Gilbert Blount was born at Mapledurham near Reading in 1819, the second son of Michael Joseph Blount, of an ancient recusant family.
He was educated at Downside before beginning professional training with Isambard Kingdom Brunel working as Superintendent on the construction of the Wapping to Rotherhithe Thames Tunnel. Blount decided that he did not want to spend his career as a civil engineer.
In 1842 he became apprenticed to the architect Anthony Salvin. By 1846 he had set up his own practice, becoming, inter alia, architect to Bishop Nicholas Wiseman. He worked on new Catholic churches throughout England; he was greatly influenced by Pugin.
Blount’s first church was the Gothic Revival St Mary Magdalen, Mortlake built in Kentish ragstone in Gothic Revival style in 1851-2. The cost was £3,000, paid for by an anonymous donor, possibly Lady (Constantia) Mostyn. The extraordinary tented tomb to Sir Robert Burton and his wife Isabella Arundell can be found in the churchyard.
His next building was the large and impressive church of St Anne’s, Underwood Road, Tower Hamlets, built for the Marist Fathers (1855). The west front is dominated by its rose window. The inside is lofty; the high altar of 1901 has a Carrara marble reredos. The church is now looked after by the Brazilian Chaplaincy.
The rather modest St Ambrose, Kidderminster was built from 1856-8; this seems to have been paid for by Blount’s relation, Sir Edward Blount, Bt. Ten miles away St Peter’s, Bromsgrove was built in 1858-60. It has a good gabled west end. Inside the nave and sanctuary are one with a polygonal apse. The intricate wrought-iron screen of 1862 survives as does the fine reredos by AWN Pugin, brought from Alton Towers in 1860.
St Peter, Gloucester (1859-60) was one of Blount’s most notable churches. Built in a Decorated Gothic style, it has a prominent tower and spire. Inside is a four-bay nave with aisles, sanctuary side chapels and much stained glass including some by Hardman.
Blount built the mission church of St Mary & St Helen, Brentwood in 1861 in Gothic style – “of that assertive ugliness which is characteristic of much church work of the sixties” (Pevsner, in an unfair moment). The church became the cathedral of the new diocese of Brentwood in 1917. A considerable portion of the old church was demolished by Quinlan Terry in his classical rebuilding of 1974 but what remains provides the Blessed Sacrament Chapel.
Next came a church in Sussex. St Mary Magdalen, Upper North Street, Brighton (1861-2) was built in red brick with stone dressings and a stone spire. The nave has five bays and the chancel two. It has a lavishly gilded high altar. The parish priest for a number of years was the traditionally-minded Fr Ray Blake, intermittently described as “outspoken”.
St Filumena, Cavershall, Staffordshire (1863-4) and St Mary & St John, Newton-le-Willows (1864) were more conventional Gothic offerings.
Alfred Edward Purdie (1843-1920) joined Blount in 1864 as a trainee architect.
St Anthony and St George, Duncton was built high on the Sussex Downs in rubble-stone and ashlar for Blount’s relation Anthony Wright-Biddulph of nearby Burton Park in 1868-9, in well-constructed and detailed 13th-century Gothic style. The well-carved high altar in Caen stone was by Farmer & Co.
The church was consecrated by Archbishop Henry Manning, sometime rector of neighbouring Lavington and Archdeacon of Chichester.
In 1868-9 Blount built Our Lady of the Assumption, Swynnerton, Staffordshire for the Fitzherbert family, Barons Stafford, of Swynnerton Hall. It is built of stone in Early English style with a bellcote. It has elaborate furnishings including a high altar.
Manning was responsible for sending the Dominican sisters of Walthamstow to Bow. They commissioned Blount in 1869-70 to design an aisle-less six-bay church in Kentish ragstone with Portland stone dressings together with a western rose window. Blount’s high altar and reredos survive. Purdie was later to add a large southern transept as the nuns’ choir.
In 1873 Sir Francis Fortescue-Turville, the then owner of Bosworth Hall in Leicestershire, commissioned Blount to design an Early Decorated church in ironstone and limestone. St Mary’s, Husbands Bosworth originally consisted of apsidal chancel, nave, north porch and a west bellcote containing one bell. The reredos is ornate.
Thanks to Robert Constable-Maxwell, the present owner of Bosworth Hall, the church is now home to a lively and committed community, and served by Fr Matthew Pittam of the Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
Blount’s penultimate church was St Mary on the Hill, Wednesbury for the convert priest and Oratorian Fr Stuart Bathurst. Built in brick in 13th-century style, it is dominated by a tower with copper spire. Inside the building has a five-bay nave with arcades.
The Holy Child and St Joseph, Bedford of 1874 was Blount’s final church. It is a lofty building in Early Decorated style, faced in rock-faced stonework. At this stage the church only consisted of three eastern bays of the nave and aisles. Pevsner in 1968 rather rudely wrote “there is nothing to recommend the interior”.
However there are many notable features, not least the use of richly carved stone detail. The high altar was designed by Blount. It is of Bath stone; the reredos has figures in canopied niches of King David, St Gregory the Great, St Andrew and St Nicholas.
At the time of his death Blount was working on the chapel at Rudding Park near Harrogate for his relation Sir Joseph Percival Radcliffe, Bt. This was completed after his death by AE Purdie. It is a very large chapel in High Victorian style with a five-bay nave. The ornate mortuary chapel has pinnacles and a pentagonal roof. It has much elaborate carving inside. The Radcliffes are long departed and the chapel is now a “wedding venue”, which has at least spared it post-Vatican iconoclasm.
At the age of 51 Blount married Sophia Margaret Brown in Knaresborough. They had four daughters, the last of whom, Gilberta, was born after his death.
Blount died at Montagu Place on November 13, 1876. He was buried five days later in a family vault at St James’s, Reading, Pugin’s neo-Norman church of 1837-40. No obituary seems to have appeared.
Charles Barry, the President of the RIBA, in his annual address in 1877, referred to Blount as follows: “A disciple of Pugin, he was a capable architect responsible for a small body of interesting but unadventurous works, variable in quality. Whilst he was not in the first flight as as a designer, his work often had character – a personal flavour – due to his choice of parts and, at times, the wayward handling of their details ... He was a gentleman of very courteous manners and much respected among friends who deplore his death.”
AE Purdie took over the practice. He did additional work at Blount’s churches at Bedford and Husbands Bosworth. Purdie’s own most famous churches were Our Lady Help of Christians, Blackheath (1890-1) and The English Martyrs, Streatham (1892-3). Purdie died in Canterbury in 1920.
Not much has been written about Blount but Philippa Hunter and Richard Barton have privately produced <em>Gilbert Blount: A Victorian Architect through his diaries</em>.
<em>(Header photo: St Anthony and St George, Duncton)</em>
