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Alfred Waterhouse's Romanesque 'Temple of Nature': The Natural History Museum, London
Author(s): J. B. Bullen
Source:
Architectural History,
Vol. 49 (2006), pp. 257-285
Published by: SAHGB Publications Limited
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/40033825
Accessed: 14-04-2020 15:19 UTC
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Alfred Waterhouse's
Romanesque 'Temple of
Nature': The Natural History
Museum, London
by]. B. BULLEN
The Natural History Museum in London is a spectacular building in many senses (Fig.
1). As one of the outstanding landmarks of high Victorian architecture, it was designed
to draw attention both to itself and to its contents. No other museum building in Britain
adopted a Romanesque style on this scale; no other building had used terracotta in such
a rich and decorative manner, and no other building (other than, perhaps, the University
Museum, Oxford) so curiously employed external decoration to illustrate its internal
function. It was calculated to appeal to a wide public and its animal sculpture was self-
consciously didactic in the way in which a number of contemporary museum buildings
were created to a programme.1 Planned as a showcase for the nation's imperial scientific
achievements, its appearance was strongly ecclesiastical. When it opened in 1881, The
Times leader called it a 'true Temple of Nature', which, the writer said, demonstrated
'the Beauty of Holiness'.2 But for many visitors in 1881 Nature had abandoned the
temple for wilder places; she had bloodied her claws, and the beauty of holiness had
been replaced by the more severe, mechanistic principles formulated by Charles Darwin.
The concept of a large museum of natural history was the inspiration of the great
naturalist Richard Owen. It was also the crowning achievement of his lifetime in
science. The 'Temple of Nature' that Alfred Waterhouse built for him embodied Owen's
belief that the history of the natural world was not a matter of randomness and chance
but the creation of a transcendent presence. In other words, the Natural History
Museum is the expression of an ideology, and its shape, size, position, style and
decoration are charged with legible meanings. Some of those meanings are readily
interpreted, others less so, and although the building history of the museum has been
well documented,3 many questions remain. Why, for example, was Waterhouse chosen
as its architect? What spurred him on to use terracotta in such an original way? And
above all why did he risk the unusual Romanesque style? The choice of Romanesque
for such a building, although it was later imitated elsewhere, was highly original.4 But
that choice was conditioned by a substantial web of aesthetic, social, and political
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258 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 1. Alfred Waterhouse,
Natural History Museum,
London (1868-81).
Photograph c. 1900
(English Heritage: National
Monuments Record)
RICHARD OWEN (1804-92)
Richard Owen was an outstanding figure in British science in the first half of the
nineteenth century. He attended the same grammar school in Lancaster as that
remarkable polymath, William Whewell, the master of Trinity College Cambridge from
1841-61. Among his many accomplishments, Whewell was a pioneer in the study of
Romanesque architecture, and he and Owen remained firm friends until Whe well's
death in 1861. Unlike Whewell, Owen was not a child prodigy, and on leaving school in
1820 was apprenticed to a surgeon and apothecary. In 1824 a passion for anatomy took
him briefly to Edinburgh University, and then in 1825 he moved to practice as a surgeon
at St Bartholomew's Hospital, London. In 1836 he was made first Hunterian Professor
of Comparative Anatomy and Physiology at the Royal College of Surgeons, building a
reputation as a specialist in comparative anatomy and, later, palaeontology He was
extremely sociable and used this gift to promote his scientific interests in the world of
patronage and political support. The Prince Consort was an enthusiastic reader of his
books and in later life Owen tutored the royal children. He met Darwin in 1836 and
Thomas Carlyle asked to be introduced to him. He was cultured, well read and counted
some of the leading figures in the literary and artistic worlds among his acquaintances.
He was a liberal in politics and in 1846 visited Sir Robert Peel to discuss the possibility
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WATERHOUSE S TEMPLE OF NATURE 259
of creating an educational museum by bringing together the fossil bones, then housed
in the British Museum, and the specimens of recent comparative anatomy in his own
care at the Hunterian Museum.
Owen was prominent in the movement towards sanitary reform in Britain which
gathered strength in the 1830s and 1840s; and it may have been the result of their
common friendship with William Whewell that in 1845 Owen met Edmund Sharpe.5
Owen was visiting his hometown, Lancaster, on behalf of the Health of Towns'
Commission. Sharpe, who had pioneered the introduction of neo-Romanesque building
into Britain, had his architectural practice in Lancaster; Sharpe accompanied Owen into
every nook and cranny of the town. Sharpe become mayor of the city in 1848, set up the
Lancaster Athenaeum in his own house and in 1849 invited Owen to lecture on natural
history there. There is no evidence that Owen had any particular interest in architecture
but, given his friendship with Whewell and his acquaintance with Sharpe, it is likely
that he would have been well disposed to designs for his new museum based upon the
German Romanesque style.
In 1856, at the age of fifty-two, Owen moved to the British Museum where he became
the curator of Natural History. Anthony Panizzi, who had been promoted to principal
librarian, gave preferential treatment to the library above the other museum
departments, but although the natural history exhibits drew huge crowds the objects
were poorly housed in cramped conditions. In the late 1850s Owen devised a scheme
for a new and separate museum that would epitomize the three kingdoms of nature:
plants, animals, and minerals. Because research was difficult to conduct at Bloomsbury
the scientific community supported the idea of the separation of natural history from
the other collections, but there was considerable dispute as to how this might be done.
Some, like T. H. Huxley and the botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker, wanted to divide the
collection into separate specialist groupings; others, like Owen himself, wished to
preserve its unity as a symbol of the unity of creation, and as an impressive educational
tool. Owen's most powerful supporter in this ambition was Gladstone, then Liberal
Chancellor of the Exchequer, who shared many of Owen's religious beliefs, and who
adopted the museum enterprise as part of a more general Peelite reform movement.
In 1859 Owen submitted to the Trustees of the British Museum a formal report on the
removal of the natural history collections, accompanied by a plan for a new, large
museum. He felt strongly about the organizing principles of the collection, about its
logical division and about the relationship between the parts and the whole, but he had
no views on the architecture of the building. Even though his design, he said, was 'not
intended to advocate any particular ... building style',6 precedent dictated that certain
styles would be more suitable than others. Waterhouse's suggestion of Romanesque
was particularly apt because, as Owen recognized, it could accommodate his own
beliefs and scientific views to Waterhouse's interests and professional experience. The
shape of the museum evolved over time, but as Owen himself pointed out in his
opening address in 1881, it still bore significant traces of the 'ancestral structures' of his
original plan.7
Owen is often crudely depicted as a reactionary critic of Darwin's evolutionism. In
fact his position was one that attempted to reconcile his own extensive research (which
included the transformation of species) with a lingering belief in a benevolent creator.
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260 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
A number of tributaries fed into the mainstream of this belief. William Buckland was
one of the most influential promoters of British science as part of a liberal Anglican
reform under the banner of 'natural theology7. When, in a lecture given in 1863, Owen
asked 'May we not discern the hand of Providence in the successive floods of light
thrown upon the operations of which this earth has been the seat?7,8 he was echoing the
views of men like Buckland who, from the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge, endorsed
the traditional argument of rational design, advanced in particular by such eminent
authorities as William Paley. Together with writers like the Duke of Argyll, William
Whewell and Adam Sedgwick, Owen accepted the idea of evolution but felt that the
natural order within which it took place was the expression of the Creator's will. Yet he
was influenced too by Thomas Carlyle's idealism, which was far removed from
fundamentalist creationism and, long before the publication of The Origin of Species in
1859, Owen had moved towards the idea of a developmental form of transmutation in
natural history. This stress on order rather than randomness was central to his first plan
for the new museum, and ultimately found expression in the symmetrical, balanced,
rationality of Waterhouse's design. For this reason Owen would have rejected anything
like the Normano-Romanesque irregularity of James Renwick's Smithsonian Institution
(1846-52) (Fig. 2), and might also have felt uneasy with a Gothic revival building that
would have had too strong a specifically Anglican flavour for his enterprise.
Although Owen had many admirers and supporters amongst the Oxbridge scientific
community, they were ordained Fellows of colleges, often aristocratic, and strictly non-
utilitarian, and he was not one of them. Instead, his affinities were closer to the rising
group of middle-class professional scientists based in London. Humphrey Davey and
later Michael Faraday worked in the Royal Institution, and this had come under the
influence of transcendentalist modes of thinking imported from German Romanticism.
