Paul R. Joyce (1934-2014)
There is little in the way of biographical information on Paul Joyce. Born in north London, but brought up partly in Northampton, where he was evacuated during World War II, Joyce left school as a teenager and after national service went to art school. He trained as an architectural draughtsman, and in the 1970s worked for the architect Roderick Gradidge. Early in his career he became interested in one of the greatest architects of the Gothic revival, George Edmund Street (1824-81), and in the 1960s embarked on a monograph. Although he published only a little of his research, he compiled a fully documented list of works and assembled an archive of drawings and photographs of Street's buildings. For 40 years or more he was the acknowledged authority on Street and was generous with help and information. The archive also contains the large card index that Joyce compiled in the 1970s for another unfulfilled project, a dictionary of Victorian architects that he was to have written with Professor J. Mordaunt Crook. His strong interest in conservation drew him into the campaign to save Abney Park cemetery, near to his home in Clapton. His historical guidebook to the cemetery, published in 1983 (second edition, 1994), is his major published work. Please note - this description is largely based on information kindly provided by Michael Hall.
George Edmund Street (1824-1881)
Born in Woodford, Essex. A principal shaper of the architectural style later called 'High Victorian', he was also one of the most thoughtful architectural writers of his day. In 1844, aged twenty, he joined the office of George Gilbert Scott, with fellow assistants George Frederick Bodley and William White. