Joseph Hansom is probably most familiar to the modern mind for his invention of the “Patent Safety Cab” in 1834. The Hansom cab with its two large wheels, closed carriage and suspended axle became a distinctive feature of the 19th-century London street scene.
Joseph Hansom was born in 1803 at 63 Micklegate, York, the second of nine children in a staunch Catholic family. In 1816 he was apprenticed to his joiner father. His aptitude for draughtsmanship and construction allowed his transfer to a York architect called Matthew Philips. About 1825, a marriage took place with Hannah Glover in York and they moved to Halifax.
In 1828, a partnership was formed with Edmund Welch. Together they designed several Anglican churches in Lancashire, Yorkshire and the Isle of Man. These were fairly unscholarly essays in a Gothic style not fully understood. They also refurbished Bodelwyddan Castle in Denbighshire for Sir John Hay-Williams. The downfall of the practice was the construction of the magnificent neo-classical Birmingham Town Hall in 1831-34. Hansom went bankrupt through standing surety for the hard stone from Anglesey, of which they had underestimated the cost.
With his architectural career in tatters, Hansom found temporary employment as the agent of the 12,000-acre Caldecote estate near Hinckley in Leicestershire. He became friends with the wealthy Catholic convert Ambrose Phillipps De Lisle of Grace Dieu and Bishop Ullathorne of the Central District. This led to a number of commissions including two convents – one for the Dominicans at Atherstone and one for the Benedictines at Princethorpe.
Hansom resumed full-time architectural practice in 1840 and thereafter concentrated on a prolific number (some 200) of ecclesiastical commissions for the Catholic Church spanning the British Isles. He absorbed the lessons of the correct use of Gothic as set out by AWN Pugin in his works such as Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Christian Architecture (1841).
Hansom entered into various architectural partnerships before his eventual retirement in 1879 – from 1854 to 1859 with his brother Charles Hansom, from 1859 to 1861 with his eldest son Henry John Hansom, from 1862 to 1863 with EW Pugin (not a success) and from 1869 to 1879 with his son Joseph Stanislaus Hansom.
Amongst his numerous commissions were two for Catholic cathedrals.
The first of these (with Charles Hansom) was for Plymouth Cathedral built between 1856 and 1858 for Bishop William Vaughan, following the restoration of the hierarchy. The style chosen was the Early English. The 207-foot tower and spire were added in 1866 from designs by the Hansoms. In 1889 a magnificent 30-foot-high stone reredos by AB Wall was added but this vanished in the various reorderings, the most dramatic of which was in 1994 for Bishop Christopher Budd by the Harris Sutton Partnership. This left a pretty gloomy building with the central altar surmounted by a hideous corona and the sanctuary hidden behind a timber screen. The entrance at the west end was linked to the cathedral centre by a covered way with unattractive steeply pitched gables. Thankfully the cathedral has been much improved in recent years with the deemed Vatican II liturgical requirements still however left in situ. The corona and screen have vanished. The sanctuary is now opened up, white and bright with a Victorian altar to Our Lady occupying pride of place in the centre of the east end. One sadness is that the building seems only to be normally open from 9am to 11am in the week; this is surely inadequate for the cathedral church of a Catholic diocese covering the counties of Cornwall, Devon and Dorset, however rough the local area is deemed to be.
The second was for what since 1965 has been the Cathedral Church of Our Lady & St Philip Howard in Arundel for the Diocese of Arundel & Brighton. Built in 1868-9 for Henry, 15th Duke of Norfolk, at the very considerable cost of £100,000, to celebrate his coming of age, it was originally dedicated to St Philip Neri. The style of the soaring nave is French Gothic of around 1300 with the radiating chapels round the east end more representing English Decorated. The town is dominated by the cathedral and the castle towering over the skyline. The building is built of Bath stone and has a flèche over the sanctuary, the interior with its six bays and transepts relatively austere. The austerity is however ameliorated by the glowing Hard-man glass in the apse and transepts.
It is impossible to give full coverage of Hansom’s copious output of churches but the following are examples of some of his most important:
St Edward King and Confessor, Clifford, West Yorkshire (1845-8) is unusually for Hansom a Romanesque building in light coloured limestone, with massive columns based on Durham Cathedral. It was brutally reordered in 1991.
St Walburge, Preston, Lancashire (1850-54). The neo-Gothic church, built for the Jesuits, with its vast spire, stands isolated and magnificent. As Pevsner says: “Nothing prepares you for the shock of the interior” with its huge hammerbeam roof.
Our Lady Help of Christians and St Denis, Torquay, Devon (1865-69) was built on a prominent site in a confident Gothic style with tall tower and spire. The interior is long and soaring with a clerestory. The sanctuary is remarkably intact with its stone fittings and metal altar rail.
The Holy Name of Jesus, Manchester (1869-71) was constructed on a cathedral-like scale for the Jesuits, who were here from its inception until 1992 and then again from 2012 when the church became the University Chaplaincy. It is built in brick (with sandstone exterior) in 13th-century Gothic scale. All eyes are carried to the unspoilt high altar and reredos. The vaulting was created from hollow polygonal terracotta pots. Pevsner described it as “a design of the very highest quality and of an originality nowhere demonstrative… Hansom never again did so marvellous a church.”
St Aloysius Gonzaga, Woodstock Road, Oxford (1873-75). (“St Aloysius of the Church of Rome, its incense, reliquaries, brass and lights made all seem plain and trivial back at school.” – John Betjeman, Summoned by Bells). The Jesuits were responsible for the building of this church and looked after the parish from 1871 to 1981. The Oxford Oratory was established in 1993 as an independent congregation. It runs a very active parish for both the city and the university with some eight priests in residence. The church is built in brick in French Gothic style. The interior is dominated by a reredos curving round the east of the sanctuary with 52 niches holding statues of saints. The church was “modernised” in 1954 and 1966 but is now being put back together.
Other churches by Hansom worth mentioning include The Immaculate Conception, Spinkhill, Sheffield (1844-46), St Mary, Ryde (1844-46), St George, York (1849-50), Mount St Mary’s, Leeds (1853-57; now derelict), The Annunciation, Chesterfield, Derbyshire (1854-56) and St Wilfrid, Ripon (1860-62).
Hansom died in 1882, three years after his retirement. Gillis said “his character was one of much power mingled with still greater gentleness”. He was buried in the cemetery attached to AWN Pugin’s church of St Thom-as, Rylston Road, Fulham.
This article first appeared in the Easter 2022 issue of the Catholic Herald. Subscribe today.
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