Furthermore, the ideals of this metropolitan group were more secular and more
utilitarian than those of the Oxbridge dons. They were supported by Prince Albert who,
as president of the Society of Arts, Manufacture and Commerce, invited Owen to
contribute to the lecture series arranged for the Great Exhibition of 185 1.9 In 1858 Owen
went to South Kensington to lecture (to a mainly working-class audience) on 'The
Animal Kingdom and its economic uses',10 thus bringing together utility and natural
history. So, when the time came to choose a location for his new museum, Owen was
extremely well disposed to a site which had close links with this up-and-coming
discipline.
The transfer of the natural history collections from the British Museum in
Bloomsbury to the Commissioners' Estate in South Kensington was politically
contentious. There were three main reasons for this. First, South Kensington lay on
quite the opposite side of the capital from the East end and the public that the museum
was meant to 'educate', and many people felt that it would take the collection into what
was then a remote part of London. Second, by removing the museum from the reference
books of the British Museum Library, and placing it in the growing 'Albertopolis' of
South Kensington, natural history would be shifted away from the old-fashioned
scientists in Bloomsbury and would fall into the hands of technocrats such as Henry
Cole and his circle. Third, the South Kensington site allowed for a substantial single
building. Politically this was seen as a move towards the democratization of this branch
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WATERHOUSE S TEMPLE OF NATURE 261
Fig. 2. James Renwick, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. (1846-52) (James P. Blair/Corbis)
Fig. 3. Francis Fowke, 1862 International Exhibition building. The Builder, 29 March 1862, p. 225
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262 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
of science, an extension of Owen's belief in the display element of the collection, and a
tendency to put the public before the researchers. In i860, however, after considerable
debate on all these matters, the trustees decided in favour of placing the natural history
collection in Cromwell Road.
A Bill for the removal was introduced into Parliament in 1861. Gladstone was
supported by Henry Layard and Richard Monckton Milnes, but there was such strong
opposition from the Conservatives (who saw the venture as extravagant and foolhardy)
that it was defeated. This defeat profoundly annoyed the queen, for whom the museum
played a key role in the South Kensington group that was rapidly becoming a memorial
to her recently deceased husband.11 In spite of this setback, however, in 1862 Henry
Hunt, working for the government commissioners, prepared a plan based on Owen's
ideas including a large lecture theatre 'for popular lectures on natural history'.12
Although this was at first rejected, on account of its size, it later became the basis of all
future plans. Gladstone suggested a compromise, pointing out that the round-arched,
domed, bazaar-like building put up hurriedly for the 1862 International Exhibition (Fig.
3) from a design by Captain Francis Fowke, might be reused as a museum. Fowke
prepared designs for its conversion,13 but this idea found favour with almost no one, on
the grounds that it was, as the Building News put it, 'one of the ugliest public buildings
... ever raised in this country'.14 So, much to Fowke's dismay, he stood by as his work
was demolished. Owen and Hunt then offered an acceptably scaled-down version of
the original plan, and the land was purchased for a new building.
THE SOUTH KENSINGTON MUSEUM COMPETITION
In January 1864 William Francis Cowper, First Commissioner of Works, warily
announced a competition for a building to house the new museum. The last major
government competition, for the Foreign Office, had been a fiasco. It had been first set
up in 1856, but when Lord Derby had come to power in 1858, with Disraeli as his
Chancellor, the competition had been set aside and G. Gilbert Scott was commissioned
with a Gothic Revival design. Another change of government brought Palmerston to
Downing Street, who was convinced that Gothic was uncomfortable, gloomy and
suitable only 'for monasteries or a college of Jesuits'.15 In i860 an energetic public
debate took place between those who supported Scott's Gothic design and those who
wanted a classical or Renaissance building. The opposition to Scott was led by a fellow
architect, William Tite, who as MP for Bath took the debate to Parliament. Tite's furious
and unfair opposition to Scott was so successful that Scott went into self-imposed exile
in Scarborough to prepare a new Romano-Byzantine design, which he hoped would
satisfy the reactionary views of Palmerston (Fig. 4). This version was put on show,
approved of by Lord Elcho (one of the Trustees of the British Museum) and liked too
by William Cowper, Palmerston' s stepson, who had by now become the First
Commissioner of Works. But this design was also rejected by the Prime Minister, as 'a
regular mongrel affair';16 Cowper was told to pass on verbal instructions to Scott to
prepare a building in 'the Italian style',17 and in 1861, following a heated debate in the
House of Commons involving at least 282 MPs, Scott's Italianate building was narrowly
adopted by Parliament.
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 263
Fig. 4. George Gilbert Scott, rejected Byzantine design for the Foreign Office, Whitehall London
(i860). Pen and ink (Royal Institute of British Architects, London)
Less than three years later Tite, with his well-known predilection for the Renaissance
style, appeared again as one of the five judges for the Natural History Museum
competition. Also present was Lord Elcho, who had so recently been a vocal antagonist
of Renaissance building at the Foreign Office and a supporter of the Gothic revival
designs of Scott. A third member, the architectural writer James Fergusson, would have
sided with Tite in terms of taste. He was influential, knowledgeable, and scholarly. In
1862 he had published a sequel to his Illustrated Handbook of Architecture (1855) entitled
a History of the Modern Styles of Architecture, in which he admitted a liking for the
quaintness of the Smithsonian Institute but a healthy dislike for the modern German
Rundbogenstil in Munich. He had a particular loathing for the 'medieval absurdities' of
Deane and Woodward's Oxford Museum, but a general admiration for the potential of
'the Italian style'.18
Rather surprisingly, the competition for the Natural History Museum attracted only
thirty-three submissions, and in contrast to the Foreign Office competition few were
especially distinguished. Most designs were Renaissance or classical in style, although
there were four which were Romanesque or contained Romanesque elements. To
everyone's surprise, the winner was Captain Francis Fowke (Figs 5 and 6). Ironically
both Tite and Elcho had been active in getting his 1862 exhibition building demolished,
but now, two years later, they were faced with approving his Italianate, round-arched
building. Second prize went to Professor Robert Kerr with another Renaissance round-
arched building, but one that was less imposing and less finished than Fowke's.
But all did not go smoothly. In June 1864 Kerr, who knew that members of the British
Museum Committee thought his entry was 'decidedly the best',19 lodged an official
complaint with Cowper that Fowke, having failed fully to observe the conditions of the
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264 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 5. Francis Fowke, winning design for Natural History Museum (1864). Pen, ink and wash (Royal
Institute of British Architects, London)
Fig. 6. Francis Fowke, -plan of winning design for Natural History Museum (1864) (National Art
Library, V&A)
competition, ought to have been excluded. An ugly correspondence took place in the
press in which Kerr described Fowke as an 'amateur architect' with no professional
training and said that his engineering skills might be fine for bazaars but that his plan
for the new museum was more of a spectacle than a serious attempt at a research
establishment.20 Henry Cole, who had supported Fowke' s application from the first,
defended Fowke. He retaliated in public by claiming that Kerr had obtained inside
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE7 265
information about the requirements of the curators of natural history, and had
persuaded them through this same channel to support Kerr's design against Fowke's.
Whilst this dispute was taking place, Fowke himself was put in formal
communication with the British Museum Committee generally, and with Richard Owen
in particular, and in June 1865 Owen went to Edinburgh to examine Fowke's Museum
of Science and Art.21 This palazzo-like building had been started in 1861 and was
modelled on recent Rundbogenstil work in Munich and Berlin. Prince Albert had
encouraged Cole to examine this German version of Romanesque as a possible model
for South Kensington, and Cole had passed this proposal onto Fowke. On his return
from Edinburgh Owen, together with Fowke, turned this attention to the decoration of
the new museum. Since terracotta had been used in new buildings of the Horticultural
Society's Arcades and at the South Kensington Museum quadrangle by Fowke and
Godfrey Sykes,22 it was decided, in the interests of continuity, to use it again. Then in
November 1865 the keepers of natural history at the British Museum began to grumble
that they had heard nothing from the architect, to which Fowke replied that he had been
ill but would soon be in touch.23 In December he died.24
The responsibility for continuing the project fell on William Cowper. The wrangle
that had taken place over the competition made it impossible for him to replace
Fowke's entry with Kerr's, since this would have been to besmirch the memory of a
dead man. Instead he had to find someone who would be willing to bring to fruition,
or at least appear to bring to fruition, Fowke' s designs. In February 1866 he appointed
Alfred Waterhouse.
ALFRED WATERHOUSE (1830-1905)
The reasons for offering Waterhouse the commission have never been fully understood,
nor is it known why he took on the project at this crucial moment in his career. A closer
look at the architectural politics of the period, however, offers suggestions for his
motives, involving attention to biographical detail, month by month in the years 1865
and 1866, including his preoccupations with the commission for the Natural History
Museum, the competition for the new Law Courts in London and the Town Hall in
Manchester.
