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‘But why?’, one might ask. Jenny Uglow provides the answer in this thoroughly researched book which depicts Sarah Losh as a ‘Charlotte Brontë of wood and stone’, a product of the Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution and picturesque aesthetics. We skip effortlessly between agricultural improvement in Cumberland, alkali production in Newcastle, church politics in Carlisle and the Reform Bill. Losh emerges as that very British type, a ‘conservative radical’. Wreay is her monument.
She was the eldest child of John Losh, a local landowner and successful industrialist seated at Woodside (now demolished) near Wreay. Her elder brother died young. Her younger brother was ‘backward’ and incapable, so on her parents’ death she became ‘squire’ of Wreay and heir to an industrial fortune from collieries, iron works and alkali soda production in Newcastle. She was well-educated, thanks to good tutoring from local clergymen as well as father and uncles, and was fluent in modern languages and Greek and Latin, well-travelled and well-read.
Her family were radicals, friends of Wordsworth and Coleridge and Foxite Whig politicians like the 11th Duke of Norfolk at Greystoke. From them she inherited a zest for ‘progress’: industrial development, social and political reform, Tractarian religion, anti-slavery, combined with a love of the past inspired by the Roman remains, monastic ruins, Saxon crosses and medieval pele towers of her native district. This was the inspiration for her activities as patron and architect. And indeed as a craftsman: she carved the alabaster font and lotus leaf candlesticks in her new church herself.
The immediate stimulus for her architectural activity was grief, caused by the death of her uncle and close ally, James Losh, in 1833 and her beloved only sister Katharine (with whom she had travelled to Italy) in 1835. ‘Sarah burst into years of creativity, as if trying to save something she had lost.’ She threw herself into the management of her estate and business interests and she ‘woke up and began to build’. She sought solace from her loneliness in architecture.
She spurned Puginian Gothic. She wanted something purer, simpler and more ‘rustic’, a favourite word of hers. She chose the style of the early-Christian Church in Italy which had analogies with the local Romanesque structures she admired. Above all, she was inspired by Thomas Hope’s Historical Essay on Architecture, post-humously published by Hope’s son in 1835. Her new church was to be ‘Lombardic’ (Hope’s phrase), then a rare and original choice.
She had no trouble in getting the village and its ruling council of ‘Twelve Men’ to agree. The minutes read: ‘Resolved unanimously that the kind proposal made by Miss Losh to rebuild the chapel at Wreay be accepted.’ Permission from the church authorities to ‘repair’ the old chapel was also forthcoming, though the bishop was initially taken aback by the plans. He gave way when she made it clear that she was going to pay for it herself (over £1,000). Without the cathedral authorities fully realising, she got them all to agree to do exactly what she wanted. An unusually fine summer in 1841 enabled the shell to rise rapidly, and by the time the snows of 1842 arrived the workmen were able to concentrate on the interior. The whole is a masterpiece of artisan craftsmanship as well as Sarah’s learning and sophisticated artistic tastes.
It is a riveting story, and Jenny Uglow makes the most of it, exploring the intellectual and social background to Losh’s unusual masterpiece. As is to be expected from the author of The Lunar Men (2002), she is especially good on the economic, industrial, literary and philosophical aspects. She fully explains the impetus for one of the most startling small masterpieces of 19th-century architecture in Britain, as well as bringing to life the admirable Miss Losh of Wreay.
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