Surveyors of the Fabric of Westminster Abbey, 1827-1906: Reports and Letters

“A fundamental resource for anyone interested in the Abbey’s architecture and contents.‘ Dr Richard Mortimer.

The papers of the nineteenth-century Surveyors of the Fabric are an essential resource for anyone interestedin the building and contents of Westminster Abbey. The Surveyors, Edward Blore, George Gilbert Scott and his son J .O. Scott, J. L. Pearson and J. T. Micklethwaite, wrote an annual report describing their activities, and these arethe core of the volume, supplemented with letters and other papers. Christine Reynolds, the Abbey’s Assistant Keeper of Muniments, adds invaluable notes from many other sources in the archives to round out a fascinating account of interventions in the stonework and monuments of the most historically significant church in England. On the way we learn what Gilbert Scott thought of William Morris, what the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings thought of J. L. Pearson’s reconstruction of the north rose window, and the dim view of Pearson taken by his successor Micklethwaite. Richard Halsey’s introduction sets these eminent Victorians and their work at Westminster in the wider context of the great age of cathedral restoration.