Until the mid-i86os Waterhouse's practice had centred on Manchester. He had been
born into a Liverpool Quaker family in 1830, but in 1848 had gone to Manchester to
study in the office of another Quaker, Richard Lane. When he set up on his own, his
practice flourished, with numerous projects in the north of England, including the
round-arched Royal Insurance Building (1862) and, a little later, Strangeways Prison
(1861-69), both in Manchester. It was, however, his success in winning the competition
for the Manchester Assize Courts (1861-69) (Fig- 7) tnat brought him national renown.
They were built in a strongly Ruskinian spirit. Waterhouse had long admired Ruskin
and in 1853 had undertaken a pilgrimage around France and Italy following in his
master's footsteps. Ruskin, in turn, admired Waterhouse, and in 1863 praised the Assize
Courts as 'a very beautiful and noble building indeed' and 'much beyond everything
yet done in England on my principles'.25 Similarly Gladstone was moved by the
'beautiful Assize Courts' when in 1864 he visited Manchester and met Waterhouse.26 So
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266 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 7. Alfred Waterhouse, Manchester Assize Court (1861-69). J. Bally e (c. 1865) (Manchester
Crown Court)
his renown grew, and in February 1865 the Assize Courts were treated to a three-page
spread in The Builder.27 At this point Waterhouse moved himself and his family to a
house in London where he felt he could substantially increase his influence in the
architectural world.
The problem in choosing a successor to Fowke for the Natural History Museum lay
in its being overshadowed by another architectural competition, this time for the New
Courts of Justice.28 In February 1865 a motion was passed in the House of Commons
enabling the Commissioners of Works to acquire a site for the project. The Times hinted
at a competition 'between a limited number of architects who stood high in their
profession';29 on 18 February a local Manchester MP, Francis Powell, urged Waterhouse
to write to the First Commissioner, William Cowper asking if his name might be
included amongst those invited to submit entries.30 Instead of writing, however,
Waterhouse decided to travel to London to speak to Cowper in person. Meanwhile the
Manchester novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who was a long-standing Nonconformist friend
of Waterhouse, wrote (without telling the architect) to Ruskin asking him to lend his
weight to the request.31 Gaskell had known Effie and John Ruskin very well before their
separation; she and Ruskin admired each other's work and Ruskin had sometimes
visited her when he was in Manchester.32 Ruskin had become friendly with William
Cowper through his wife Georgiana whom he had first glimpsed in Rome in 1840, and
whom he then met formally at a dinner party in 1854. They got on well, and Ruskin was
invited to the Cowper 's home, Broadlands, where a little later he was introduced to Mrs
and Mrs Palmer ston.33 The Cowpers shared many of Ruskin' s aesthetic and social
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WATERHOUSE'S 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 267
ideals34 and William responded positively to Ruskin' s intervention on behalf of
Waterhouse.35 In consequence, Waterhouse's name was included in the list, and Ruskin
spoke strongly in favour of his work in a lecture to the Institute of British Architects in
May of the same year.36
In November 1865, the legal adviser to Law Courts Commission, Edward Wilkins
Field, approached Waterhouse asking him to assist with drafting the conditions of the
Law Courts competition. Cowper, realizing that this might prejudice Waterhouse's
position as a competitor, wrote to warn him, and on 1 December Waterhouse resigned
the position after just a few weeks. Five days later Francis Fowke died. On 9 December
this was reported to the British Museum Committee and the responsibility for
continuing the Natural History Museum project fell to Cowper.37 No extant
correspondence between Cowper and Waterhouse regarding this matter survives, so
that Cowper's precise motives are not known; yet several factors point fairly clearly as
to why he approached Waterhouse to 'complete' Fowke' s museum project.
At the beginning of 1866 Waterhouse was a young architect of thirty-five, only just
established in a national career. He had one highly regarded building to his name, but
only one, and had yet to prove himself with another. The Law Courts competition was
in its infancy, and no one yet knew whether Waterhouse could produce work of
sufficient stature to succeed. The competition was very strong, and he was up against
far more established members of the profession than himself. He was well liked,
however, both personally and professionally. Gladstone, Ruskin and Cowper
appreciated his work, and clearly Cowper trusted him. Unlike Fowke (and this was a
great advantage), Waterhouse shared the attitudes and values of the neo-medievalists.
Cowper 's reasons for choosing Waterhouse seem to have been twofold. First, in asking
him to take over the Natural History Museum project he must have seen an
opportunity for Waterhouse to establish himself in London should the Law Courts
competition not go his way. In this, Cowper was to be proved correct. Second, he
probably saw that with the recent death of Fowke there was no urgency to complete the
museum building, and that over time its design might be shifted away from Fowke's
Renaissance style to something more in sympathy with Ruskin' s theoretical ideals and
Waterhouse's practice. Waterhouse was passionate about the Law Courts, but saw in
Cowper a useful ally and probably was easily persuaded. As late as 17 January 1866, the
Keepers of Natural History at the British Museum were registering their anxiety about
appointing a new architect for the museum and decided to approach the Commission
about it. By 23 February Cowper 's office had written formally to Waterhouse asking
him to generate estimates for the execution of Fowke's plans; on 2 and 3 March the
Treasury and the Office of Works both wrote to the committee of the British Museum to
inform them of the decision to appoint Waterhouse.38
Although Waterhouse's energies in the next few months were dedicated to
producing the hugely complex design for the Law Courts, he did not neglect his new
obligation to the museum. On 6 March 1866 he was invited to communicate with the
Keepers of Natural History at the museum, and the next day he wrote to the Office of
Works to say that he was going to Edinburgh in the following week to look at museums
there; soon afterwards, and urged on by Francis Cowper, he went to Dublin for the
same purpose.39 By April, Waterhouse had met Richard Owen on several occasions, at
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268 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
which Owen had stressed some of the 'advantages afforded' by Fowke's plan.40
By June 1866 things changed radically. This month saw the fall of the Liberal
Government, the departure of Cowper from his post as First Commissioner, and the
temporary standstill in the whole Natural History Museum project. Meanwhile, in
the competition for the Law Courts, although Waterhouse was a strong contender, he
lost to G. E. Street. In March 1867 the competition for Manchester Town Hall was
announced, and in September Waterhouse was declared the winner. Late in 1867 he
turned his attention back to the Natural History Museum and began to redraw Fowke's
design. On 1 April 1868 Manchester Council formally ratified the competition result for
the Town Hall and by March 1868 Waterhouse had so recast the Natural History
Museum that what Fowke had first envisaged as a Renaissance palace was now
Romanesque cathedral.
WATERHOUSE AND ROMANESQUE
In the competition for the Foreign Office, style had taken a leading role at the planning
stage. By contrast, the deliberations about the Natural History Museum had taken so
long that style was hardly discussed. The British Museum Committee offered no
opinion, 'as to the elevation'. Their priority, they said, was with the accommodation,
and the proposed architectural style was 'a matter of taste, and in their opinion a
question to be left for the consideration and decision of Her Majesty's Government'.41
The Government, however, made no comment when Waterhouse explained in 1868 to
Lord John Manners (the new First Commissioner) that he had chosen 'as a basis, the
round-arched style common in Southern German so late as the 12th Century'. 'It would',
he said, 'afford both the grandeur and simplicity which should characterize a building
of this description.'42 In discussion with Owen, whom he met on a regular basis, he
came to the conclusion that the symbolism of a great natural history museum (a
'building of this description') was best expressed through the language of the
ecclesiastical architecture of southern Germany, because it represented a certain kind of
'grandeur'. He also felt that this grandeur should be accompanied by 'simplicity' (a
term loaded with positive connotations for a Quaker like Waterhouse) and implying,
too, that the more elaborate Gothic would not be appropriate. Instead, something less
highly developed, more primitive even, would provide the best framework for a
collection that focussed specifically on the evolution of the most primitive forms of life
into the most sophisticated. Then there was the terracotta moulding, which as
Waterhouse pointed out to John Manners, had been used 'extensively in the New
Museum of the Science and Art Department'.43 And here again Romanesque was the
most historically appropriate vehicle for the elaborate naturalistic decoration he was
planning with Owen.
