This is a slightly revised version of an article written for Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens. The place is well worth a visit.
Batty Langley's name is not easily forgotten once heard. If he obtained fame at all though it must surely be because of a book, written in 1741 entitled Ancient Architecture Restored and Improved by a Great Variety of Grand and Usefull Designs, Entirely New in the Gothick Mode. This book was later re-issued in 1742 with the pompous title of Gothic Architecture, Improved by Rules and Proportions in Many Grand Designs. The debate as to whether or not ancient Gothic architecture was actually built according to rules and proportions is best left for another time. Langley himself was also a great promoter of a systematised style of architecture that was all the rage in the eighteenth century Europe, called Palladian Architecture.
Palladian architecture is derived from the designs of the Venetian architect Andrea Palladio (1508–1580). The term Palladian normally refers to buildings in a style inspired by Palladio's own work. That which is recognised as Palladian architecture today is a 17th to 18th Century evolution of Palladio's original concepts. Palladio's work was strongly based on the symmetry, perspective and values of formal classical temple architecture of the Ancient Greeks and Romans. From the 17th century onwards Palladio's interpretation of these classical forms were adapted as Palladianism. This style continued to develop throughout 18th century; A typical example of an English house in the Palladian style is Stourhead House.
Both Palladian architecture and the designs of Batty Langley held great influential sway in America in the eighteenth century, but more about that anon.
Langley’s architectural aesthetic was based on what was known as the Five Orders of Architecture. The Order of a classical building is akin to the mode or key of classical music, or the Latin grammar of rhetoric within classical literature or speech. The Five Orders were established in architecture rather like the intervals of music, raising certain expectations in an audience attuned to its language. Three ancient orders of architecture—the Doric, Ionic, and Corinthian—originated in Greece. To these the Romans added Tuscan (which they made simpler than Doric), and Composite (which was more ornamental than the Corinthian). The orders themselves are illustrated below:
Encyclopedie:
Classical Orders, engraving from the Encyclopédie vol. 18. - Public
domain
More information on Palladianism and the Orders of Architecture is available from Wikipedia. Click on the underlined words to read the articles.
Batty and his brother Thomas (who mainly dealt with the engraved illustrated plates) published around 20 books in their career. Only one book dealt with Gothic, while the remaining books were devoted to instructions on how to deal with Classical Design using the elements of building technology that were available at the time.
These books were extremely well written and researched, and enjoyed an enormous contemporary circulation. The unusual thing was that (on the whole) Langley books were bought and read by tradesmen (carpenters, masons, joiners, plasterers and so on), rather than the gentry or nobility. Langley books were also sophisticated architectural textbooks for the artisan class, literate craftsmen, or for apprentices with an eye on preferment. The influential nature of the books can be stated with some confidence; Looking at the subscription list for a Langley book published in 1733 reveals nearly 300 hundred subscribers, almost all of them being builders and craftsman in London and the provinces.
Batty Langley was born in 1696 in Twickenham. He was the son of a jobbing gardener, and bore the name of David Batty, a patron of his father's. Twickenham was then a village of suburban villas within easy reach of London by a pleasant water journey on the Thames. Whilst there he inherited some of his father's clients, an early one being Thomas Vernon of Twickenham Park. From Twickenham Langley moved to Parliament Stairs in Westminster, and in 1742 moved to Meard Street, Soho.
Meard Street was very much a craftsman's area at that time, and this was the location where the Langley's produced the thousands of engraved plates for their books. Thomas Langley also ran night classes for apprentices and other tradesmen there. The subjects ranged from architecture, drawing, geometry, and mensuration (the calculation of the total amount of materials required to construct a building). This poorly paid occupation demonstrates the Langley's enthusiasm for education of the artisan classes. In 1727 (whilst he was still at Twickenham) Batty Langley complained that the young were 'ignorant of proportion'. He also warned parents who were thinking of binding their sons as apprentice builders, to have a covenant entered in the articles to ensure that they received education in the five orders of architecture.
English architecture was riding high with the Palliadian fashion, and the Langley's saw it as their job to ensure that all builders were thoroughly competent in the style in order to keep Britain ahead. In the 1730s there were an astounding number of buildings following this trend all over the country.
