Thomas Willement’s wall paintings to give the church ‘… much more of its original dignity and grandeur’, disregarding the possibility that, like many medieval churches, the Temple Church was originally covered in wall paintings.[109] Indeed, Smirke noted that traces of original paint were discovered during his restoration, prompting him to conclude that ‘… the whole was painted much in the manner as we now [post-1840s restoration] see it’ (Fig. 7).[110] The decision to remove the Temple Church’s wall-paintings may not be surprising, considering it was taken at a time when nineteenth-century architecture was generally despised and before the foundation of The Victorian Society in 1958, but it did result in the loss of an important work of early-Victorian taste.[111]
The work of the twentieth-century restorers also shapes the ways that the church is interpreted and viewed today, even by scholars. In Stewart’s article on the involvement of Henry III (1207-1272) in the rebuilding of the Temple Church’s chancel, he describes the thirteenth-century chancel as ‘… a minimalist version of Early English Gothic…’ due to its lack of architectural ornamentation (Fig. 3).[112] Stewart argues that Henry and the Knights Templar chose such a restrained design because of the financial insecurities of the 1230s and to create a contrast between the new chancel, meant to house the tombs of Henry III and his wife Eleanor of Provence (ca 1223-1291), and the round nave.[113] Jansen similarly notes that the chancel ‘… is reticent and simple’, which she interprets as befitting the monastic values of the Templars.[114]
However, these interpretations disregard the possibility that there were originally architectural details that have been lost. Gothic carvings may have been removed as acts of iconoclasm or to refashion the chancel in the English baroque style as part of Wren’s refurbishment (Fig. 4). His wainscotting, for example, could have resulted in the destruction of sculpted decoration on the chancel’s lower walls. The chancel’s lack of architectural ornament may have been compensated for by stained glass, wall-paintings or temporary furnishings, such as woodwork or textiles, that have been destroyed. If the Temple Church had still had its colourful Victorian wall-paintings, encaustic tiles and reredos, would its decoration still be viewed as minimalist (Fig. 7)? Even though the features that were added in the 1840s were partly based on other medieval examples, they may be more truthful to the general appearance and atmosphere of the medieval Temple Church than the sober chancel that exists today (Fig. 3). Whilst this question can most likely never be answered due to the sheer amount of original fabric that has been lost, it should serve as a reminder of the difficulties inherent in interpreting the architecture of a medieval church that is, in many ways, not medieval at all.
Godfrey’s disapproval of Smirke and Burton’s restoration, described by him as a ‘… painful accomplishment…’, seems slightly hypocritical considering he also removed much of the Temple Church’s original fabric.[115] One important distinction, however, is that Godfrey simply had no choice if he wanted to make the building safe enough to be used again by its congregation. He had, after all, specified in the builder’s contract that safety was the only acceptable justification for removing original materials. [116] Godfrey, faced with a building that was severely damaged but still needed to function, was forced to take drastic steps such as replacing the weakened Purbeck piers. While his intention was to preserve and restore the Temple Church, he, like the Victorians a century before him, essentially rebuilt it. As a consequence, modern visitors to the Temple Church may think that they see a medieval building, but they are essentially standing in a reconstruction. The result of Godfrey’s project is, in his own words, another ‘… complete modern simulacrum of this superb monument.’[117]
The Temple Church’s long history has seen significant changes to its original fabric, resulting in a church that contains little to none of its medieval structure, as the building’s exterior and nave have also been drastically restored. While scholars like Gardam and Stewart assert that the surviving church faithfully replicates its original forms, it is difficult to truly substantiate such claims considering there is no visual evidence of the Temple Church before the second half of the seventeenth century.[118] Since the chancel’s erection in the thirteenth century, it has been refurbished, restored and reconstructed so extensively that the original building is all but lost. None of the chancel’s medieval furnishings or polychromy survive, leaving the viewer with a relatively plain and simple structure that may not accurately reflect the Knights Templars’ intentions for their London headquarters.