The words used by Waterhouse to John Manners might seem to apply to the building
in its final form but, in fact, the design that he offered the trustees in 1868 was very
different from the one that now stands in South Kensington. The elevational drawings
for this have all disappeared, but the plan contains echoes of Fowke's much despised
1862 exhibition building.44 Both designs possess two long arcades that terminate in
pavilions on the street front; both have grand, cathedral-like entrances (and, in Fowke's
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WATERHOUSE S TEMPLE OF NATURE 269
Fig. 8. Alfred Waterhouse, drawing for Natural History Museum (1870-71) (Royal Institute of
British Architects)
case, were loosely Romanesque) and the central focus of each is a large and imposing
dome, which was employed by Waterhouse to roof a lecture theatre. By 1871 yet
another plan advanced towards that of the present building, in that the twin towers
were in place (Fig. 8). Mark Girouard has elegantly traced the stages by which
Waterhouse modified the Bramantesque structure proposed by Fowke, showing how
he adopted many ideas from Fowke' s prize winning design, while modifying them to
conform to his own tendencies and interests and those of Richard Owen.45 The
prominent dome was retained in 1871, and this now seemed to be roofing the main
entrance hall, with the lecture theatre (a feature later abandoned) pushed backwards
towards the rear of the building. The strategy of adaptation was magisterial. The
exuberance in Fowke's project46 is transferred from the elevation to the decoration,
where vitality and energy is expressed in the bustle of animal activity across the surface
of the new building. Meanwhile, the evolving design was not only simpler than
Fowke' s, but also acted as an emblem of the two motives which dominated Owen's
work: the epistemological and the theological. These are represented by the east- west
and the north-south axes of the building (Fig. 9). The first runs along the long front
elevation (Fig. 10). With its steep gabled roof, regular fenestration and dormers, it looks
back to Deane and Woodward's recently opened Oxford Museum (1855-59), which in
its turn, is reminiscent of medieval halls such as Brussels town hall and the twelfth-
century cloth hall at Ypres.47 These, of course, were pointed-arch buildings, and in
retaining the round arch Waterhouse was alluding to recent commercial buildings (see
below p. 277) while simultaneously echoing the shape of the windows in Fowke' s
proposal. The axis is strengthened by the symmetrical, worldly and somewhat
Palladian pavilions retained from Fowke' s design. The second axis runs at right angles
to the first, processing up the steps of the entrance, through the massive door, under the
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270 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 9. Alfred Waterhouse, Natural History Museum, London (1868-81). Photograph c. 1900 (English
Heritage: National Monuments Record)
Fig. 10. Alfred Waterhouse, plan of Natural History Museum (1881) (Victoria & Albert Museum)
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 271
twin towers and into the central hall. This axis is charged with different associations
from that of the first, and is strongly ecclesiastical. Waterhouse himself saw it in these
terms,48 and the area reserved for Owen's Index Museum, his 'cathedral to God's
wonders of the natural world',49 was persistently described using ecclesiastical
language by the architectural press of the period.50
In his management of Fowke's arrangement, Waterhouse achieved - and brilliantly
so - the marriage of two architectural metaphors, one expressive of the secular, the
other of the sacred. The front along Cromwell Road is reminiscent of the secular public
prosperity of the medieval merchant, the world of the marketplace and the guild. In
contrast the grand westwerk of the towers, the entrance, and the cathedral-like interior
are strongly suggestive of the realm of faith and of the spirit. This combination then
indirectly reflects the two sides of Owen's scientific endeavour, in which his passionate
secular commitment to evidence grounded in material reality was constantly referred
back to a set of sacred, metaphysical principles. In all this Waterhouse managed to
preserve Fowke's round-arched fenestration, but cleverly changed its ideological
associations. Instead of being a product of what Ruskin called 'the pestilent art of the
Renaissance', it was now modelled on the Romanesque 'round-arched style common in
Southern German', a style whose 'highest glory', Ruskin claimed, 'is that it has no
corruption'.51
Ruskin' s enthusiasm for Romanesque in the Stones of Venice was certainly a factor in
Waterhouse' s pleasure in this style. He was, however, also familiar with the work of
Richard Owen's acquaintance, Edmund Sharpe, who had used the architecture of
southern Germany as a model for pioneering neo-Romanesque churches, like St Mark's
Witton, near Blackburn (1835-36), and St Paul's Farington, near Preston (1839-40).52
Sharpe was also highly original in his use of terracotta. When Sharpe accompanied
Owen around Lancaster in September and in October 1844 he had just completed the
first of his so-called Gothic 'pot churches', St Stephen and All Martyrs, Lever Bridge,
and was in the process of submitting plans for the second, Holy Trinity, Rusholme in
Manchester (1844-46).53 In 1851 Waterhouse, quite independently, made a careful study
of Holy Trinity in his sketchbook.54 It was not until towards the end of his career, when
he returned once again to architecture, that Sharpe brought together Romanesque (or
perhaps more correctly, neo-Norman) and terracotta, at Scotforth, Lancaster (1874).55
When Romanesque was first introduced into Britain in the 1840s, the Cambridge
Camden Society strongly opposed its use for Anglican churches,56 but, as Kathleen
Curran convincingly argues, it was adopted instead by Nonconformist groups.57
Waterhouse fits this pattern; his Anglican mode is Gothic, but he built several
dissenting chapels in a Romanesque style. The cemetery at Ince-in-Makerfield, for
example, needed two chapels; Waterhouse built a Gothic one for Anglican use and a
Romanesque one for Nonconformists and Catholics (1856-57). Then in Rusholme, just
a stone's throw from Sharpe's Holy Trinity, he was asked in i860 to design a
Congregational chapel; he chose a strong Romanesque building with a tall corner
tower, recessed porches and round arches, some of them stilted (Fig. 11).
Although Waterhouse was known to his contemporaries as a Gothic architect, his
tastes were extremely eclectic, and this Catholicism is reflected in his sketchbooks. In his
early years as an architect he made almost annual trips to France, Italy, Switzerland or
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272 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 11. Alfred Waterhouse,
Congregational chapel Rusholme (1863)
(Manchester School of Architecture)
Fig. 12. Alfred Waterhouse, St Martin
Bonn, Sketchbook no. n,. 17 August
1857, p. 17 (Private collection)
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE7 273
Germany and his drawings record a perennial interest in continental Romanesque
architecture.58 In 1853 he noted the Romanesque windows at Valence, made a delicate
pencil study of the multi-colonnaded porch of the Lombard-Romanesque duomo at
Monza, and had made a close study of the duomo baptistery at Padua.59 When, in 1857,
he went on a leisurely trip down the Rhine as far as Cologne, he made a few drawings
of Romanesque buildings, including a full-page study of the 'glorious Romanesque
Cathedral',60 of St Martin at Bonn (Fig. 12). This interest developed in the 1860s when
he made a second, more concentrated and intensive journey down the Rhine to
southern Germany. In September 1861 he travelled from Treves (Trier), to Speyer,
Mainz, Bacherach, Boppard, Kloster (Maria-Laach), Laach, Coblenz, Andernach and
Cologne.61 All the time he was drawing energetically and almost all his studies are of
Romanesque buildings. Inside the churches he was fascinated by the spaces created by
round arches, arcades and stilted arches. At Trier he focused on the windows and their
disposition, and on the short columns of the eastern apse; and he made a careful study
of an arcade where twisted columns, similar to those used later in the entrance to the
Natural History Museum, support capitals comprising interlocked male figures and an
arch richly decorated with animals wreathed with plants (Fig. 13). At St Peter,
Bacherach, he drew gargoyles from the exterior, heavily foliated animal capitals from
the interior, and the stilted arches in a colonnade.62 Further down the Rhine, at Boppard,
he made a fine, bold drawing of the twin towers of the Hauptkirche, a drawing of the
twin round towers of Maria Laach,63 and another of the towers at Andernach, which
alone provided him with three dense pages of Romanesque interior detail (Fig. 14).64
The interdependency of flora and fauna in a rich, deeply carved surface emerges
strongly in the drawings which Waterhouse provided C. Dujardin the sculptor for the
terracotta decoration. The relationship with the Romanesque originals comes out even
more clearly in the recently acquired album of more than sixty Waterhouse drawings
owned by Dujardin.65 Unlike the working drawings, these often show the organic
relationship between shaft and capital, as, for example, in a double colonette to the
right-hand side of the central entrance (Fig. 15), which shows canine figures on one
capital, and on the other a stork catching a frog, all embedded in a deep undergrowth
of foliage. On arriving in Cologne, Waterhouse visited St Maria in Kapitol, San
Apostolen, and St Andreas, drawing as he went,66 and he was particularly attracted by
St Martin, of which he made several studies, both on this occasion and later in 1871,
when he drew the towers.67 In subsequent years on journeys to France (1865), Italy and
Germany (1867), he continued to make drawings of Romanesque detail, but nothing
quite matched his enthusiasm of 1861.
