   #copyright

Benjamin Mountfort

2007 Schools Wikipedia Selection. Related subjects: Architecture

   Benjamin Mountfort around 1875.
   Enlarge
   Benjamin Mountfort around 1875.

   Benjamin Woolfield Mountfort ( 13 March 1825– 15 March 1898) was an
   English emigrant to New Zealand, where he became one of that country's
   most prominent 19th century architects. He was instrumental in shaping
   the city of Christchurch. He was appointed the first official
   Provincial Architect of the developing province of Canterbury. Heavily
   influenced by the Anglo-Catholic philosophy behind early Victorian
   architecture he is credited with importing the Gothic revival style to
   New Zealand. His Gothic designs constructed in both wood and stone in
   the province are considered unique to New Zealand. Today he is
   considered the founding architect of the province of Canterbury.

Early life

   Mountfort was born in Birmingham, an industrial city in the Midlands of
   England, the son of perfume manufacturer Thomas Mountfort and his wife
   Susanna (née Woolfield). As a young adult he moved to London, where he
   studied architecture under the Anglo-Catholic architect Richard
   Cromwell Carpenter, whose medieval Gothic style of design was to have a
   lifelong influence on Mountfort. After completion of his training,
   Mountfort practised architecture in London. Following his 1849 marriage
   to Emily Elizabeth Newman, the couple emigrated in 1850 as some of the
   first settlers to the province of Canterbury, arriving on one of the
   famed "first four ships", the Charlotte-Jane. These first settlers,
   known as "The Pilgrims", have their names engraved on marble plaques in
   Cathedral Square, Christchurch, in front of the cathedral that
   Mountfort helped to design.

New Zealand

   Canterbury College, designed by Benjamin Mountfort in 1877, is
   dominated by a central clock tower, with a medieval style great hall to
   the right.
   Enlarge
   Canterbury College, designed by Benjamin Mountfort in 1877, is
   dominated by a central clock tower, with a medieval style great hall to
   the right.
   Canterbury College, The Great Hall, pictured to the right of
   illustration above.
   Enlarge
   Canterbury College, The Great Hall, pictured to the right of
   illustration above.

   In 1850 New Zealand was a new country. The British government actively
   encouraged emigration to the colonies, and Mountfort arrived in
   Canterbury full of ambition and drive to begin designing in the new
   colony. With him and his wife from England came also his brother
   Charles, his sister Susannah, and Charles' wife, all five of them aged
   between 21 and 26. Life in New Zealand at first was hard and
   disappointing: Mountfort found that there was little call for
   architects. Christchurch was little more than a large village of basic
   wooden huts on a windswept plain. The new emigré's architectural life
   in New Zealand had a disastrous beginning. His first commission in New
   Zealand was the Church of the Most Holy Trinity in Lyttelton, which
   collapsed in high winds shortly after completion. This calamity was
   attributed to the use of unseasoned wood and his lack of knowledge of
   the local building materials. Whatever the cause, the result was a
   crushing blow to his reputation. A local newspaper called him:

   … a half-educated architect whose buildings… have given anything but
   satisfaction, he being evidently deficient in all knowledge of the
   principles of construction, though a clever draughtsman and a man of
   some taste.^

   Consequently, Mountfort left architecture and ran a bookshop while
   giving drawing lessons until 1857. It was during this period in the
   architectural wilderness that he developed a lifelong interest in
   photography and supplemented his meagre income by taking photographic
   portraits of his neighbours. Mountfort was a Freemason and an early
   member of the Lodge of Unanimity, and the only building he designed
   during this period of his life, in 1851, was its lodge. This was the
   first Masonic lodge in the South Island.

Return to architecture

   In 1857 he returned to architecture and entered into a business
   partnership with his sister Susannah's new husband, Isaac Luck.
   Christchurch, which was given city status in July 1856 and was the
   administrative capital of the province of Canterbury, was heavily
   developed during this period. The rapid development in the new city
   created a large scope for Mountfort and his new partner. In 1858 they
   received the commission to design the new Canterbury Provincial Council
   Buildings, a stone building today regarded as one of Mountfort's most
   important works. The building's planning stage began in 1861, when the
   Provincial Council had grown to include 35 members and consequently the
   former wooden chamber was felt to be too small.