The first of the Langley books was Practical Geometry Applied to the Useful Arts of Building, Surveying, Gardening, and Mensuration (1726). The style of this book was low key, presenting the subject matter as nothing more than a pleasant intellectual study. This was not a successful book in terms of sales, and the next book The Builder's Chestbook, or a Complete Key to the Five Orders in Architecture (1727) did much better. This was probably because the style of this book was much more didactic, and could be used as a practical resource for those actually involved in building. The book consisted of eleven sections in the form of a dialogue between master and pupil. The first seven sections was a catechism on the Five Orders, with the following three sections dealing with building materials, and the final (very long) section covered mensuration.
In 1728 Langley published the book New principles of gardening: or The laying out and planting parterres, groves, wildernesses, labyrinths, avenues, parks, & c. after a more grand and rural manner, than has been done before; with experimental directions for raising the several kinds of fruit-trees, forest-trees, evergreens and flowering shrubs with which gardens are adorned. To which is added, the various names, descriptions, temperatures, medicinal virtues, uses and cultivation of several roots, pulse, herbs, & c. of the kitchen and physick gardens, that are absolutely necessary for the service of families in general. (They certainly could come up with titles in those days!)
Although Batty Langley was the son of a landscape gardener, this book is in many ways out of step with the main sequence of his work. It may have been an attempt by the Langley's to obtain patronage of the 'well-to-do'. If this was the idea it signally failed in its purpose. The Langley's were never fated to get that sort of patronage, as the wealthier classes found them somewhat pushy and unrefined.
Here are some plates from the book:
Langley
- New Priciples of Gardening - Public Domain
The Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust, at Castle Bromwich, Solihull has reconstructed an authentic kitchen garden using New
principles of gardening as a guide. Below is a picture taken in February 2012. The design
of the layout is easier to see without the plants.
Photograph
© Graham High. Licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons
Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 license.
In
1734 -1736 Batty Langley published his biggest work (though not his
most popular) in the form of a two-volume folio set Ancient
Masonry. It was more about freemasonry than masonry as we
understand it today. This encyclopaedic work has over 500 plates, all
illustrated by the Langley's. The workload is jaw-dropping in its
complexity and thoroughness. In the two volumes were all the
technical and technological data that a builder was ever likely
to need in order to practise his trade. There are even plates (one of
which is shown below) that geometrically sets out every letter of the
alphabet from A to Z.
In
1740, The Langley's published their most successful work The
City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs, or, The
Art of Drawing and Working the Ornamental Parts of Architecture. Here
we have the Five Orders again, only this time in the form of a
pattern book, showing cornices, windows, niches, chimney pieces,
pulpits, altarpieces, and other items. The craftsman could lift out
of it highly competent designs in the style of Inigo Jones, Kent, or
Gibbs. There are hundreds of surviving chimney pieces still all over
the country that owe their origins to this book, which ran
into two editions.
In 1741, The Builder's Jewel or Youth's Instructor and Workman's Remembrancer was published. Only 5 by 4 inches in size, it could easily fit snugly into a 18th Century pocket. It is illustrated with some beautifully inscribed plates.
In 1741, The Builder's Jewel or Youth's Instructor and Workman's Remembrancer was published. Only 5 by 4 inches in size, it could easily fit snugly into a 18th Century pocket. It is illustrated with some beautifully inscribed plates.
Langley
- Builder's Jewel - Public Domain
In
1742 The Langley's published the second edition of Gothic
Architecture Improved book as mentioned in the opening of this
article. Nothing is mentioned at all about Gothic in any of the
Langley's previous works, but now Batty launches himself full-on into
the head stream of Gothic design. He provides a complete system of
Gothic-inspired geometry. The problem with it is that the system he
employs is largely ad-hoc, and is used in an attempt to
fuse Gothic Design together with the Five Orders.
Langley
- Gothic Architecture - Public Domain
This
book thoroughly irritated Horace Walpole, whose Gothick villa at
Twickenham, Strawberry Hill, gave impetus to the stirrings of the
Gothic Revival:
'All
that his books achieved, has been to teach carpenters to massacre
that venerable species, and to give occasion to those who know
nothing of the matter, and who mistake his clumsy efforts for real
imitations, to censure the productions of our ancestors, whose bold
and beautiful fabrics Sir Christopher Wren viewed and reviewed with
astonishment, and never mentioned without esteem'.