It is easy for the twenty-first-century viewer to celebrate Godfrey’s work on the Temple Church. Whereas Wren, arguably, despoiled a gothic church by cladding it in classical forms, Godfrey at least attempted to stay true to its original fabric, although his restoration did essentially turn into a reconstruction. This judgment is, however, painfully anachronistic. By updating the Temple Church’s chancel to conform to the popular style of his age, Wren could be seen as working in the medieval spirit which similarly often chose to restore churches or build additions in a contemporary style. The modern quest for originality in architectural designs seems wholly alien to a medieval culture that highly valued copying famous and sacred structures. The Temple Church is, in fact, a prime example of this approach as it was meant to emulate the Anastasis Rotunda in Jerusalem and thereby transport some of its spiritual power to London.[119] Such judgments also do not critically question what the original structure of the Temple Church truly is. The authors and architects referenced in this article have all considered the Temple Church’s original architecture to include the thirteenth-century chancel, completely disregarding, with exception of Godfrey, the earlier twelfth-century structure that once stood there. Why, if the thirteenth-century chancel is deemed part of the church’s authentic form, can later additions such as those introduced by Wren, Smirke and Burton not be seen as becoming integral to the building? Indeed, Dinah Eastop rightly notes that while the true nature of an object is key to its conservation, ‘[i]t is now widely recognized that “true nature” is not a fixed state but varies with context, is socially determined and is subject to contestation’ as it can incorporate modifications that have been introduced since the object’s creation.[120] The Temple Church’s fabric and furnishings incorporate and reveal its rich history, but the restorations that attempted to remove this history to recreate the original structure, whatever that is, seem to miss this crucial point. In the end, Wren and Godfrey both wanted to make a church that befitted its time and could be used by their contemporaries. Ultimately, this has allowed the Temple Church to remain central to London life for more than 850 years.
Acknowledgements
I would firstly like to thank Dr Tom Nickson for his invaluable feedback on this work when I first submitted it as an essay for the MA England, Europe and Beyond: Art, Identity, Trade & Politics in the Middle Ages, as well as Sophia Adams and the anonymous peer reviewers for their comments. I am also grateful to Celia Pilkington and Robin Griffith-Jones for their help in accessing the Temple Church’s archives.
Citations
[1] Andrew Ballantyne, ‘Misprisions of Stonehenge’, in Dana Arnold and Andrew Ballantyne (eds), Architecture as Experience: Radical Changes in Spatial Practice (London and New York: Routledge, 2004), 31-33.
[2] Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park (eds), The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017); David Lewer and Robert Dark, The Temple Church in London (London: Historical Publications Ltd, 1997).
[3] Virginia Jansen, ‘Light and Pure: The Templars’ New Choir’, in Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park (eds), The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 46-48.
[4] Zachary Stewart, ‘Brotherly Rivals: Templars, Hospitallers and the Architectural Expansion of the Temple Church in London’, The Antiquaries Journal 101 (November 2020): 3-4.
[5] Zachary Stewart, ‘A Lesson in Patronage: King Henry III, the Knights Templar, and a Royal Mausoleum at the Temple Church in London’, Speculum 94, vol. 2 (April 2019): 354
[6] Dinah Eastop, ‘Conservation as Material Culture’, in Christopher Tilley et al. (eds), Handbook of Material Culture (London: SAGE, 2006), 518.
[7] Eastop, 528.
[8] Lewer and Dark, 27-30.
[9] Richard Krautheimer, ‘Introduction to an “Iconography of Medieval Architecture”’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 1-33; Helen Nicholson, ‘At the Heart of Medieval London: The New Temple in the Middle Ages’, in Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park (eds), The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 2; Stewart (2019): 364; Stewart (2020): 6, 15-16.
[10] Richard Dodsworth and William Dugdale, Monasticon Anglicanum (London: Sam Keble and Hen Rhodes, 1655), 204-205.
[11] Dodsworth and Dugdale, 228.
[12] Lewer and Dark, 50, 54; Nicholson, 15-16.
[13] Nicholson, 17; Stewart (2019): 339.
[14] Lewer and Dark, 54.
[15] Bruce Williamson, The History of the Temple (London: John Murray, 1924), 261-268.
[16] ‘Choir Committee 18 March 1947’, Inner Temple Archives.
[17] Lewer and Dark, 70, 85, 94, 121.
[18] Lewer and Dark, 160.
[19] Frederick Inderwick, A Calendar of the Inner Temple Records III, 1660-1714 (London: Henry Sotheran & Co, 1901), 103.
