Egyptian Revival architecture in the British Isles is a survey of motifs derived from Ancient Egyptian sources occurring as an architectural style. Egyptian Revival architecture is comparatively rare in the British Isles. Obelisks start appearing in the 17th century, mainly as decorative features on buildings, and by the 18th century, they started to be used in some numbers as funerary or commemorative monuments. In the later 18th century, mausoleums started to be built based on pyramids, and sphinxes were used as decorative features associated with monuments or mounted on gate piers. The pylon, a doorway feature with spreading jambs which support a lintel, also started to be used and became popular with architects.
As a result of the Napoleonic conquest of Egypt in 1798, more accurate records became available to architects, and Egyptian Revival became a recognised architectural style. As the 19th century progressed Egyptian features were, on occasions, used for industrial buildings and particularly for suspension bridges, and after 1830 the Egyptian Revival style was often used for cemetery buildings and monuments in cemeteries. Some examples of churches and synagogues exist in this style.
By the end of the 19th century, the style had very nearly disappeared, but in 1922, with Howard Carter's discovery of Tutankhamun's tomb the style underwent a dramatic revival. It was used particularly for cinema architecture and sometimes for factory buildings. The angular shapes of Egyptian architecture could be mixed with those of Art Deco, leading to a hybrid Art Deco style which appeared in the 1930s. Subsequently, there have been very few buildings in the Egyptian Revival style.
Sources for the style
The first illustration of a pyramid was published by John Greaves, Professor of Mathematics at Oxford University, in 1646, to record and draw on site, the external and internal measurements of the Giza pyramids and to confirm that they were tombs.Greaves, J.(1646), Pyramidographia (London, published by G. Badger). Detailed renderings of various temples on the Nile, the Pyramids, and the Sphinx had been accumulating for connoisseurs and designers in works such as Bernard de Montfaucon's, ten-volume L'Antiquité expliquée et representée en figures (1719–1724), which reproduces, methodically grouped, all the ancient monuments. In 1735 Benoît de Maillet's Description de l'Égypte (1735) appeared and was followed by Comte de Caylus Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grècques, romaines et gauloises of 1752–55.Recueil d'antiquités égyptiennes, étrusques, grècques, romaines et gauloises (6 vols., Paris, 1752–1755). This was followed by Frederic Louis Norden's Voyage d'Egypte et de Nubie (1755). Norden had travelled widely in Egypt and provided much detailed information about the standing monuments.
Also of importance were the engravings of Giambattista Piranesi (1720–1778), which included, in his defence of Roman forms, a place for Egypt as a primary source. In his engravings and especially in his Diversi maniere d'adornare i cam mini of 1769. Piranesi promoted Egyptian ornament, and advanced the theme of the Sublime, esteeming the monumentality of Egypt's austere and stereometric architectural forms to be the major influence on the emerging Neoclassicism and its Egyptian Revival. Travellers from Britain, such as Richard Pococke, who published in 1743 A Description of the East and Some Other Countries were also a source for popularising Egyptian architecture.
The invasion of Egypt by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1798 was to provide a major stimulus to the study of Egypt's past and encouragement of Egyptian Revival architecture. It was the informed and accurate literature which then appeared, which for the first time produced detailed surveys of the country's major buildings. The first publication was Vivant Denon's (1747–1825)Denon, V., Travels in Upper and Lower Egypt, during the Campaign of General Bonaparte (London: Longman and Rees, 1803).Howard Colvin, A Biographical Dictionary of British Architects 1600–1840, 3rd ed. (Yale University Press) 1995, s.v. "Robinson, Peter Frederick"; Survey of London vol. xxix. partly inspired by the success of the Egyptian Room in Thomas Hope's house in Duchess Street, which was open to the public and had been well illustrated in Hope's Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (London, 1807).
At this point architects started producing examples of Egyptian buildings that they hoped their clients would wish to have built. An example of this is a Perspective view of a Mansion in the Egyptian style by James Marshall in 1806."Morley" (1993), p. 192, Pl 134 Designs for shopfronts were also being produced and probably executed at this time by architects in London."Morley" (1993), p. 192, Pl 133
The full publication of Napoleon's scientific expedition was published as the Description de l'Égypte in 23 or 29 volumes between 1809 and 1828. This was to provide a major resource for the architects and their clients if they were considering introducing Egyptian elements in their buildings. In particular the illustrations of the facade of the Grande Temple at Dendera were a popular source.