Waterhouse' s choice of Romanesque for the Natural History Museum may also have
been influenced by contemporary architectural practice. A number of architects had
used it to good effect, notably the Ruskinian partners Deane and Woodward at Trinity
College Museum, Dublin (1851-55), whose Romano-Byzantine interior Waterhouse
almost certainly saw in 1866. Perhaps most influential, however, was Gilbert Scott's
unbuilt Romanesque design for the Foreign Office of i860. Since Waterhouse wrote to
the Commissioner of Works in 1856 requesting particulars of the Foreign Office
competition, he would have taken a close interest in its progress;68 and although he
submitted no entry for this, he must have followed the 'battle of the styles' that went on
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274 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 13. Alfred Waterhouse, Trier, Sketchbook no.
iv, 13 September 1861, pp. 3-8 (Private
collection)
Fig. 14. Alfred Waterhouse, Andernach,
Sketchbook no. iv, 20 September 1861, pp. 35-38
(Private collection)
so publicly in the press and in Parliament.69 By the end of this, Scott had shown that a
large-scale, prominent and public building in the Romanesque style was possible, and
that even though this particular project had been rejected by the personal whim of
Palmer ston, such a possibility remained.
In the year following Waterhouse' s Rhine journey - 1862 - a letter was published
in The Builder that caught Scott's attention. Entitled 'Byzantine Decorative Colouring', it
was an encomium in favour of Romanesque vigour and energy.70 It was signed 'A.W.
'A.W' said that Byzantine (by which he meant 'all Christian work before Gothic',
including Romanesque) is 'manly and massive'. 'If Byzantine', he continued, 'had only
had the pointed arch it would have been perfect. There is life in it, and plenty of
grotesque,- the best sign of healthy minds. Gothic grotesque is sensual compared with
the open-hearted vigour of Byzantine.'71 Scott, writing as 'A Goth', replied at length,
pointing out to A.W. that there was a form of early Gothic that conformed to his desire
for something 'manly'. It is, he said,
a Gothic of the twelfth century, as at Notre Dame and St Germain des Pres in Paris, at
Sens, Noyen, Canterbury, Glastonbury, St Cross &c; which is his Byzantine with the
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 275
Fig. 15. Alfred Waterhouse, detail of the
enrichments of the new Museum of Natural
History modelled by C. Dujardin for A.
Waterhouse (c. i&j/^-jy), sheet 26. Pencil on
paper
addition of the pointed arch; and in this Gothic we greatly rejoice: nor will we complain
of an ally using the round-arched Romanesque or the domed Byzantine, and helping us
to mould them into one style with the mature Gothic of the glorious thirteenth century;
preserving the beauties and eschewing the faults of both.72
This exchange between Scott and someone who may have been Waterhouse reveals
a shared enthusiasm for Romanesque combined with historical uncertainty about the
style. Waterhouse' s use of Romanesque motifs in the Natural History Museum (as
many scholars have noticed)73 was loose and undogmatic. This was partly
temperamental and partly conceptual. Not only was Waterhouse a non-doctrinaire
designer but, in the 1860s, the history of Romanesque had hardly begun to be written.
Nevertheless, when we turn to contemporary continental publications we can see that,
since the days of Edmund Sharpe's tentative attempts at Romanesque church building,
a range of illustrated reference books were becoming available to those who wished to
build in this style. Although it is not possible to identify specific models for the Natural
History Museum, the Germans had been active through the century in producing a
substantial literature on Romanesque which, together with his own drawings, would
have equipped Waterhouse with confidence and fluency in the vocabulary of this style
of medieval design. C. G. Kallenbach and Jacob Schmitt's book Die christliche Kirchen-
Baukunst des Abenlandes (1850)74 is a vast quarry of small but detailed illustrations of
Romanesque plans, elevations, sculpture, capitals, windows, and doors from around
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276 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Europe; similarly, the Systematische Darstellung der Entwickelung der Baukunst (1852) by
Ludwig Puttrich, the President of the Society of Antiquaries of Germany/5 contains
many pages of comparative drawings illustrating Romanesque windows, doors, and
capitals. Furthermore, William Whe well's friend Georg Moller, in his Denkmaler der
Deutschen Baukunst (1815-51), 76 provided detailed illustrations of churches at Frankfurt,
Mainz, Paderborn, and of the double towers at Limburg, whose west end resembles
that of the Natural History Museum's twin tower arrangement. Perhaps most striking,
however, are the illustrations in Sulpiz Boisseree's Denkmale der Baukunst vom yten bis
zum ljten Jahrhundert am Nieder-Rhein (1833).77 These had greatly impressed Edmund
Sharpe when he saw them in 1836, 78 and contain a wealth of Romanesque detail,
including animal and plant capitals from Andernach,79 many details from St Maria in
Kapitol, Cologne,80 and ten highly ornamented capitals from St Pantelon, also in
Cologne.81 Two of these studies can be related specifically to Waterhouse's museum
design. The disposition of his central towers has strong affinities with the twin towers
of the Minster of St Martin, Bonn, which Waterhouse had so admired in 1857 (Fig- ^X
and the design of each his own towers bears a close resemblance to that of St Martin at
Cologne,82 which he had seen in 1861 (Fig. 17). It is as if he had taken the square towers
from Cologne and consistently simplified them. At the Natural History Museum he has
made the corner elements protrude less from the main body, and at the highest level he
has reduced the two tiers of these corner towers to one. He has also simplified the
multi-faceted pitched roofs, reducing their numerous sides to four-sided pyramids.
Likewise, on the central tower he has rendered the upper three windows as single-
rather than double-arched, and has lengthened them. Beneath them, the group of small
windows has been reduced in number and the windows at the edges of the towers have
been removed entirely. The central spires of Waterhouse's two towers are octagonal,
and have closer affinity with principal tower of St Martin at Bonn, but capped with a
much shorter spires.
Then there is the museum's magnificent splayed portal, so reminiscent of the grand
west entrances of a number of Romanesque churches. Mark Girouard nominates the
Gnadenpforte at Bamberg or the splendid north door of St Jacob in Regensberg.83 Few,
however, are so elaborate as the so-called 'Golden Door' of the Minster at Freiburg. In
1836 Puttrich had published Die goldene Pforte der Domkirche zu Freiberg, with nineteen
pages of text and seven illustrations by G. W. Geyser dem Jiingern.84 This cavernous
entrance sports ten columns, whereas Waterhouse's has sixteen, but both entrances
have hugely elaborate capitals. The double opening of Waterhouse's great entrance has
few Romanesque precedents, and his tympanum comprising a small row of sculpture
surmounted by three round arches is also unusual.
By 1868, however, the monumental, ecclesiastical aspects of Romanesque
architecture had hardly been revived in Britain, but another version of the style was
well established. This was the secular, commercial variety. It took its inspiration more
from Italy than from Germany, and as much from domestic as from ecclesiastical
building. In the 1850s and 1860s round-arched, arcaded buildings had been widely used
in the design of offices and warehouses. Many of these drew their inspiration from
Ruskin's Stones of Venice and from his drawings of Byzantine warehouses and palaces
on the Grand Canal and elsewhere. Waterhouse was no exception in being captivated
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WATERHOUSE'S 'TEMPLE OF NATURE7 277
Fig. 16. Sulpiz Boisseree's Denkmale der Baukunst
vom 7 ten bis zum 13 ten Jahrhundert am Nieder-
Rhein (1833), plate 66
Fig. 17. Sulpiz Boisseree's Denkmale der
Baukunst vom 7 ten bis zum 13 ten
Jahrhundert am Nieder-Rhein (2833),
plate 10
by Ruskin's compelling argument, and in 1865 he successfully submitted a round-
arched warehouse design to the Architectural Exhibition. This design was for the sugar
merchants Fryar and Binyon, and was reminiscent, said the Guardian (alluding to the
Doge's palace), of a 'celebrated building in Venice'.85
According to Henry-Russell Hitchcock, the first completely arcaded commercial
building comprised some shops in Market Street, Manchester, built by Starkey and
Cuff ley in 185 1;86 the most influential, however, was Dean and Woodward's Crown Life
Office (Fig. 18). This opened in New Bridge Street, London, in 1856, the same year as
Waterhouse's warehouse design appeared at the Architectural Exhibition.87 The appeal
of this arcaded style, whether it was used for offices or warehouses, was that it could
be endlessly repeated, endlessly extended, and (later in the nineteenth century)
prefabricated. Moreover, unlike Gothic work it created large flat wall spaces, a feature
that was attractive to different groups and for different reasons. For church decorators,
the walls were suitable for large murals or mosaics; for museum curators, they were
admirable for the accommodation of showcases, shelving, and visual aids; for the
aesthete, they were ripe for polychromatic decoration. In the case of the Crown Life
Office, both exterior and interior were ornamented with a wide range of materials in
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278 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Fig. 18. Thomas Dean and
Benjamin Woodward, Crown Life
Office (1856-58). Engraving in
Building News, 16 July 1858
variegated patterns and textures. The full force of this development was felt in such
robustly round-arched commercial buildings as George Aitchison's Mark Row, London
(1864), or in work done in the so-called 'Bristol-Byzantine' style.88
The utilitarian aspect of the arcading of the Natural History Museum, whether
derived from Ypres or the Grand Canal, would not have bothered Owen, whose aim
was 'creating a material symbol7 for 'the greatest commercial and colonizing empire in
the world7,89 but it did arouse criticism from Fowke's principal supporter, Henry Cole.