(Walpole, Anecdotes of Painting, 1798, p 484)
Batty
Langley's attempts at Gothic were also very soon discredited by
serious students of the style; nevertheless the book did have a very
strong influence, and there is an argument to support that it was the
most culturally successful books ever produced by them. There are
many instances of buildings still standing that can almost have been
taken straight out of the plates of the book, like the one
illustrated below:
Langley
- Gothic Architecture - Public Domain
In 1747 Batty Langley resumed his mission of making classical textbooks for builders with the handsome folio, The Builder's Directory or Bench-mate. This ran to five editions. Then in 1750 came his final work: The Workman's Golden Rule for Drawing and Working the Five Orders in Architecture. . for the Instruction of Apprentices and Journey Men. This book is remarkable for its size. It is tiny; only 4 inches by 2 ½ inches.
The very small print includes a dedication to the author's worthy friends, the masters and journeymen of the building trade. They are, he said
'...the
best builders in the world; and for that no thanks is due to the
nobility and gentry of this country. All they have encouraged are
vice, ignorance, and luxury'.
With that final snarl at ruling class, Batty Langley's ended. He died the following year, aged 55.
Here's his portrait:
Public
Domain
Batty had married twice, and brought up a large family naming some of his sons Hiram, Euclid, Vitruvius and Archimedes. A tribute to his four passions, Geometry, Architecture, Mechanics and Freemasonry.
Batty's unusual name coupled with his Gothic book has made him (quite unjustifiably) a figure chuckled at among architects and building historians. However Batty and Thomas Langley's books have a quality and thoroughness about them. The huge quantity of these works bear witness to their devotion on behalf of improving the lot of builders and aspirant architects, as well as young apprentices. This was done by providing tradesmen with useful instruction to stand them in good stead throughout their careers.
Langley's books were enormously influential in Britain's American colonies where Palladianism was immensely popular (just look at the White House!). At Mount Vernon, George Washington relied upon plate 51 of Langley's The City and Country Builder's and Workman's Treasury of Designs as the source for the famous Venetian (or Palladian) window in the dining room; upon plate 54 of the same book for the ocular window on Mount Vernon's western facade; and upon plate 75 of Langley's The Builder's Jewel for the rusticated wood siding. Copies of Langley's works were also given prominence in the library of Thomas Jefferson. Not a bad legacy for a landscape gardener's son from Twickenham.
Thanks to:
The
Late Sir John Newenham Summerson CH CBE.
The notes I made whilst an undergraduate listening to his Batty
Langley lecture forms the main structure of this article.
The Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/
Wikipedia.
Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust. www.cbhgt.org.uk
Further Reading:
Most of Langley's books are available from Google Books http://books.google.com/ I recommend viewing this site over buying the reprinted modern editions, as they are expensive and the scanning quality is variable, verging on a complete 'waste of money'. Google's scans are very good.
The Open University http://www.open.ac.uk/
Wikipedia.
Castle Bromwich Hall Gardens Trust. www.cbhgt.org.uk
Further Reading:
Most of Langley's books are available from Google Books http://books.google.com/ I recommend viewing this site over buying the reprinted modern editions, as they are expensive and the scanning quality is variable, verging on a complete 'waste of money'. Google's scans are very good.
Ackerman, Jaaes S. (1994). Palladio (series "Architect and Society")
Halliday,
E" E. (1967). Cultural History of England. London: Thames
and Hudson.
Jackson-Stops,
Gervase (1990). The Country House in Perspective. Pavilion
Books Ltd.
Marten
Paolo, (1993). Palladio. Benedikt Taschen Verlag GmbH, Koln
(Photos of Palladio's surviving buildings)
Reed,
Henry Hope, and Joseph C. Farber, (1980) Palladio's
Architecture and Its Influence,
Dover Publications Inc., New York.
Summerson, John. The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (1986),
Tavernor, Robert, (1979).Palladio and Palladianism (series "World of Art")
Watkin, David (1979). English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.
Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
There are precious few biographical publications on Batty or Thomas Langley. If you are aware of any, please contact me via the comments section of this bog, and I will add them to this list.
Summerson, John. The Architecture of the Eighteenth Century (1986),
Tavernor, Robert, (1979).Palladio and Palladianism (series "World of Art")
Watkin, David (1979). English Architecture. London: Thames and Hudson.
Wittkower, Rudolf. Architectural Principles in the Age of Humanism
There are precious few biographical publications on Batty or Thomas Langley. If you are aware of any, please contact me via the comments section of this bog, and I will add them to this list.
