A little roguery
Having admired the façade of St John’s Smith Square the other day, I glanced away from Smith Square towards the river and this wonderful little structure caught my eye. It’s the Buxton Memorial Fountain, and I’ve often noticed the way it adorns the Victoria Tower Gardens near the Houses of Parliament. But I’d not seen it from this angle before, its ornate Gothic arches and pointed roof aligned with the end of the street.
This little building was commissioned in 1865 by an MP, Charles Buxton, to commemorate the work of his father, Thomas Fowell Buxton, and the group of colleagues who had campaigned for the abolition of the slave trade. It originally stood in Parliament Square but was taken down in 1949 and moved to its current happy location in 1957.
The fountain was the work of Samuel Sanders Teulon (1812–73), a Gothic architect who designed a multitude of churches, vicarages, and allied buildings and who was designated by H. S. Goodhart-Rendel as one of the ‘Rogue architects’ of the Victorian era. What Goodhart-Rendel meant was that these architects were original to the point of eccentricity, designing buildings that were Gothic, but not as we know it. They would combine styles from different sources, introduce jazzy patterns, and use vibrant, sometimes brash colours.
The Buxton Memorial Fountain begins like a conventional, if highly ornate, structure of Gothic arches. But the roof is something else – a brightly coloured extravaganza of enamelled iron tiles that sings in the sun and enlivens a dull day. In this part of central London, with its familiar mixture of brick and stone buildings, this jewel-like roof comes as a surprise, and a welcome dose of colour. Sometimes a little roguery is not such a bad thing.
