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Medland and Henry
Taylor: Manchester architects
By Fiona Martin
1. The two architect brothers were born in Stanford Rivers, Essex, the
sons of Isaac Taylor and Elizabeth Medland. In choosing to
practise architecture they followed the family vocation of the
Medlands, a family of carpenters, surveyors and architects who
had lived in south London for several generations.
2. There were close links between the Taylor and Medland families. When
Elizabeth's mother (nee Sarah Clark) died in the 1810s, Jane Taylor
became a sort of surrogate mother to the children: Sarah, Elizabeth,
Phoebe, James and John. Elizabeth’s widowed father James proposed
marriage to Jane in 1821 and was initially accepted, but Jane quickly
broke the engagement on account of her deteriorating health (to the
great sadness of both parties) but James in fact predeceased her, in
June 1823.
3. The younger of the two brothers, Henry Medland Taylor (1837 -1916),
usually just called Henry, began their Manchester connection when he
trained at Owen’s College, which soon afterwards became Manchester
University. It was founded in 1851 when Henry was 14, so he must have
been one of the early students there.
4. His older brother, James Medland Taylor (1834 -1909), usually called
just Medland, began his training in Leatherhead and then was a pupil in
the architect’s firm of his uncle, James Medland (after whom he was
named) in Gloucester. James Medland was the brother of Elizabeth,
mother of Henry
and Medland. Both were born in Newington, then a quite rural
part of Surrey, just south of the Thames.
5. The first James Medland (1739–1820) was, according to his will, a
“carpenter and gentleman”. His son, James Medland II (1769–1823) was
a surveyor, “of St Mary Newington” but his probate inventory describes
him as an architect “late of Union Place, New Kent Road”. James Medland
III (1808–94) with whom James Medland Taylor trained in Gloucester
was the grandson of James Medland I. He trained with James Piggott
Pritchett, a York-based architect and Congregational deacon who had
been apprenticed to James Medland I and who also later trained James
Medland Taylor’s cousin, Isaac Charles Gilbert of Nottingham
(1822–1885), usually called just Charles, a son of Ann Gilbert, the
elder sister of Medland and Henry’s father Isaac Taylor. Other
architects in the family included James Medland III’s sons John Medland
(c1840–1913) and Matthew Henry Medland (1838–c1910), and John
Medland Clark (1813– 1849), architect of the Old Custom House, Key
Street, Ipswich, another grandson of James Medland I.
6. A history of Gloucester says: “The leading local architects
before 1850 were Thomas Fulljames, the county surveyor, and Samuel
Whitfield Daukes. Daukes, a pupil of the York architect J.P.
Pritchett, had an office in Gloucester by 1834 and obtained commissions
for new commercial buildings. On his departure in the late 1840s his
associate James Medland, another of Pritchett's pupils, continued the
practice, at first with J.R. Hamilton who had been Daukes's partner
from 1841. By the later 1840s Fulljames, also the diocesan surveyor,
had taken into partnership his pupil F. S. Waller. Another local
architect of the period was John Jacques.”
7. The census for 1851 shows that Medland was staying with his uncle’s
family in Clarence Street, Gloucester; he was 16 or 17 at the time.
Another person living there was his uncle’s other pupil, James Sewell,
who was a couple of years older. The firm, as well as being very
successful
in and around Gloucester, also specialised in designing the layout and
buildings in cemeteries being built to serve rapidly expanding cities
such as Birmingham, Plymouth and Leicester. James Medland rose to
become County Surveyor by 1880. There is also some evidence that he was
the architect of the Independent Congregational chapel in Ongar, the
foundation stone of which was laid, on April 24, 1833, by the (very)
young Isaac Taylor IV and to which a Sunday School designed by Isaac
Charles Gilbert was added in 1865.
8. Medland and Henry Taylor set up their architecture firm at 2 St
Anne’s Churchyard, Manchester, not far from Owen’s College. The two
brothers were very busy during the second half of the 19th century, and
Medland was active into the 20th. Their main activity, either
individually or together as a team, was building Anglican churches for
the many growing communities in what is now known as Greater
Manchester, and also in the neighbouring counties of Lancashire,
Derbyshire and Cheshire. For example, Salford grew very quickly.
“The
main population growth of Salford took place towards the middle of 19th
century. In 1821 there were 25,700 inhabitants and by 1841 probably
40,000. If steps had not been taken by Stowell (the local vicar) and
others to divide the Parish of Christ Church it would have had about
60,000 folk living within its borders by 1880”.
And of course this was
a time when almost everyone went to church, so buildings were urgently
needed. In Saughall in Cheshire the Taylors built a church with “a
total of 358 seats in the church for a village of 800 people”.
Another
important factor, for communities without a wealthy benefactor, was
cost, especially in a village that size, where the church’s total
estimated cost came to £1288. This is probably why many of the
churches are made of brick rather than stone. Even with these basic
materials, several of the churches have been considered of high enough
quality to be given Listed Building status. One example is St Peter’s
Church in St Helen’s, built in 1864-5 by Medland Taylor, although the
local authority description of local listed buildings does not make it
sound very beautiful: “Rubble walls, a mixture of red and yellow
sandstone and industrial waste, with red and yellow stone dressings;
slate roof”. In Denton there are five Medland Taylor buildings: two
churches, two rectories, and the chancel and transepts to the 16th
century church of St Lawrence, also known as Denton chapel.
