Courtyard (1), Chapel, Keble College, Oxford (1868-1882), by William Butterfield. Photograph 1977 and text by George P. Landow. [You may use this image without prior permission for any scholarly or educational purpose as long as you (1) credit the photographer and (2) link your document to this URL.]
Charles L. Eastlake comments in his 1872 history of the Gothic Revival that in Keble College, Butterfield
ventured on a more emphatic departure from local traditions of style than Oxford has yet seen, either in the decadence or the Revival of Gothic, applied to buildings of a similar class. Perhaps it is hardly fair to judge of this building so soon after its erection, when the horizontal bands of stone, of black brick, and of white brick, oppose each other so crudely that in looking at the various fronts — east, west, north, or south — one can see nothing but stripes. Yet, even when time has toned down the colour of the materials, they will be always predominant in the design, and if such an innovation be tolerated at Oxford — once the head-quarters of Mediaeval taste — we need not be surprised to find it imitated elsewhere. Indeed, this mode of surface decoration has been long practised in other works, though by no means with equal skill. In Keble College the main mass of the walls is executed in red brick, and the architect has cunningly broken up his black bands with white bricks and his white bands with black ones. In order to relieve each other from monotony and heaviness. The window dressings and mullions are of stone, and the general design- — except in the particulars mentioned — is distinguished by intense simplicity. [p. 262]
Related materials about Keble College, Oxford
- Chapel as seen from courtyard
- College Exterior
- Courtyard (2)
- Victorian Rogue Architecture
- John Keble and the Oxford Movement
References
Crook, J. Mordaunt . The Dilemma of Style: Architectural Ideas from the Picturesque to the Post-Modern. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987.
Thompson, Paul. William Butterfield, Victorian Architect. Cambridge: MIT Press, 1971.
Last modified 28 June 2005