[20] Griffith-Jones, 136; Lewer and Dark, 68-70.
[21] Inderwick, 173.
[22] Griffith-Jones, 136.
[23] Lydia Soo, Wren’s “Tracts” on Architecture and Other Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 34.
[24] Jules Lubbock, The Tyranny of Taste: The Politics of Architecture and Design in Britain 1550-1960 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1995), 149.
[25] John Evelyn, ‘An Account of Architects and Architecture’, in Roland Freart, A Parallel of the Antient Architecture with the Modern (London: D. Brown, 1707), 9.
[26] Thomas Cocke, ‘The Wheel of Fortune: The Appreciation of Gothic Since the Middle Ages’, in Jonathan Alexander and Paul Binski (eds), Age of Chivalry: Art in Plantagenet England 1200-1400 [exhib. cat.] (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1987), 186; Soo, 211.
[27] Soo, 37, 214.
[28] Lubbock, 178. The extent to which the English baroque style is based on classical architecture is a complex issue, yet it should be noted that scholars such as Griffith-Jones, Lubbock and Soo have extensively referred to Wren as working in the classical style.
[29] Lubbock, 174.
[30] Soo, 50, transcribes Wren’s ‘Report on Old St. Paul’s before the Fire (7 May 1666)’.
[31] Soo, 212.
[32] Soo, 210.
[33] Soo, 92, 154, transcribes Wren’s ‘Report on Westminster Abbey to Francis Atterbury, Dean (1713)’ and his ‘Tracts on Architecture’.
[34] Soo, 90, transcribes Wren’s ‘Report on Westminster Abbey’.
[35] Soo, 218.
[36] Soo, 234-235.
[37] Soo, 90, transcribes Wren’s ‘Report on Westminster Abbey’.
[38] Inderwick, 198; Lewer and Dark, 73.
[39] Edward Hatton, A New View of London (London: J. Nicholson, 1708), 563.
[40] Soo, 214, 218-219.
[41] Griffith-Jones, 152-153.
[42] Inderwick, 198-199.
[43] Hatton, 563.
[44] Sydney Harrison, ‘The Wren Screen from the Temple Church, London’, reprinted from The Collector, vol. XI (1935): 1, transcribes the account of Middle Temple Treasurer Edward Smith, 1682-1683.
[45] Hatton, 563.
[46] Inderwick, 199.
[47] Inderwick, 103.
[48] Lewer and Dark, 71.
[49] Griffith-Jones, 156.
[50] George Worley, The Church of the Knights Templars in London (London: G. Bell & sons, 1907), 30.
[51] Soo, 154, transcribes Wren’s ‘Tracts on Architecture’.
[52] Griffith-Jones, 155.
[53] Worley, 30.
[54] Soo, 90, 92, 154, transcribes Wren’s ‘Report on Westminster Abbey to Francis Atterbury, Dean (1713)’ and his ‘Tracts on Architecture’.
[55] Hatton, 563.
[56] Hatton, 563.
[57] Hatton, 563.
[58] William Maitland, The History and Survey of London (London: T. Osborne and J. Shipton, 1756), 969.
[59] Joseph Mordaunt Crook, ‘The Restoration of the Temple Church: Ecclesiology and Recrimination’, Architectural History 8 (1965): 39-51; Catherine Gardam, ‘Restorations of the Temple Church, London’, in Lindy Grant (ed.), Medieval Art, Architecture and Archaeology in London, British Archaeological Association Conference Transactions for the Year 1984 (Abingdon: Routledge, 1990), 101-117; William Whyte, ‘Restoration and Recrimination: the Temple Church in the Nineteenth Century’, in Robin Griffith-Jones and David Park (eds), The Temple Church in London: History, Architecture, Art (Woodbridge: Boydell & Brewer, 2017), 195-210.
[60] Whyte, 198.
[61] Whyte, 209.
[62] Whyte, 199-201.
[63] Charles Addison, The Temple Church (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, 1843), 43. Emphasis added by Addison in the original text.
[64] Bernard Porter, The Battle of the Styles: Society, Culture and the Design of a New Foreign Office, 1855-1861 (London and New York: Continuum, 2011); Whyte, 195-210.
[65] Whyte, 207.
[66] Whyte, 208.
[67] Lewer and Dark, 96.
