Charles Robert Cockerell
Charles Robert Cockerell, a man essentially European in outlook, a friend of Byron, Ingres and Canova who considered himself a born artist, may seem a surprising choice as the architect for a remote Welsh college. It was however, through his friendship with the scholarly John Scandrett Harford of Lampeter, that he became involved with Bishop Burgess’s ambitious educational plan.
Born in London on 27th April 1788, the third of eleven children, Cockerel was somewhat reluctant to follow in the footsteps of his father Samuel Pepys Cockerell, a successful architect and surveyor. After attending a private school near the City Road, Finsbury and then Westminster School, Cockerell began his architectural training in his fathers’ office. Five years later in 1809, he moved to the office of Robert Smirke, who he was to assist with the rebuilding of the New Covent Garden Theatre.
The following year Cockerell embarked on a Grand Tour which, although originally planned as a four-year journey, evolved into seven of the most significant and influential years of his life. The Napoleonic Wars had closed much of the Continent to tourism, so it was to Constantinople, travelling as a Kings’ messenger with despatches for the fleets at Cadiz and Malta, that Cockerell first departed. He continued on to Greece arriving in Athens in June 1810, where he was embraced by the cosmopolitan society of scholars, artists and archaeologists. Despite the dangers and privations inherent in travelling, including vermin infested accommodation, shipwrecks and privateers, Cockerell journeyed extensively, touring, drawing and excavating temples and ancient sites.
In 1811 he visited the Temple of Jupiter Panhellenius on the island of Aegina and later toured the Peloponnese in Southern Greece, stopping at Olympia and exploring the Temple of Apollo Epicurius at Bassae.
His excavations and studies resulted in several important discoveries, including a 102-foot frieze and a previously unknown Ionic order in Bassae, as well as the use of polychromy at Aegina. In 1812, following a tour of the Hellenistic sites in Asia Minor, Cockerell spent three months in Sicily measuring and making drawings of the temple of Jupiter Olympius at Agrigento These were later published in the supplementary volume of Stuart and Revett’s The Antiquities of Athens (1830).
Napoleon’s first abdication in April 1814, enabled Cockerell to travel to Rome, where his famous discoveries in Greece ensured that he was feted by the finest of Italian society. Intellectuals, ambassadors, envoys and artists flocked to see his drawings he was preparing for publication. In 1816, whilst Cockerell was living in Florence, he was persuaded by his father to undertake a design for a palace for the Duke of Wellington. His experiences over the last few years had made him an authority on classical architecture, but had done little to increase his practical expertise as an architect. So deflated was he by his failure to produce a satisfactory design, that he wrote to his father asking for permission to abandon architecture and to become an artist. This request was refused and in June 1817 Cockerell returned to London, yet his travels in Greece were to have an all embracing influence over his future architectural career,
I reflect on my travels in Greece which have opened my eyes enlarged & elevated my ideas…Greece has its merits which I feel now most powerfully. I see without prejudice I am unconfined by the chains of school, I feel independent & free & have studied in a new & venerable field which has taught me the way to observe objects
Cockerell firmly believed Grecian or classical architecture to be the source of all originality and although he venerated the Gothic past, he was disinclined to design Gothic buildings. Nor was he without criticism of the Greek revival movement, arguing that architects needed to ‘appropriate the Greek style, engraft it on our wants & recast it for our necessities’. Despite his refusal to allow his style to be governed by the day’s fashion, his practice in Mayfair quickly received commissions, one of the earliest being from the Literary and Philosophical Institution in Bristol.
Such societies developed during the mid-to-late eighteenth century promoting many of the aspects of the Enlightenment, including the pursuit of scientific knowledge and its practical application to improve social conditions and industrial production. The buildings in which the societies met included a library, museum and lecture theatre, a laboratory and even an observatory.
John Scandrett Harford
John Scandrett Harford of the Blaise Castle estate was one of the Bristol society’s leading lights. Born in 1787, the second son of a successful banker and manufacturer, Harford turned away from his family’s Quaker religion and became an Anglican in his early twenties. He was an ardent supporter of the Church Missionary Society and the Bible Society, helping to establish branches of both in Bristol in 1813. His friendship with many of the Clapham Sect, a group of Church of England social reformers, and in particular with William Wilberforce and Bishop Burgess’s close friend Hannah More, who was also a close friend of Bishop Thomas Burgess, involved him in moral campaigns such as the abolition of slavery.
An early enthusiasm for art and classical literature blossomed when Harford and his wife Louisa, the eldest daughter of the Bristol MP Richard Hart Davis, travelled to Italy in 1815, via Paris and a visit to the Louvre. Whereas Cockerell was stimulated by his travels in Greece, it was Italy that developed Harford’s passion for art into knowledge and transformed him from an enthusiast to a collector.