'A manufacturing sort of thing, Byzantine7,90 was how he described Waterhouse7s 1868
design, reacting aggressively to its domical skyline. By 1870 the opposition had
increased. Cole continued to call for a return to Fowke's original plan and was
supported by the backtracking Lord Elcho who now described Waterhouse7s design in
Parliament as an 'abomination7.91 James Fergusson was equally implacable, and in 1872
he contributed an article highly critical of Waterhouse7s choice of period to Macmillan's
Magazine. He insinuated that from the first Waterhouse had never had any intention of
completing Fowke's work:
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WATERHOUSE'S 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 279
consequently [he] very soon produced an entirely new design of his own, in what he is
pleased to call the Norman, or according to the more fashionable modern euphemism,
the 'Bizzantine' style, though what its connexion may be with Byzantium I do not know.
'As Mr Waterhouse very well knows/ he concluded, 'it is no more Norman than the
British Museum is Greek/92 In the same year Cole wrote an open letter to The Times,
mocking the conduct of architectural competitions. In the recent instance of the Natural
History Museum, he said:
Mr Cowper Temple, with delightful innocency, put the execution of it into the hands of a
Gothic architect. Lord John Manners reappears in his favourite character as First
Commissioner, and puts aside the design chosen by a public competition, for one in a
style of Gothic which it is difficult to chararacterize, and approved of by no one but
himself.93
Nevertheless, despite all this hostility, the foundations for the museum were laid, and
by 1873 the building was well under way.
THE TERRACOTTA DECORATION
In their preliminary negotiations, Waterhouse probably pointed out to Owen that
Romanesque was far more suitable for sculptural decoration than the Renaissance of
Fowke's design. This is borne out by the fact that Owen repeatedly told audiences that
Waterhouse 'chose an adaptation of the Round-arched Gothic, Romanesque, or Romaic
of the twelfth century' because 'no style could better lend itself to the introduction, for
legitimate ornamentation, of the endless beautiful varieties of form and surface-
sculpture exemplified in the animal and vegetable kingdoms'.94 The 'animal and
vegetable kingdoms' had appeared in abundance at Deane and Woodward's Crown
Life office in New Bridge Street. Sculptures designed by Hungerford Pollen and
executed by the famous O'Shea brothers, filled the little spaces throughout the building
with birds, rabbits and dogs. The architectural press found this treatment strange but
interesting;95 the Pre-Raphaelites Rossetti, Madox Brown and Thomas Woolner were
delighted by it.96 Similar sculptural effects were being achieved by Deane and
Woodward at the Oxford Museum (1854-60). Waterhouse visited this in 1858, precisely
when the O'Shea brothers (who had previously been employed at the Assize Courts)
were working on the exterior, and he made detailed and appreciative notes on the
decoration.97
But the difficulties of working in sculpture on such a large building were becoming
evident. It was painfully slow, and when the O'Sheas walked out at Oxford it was
impossible to complete the project. Waterhouse saw that terracotta could circumvent
these problems. He had a long-standing interest in the medium that went back to
Edmund Sharpe's 'pot churches'. Sharpe, however, had tried to make terracotta look
like stone, and this was not Waterhouse's aim. In 1855 Waterhouse had been 'struck', as
he put it, by the use of terracotta with brick in the museum building for the Palais de
l'lndustrie in Paris;98 in 1857 he described a new brick and terracotta Protestant church
in Cologne as 'a beautiful erection',99 and he undoubtedly picked up on Gilbert Scott's
enthusiasm for terracotta in his 1858 Remarks on Domestic and Secular Architecture™
Such was the vogue for terracotta that in 1863 William Tite offered a prize at the
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280 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
Institute of British Architects on the subject: 'On the Application of Coloured Bricks and
Terra Cotta to Modern Architecture/ The winner was the fledgling architect and
novelist, Thomas Hardy.101
Thus dignified by ancient usage and graced with recent precedent, terracotta, as
Waterhouse saw, might also be used to mediate between Ruskin's demand for creative
originality and the demands of modern technology. A large building might be
decorated both inside and out with repetitions of the same sculptural elements, which
had all the appearance of originals.102 Although terracotta had not been much used by
Romanesque builders, it could readily be adapted to vigorous naturalistic sculpture.
Furthermore, terracotta was possessed of the appropriate associations for a building of
this kind. Like the architectural design itself, it mixed the secular and the sacred; its
earthy nature fitting the primitive aspects of the architectural style, and was charged
with Biblical symbolism connected with the power of the potter's hand.103 In 1873
Owen supplied Waterhouse with 'figures and outlines of upwards of fifty restorations
of extinct animals',104 and Waterhouse - who had talents as a draughtsman much
beyond those called for in his architectural profession - translated these outlines into
a series of lively reincarnations, to which he added numerous studies of living beasts.105
Owen's reservations about the nature of evolutionary theory, however, made him
separate biology from palaeontology, and his views are (in a sense) set in stone in
Waterhouse's building. He decided to segregate the dead menagerie by placing it on the
east side of the building, from the living one on the west side. There was a final touch,
however, which clearly distinguished Owen's views from those that were beginning to
change the shape of natural history. On the highest gable over the entrance, and at the
precise intersection between the secular and the sacred axes, stood a figure that, for
Owen, represented the culmination of the order to which he subscribed. It was a statue
of Adam.106
THE RECEPTION OF THE MUSEUM
The actual construction of the museum was bedevilled by many practical, political and
financial problems. In late 1868, with Gladstone as Prime Minister and Henry Layard at
the Office of Works, the Liberals planned to move the site to the Embankment. When
this was found to be impracticable, it returned to South Kensington, under a
Conservative government, with A. S. Ayrton as First Commissioner, and was subject to
severe economies. Nevertheless, the work advanced, albeit slowly, and as it neared
completion in the late 1870s members of the architectural profession began to visit it
and reports of it appeared in the architectural press. These were largely positive and
focused mostly on the success of the terracotta. When members of the Architectural
Conference visited in 1879 tnev were full of praise for Waterhouse's innovations,107 and
as The Architect put it, how rarely 'so much freshness is to be found in a single
building'.108 Ruskin dissented. Although he had previously supported Waterhouse,
when he spoke of 'the accursed mess of the Nt. Brit. Mus. At Kensington' and how it
was 'the worst bit of jobbery we've done in London', he was referring to the mechanical
replication of the sculpture and the various compromises involved in the use of
terracotta.109 The Daily News disagreed and stressing the success of the terracotta, felt
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WATERHOUSE'S 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 281
that only the Romanesque style would have given Waterhouse the latitude to
experiment in this way. 'This flexible style', said the writer, 'lends itself to all moods of
playful inventiveness: to the close imitation of leaves and tendrils, animals and flowers
and ample room for quaint "conceits"/110 The British Almanac and Companion also
admired the use of terracotta, and praised Waterhouse' s ability to create out of 'the old
Romanesque style an architecture quite modern in feeling'.111 The ecclesiastical
associations of the elevation, however, received a mixed reception. One of the leading
scientific journals, Nature, was strongly opposed to the 'adoption of such a semi-
ecclesiastical style', fearing that 'in the future there will be a perpetual conflict between
the views of the keepers of the Museum collections and those of the architect of the
building'.112 Waterhouse himself described the entrance hall as the 'nave of a
Cathedral'113 and the Daily News, echoing his sentiments, said that the interior was 'like
a large Romanesque church'.114 A few writers, such as Ingress Bell, felt at ease with the
religious associations of the Romanesque style and the soaring cathedral-like towers:
Glancing upwards over the whole field of its varied and orderly scheme of enrichment,
the eye rests upon the consummation of the whole in the figure which terminates
appropriately the highest gable. There standing erect, is seen the 'quintessence of nature',
with outstretched arms and upward gaze directed towards a still higher power.115
Waterhouse worked with the scientific, social and political architects of the Natural
History Museum to create a building embodying many ambitions. Its enormous size is
an indication of its central public role in bringing science to the people; the long
horizontal stretch of its repeating arcades, more substantial even than the Byzantine
warehouses of Venice, contains the imperial collection of what was then the greatest
trading nation on earth, yet the soaring verticality of it central towers aspires to
something transcending earthliness and materialism. Its Romanesque style is
simultaneously dignified and rugged. It looks back to Byzantine originals and beyond;
it anticipates the more sophisticated and polished glories of Gothic, but - in its
imaginative use of terracotta, glass, and cast iron - it is a piece of nineteenth century
engineering. The logical arrangement of the elevation reflects the logical order of the
exhibits within, and this, in turn, parallels the ordered logic of evolutionary
development. Across the controlled symmetry of that same elevation the teaming
multifariousness of insects, plants and animals acts as an emblem of the richness and
abundance of the natural order. In 1881, Waterhouse's 'Temple of Nature' may not have
been a monument to the latest research in natural history, but it was the spectacularly
ingenious record of the social and scientific beliefs of an earlier generation.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
The research for this article was made possible by a grant from the Leverhulme Trust.