   The new grandiose plans for the stone building included not only the
   necessary offices for the execution of council business but also dining
   rooms and recreational facilities. From the exterior, the building
   appears austere, as was much of Mountfort's early work: a central tower
   dominates two flanking gabled wings in the Gothic revival style.
   However the interior was a riot of colour and medievalism as perceived
   through Victorian eyes; it included stained glass windows, and a large
   double-faced clock, thought to be one of only five around the globe.
   The chamber is decorated in a rich, almost Ruskinesque style, with
   carvings by a local sculptor William Brassington. Included in the
   carvings are representations of indigenous New Zealand species.

   This high-profile commission may seem surprising, bearing in mind
   Mountfort's history of design in New Zealand. However, the smaller
   buildings he and Luck had erected the previous year had impressed the
   city administrators and there was a dearth of available architects. The
   resultant acclaim of the building's architecture marked the beginning
   of Mountfort's successful career.

Mountfort's Gothic architecture

   St Augustine's Church in Waimate. Mountfort's Gothic in wood, designed
   in 1872, has the campanile of a medieval cathedral in miniature,
   neighboured by the roof of a chateau, entered by the lych gate of an
   English parish church, all successfully harmonised into a New Zealand
   landscape.
   Enlarge
   St Augustine's Church in Waimate. Mountfort's Gothic in wood, designed
   in 1872, has the campanile of a medieval cathedral in miniature,
   neighboured by the roof of a chateau, entered by the lych gate of an
   English parish church, all successfully harmonised into a New Zealand
   landscape.

   The Gothic revival style of architecture began to gain in popularity
   from the late 18th century as a romantic backlash against the more
   classical and formal styles which had predominated the previous two
   centuries. At the age of 16, Mountfort acquired two books written by
   the Gothic revivalist Augustus Pugin: The True Principles of Christian
   or Pointed Architecture and An Apology for the Revival of Christian
   Architecture. From this time onwards, Mountfort was a disciple of
   Pugin's strong Anglo-Catholic architectural values. These values were
   further cemented in 1846, at the age of 21, Mountfort became a pupil of
   Richard Cromwell Carpenter.

   Carpenter was, like Mountfort, a devout Anglo-Catholic and subscribed
   to the theories of Tractarianism, and thus to the Oxford and Cambridge
   Movements. These conservative theological movements taught that true
   spirituality and concentration in prayer was influenced by the physical
   surroundings, and that the medieval church had been more spiritual than
   that of the early 19th century. As a result of this theology, medieval
   architecture was declared to be of greater spiritual value than the
   classical Palladian-based styles of the 18^th and early 19^th
   centuries. Augustus Pugin even pronounced that medieval architecture
   was the only form suitable for a church and that Palladianism was
   almost heretical. Such theory was not confined to architects, and
   continued well into the 20th century. This school of thought led
   intellectuals such as the English poet Ezra Pound, author of The
   Cantos, to prefer Romanesque buildings to Baroque on the grounds that
   the latter represented an abandonment of the world of intellectual
   clarity and light for a set of values that centred around hell and the
   increasing dominance of society by bankers, a breed to be despised.

   Whatever the philosophy behind the Gothic revival, in London the
   19th-century rulers of the British Empire felt that Gothic architecture
   was suitable for the colonies because of its then strong Anglican
   connotations, representing hard work, morality and conversion of native
   peoples. The irony of this was that many of Mountfort's churches were
   for Roman Catholics, as so many of the new immigrants were of Irish
   origin. To the many middle-class English empire builders, Gothic
   represented a nostalgic reminder of the parishes left behind in Britain
   with their true medieval architecture; these were the patrons who chose
   the architects and designs.

   Mountfort's early Gothic work in New Zealand was of the more severe
   Anglican variety as practised by Carpenter, with tall lancet windows
   and many gables. As his career progressed, and he had proved himself to
   the employing authorities, his designs developed into a more European
   form, with towers, turrets and high ornamental roof lines in the French
   manner, a style which was in no way peculiar to Mountfort but was
   endorsed by such architects as Alfred Waterhouse in Britain. On the
   other hand, the French chateaux style was always more popular in the
   colonies than in Britain, where such monumental buildings as the
   Natural History Museum and St Pancras Station were subject to popular
   criticism. In the United States, however, it was adopted with huge
   enthusiasm, with families such as the Vanderbilts lining 5th Avenue in
   New York City with many Gothic chateaux and palaces.

