The Reception and Reinvention of Coventry’s Medieval Architectural, Archaeological, Decorative and Visual Arts Heritage, c.1800-1920

Abstract

This thesis provides the first interconnected, developed and comprehensive view of the reception of Coventry’s medieval art and architecture between 1800 and 1920. In order to develop this view, this thesis builds a detailed visual ‘map’ of where and how much of Coventry’s medieval heritage could be seen in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This map is primarily constructed from a range of rarely-examined antiquarian prints, drawings and paintings. Through map-regression exercises, using previously unseen cartographic sources and architectural plans, the thesis similarly develops new knowledge on the transformation of Coventry’s medieval heritage. At the same time, this thesis implements art-historical approaches to provide a more developed view of the reception of Coventry’s medieval heritage. It illuminates how and why Coventry’s medieval buildings were portrayed as natural ‘living’ organisms in early nineteenth-century antiquarian prints. The antiquarian response to Coventry’s medieval heritage is discussed and analysed throughout this thesis in order to redress the longstanding mistreatment of antiquarianism in historiography. The main ambition is to bring new visibility to the emerging network of antiquaries who built, heightened and stimulated the taste for Coventry’s medieval heritage in the 1820s. It uncovers how John Britton (1771-1851) particularly fuelled the taste for Coventry’s medieval architecture by linking it to expanding ideas of nationhood and nationalism. This thesis seeks to develop new knowledge on how Coventry’s medieval heritage, which may be understood as the tangible manifestation of the pre-Reformation Catholic faith, was treated by a network of Catholic Revivalists during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The central concern is to illuminate how Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812-1852) reinvented Coventry’s medieval timber-framed dwellings in order to build his own Catholic ‘utopia’ in the 1830s. Stylistic analysis of Pugin’s rarely-examined pencil drawings of Scarisbrick Lodge provides deeper insight into how and why he was inspired by Coventry’s medieval domestic architecture. Pugin’s response to Coventry’s Catholic heritage is likewise shown to have been influenced by the work of several local antiquaries including William Dugdale (1605-1686) and Edward James Willson (1787-1854). Nonetheless, the five chapters that comprise this thesis serve to demonstrate how the treatment of Coventry’s medieval heritage was shaped by wider developments on the Continent. In particular, it investigates how the response to Coventry’s medieval heritage was shaped by a network of German Romantics, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832) and Johann Friedrich Overbeck (1789-1869). The thesis goes on to shed new light on how Coventry’s medieval craftsmanship transcended national boundaries, different imaginaries and cultural borders in the 1890s. An examination of previously unseen picture postcards of Coventry’s medieval buildings likewise reveals how they were consumed and received in the German lands in the early 1900s. Ultimately, this thesis will conclude by arguing that Coventry was perceived to be a great Gothic city as its medieval buildings were likened to those seen in Cologne, Nuremberg and Strasbourg.

Date of Award	May 2024
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	Coventry University
Supervisor	Juliet Simpson (Supervisor)