NOTES
1 Smirke's British Museum (1847) was designed in a Greek style to house the Elgin Marbles, and Deane and
Woodward's Oxford Museum (1855-59) employed the sculptural expertise of the O'Shea brothers to decorate
the exterior with flora and fauna. Phillip Kent points out how many of the Natural History museums of the
second half of the nineteenth century employed Romanesque revival models for their decoration. See
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282 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
'Survival of the Fittest: The Romanesque Revival, Natural Selection, and Nineteenth Century Natural History
Museums', Fabrications, 11 (2000), pp. 1-25.
2 The Times, 18 April 1881, p. 9. According to Nature, 23 (1881), p. 549, it was George Augustus Sala who first
used the phrase 'Temple of Nature' with reference to the museum.
3 Most notably by F. H. W. Sheppard in 'Natural History Museum', in Survey of London: The Museums Area of
South Kensington and Westminster (London, 1975), pp. 201-13; John Olley and Caroline Wilson, 'The Natural
History Museum', in Timeless Architecture, ed. Dan Cruikshank (London, 1971), pp. 47-67; Mark Girouard, Alfred
Waterhouse and the Natural History Museum (New Haven and London, 1981); Colin Cunningham and Prudence
Waterhouse, Alfred Waterhouse 1830-1905: biography of a practice (Oxford, 1992); and Carla Yanni, 'Nature in
Conflict', in Nature's museums: Victorian science and the architecture of display (London, 1999), pp. 112-46.
4 It was not, however, the first. That honour belongs to James Renwick's Smithsonian Institute Building,
Washington DC (1846-51) (although this might be considered neo-Norman rather then neo-Romanesque).
After Waterhouse we find Calvert Vaux and J. Wrey Mould's the American Museum of Natural History, New
York (1872-77), William F. Smith's Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum, Honolulu, Hawaii (1889), William Kemp's
Technological Museum (later Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences), Sydney, Australia (1891-92), and
Charles Harrison Townsend's Horniman Museum, Forest Hill, London (1897). See Phillip Kent, 'Survival of
the Fittest: the Romanesque Revival, Natural Selection, and Nineteenth Century Natural History Museums',
Fabrications, 11:1 (2000), pp. 1-25.
5 For Whewell and Sharpe, see J. B. Bullen, 'The Romanesque Revival in Britain, 1800 -1840: William Gunn,
William Whewell, and Edmund Sharpe', Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, 47 (2004), PP. 13Q-58.
6 Owen, quoted in Nicholas A. Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (New Haven, 1994), p. 35.
7 'The New Natural History Museum', Building News, 41 (1881), p. 295.
8 Richard Owen, Instances of the power of God as manifested in His Animal Creation (London, 1864), p. 53.
9 Richard Owen, 'The Animal Kingdom and its Uses', Lectures on the results of the Great Exhibition, 1 (London,
1852-53), pp. 75-131.
10 Rupke, Richard Owen, p. 94.
11 See Sheppard, 'Natural History Museum', p. 203.
12 Archives of the Public Record Office (henceforth PRO), Work 17/16/2, p. 2.
13 PRO, Work 17/16/2, p. 15.
14 Building News, 11 (1864), p. 297.
15 Palmerston, quoted by James o'Connell in his 'Natural History of Architecture', London Quarterly Review,
13 (1859-60), pp. 31-62 (p. ^y). See also David B. Brownlee, 'The "regular mongrel affair": G.G. Scott's design
for the government offices', Architectural History, 28 (1985), pp. 159-97.
16 George Gilbert Scott, Personal and Professional Recollections (London, 1879), p. 197.
17 Ian Toplis, The Foreign Office: An Architectural History (London and New York, 1987), p. 123.
18 James Fergusson, History of the Modern Styles of Architecture (London, 1862), pp. 439-40, 343 and 374-76.
19 British Museum Committee papers, 14 March 1865: 1367/8.
20 Reference to this exchange was recorded in BM Committee c.10.911, and a letter from Cole was printed in
The Times, 18 December 186s.
21 BM Committee, 29 July 1865, c. 10857.
22 See Winslow Ames, Prince Albert and Victorian Taste (London, 1967). p. 129; and Olley and Wilson, 'The
Natural History Museum', p. 56.
23 BM Committee, 11 November 1865, c. 10885.
24 His death was reported to the British Museum Committee on 9 December 1865: BM Committee c. 10899.
25 Ruskin to his father John James Ruskin, December 1863. Works, 18, p. lxxv.
26 Diary entry for 14 October 1864. H. C. G. Matthew, The Gladstone Diaries, vi (Oxford, 1978), p. 306.
27 Builder, 11 (1865), pp. 135-37.
28 Waterhouse's role in this competition is dealt with substantially by David B. Brownlee in The Law Courts.
The Architecture of George Edmund Street (Cambridge, Mass., New York and London), p. 83 ff.
29 The Times, 11 February 1865, p. 7.
30 See Cunningham and Waterhouse, Alfred Waterhouse 1830-1905, p. 41.
31 See Elizabeth Gaskell to Ruskin, February 1865, in The Lettters of Mrs Gaskell, ed. J. A. V. Chappie
(Manchester, 1966), letter 559. She also wrote to Lord Houghton, Richard Monkton Milnes, in similar terms.
See Further letters of Mrs. Gaskell, ed. J. A. V. Chappie and Alan Shelston (Manchester, 2000), pp. 268-69.
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE' 283
32 For 1855, see Works, 36, p. 479, and for 1859, see Works, 16, p. lxv. In 1865 Ruskin wrote to her saying that
both he and his mother had hugely enjoyed Cranford; see Works, 36, p. 479.
33 Ruskin, Works, 35, pp. 503-04.
34 In 1871 Cowper became one of the original trustees for Ruskin s Guild of St George.
35 Ruskin replied almost immediately to Gaskell, including a positive response from Cowper. See Chappie
and Shelston, Further Letters, pp. 260-70.
36 Works, xix, p. 23.
37 BM Committee, 9 December 1865, C10899.
38 BM Sub Committee Building and Sub Committee Natural History, 17 January 1866, SC 1407-1409; 14
February 1866, PRO, Work 17/16/2, p. 11; and 23 February 1866, PRO, Work 1/81, p. 74; BM Standing
Committee, 10 March 1866, SC 10944.
39 6 March 1866, PRO, Work 1/81, p. 110; 7 March 1866, PRO, Work 17/16/2, p. 31; and 2 August 1869, PRO,
Work 17/16/2, p. 88.
40 Officers7 Report 20 April 1866: CE5/77 P. 3516.
41 BM Sub Committee on Building and Sub Committee on Natural History, 25 March 1868, SC 1473-1474.
42 Waterhouse to Office of Work, 4 May 1868, PRO, Work 17/16/2.
43 Ibid.
44 The plans for this and those for subsequent years are contained in PRO, Work 17/16/2.
45 Girouard, Alfred Waterhouse, pp. 25-33.
46 Based, as Carla Yanni suggests, on ideas contained in Androuet du Cerceau's Les Trois livres d 'architecture
(1559); Yanni, 'Nature in Conflict', p. 121.
47 See Eve Blau, Ruskin's Gothic: the Architecture of Deane and Woodward 1845-1861 (New Jersey, 1982),
pp. 56-57.
