William Hosking (26 November 1800 – 2 August 1861) was an English writer, lecturer, and architect who had an important influence on the growth and development of London in Victorian times. He became the first Professor of Architecture at King's College London, and associated this discipline in a scholarly fashion with interests in town planning, civil engineering, history and antiquities.
Early life
Upbringing and early writings
Hosking was born at Buckfastleigh in Devon, the son of a woolen manufacturer. In 1809 he emigrated with his parents to New South Wales (which joined the federation of Australia in 1901), where his father, whose business interests in Devon had been doing poorly, had accepted a government office. It was here that Hosking's architectural career began for he was apprenticed to a surveyor and builder. This profession continued to interest him when, in 1819, he returned to England to seek further training, becoming articled to a Wesleyan minister-turned-architect, the Rev. William Jenkins.
In the early 1820s Hosking completed his articles and travelled in southern Europe, including Italy; primarily to study art and architecture with Jenkins's son John. This subsequently led to his exhibiting drawings at the Royal Academy (including "Temple of Concord, Agrigentum" and "Temple of Neptune at Paestum") and provided original material for his first book: A Selection of Architectural and Other Ornaments, Greek, Roman and Italian drawn from the originals in various museums and buildings in Italy, published in 1827. Such scholarship led to his being elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1830. At about this date he was also commissioned by the Encyclopædia Britannica, to contribute the chapters headed "Architecture" and "Building", later to be supplemented with "The Drainage of Towns".
His interest in antiquities—in particular scholarly observation of the architectural details of historic buildings—became reinforced by his membership of the forerunner of the Royal Historical Society, the Camden Society. Indeed, historical accuracy came to characterise Hosking's approach to architecture, as he sought to mix historical elements in appropriate ways. This eye for historical detail was combined with a concern for equally detailed practical improvements in construction techniques (such as fire retardation, damp proofing, and other aspects of what has become known today as a branch of civil engineering known as building control).
Early architectural work, 1830–1840
Bridge design By the early 1830s Hosking had a sufficient reputation in the arts and sciences of buildings and construction to secure an appointment with the new Birmingham, Bristol and Thames Junction Railway Company (The West London Railway) to design an impressive scheme for carrying a roadway over the Paddington Arm of the Grand Junction Canal (now the Grand Union Canal); both of which then passed over the new railway. His success in designing this construction was much commented upon and assisted his election, in 1835, to Fellowship of the Institute of British Architects (now the Royal Institute of British Architects, RIBA).
Thereafter, Hosking continued to develop his interest in bridge design, though more academically, and went on to develop related interests in the construction of buildings for fire resistance, avoidance of damp, etc., which led to his being recognised as having competence in both civil engineering and architectural spheres.
Congregationalists' non-denominational cemetery
In 1839 Hosking was chosen by the newly formed Abney Park Cemetery Company to design the buildings and contribute to the layout of a landscaped park cemetery to serve the metropolis of London in which all parts would be open to the burial of anyone regardless of belief or denomination. The aim of the promoters of Abney Park Cemetery was to open the first wholly non-denominational garden cemetery in Europe.
Hosking's brief was to design the cemetery's buildings to reflect this new liberal departure in burial reform, and to complement the cemetery's historic parkland setting, into which a magnificent arboretum and educational institute were also to be established.
To complement Hosking's buildings, an appropriate landscape setting was designed and planted by George Loddiges. A landscape vaguely akin to rather simplified version of John Loudon's "gardenesque" style emerged around the perimeter, with the larger part of the estate remaining naturalistic and partially sylvan, possibly echoing the Rural Cemetery ideal emerging in America insofar as this was practicable in a country where landscape was no longer relatively unaffected by human activity.
The uniquely attractive result was much favoured by Loudon, both as an exception to his preferred formal style of cemetery design, and to the "pleasure ground" style he disliked in other contemporary cemeteries such as at Norwood. Loudon was especially complementary towards Abney Park Cemetery since it offered an educational park, complete with an arboretum that was generally open to free public access, something that he had campaigned for in the vicinity of London.
Hosking's clients, led by the Abney Park Cemetery's founder and indefatigable company secretary George Collison II, worked with him to prepare a unique design for the Stoke Newington cemetery. Collison increasingly came to the view that Hosking's layout and architectural styles should meet a brief of being symbolic of the cemetery's founding ideals; to reflect the fact that here was to be the first nineteenth-century garden cemetery to be neither consecrated, nor set out by Act of Parliament, giving it both a non-denominational character and also permitting inclusion of spaces and designs for wider educational and public access purposes. Hosking's buildings must also respect the landscape, for here, unlike other cemeteries of its period, use of the land for interment was partly viewed as a convenient means to achieve other common purposes; all of the original founders were Congregationalists who shared an underlying motivation to preserve and encourage interest and appreciation in the landscape of Abney Park that "spoke to them" of the memory of Isaac Watts and Lady Mary Abney. The promoters hoped that the burial fees would provide the revenue to meet this romantic objective.
