The Arts In Berwick --Architecture
Victorian Mansions and Monuments

There are a number of later Victorian mansions across the Borough:- Carham Hall (1870), Middleton Hall, near Belford (1871), Longridge Towers outside Berwick (1876) and Tillmouth Park, near Twizel (1882) are all in the Tudor style. Lady Waterford's work at Ford is likewise more Renaissance or Tudor in inspiration than High Gothic revival.

Earlier the Gothic had prevailed as at Cheswick House (1859-62), designed by F.R. Wilson assistant to Salvin, who was working at Alnwick. For churches, of course, Gothic was the main respectable style, with 1858 a good year for church building in the area.

In Berwick both Wallace Green Church and St Mary, Castlegate are Gothic and both built in 1858. St Mary's, now flats, was decorated with stained glass by William Wailes, several panels of which are in the Borough Museum. Meanwhile, the well-known architect William Butterfield (1815-1900) was commissioned to design a memorial chapel at Etal.

His building is a microcosm of his style, built of pink sandstone with bands of buff coloured stone, a high, steeply pitched roof and plain buttresses. It followed closely Ruskin's theories and would be seen again on a much grander scale at Butterfield's Keble College chapel (1868). Lady Waterford secured the services of David Bryce (1803-76) to convert Ford back to what she reckoned a castle ought to look like. But George Gilbert Scott (1811-78) was brought in to design a memorial fountain for her husband in 1860, two years before Queen Victoria chose Scott's design for a memorial to her late husband which now stands opposite the Royal Albert Hall.

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