48 Lecturing in the Index Museum, he said in 1873, would be very much like speaking in the nave of a
cathedral'; PRO, Work DF 930/1.
49 Olley and Wilson, 'The Natural History Museum', p. 50.
50 bee notes 110 ana 115 below.
51 Ruskin, Works, 10, p. 253, and 9, p. 47.
52 See J. B. Bullen, Byzantium rediscovered (London, 2003), pp. 151-53.
53 I am grateful to John Hughes who pointed this out.
54 Waterhouse Sketchbook: 'Scrapbook 2; 1851-3: drawing dated 21 Sep. 1851' (private collection). See also
Colin Cunningham, The Terracotta Designs of Alfred Waterhouse (London, 2001), p. 12, n. 9.
^ See Robert Jolly, hdmund Sharpe and the rot Churches, Architectural Review, 14b U969J, pp. 427-31.
56 See Bullen, Byzantium rediscovered, pp. 144-45.
yj Kathleen Curran, The Romanesque Revival (University Park, Pennsylvania, 2003), pp. 214 ff.
58 Stuart Allen Smith points out that between 1857 and 1871 he made four trips to Germany, five trips to Italy,
and seven to France. See Stuart Allen Smith, 'Alfred Waterhouse', in Seven Victorian Architects, ed. Jane
Fawcett (London, 1976), p. 112.
59 Waterhouse Presentation Book, 20 May 1853, p. iv; 25 July 1853, p. xv; and 29 August 1853, p. xxiii.
60 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. 11 (private collection), 17 August 1057, p. 36. lhe drawing is on p. 17.
61 Mark Girouard, Alfred vvaterhouse, p. 42, touches on the connexion between the museum ana Khenish
churches.
62 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. IV (private collection), 17 September 1861, pp. 13-15.
63 Ibid., 19 September 1861, pp. 30 and 32.
64 Ibid., 20 September 1861, pp. 35-38.
65 Some details of the enrichment of the new Museum of Natural History (bouth Kensington) modelled by
C. Dujardin for A. Waterhouse Esq. A.R.A.' (c. 1874-97). This album, which was in the possession of a French
collector for some twenty years, has recently (2004) been acquired by the Natural History Museum.
66 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. iv (private collection), 21 September 1861, pp. 39-45.
67 Ibid., 21 September 1861, pp. 44-45; and Sketchbook no. v (private collection), 6 September 1071.
68 Colin Cunningham, The Terracotta Designs of Alfred Waterhouse (London, 1992), p. 40 n.
69 In A.W., 'Byzantine Decorative Colouring', The Builder, 20 (1862), p. 230.
70 It appeared on 20 March, in the same issue as contained Fowke's new exhibition building.
71 A.W. [Alfred Waterhouse?] 'Byzantine Decorative Colouring', p. 230.
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284 ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 49: 2006
72 A Goth [Gilbert Scott], The Builder, 20 (1862), p. 250.
73 See, for example, Cunningham and Waterhouse, Alfred Waterhouse 1830-1905, p. 72.
74 Georg Gottfried Kallenbach and Jacob Schmitt, Die christliche Kirchen-Baukunst des Abendlandes von ihren
Anfangen bis zur vollendeten Durchbildung des Spitzbogen-styls (Halle, 1850).
75 Ludwig Puttrich, Systematische Darstellung der Entwickelung der Baukunst in den obersachsischen Landern von
10.-15. Jahrhundert (Leipzig, 1852).
76 Georg Moller, Denkmdler der Deutschen Baukunst (Darmstadt, 1831).
yy Johann Sulpiz Melchior Dominicus Boisseree, Denkmale der Baukunst vom yten bis zum l^ten Jahrhundert am
Nieder-Rhein (Munich, 1833); this was translated as Monuments d 'architecture du septieme au treizieme siecles dans
les contrees du Rhin inferieur (Munich and Stuttgart, 1842).
78 Letter from Edmund Sharpe to William Whewell, Coblenz, 2 July 1833, Trinity College, Cambridge, R.6.116.
79 Plate 49.
80 Plate 8.
81 Plate 30.
82 Plate 10.
83 Girouard, Alfred Waterhouse, p. 42.
84 Ludwig, Puttrich, Die goldene Pforte der Domkirche zu Freiberg (Leipzig, 1836).
85 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. 1 (private collection), p. 49. Waterhouse visited the exhibition and noted the
words from 'The Architectural Exhibition', The Guardian, 16 January 1856, p. 47.
86 Henry Russell Hitchcock, 'Victorian Monuments of Commerce', Architectural Review, 105 (1949), p. 66.
87 The Crown Life Building was demolished in 1866.
88 Michael W. Brooks, John Ruskin and Victorian Architecture (London, 1989), pp. 180-91, supplies a wide
range of examples in this style.
89 Owen quoted in Rupke, Richard Owen, p. 13.
90 Henry Cole's diary quoted in F. H. W Sheppard, Survey of London, vol. 34, The Museums Area of South
Kensington and Westminster (London, 1975), p. 207.
91 Elcho quoted in Sheppard (1975), p. 209.
92 James Fergusson, 'The New Law Courts', Macmillan's Magazine, 25 (1872), 254.
93 Henry Cole, letter to The Times, 3 February 1872, reprinted in Fifty Years of Public Works of Sir Henry Cole
K.C.B. ... accounted for in his deeds, speech and writings, ed. A. S. Cole and H. L. Cole, 2 vols (London, 1884), 11,
p. 306.
94 Richard Rev. Owen, The Life of Richard Owen, 11 (London, 1894), pp. 52-53.
95 The Builder said that, 'the whole effect is very different from that of Gothic, to the English eye'.
'Architecture of the Day', The Builder, 16 (1858), p. 842.
96 Rossetti said that it was 'the most perfect piece of civil architecture of the new school' and added: 'I never
cease to look at it with delight'; Ford Maddox Brown thought that it was 'the most exquisite piece of
architecture I have seen in England', and Thomas Woolner said that it was 'brilliant in effect and original'.
Quoted in Frederick O'Dwyer, The Architecture ofDeane and Woodward (Cork, 1997), pp. 314-15.
97 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. 11 (private collection), September 1858, pp. 131-36.
98 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. 1 (private collection), 19 September 1855, pp. 15-16.
99 Waterhouse Sketchbook no. 11 (private collection), August 1857, p. ^y.
100 George Gilbert Scott, 'Materials of Buildings', in Remarks on Secular and Domestic Architecture, 2nd edn
(London, 1858), p. 105.
101 See C. J. P. Beatty (ed.), The Architectural Notebook of Thomas Hardy (Dorchester, 1966), p. 6. The essay no
longer exists.
102 The details of making and installing the terracotta are given in Olley and Wilson, 'The Natural History
Museum', pp. 5iff., and in Michael Stratton, The Terracotta Revival (London, 1993), pp. 7off.
103 'Then I went down to the potter's house, and, behold, he wrought a work on the wheels. I And the vessel
that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter: so he made it again another vessel, as seemed good
to the potter to make it. I Then the word of the Lord came to me, saying, I O house of Israel, cannot I do with
you as this potter? saith the Lord. Behold, as the clay is in the portter's hand, so are ye in mine hand, O house
of Israel' (Jeremiah, 18: 3-6).
104 Natural History Museum archive, DF 930/1/23: Owen reporting to the Trustees of the British Museum
(Natural History), 20 November 1873.
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WATERHOUSE's 'TEMPLE OF NATURE" 285
105 These are reproduced in Cunningham (2001). In his youth Waterhouse had wanted to train as an artist,
but his pragmatic Quaker family set him on the road to architecture. His sketchbooks are a testimony to his
natural ability as a fine draughtsman.
106 This seems to have been toppled at the time of the Second World War. See Cunningham (2001), p. 15.
107 'Architecture and Public Works', in The British Almanac and Companion (1879), p. 154.
108 "The Natural History Museum', The Architect, 25 (1881), p. 302.
109 Ruskin to Henry Swan, curator of the Sheffield Museum, 15 November 1883 (EL3.R596 MSi), and 8 June
1882 (EL3.R596 MSi), both in the Rosenbach Museum & Library, Philadelphia.
110 Daily News, 6 September 1879, p. 2.
111 The British Almanac and Companion (1880), p. 160.
112 Nature, 23 (1881), p. 55.
113 Waterhouse to Jones about the issue of a lecture theatre in the museum, 25 August 1873: Natural History
Museum archive, DF 930/1.
114 Daily News, 6 September 1879, p. 2.
115 Ingress Bell, vThe New Natural History Museum - 1', The Magazine of Art, 4 (1881), p. 360.
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