ABSTRACT
The architect William Burges, born in 1827, served Gothic Revival neat. He designed two projects for the 3rd Marquess of Bute, who had become immensely wealthy from ownership of the port of Cardiff which shipped coal from Welsh mines. Areas of Kensington and Chelsea in particular were attracting businessmen’s artistically inclined sons, and occasionally daughters, who were not seen as future assets to the businesses that were providing them with generous allowances. In 1853 ‘barbarians’ under Commodore Matthew Perry of the American Navy had sailed into culturally hermetic Japan and the discontinued trade links established 200 years earlier by Europeans were reopened. In the 1890s British Arts and Crafts developed its effete side, the Aesthetic movement, led by Oscar Wilde. Its adherents indulged in pantomimes of confected taste, all the better to outrage the bourgeoisie.