[68] Addison, 44.
[69] Crook, 39-51.
[70] Sydney Smirke, ‘An Account of the Temple Church’, in Richard Hamilton Essex (ed.), Illustrations of the Architectural Ornaments etc, of the Temple Church (London: John Weale, 1845), 4; Whyte, 204.
[71] Lewer and Dark, 97-98.
[72] Smirke, 6.
[73] Gardam, 111, 113; Whyte, 208, quotes Smirke writing in 1855.
[74] Lewer and Dark, 101.
[75] Gardam, 113; Lewer and Dark, 104; Whyte, 196.
[76] Addison, 42.
[77] Chris Miele (ed.), From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity 1877-1939 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005).
[78] William Morris et al., ‘The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Manifesto’, in Chris Miele (ed.), From William Morris: Building Conservation and the Arts and Crafts Cult of Authenticity 1877-1939 (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2005), 338.
[79] Lewer and Dark, 148.
[80] William Dove, ‘The Temple Church and its Restoration’, Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 21, no. 3 (1967): 166.
[81] Frank MacKinnon, The Ravages of War in the Inner Temple (London: Masters of the Bench of the Inner Temple, 1945), 33.
[82] Celia Pilkington in conversation with the author (22 November 2021).
[83] Gardam, 101-117.
[84] Dove: 164-172; Walter Godfrey, ‘Recent Discoveries at the Temple, London, and Notes on the Topography of the Site’, Archaeologia 95 (1953): 123-141.
[85] ‘Inner Temple Bench Table for 14 January 1947’, Inner Temple Archives.
[86] Godfrey: 123.
[87] Godfrey: 123.
[88] Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Letter Sent to Walter Godfrey on 31 January 1950’, Inner Temple Archives; Dove: 167.
[89] Gardam, 101; Godfrey: 123.
[90] Gardam, 101, 114.
[91] Lewer and Dark, 155, transcribe the builder’s contract.
[92] ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 13 January 1949’, Inner Temple Archives.
[93] ‘Inner Temple Bench Table for 14 January 1947’.
[94] Lewer and Dark, 156; ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 27 April 1949’, Inner Temple Archives.
[95] Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 8 July 1948’, Inner Temple Archives; Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 23 May 1950’, Inner Temple Archives; Treleven Haysom, Purbeck Stone (Stanbridge: The Dovecote Press, 2020), 51-55.
[96] Lewer and Dark, 156, quote Godfrey.
[97] Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Letter Sent to Walter Godfrey on 11 September 1953’, Inner Temple Archives; Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Letter Sent to Walter Godfrey on 18 November 1953’, Inner Temple Archives.
[98] Gardam, 109; Lewer and Dark, 158.
[99] Lewer and Dark, 155, transcribe the builder’s contract.
[100] Soo, 154, transcribes Wren’s ‘Tracts on Architecture’.
[101] Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Letter Sent to Walter Godfrey on 30 September 1949’, Inner Temple Archives; Walter Godfrey, ‘Office Note, 9 October 1948’, Inner Temple Archives; Lewer and Dark, 157, quote Godfrey; ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 27 April 1949’.
[102] Godfrey: 125.
[103] Godfrey: 130.
[104] Godfrey: 131.
[105] Dove: 171; ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 3 November 1953’, Inner Temple Archives.
[106] ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 21 October 1953’, Inner Temple Archives.
[107] Dove Brothers Ltd., ‘Letter Sent to Walter Godfrey on 8 April 1953’, Inner Temple Archives.
[108] Lewer and Dark, 101.
[109] Dove: 168; ‘Notes on a Meeting Held on 3 November 1953’.
[110] Smirke, 6.
[111] Whyte, 196.
[112] Stewart (2019): 367.
[113] Stewart (2019): 370-371, 376.
[114] Jansen, 46, 51.
[115] Godfrey: 123.
[116] Lewer and Dark, 155, transcribe the builder’s contract.
[117] Godfrey: 123.
[118] Gardam, 114; Stewart (2020): 3-4.
[119] Nicole Hamonic, ‘Jerusalem in London: The New Temple Church’, in Ben Quash et al. (eds), Visualising a Sacred City: London, Art and Religion(London: Bloomsbury Collections, 2016), 387.
[120] Eastop, 518.