   Mountfort's skill as an architect lay in adapting these flamboyant
   styles to suit the limited materials available in New Zealand. While
   wooden churches are plentiful in certain parts of the USA, they are
   generally of a simple classic design, whereas Mountfort's wooden
   churches in New Zealand are as much ornate Gothic fantasies as those he
   designed in stone. Perhaps the flamboyance of his work can be explained
   in a statement of principles he and his partner Luck wrote when bidding
   to win the commission to design Government House, Auckland in 1857:

   ...Accordingly, we see in Nature's buildings, the mountains and hills;
   not regularity of outline but diversity; buttresses, walls and turrets
   as unlike each other as possible, yet producing a graduation of effect
   not to be approached by any work, moulded to regularity of outline. The
   simple study of an oak or an elm tree would suffice to confute the
   regularity theory.^ 2

   This seems to be the principle of design that Mountfort practised
   throughout his life.

Provincial Architect

   The construction of Christchurch Cathedral, designed by George Gilbert
   Scott, was supervised by Benjamin Mountfort who designed the spire.
   Enlarge
   The construction of Christchurch Cathedral, designed by George Gilbert
   Scott, was supervised by Benjamin Mountfort who designed the spire.
   The Christ Church was completed in 1904. The building remains almost
   unaltered.
   Enlarge
   The Christ Church was completed in 1904. The building remains almost
   unaltered.

   As the "Provincial Architect" — a newly created position to which
   Mountfort was appointed in 1864 — Mountfort designed a wooden church
   for the Roman Catholic community of the city of Christchurch. This
   wooden erection was subsequently enlarged several times until it was
   renamed a cathedral. It was eventually replaced in 1901 by the
   Cathedral of the Blessed Sacrament, a more permanent stone building by
   the architect Frank Petre. Mountfort often worked in wood, a material
   he in no way regarded as an impediment to the Gothic style. It is in
   this way that many of his buildings have given New Zealand its unique
   Gothic style. Between 1869 and 1882 he designed the Canterbury Museum
   and subsequently Canterbury College and its clock tower in 1877.

   Construction on the buildings for the Canterbury College, which later
   became the University of Canterbury, began with the construction of the
   clock tower block. This edifice, which opened in 1877, was the first
   purpose built university in New Zealand. The College was completed in
   two subsequent stages in Mountfort's usual Gothic style. The completed
   complex was very much, as intended, an architectural rival to the
   expansions of the Oxbridge Colleges simultaneously being built in
   England. Built around stone courtyards, the high Victorian collegiate
   design is apparent. Gothic motifs are evident in every facade,
   including the diagonally rising great staircase window inspired by the
   medieval chateau at Blois. The completed composition of Canterbury
   College is very reminiscent of Pugin's convent of "Our Lady of Mercy"
   in Mountfort's home town of Birmingham, completed circa 1843, a design
   that Mountfort would probably have been familiar with as a boy. It is
   through the College buildings, and Mountfort's other works, that
   Canterbury is unique in New Zealand for its many civic and public
   buildings in the Gothic style.

   George Gilbert Scott, the architect of Christchurch Cathedral, and an
   empathiser of Mountfort's teacher and mentor Carpenter, wished
   Mountfort to be the clerk of works and supervising architect of the new
   cathedral project. This proposal was originally vetoed by the Cathedral
   Commission. Nevertheless, following delays in the building work
   attributed to financial problems, the position of supervising architect
   was finally given to Mountfort in 1873. Mountfort was responsible for
   several alterations to the absentee main architect's design, most
   obviously the tower and the west porch. He also designed the font, the
   Harper Memorial, and the north porch. The cathedral was however not
   finally completed until 1904, six years after Mountfort's death. The
   cathedral is very much in the European decorated Gothic style with an
   attached campanile tower beside the body of the cathedral, rather than
   towering directly above it in the more English tradition. In 1872
   Mountfort became a founding member of the Canterbury Association of
   Architects, a body which was responsible for all subsequent development
   of the new city. Mountfort was now at the pinnacle of his career.
   Canterbury Museum, designed by Benjamin Mountfort. Completed in 1882,
   in the style of a French chateau
   Enlarge
   Canterbury Museum, designed by Benjamin Mountfort. Completed in 1882,
   in the style of a French chateau