Although The Rosary cemetery in Norwich had begun to pioneer elements of a non-denominational approach, it had presented only a partial model (it made no progress on designing a non-denominational chapel until the late nineteenth century). Similarly, other cemeteries to date had only been able to apply the term non-denominational in a partial sense, lacking non-denominational entrance lodges or chapels. Consequently, at the date of Hosking's brief, there was no European architectural style for the buildings of a wholly non-denominational cemetery on which he could draw for inspiration. Thus Hosking's brief was both novel and ambitious. There was no similar model to base his designs on, other than what was in a partially state of progress in the New World, at Mount Auburn Cemetery near Boston.
Egyptian Revival temple lodges and early Gothic Revival chapel To realise the visionary Abney Park project, Hosking was commissioned to design an Egyptian Revival entrance ensemble comprising carefully studied temple lodges (with twin north and south components) with dramatic pylons, gates and railings in between. This was to become the earliest example in European architecture of a cemetery building (as opposed to monuments or gates) being designed and built in "Egyptian revival" style. It was also the earliest example in Europe of a cemetery frontage constructed in the style—railings at a cemetery frontage. Previously the style had only been used in cemetery design for memorial monuments, for one temporary frontage scheme (at Mount Auburn Cemetery), and for a gate in a wall of a small non-conformist cemetery in Sheffield).
Though use of the style was disapproved of by Augustus Pugin Jnr (1812–52) for departing from western Christian styles, and proved controversial in like-minded quarters, others were impressed with the bold and quite new design at Abney Park and began to conclude that the "Egyptian Revival" should be taken further; though mostly for purely stylistic reasons. In 1839 it had also been used by Stephen Geary at the entrance to Egyptian Avenue at Highgate Cemetery and by 1842, two years after Abney Park opened, it was possible for the architect Thomas Wilson, a member of the General Cemetery Company board, to publish the most futuristic cemetery design ever, to be wholly completed in the Egyptian style. His proposal was the Metropolitan Sepulchre, a brick and granite pyramid taller than St. Paul's Cathedral containing nearly a quarter of a million catacombs, on nearly a hundred levels, surmounting Primrose Hill, complete with a public observatory at the top! However it did not gain the support it needed, and Hosking's Abney Park entrance and Geary's Egyptian Avenue remain the only successful examples of large-scale use of the Egyptian style in cemetery design.
Hosking's skills did not just shine through in his careful planning and detailing of Egyptian-revival temple lodges and frontage; he was also commissioned to design a similarly unique and impressive cemetery chapel. This, the Abney Park Chapel was to be the first non-denominational cemetery chapel in Europe, and quite probably the world (since its "sister" chapel at Mount Auburn was a later addition). While not detracting from the magnificence and originality of the grand entrance design, Hosking's chapel had, likewise, to make its mark as a unique design. As with the novel entrance, Hosking met the challenge both with originality and a surprisingly wide knowledge of architecture. Since he had travelled extensively, and had a strong interest in antiquities, he was able to look well beyond traditional British architectural and Gothic Revival sources. Further information about his design can be found in the entry for Abney Park Chapel, which is an early example of Dissenting Gothic.
Academic recognition and town-planning, 1840–1850
Professorship at King's College King's College London MottoSancte et sapienter"With holiness and with wisdom"Established1829Homepagehttp://www.kcl.ac.uk
Hosking's work at Abney Park won important admirers, as well as critics. Its combination of an architectural design approach, academically researched in every detail, conceptual empathy for the non-denominational idea, and educational landscape complete with arboretum, presented the environs of London with a challenging standard for future landscape and building design. In 1840, in recognition of Hosking's contribution to the advancement of architectural practice, he was offered the first Professorship of King's College in the "Art of Construction", soon renamed "Principles and Practice of Architecture", to better reflect this relatively new profession and its emergence as an academic discipline. Hosking's educational approach was set out in his new book of the same title, Principles and Practice of Architecture (1842). His appointment by King's College was something of a coup for those with liberal, non-denominational empathies, since the university was founded as a high church riposte against the "ungodly" UCL with its non-denominational entry requirements. King's was only brought slowly out of this backward-looking denominational approach that gradually came to be perceived as belonging to a bygone age.
Institute of British Architects