STEPHEN SALTER (1825-1896) AND THE ALLOCATION OF ARCHITECTURE

It turns out there are not one but three nineteenth century architects (at least) named Stephen Salter. What started out last week as a simple post about the achievements of one of them, turned into a confusing meander through the many many MANY Stephen Salters past and present, related to me or each other or neither.

Anyway, I have a list of architects and a list of buildings designed by one or other of them. The architects are:

Stephen Salter, b. 1801

Stephen Salter, b. 1825, d. 1896, son of the above

Stephen Salter, b. 1861, not related to the above but son of another Stephen Salter

The buildings are by and large an impressive array of public institutions. Now that I’ve had time to sort them out, I see they fall into three quite distinct groups in terms of date or location. They are:

(above) Auditorium, Adelphi Theatre (demolished 1901);

(below) Basingstoke Town Hall and Corn Market

1856  St Paul’s Church, East Moseley, Surrey

1858  Adelphi Theatre, The Strand, London

1864  Basingstoke Corn Market

(above) Christ Church, Hendon;

(below) foundation stone of the Savoy Place Laboratories,

laid by Queen Victoria, Empress of India

1881  Christ Church, Hendon, north London

1884  Admiralty, Whitehall, central London (unsuccessful submission)

1886  Physicians/Surgeons Laboratories, central London

1889  8-8a Bourdon St, London (St George’s Women’s  Shelter)

(above) 1-3 High Street, Oxford;

(below) Sandlands, Boarhill, Oxfordshire

1896  Pangbourne villas, Berks

1901  1-3 High St, Oxford

1902  94 High St, Oxford

1904  Cowley Rd Methodist Church, Oxford

1905  Sandlands, Boarshill

1908  2-4 Charlbury Rd, Oxford

That last group are by date and record all by the 1861 Stephen Salter. There is a gap in time between the buildings of 1864 and 1881 (which of course is not to say that nothing was built by any of them during that period – absence of evidence is not evidence of absence) but in fact they could all have been the work of the 1825 Stephen. And although the 1801 Stephen describes himself in 1871 as a “retired architect,” in the 1851 census he declares himself an arguably less exalted “architectural modeller.” In 1851 his son Stephen is a fully fledged “architect.” So I’m going to attribute everything up to the Bourdon St Women’s Shelter to my 1825-born cousin.

After all that, the last word goes to the youngest architect and the only one I’m not related to. The seven villas which he designed along the river Thames at Pangbourne were not well received at the time. Even 33 years after they were built, a critic wrote:

“The row of villas near Pangbourne are an example of the pretentious and expensive sort of building which has not been mitigated by gardening. These houses have been locally christened the Seven Deadly Sins, which is sufficiently indicative of the opinion of the public upon such architectural disfigurement.”

 

Two of The Seven Deadly Sins, Pangbourne

They clearly reflect the eclectic Arts and Crafts style of Stephen Salter the younger, and as noted by a more recent writer, from Oxford County Council,

“These particular deadly sins seem to me to have become less fatal with age! Perhaps time and gardening have now mitigated what obviously looked brash when first built. I suspect that the particular deadly sin with which they can now be associated is Jealousy. How many people who love the river would not want to live there?”

One was on the market recently for £875,000.