   By the 1880s, Mountfort was hailed as New Zealand's premier
   ecclesiastical architect, with over forty churches to his credit. In
   1888, he designed St John's Cathedral in Napier. This brick
   construction was demolished in the disastrous 1931 earthquake that
   destroyed much of Napier. Between 1886 and 1897, Mountfort worked on
   one of his largest churches, the wooden St Mary's, the cathedral church
   of Auckland. Covering 9000 square feet (800 m²), St Mary's is the
   largest wooden Gothic church in the world. The custodians of this
   white-painted many-gabled church today claim it to be one of the most
   beautiful buildings in New Zealand. In 1982 the entire church, complete
   with its stained glass windows, was transported to a new site, across
   the road from its former position where a new cathedral was to be
   built. St Mary's church was consecrated in 1898, one of Mountfort's
   final grand works.

   Outside of his career, Mountfort was keenly interested in the arts and
   a talented artist, although his artistic work appears to have been
   confined to art pertaining to architecture, his first love. He was a
   devout member of the Church of England and a member of many Anglican
   church councils and diocese committees. Mountfort's later years were
   blighted by professional jealousies, as his position as the province's
   first architect was assailed by new and younger men influenced by new
   orders of architecture. Benjamin Mountfort died in 1898, aged 73. He
   was buried in the cemetery of Holy Trinity, Avonside, the church which
   he had extended in 1876.

Evaluation of Mountfort's work

   Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings. One of Mountfort's earliest
   New Zealand Gothic buildings, in the style he made his trademark
   Enlarge
   Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings. One of Mountfort's earliest
   New Zealand Gothic buildings, in the style he made his trademark

   Evaluating Mountfort's works today, one has to avoid judging them
   against a background of similar designs in Europe. In the 1860s, New
   Zealand was a developing country, where materials and resources freely
   available in Europe were conspicuous by their absence. When available
   they were often of inferior quality, as Mountfort discovered with the
   unseasoned wood in his first disastrous project. His first buildings in
   his new homeland were often too tall, or steeply pitched, failing to
   take account of the non-European climate and landscape. However, he
   soon adapted, and developed his skill in working with crude and
   unrefined materials.

   Christchurch and its surrounding areas are unique in New Zealand for
   their particular style of Gothic architecture, something that can be
   directly attributed to Benjamin Mountfort. While Mountfort did accept
   small private domestic commissions, he is today better known for the
   designs executed for public, civic bodies, and the church. His
   monumental Gothic stone civic buildings in Christchurch, which would
   not be out of place in Oxford or Cambridge, are an amazing achievement
   over adversity of materials. His hallmark wooden Gothic churches today
   epitomise the 19th-century province of Canterbury. They are accepted,
   and indeed appear as part of the landscape. In this way, Benjamin
   Mountfort's achievement was to make his favoured style of architecture
   synonymous with the identity of the province of Canterbury. Following
   his death, one of his seven children, Cyril, continued to work in his
   father's Gothic style well into the 20th century. Cyril Mountfort was
   responsible for the church of "St. Luke's in the City" which was an
   unexecuted design of his father's. In this way, and through the daily
   public use of his many buildings, Mountfort's legacy lives on. He ranks
   today with his contemporary R A Lawson as one of New Zealand's greatest
   19th century architects.

Buildings by Benjamin Mountfort

     * Most Holy Trinity in Lyttelton, 1851 (demolished)
     * Canterbury Provincial Council Buildings, 1858-1865:
     * Christchurch Cathedral, begun 1863:
     * Canterbury Museum, 1869-1882:
     * St. Augustine's Church, Waimate 1872:
     * Avonside Church Chancel, 1876:
     * St Paul's Church, Papanui, 1877
     * Canterbury College, Christchurch, 1882:
     * Church of the Good Shepherd, Phillipstown,1884
     * St Mary's Church, Auckland, begun 1886: .
     * St John's Cathedral, Napier, 1888

   Retrieved from " http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benjamin_Mountfort"
   This reference article is mainly selected from the English Wikipedia
   with only minor checks and changes (see www.wikipedia.org for details
   of authors and sources) and is available under the GNU Free
   Documentation License. See also our Disclaimer.