Among the many churches they built were: St John’s, Manchester; St
Clement’s, Longsight; St Agnes’, Longsight; St Luke’s, Manchester;
Stowell Memorial Church, Regent Road, Manchester; St Thomas’, Heaton
Chapel; Church of the Ascension, Broughton; the enlargement of St
Mary’s, Droylsden; St Michael's, Lavender Street, Hulme; All Saints’,
Cheadle Hulme; St Anne’s, Denton; St Elizabeth of Hungary, Aspull near
Wigan; St Peter’s, St Helens; Holy Trinity Church, Gee Cross,
Stockport; St Chad’s, Romiley, Stockport; St John the Evangelist,
Bacup; Saint Edmund’s, Falinge, Rochdale; St Catherine’s, Todmorden
Road, Burnley; St George’s, Pendleton; St James’s, Buxton; St Mary the
Virgin, Haughton Green; St Ann's Haughton (church and rectory) and St
Andrew’s, Hadfield, Derbyshire.
9. The University of Wales at Bangor has
an archive of their work, Medland and Taylor Architects Church
Photographs and Drawings [GB 0222 BMSS MED]. They also designed public
buildings paid for by local philanthropic industrialists such as the
Astley Cheetham Public Library, in Stalybridge and the Blair Hospital,
a convalescent home in Egerton. The Library, built by J.F. Cheetham,
has
been a lasting success.
“In 1897 his wife (Mrs Astley
Cheetham) laid
the foundation stone of a new public library for Stalybridge which was
built at his expense and opened in 1901. Cheetham's commitment to this
project was shown in the detailed planning he gave to it. He personally
inspected many libraries in London and tried to avoid their mistakes,
and worked in close collaboration with his chosen architect, Medland
Taylor. The site was chosen with care, as being central but not too
noisy. Trinity Street was widened to accommodate the building. The
result was a library that has served Stalybridge for over a century and
remains one of Tameside's finest buildings. His generosity was
recognised when he was made a Freeman of the Borough of Stalybridge in
1897.”
10. Their best-known work, according to David Garrard (Historic
Churches Adviser to the Victorian Society) “is probably the
extraordinary free-form brick church of St Anne at Denton (grade II*,
1881); this forms the nucleus of the most important cluster of their
buildings still surviving, comprising St Anne’s with its adjoining
lych-gate (grade II) and rectory (grade II*), the chancel and transepts
added in 1872 to the 16th-century timber-framed church of St Laurence,
Denton (grade II*), and – in the same material but with a bizarre
octagonal brick belfry tower resembling a minaret – the church of St
Mary at nearby Haughton Green (grade II, 1876). The Old Rectory, built
to house the incumbent at the latter church, forms an important element
in this group, and shares many of its common stylistic features
including the use of brown and red brickwork, timber-framing,
projecting gables, canted bays and corbelling.”
11. Medland Taylor seems to have been the one with drive and energy. He
was president of the Manchester Society of Architects in 1880-81. One
guide claims that he “canvassed” for the job of building All Saints’
Church in Rochdale in about 1860 “as soon as it was announced”. His
obituary in The Builder (June
12, 1909) drew attention to work at
Chetham College, at Sacred Trinity Schools (Salford), and the Seamen’s
Institute and Chapel (near Manchester docks) as well as some of the
work mentioned above. Henry was a more scholarly, gentle person. At a
guess, the partnership between the brothers may not always have been
harmonious, but while it lasted it was certainly productive. Their firm
evolved eventually into the present-day firm of Taylor Wood.
12. Nowadays, the brothers’ work gets mixed reviews. The Lancashire
volume of Pevsner’s Guide
describes one church, St Agnes in
Longsight as “a charming little building, with typical Taylor
details, Gothic, low and gabled, built of polychrome brick”. This
church was designed by both Henry and Medland Taylor (in the 1880’s).
Medland
Taylor was certainly the better known of the two. Although he is still
described as a leading Victorian architect, and “prolific and
original”, his style has rather fallen out of fashion. The Blair
Hospital is (according to the Pevsner
Guide) “as odd as any of his
churches”, being “in an unusual mix of stone and brick in equal
quantities, either striped or chequered. The brick is harshly red.” But
most of the churches (and especially the library) have stood the test
of time as the places that they were designed to be. [Hartwell,
Manchester (Pevsner Architectural Guides) 2001 also lists many
of their
other churches]. Henry and Medland are regarded by David Garrard as
“two of the most
important regional architects working in Manchester in the
mid-Victorian period.”
13. Henry seems to have effectively taken early retirement from the
firm (perhaps because of ill health) to devote himself to what really
interested him, architectural history. He became an FSA and wrote a
number of well received books, such as The Ancient Crosses and Holy
Wells of Lancashire, Old
Halls in Lancashire and Cheshire and Ightham Mote. Isaac Taylor,
Medland’s son (1871–1948) probably took
Henry’s place. Henry and his family later moved from Manchester to
Tunbridge Wells and Southport, while Medland stayed in Rusholme at his
house called Stanford (after their native village in Essex) at 147
Dickenson
Road.
12. The extended Taylor family are also in Henry’s debt for all his
work on family history and family trees, which in those days was much
harder and more time-consuming than it is now.
April 2009
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