William Burges - Architectural Scholarship

Architectural Scholarship

Burges's limited output, and the general unpopularity of his work for much of the century following his death, meant that he was little studied. In a seventy-one page guide to Cardiff Castle, published in 1923, he is referenced only three times, and on each occasion his name is misspelt as "Burgess". Pevsner's 1951 volume on the exhibits at the Great Exhibition, High Victorian Design, makes no mention of him, despite his significant contributions to the Medieval Court. The last thirty years, however, have seen a significant revival of interest. His rehabilitation can be dated to 1981, the centenary of his death, when a major exhibition on his life and works was held, firstly at The National Museum of Wales, Cardiff, until October 1981, and then at the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, from November 1981 to January 1982. The catalogue to that exhibition, entitled The Strange Genius of William Burges, was edited by J. Mordaunt Crook. In the same year, the only full study of Burges, Crook's William Burges and the High Victorian Dream, was published. In the dedication to that volume, "In Mem. C.H.-R", Crook acknowledges his debt to Charles Handley-Read, perhaps the first serious scholar of Burges, whose notes on Burges Crook inherited following Handley-Read's suicide. A revised edition is to be published in February 2013. Other sources include articles on Cardiff Castle and Castle Coch in Mark Girouard's The Victorian Country House. The Buildings of England, The Buildings of Wales, The Buildings of Scotland and The Buildings of Ireland series provide comprehensive coverage of Burges's works by county, although in the last two instances they are not yet complete. The current (2012) curator of Cardiff Castle, Matthew Williams, has also written a number of Burgesian/Bute articles for the architectural press. The Cathedral of Saint Fin Barre at Cork, by David Lawrence and Ann Wilson, covers Burges's work in Ireland."