In 1819, three years after his return to England, Harford first heard of Bishop Burgess’s plans for a college in west Wales, when both he and Burgess were guests of Henry Ryder, Bishop of Gloucester. This introduction was the start of the Harford family’s enduring commitment to St David’s College, beginning with the donation of a piece of their land, Cae Castell (Castle Field) in Lampeter, as the site for the building. He also suggested Charles Cockerell, ‘an artist no less than an architect’ to design the college. The two men became good friends with Cockerell writing of Harford, ‘there are few who like Harford give their friendship & patronage at the same time’. They later collaborated on a book on Michelangelo, Illustrations Architectural and Pictorial of the Genius of Michael Angelo Buonarroti, which included a twelve-page essay written by Cockerell to accompany his illustrations reconstructing Michelangelo’s designs for St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.
Cockerell made the first of his many journeys to the remote town of Lampeter in December 1821, in the company of Harford and Bishop Burgess to view the chosen location. In a letter to his brother recounting the events, Harford describes how after breakfasting at the Bishop’s Palace they travelled to Lampeter in the Bishops coach and four, where they were greeted by the townspeople. Harford admitted to feeling ‘fearful lest I might seem to have over-coloured the advantages of the site’, yet both the Bishop and Cockerell were very impressed. That evening, following dinner at Harford’s residence, Falcondale House, Cockerell made his initial sketches, a bird’s-eye view and plan which included a cloister walk on all sides of the quadrangle. Bishop Burgess, who had seemingly approached other architects for designs which, according to Cockerell, he had rejected on the grounds that they resembled prisons or stables, was delighted with the results. The Bishop returned to Carmarthen the following day, but Harford and Cockerell returned to the town to re-examine the site, where, according to Harford, the architect showed his ‘usual zeal & ability’.
Harford, as a local landowner and a man with influential banking contacts, was greatly involved in the plans for the college. These ranged from assessing the suitability of the local stone for building, to arrangements for the laying of the foundation stone and college scholarships. He was also somewhat reluctantly persuaded, by Bishop Burgess to approach Oxford University for funding. This followed his success in procuring a £200 subscription towards the college from Cambridge University; the Master of Christ’s College was not only his friend but also the Bishop of Bristol. Nonetheless, he had grave misgivings about the outcome of the venture writing, ‘Hapless Adventurer! you are making a bold attempt without adequate means. You are not acquainted with a single Don, and have to complete your task in three of four days. Prepare, then, for disappointment’. However, to his delight Oxford matched Cambridge’s subscription and also conferred on him the degree of DCL (Doctor of Civil Law).
In 1825, when, upon his appointment as Bishop of Salisbury, Bishop Burgess left Wales, Harford assumed a greater responsibility in regard to both the building work and the general organisation of the institute.
It is likely that without his influence the college would not have been in a position to open on 1st March, 1827. Rice Rees, the newly appointed Professor of Welsh, arrived at the college on 26th February and found ‘everything in a very unfit state of preparation, not even a single plate bought for the hall not a cooking utensil for the kitchen, and yet about 20 students were expected to dine in College on the first of March’. On his arrival the following day Harford not only arranged for the kitchen items and bedding to be purchased, but ordered temporary doors and locks for the buttery. Three days after the opening of the college, on Sunday 4th March, Harford and Cockerell both attended a service in the College. Harford recalled ‘It seemed to me like the consecration of the building. There being no exciting ceremonial to interrupt or interfere with, spiritual recollection, I could mingle with the beautiful Church Service without distraction, thoughts and feelings of devout gratitude to God, for having thus far realised my hopes and wishes, with earnest prayers to him for a blessing on everything and person connected with the future progress of the Institution.’
Harford’s enthusiastic optimism for the future of St David’s College was still very evident when he wrote to his father-in-law on the 10th March to describe its opening, ‘I am happy to say that its prospects are most favourable’. However, although he was impressed with the respectability of the students, he did allow that he was surprised at their ‘extreme backwardness and ignorance’, having been present at nearly twenty of their entrance examinations. Although he blamed this on the quality of the grammar schools, he was confident that their time at the college would produce ‘most gratifying results.’ In a letter written to Bishop Burgess towards the end of the month, Harford commented on the college’s well provisioned library and the chapel which he described as being, ‘quite bijou and reflects the highest credit on Cockerell’s taste & skill’. He concluded that ‘In short the smile of Providence appears to have rested from the very first on this great undertaking.’
It was thus that a remote Welsh college was designed by a man who was later appointed architect to the Bank of England and elevated to the post of Professor of Architecture at the Royal Academy. Its greatest benefactor and supporter was a Fellow of the Royal Academy and a recognised philanthropist, biographer and art collector.