Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/208

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Bodley
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Bodley


and they were not, as is sometimes supposed, contemporary fellow pupils.

Bodley, who first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1854, had little opportunity of independent practice before 1860. He lived in Harley Street with his mother, and conducted his work, which he carried out almost single-handed, at home. His first work was the addition of an aisle to a church at Bussage in Gloucestershire for Thomas Keble [q. v.], brother of John Keble [q. v.]. This was rapidly followed by other com- missions, of which the chief were the churches of St. Michael and All Angels, Brighton ; of Stanley End, Gloucestershire ; of France Lynch ; St. Martin on the Hill, Scarborough (consecrated 1863) ; All Saints' in the same town ; All Saints', Cambridge ; St. Michael, Folkestone, and St. John the Baptist, Tue Brook, Liverpool (1869). Bodley also designed in 1869 a number of villas at Malvern and many parsonages. The representative ecclesiastical buildings which Bodley produced in the decade 1860-70 may be classed as his first period, though in certain points of style and development they differ vastly from one another. The Brighton church (St. Michael) shows the first revolt of a strong genius against its teacher. ' Tired of mouldings ' in his pupilage, he here sets himself to avoid their use and obtains an effect with flat bands and unchamfered arches which is surprising in its vigour. The church has since been altered by another hand. St. Michael's, Scarborough, comes nearer to the method of other English Gothic designers. It shows the influence of the French examples of the thirteenth century, but its details are original and by no means simple copies.

In 1869 Bodley and Garner formed a partnership which lasted until 1898. The offices of the partnership were in Gray's Inn, first in South Square, later in Gray's Inn Square, but both Bodley and Garner for many years personally worked out their own detail drawings each in his own house at Church Row, Hampstead. Between 1869 and 1884 the collaboration was as a rule so complete that it is impossible to differentiate the authorship of individual works. But in the later years of the union the two architects adopted methods of divided labour and gave individual control to separate works. On joining Garner, Bodley, by a spontaneous impulse and not by the prompting of his partner, developed in his work a freer and richer style which was later in its mediaeval prototypes. The two churches most typical of their style at this epoch are those of the Holy Angels, Hoar Cross, and of St. Augustine, Pendlebury. Outwardly the latter church (1874) owes its effect to its giant simplicity. It is constructed on the principle of internal buttresses, the narrow aisles being simply formed by piercings or arch- ways in stout walls which connect the nave piers with the outer wall. The tracery of the rich east window is an original development of fourteenth- century models. The church at Hoar Cross is an example of generous profusion in a small compass. It was built for the Hon. Mrs. Meynell Ingram, a patron who left the architects an unstinted field for the display of genius. Other churches of this period were St. Salvador's at Dundee, All Saints', Cambridge (opposite Jesus College), which is said to be the first fruits of the combination with Garner, and St. Michael's, Camden Town, a church which returns once more to earlier Gothic inspirations.

To Bodley's personal activity belonged subsequently the churches at Clumber and Eccleston, built respectively for the dukes of Newcastle and Westminster on the same munificent conditions as those prevailing at Hoar Cross. These churches Bodley claimed as his favourite works. To the same category belong the Community Church and other buildings for the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford ; the church of the Eton Mission at Hackney Wick ; Chapel Allerton, Holbeck near Leeds ; St. Aidan's, Bristol ; St. Faith's, Brentford ; churches at Homington and Warrington, and that of the Holy Trinity in Prince Consort Road, South Kensington.

Bodley rarely submitted designs in competition. In 1878, to his great disappointment, he failed to secure the building of Truro Cathedral, which fell to John Loughborough Pearson [q. v. Suppl. I]. Similarly he competed in the practically abortive (first) competition for the cathedral at Liverpool. An award was indeed made, the design of (Sir) William Emerson being premiated ; but the site and scheme were abandoned till 1903, when a new competition was instituted and Bodley was appointed one of the assessors. He had the satisfaction of joining in the selection of Mr. G. Gilbert Scott (grandson of his former master), with whom he was subsequently associated as consulting architect.

On both Oxford and Cambridge Bodley left his mark. He competed in vain for the Oxford ' Schools,' which were entrusted to Mr. T. G. Jackson, but the successful work done by Bodley & Garner (chiefly the latter)