The Egyptian Hall in Piccadilly, London, commissioned by William Bullock as a museum to house his collection of curiosities was completed in 1812. The plans for the hall were drawn up by architect Peter Frederick Robinson. The museum was variously referred to as the London Museum, the Egyptian Hall or Museum, or Bullock's Museum. Later the Hall was used to display the discoveries made by Giovanni Battista Belzoni who had returned to England In 1819 and published an account of his travels and discoveries entitled a Narrative of the Operations and Recent Discoveries within the Pyramids, Temples, Tombs and Excavations in Egypt and Nubia, &c the following year. During 1820 and 1821 Belzoni also exhibited facsimiles of the tomb of Seti I. The exhibition was held at the Egyptian Hall, Piccadilly, London. This was a further stimulus to public interest in Egyptian art and architecture and coincided with the use by civil engineers in using pylons for suspension bridges, chain piers and the furnaces at Lord Bute's Ironworks at Rhymney in south Wales.
The English architect and egyptologist Joseph Bonomi the Younger joined an expedition to Egypt led by the Scotsman Robert Hay (Egyptologist). Hay and Bonomi stayed in Egypt from November 1824 until 1828, and 1829 to 1834, recording monuments and inscriptions, and making a large number of architectural plans. Their manuscripts are now primarily in the British Library, and many of his plaster casts in the British Museum. In Cairo (1827–1828), In 1828 Bonomi worked in Cairo on the illustrations for James Burton's Excerpta hieroglyphica – Burton was the elder brother of the architect Decimus Burton. This was followed by the artist David Roberts. He is especially known for a prolific series of detailed lithograph prints of Egypt and the Near East that he produced from sketches he made during long tours of the region between 1838 and 1840.
Belzoni travels in Egypt were followed by Bononi David Hay Expedition.
Finally the Prussian expedition under Karl Richard Lepsius should be mentioned. This was modelled after the earlier Napoléonic mission, and consisted of surveyors, draftsmen, and other specialists. The mission reached Giza in November 1842 and spent six months making some of the first scientific studies of the pyramids of Giza, Abusir, Saqqara, and Dahshur. They discovered 67 pyramids, recorded in the pioneering Lepsius list of pyramids, and more than 130 tombs. The chief result of this expedition was the publication of Denkmäler aus Ägypten und Äthiopien (Monuments from Egypt and Ethiopia), a massive twelve-volume compendia of nearly 900 plates of ancient Egyptian inscriptions, as well as accompanying commentary and descriptions published in 1849. This expedition was accompanied by Joseph Bonomi and another English architect James William Wild.
Forms and motifs Cleopatra's Needle was re-erected in London in 1878, see Cleopatra's Needle, London.
Obelisks
The first obelisks may start to appear in the later 16th century and it is suggested that the obelisk on Compton Pike is Elizabethan in date. More securely dated is a series of obelisks which start to appear in the 18th century. The first of these was the Wakeman obelisk of 1702 by Nicholas Hawksmoor, which is set in the square at Richmond, Yorkshire. Probably several hundred obelisks exist in the British Isles dating from 18th and early 19th centuries. Most of these obelisks, which are often landmarks commemorate famous people and their achievements. At Stowe in Buckinghamshire an obelisk was erected in memory of Wolfe's victory at Quebec in 1752, while at the death of the Duke of Cumberland in 1765 was noted by an obelisk at Englefield Green in Surrey. Thomas Coke, Earl of Leicester, Coke of Norfolk the farming pioneer has a particularly fine obelisk, set up in the park he created at Holkham in Norfolk. Sometimes an obelisk was used to mark the site of a battle such as the obelisk on the site of English Civil War battlefield at Naseby in Leicestershire. Occasionally obelisks are used as mile markers, as on the Great North Road at a mile from Westminster. In Lincoln an elaborate obelisk was set up on the High Bridge in 1762–63 as a conduit for dispensing water,Yeates Langley, A (1997), Lincoln :A Pictorial History, Pl.179. while Anthony Salvin used obelisks as water fountains on the Belton House estates in Lincolnshire.
In Ireland an early obelisk was constructed as a family funeral memorial by Sir Edward Lovatt Pierce for the Allen family at Stillorgan in Ireland in 1717, called the Stillorgan Obelisk, one of several Egyptian obelisks erected in Ireland during the early 18th century. Others may be found at Belan, County Kildare; and Dangan, County Meath. The Casteltown Folly in County Kildare is probably the best known, albeit the least Egyptian-styled.
Jubilee Tower, Moel Famau, Flintshire
A particularly ambitious example of an obelisk type monument was the tower, built to commemorate the Golden Jubilee of George III in 1810. It stands on the summit of Moel Famau in northeast Wales and was designed by Thomas Harrison of Chester. It takes its inspiration from an Egyptian obelisk with three tiers. Although the foundation stone was laid in 1810 by George Kenyon, 2nd Baron Kenyon, the tower was never completed due to a lack of funds. In 1862, a major storm brought down the incomplete tower. The remaining upper part of the structure was demolished for safety reasons leaving just the base. Egyptian features can still be discerned in the ruins of the monument with the Pylon doors and the Hieroglyphic characters on the stonework."Colvin" (1995), p. 468
Obelisk Gallery
General Sir David Baird's obelisk, near Crieff, erected 1832
Pyramids