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The architect of the Finsbury Bank for Savings

Alfred Bartholomew 1801–1845

Alfred Bartholomew designed one building of note, the Finsbury Bank for Savings in Sekforde Street, and could not build it as he wanted. His lasting work was on paper: a combative book arguing that good architecture, and Gothic above all, is structural through and through.

Title page: Specifications for Practical Architecture, preceded by an Essay on the Decline of Excellence in the Structure and in the Science of Modern English Buildings; with the Proposal of Remedies for those Defects. By Alfred Bartholomew, Architect. With one hundred and sixty demonstrations, engraved on wood, by R. Hart. London: John Williams, Library of Fine Arts, 106, Great Russell Street, Bloomsbury. 1840.
Title page of Specifications for Practical Architecture, 1840.A. Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), NYPL copy digitised by Google, via Internet Archive
Born
London, 28 March 1801
Died
Gray’s Inn, 2 January 1845, aged 43
Architect of
the Finsbury Bank for Savings, 1839–41
Author of
Specifications for Practical Architecture, 1840
Editor of
The Builder through 1844
Portrait
None known

Eleven chapters

  1. “In politics a conservative, and in religion a churchman, … is obliged to confess himself in architecture an uncompromising radical.”Alfred Bartholomew, 1839Chapter 1, 1801–c.1817The watchmaker’s sonAlfred Bartholomew was born in London on 28 March 1801.
  2. “Wren had more science in his head and heart, than a thousand Sir John Soanes in their whole souls and bodies”Alfred Bartholomew, 1840Chapter 2, c.1817–c.1821Early mornings at the Bank of EnglandAbout 1817, according to the Gentleman’s Magazine, he was articled to the architect J. H. Good, “then of Hatton Garden (a former pupil of Sir John Soane)”.
  3. “His private practice did not afford works of sufficient importance for further notice”Architectural Publication SocietyChapter 3, 1831–38Thirty-two buildings, none of them namedHis earliest known book was not about building. Sacred Lyrics (1831) put the Psalms into verse for parish singing.
  4. Chapter 4, 1838–39Enormous fire-gratesHis first book on building was a polemic, and its title gives the occasion: Hints relative to the Construction of Fire-proof Buildings, occasioned by the late Destruction of the Royal Exchange, London (1839).
  5. Chapter 5, 1839–41Paying for his own ornamentHow Bartholomew came to be chosen is not recorded, and there is no evidence of a competition.
  6. Chapter 6, 1840The bank he published insteadThe rejected design survives on paper.
  7. Chapter 7, 1840A Society of English PlasterersSpecifications for Practical Architecture was his main work.
  8. “Bartholomew, my boy! we are now quits: you are a d— honest, plain-speaking, though somewhat hard-mouthed fellow,—one who does not mince matters at all.”“Candidus”, 1840Chapter 8, 1839–44Candidus and “Caninus”His writing made enemies, and the Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal gave them room.
  9. “But let us become once more Real Free-masons, and we shall have ribbed vaults, and domes, built of stone for the price of our present mean and perishable wooden skeleton-work”Alfred Bartholomew, 1840Chapter 9, 1842–44Real Free-masonsBartholomew’s lasting idea was that Gothic is rational construction.
  10. Chapter 10, 1844–45One day in officeThe Builder was founded in 1843 by Joseph Aloysius Hansom, and Bartholomew succeeded him as editor.
  11. “… built little and nothing of great importance. His importance lies entirely in one book”Nikolaus Pevsner, 1972Chapter 11, 1845–2008From standard book to pioneerThe obituaries were measured.

Timeline

  • Told in these chapters
  • Told on the history pages
  1. 1801, 28 MarAlfred Bartholomew born in London
  2. 1816Finsbury Bank for Savings foundedThe building
  3. c.1817Bartholomew articled to J. H. Good, a former pupil of Soane
  4. 1839, AprHints relative to the Construction of Fire-proof Buildings reviewed
  5. 1839Site in Sekforde Street agreed; building begins, in mid-May according to the Survey of LondonThe building
  6. 1840Specifications for Practical Architecture published, with a fire-proof savings bank as Chapter XLVIIThe building
  7. 1840, JulThe CEAJ publishes the front: “only £2850” allowed, and the architect pays for part of the ornamentThe building
  8. 1841, AprThe bank at work in Sekforde StreetThe building
  9. 1842, 26 NovBartholomew founds the Freemasons of the Church
  10. 1844Bartholomew edits The Builder
  11. 1844, 28 NovElected district surveyor for Hornsey
  12. 1845, 2 JanBartholomew dies at Warwick House, Gray’s Inn, aged 43The building
  13. 1942, 21 MayThe Finsbury and City of London Savings Bank merges with the London Savings Bank to form the London Trustee Savings BankThe building
  14. 1942, OctGeorge G. Pace calls Bartholomew “a pioneer of functional Gothic”
  15. 1950, 29 DecThe bank listed at Grade IIThe building
  16. 2021–22Front repainted to Bartholomew’s specification, in Portland stone and purple brown, and the entrance lettering reinstatedThe building

Picture credits

  1. This pageA. Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), NYPL copy digitised by Google, via Internet Archive. Public domain (1840). Source.
  2. Chapter 4A. Bartholomew, Hints … (1839), British Library copy digitised by Google. Public domain (1839); Google Books scan of the British Library copy. Source.
  3. Chapter 5The Civil Engineer and Architect’s Journal, vol. III, July 1840, p. 217; engraved by T. Withy. Internet Archive / Northeastern University Library. Public domain (1840). Source.
  4. Chapter 6A. Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), NYPL copy digitised by Google, via Internet Archive. Public domain (1840). Source.
  5. Chapter 6A. Bartholomew, Specifications for Practical Architecture (1840), NYPL copy digitised by Google, via Internet Archive. Public domain (1840). Source.
  6. Chapter 7Woodcut by R. Hart, Specifications (1840). Public domain (1840). Source.
  7. Chapter 10The Builder, 13 January 1844. Public domain (1844). Source.

The photographs are reproduced under the Creative Commons licences named. The cropped versions of No Swan So Fine’s photographs are shared under the same licence, CC BY-SA 4.0. Quotations from works still in copyright are kept short and attributed, and each chapter’s notes give its sources.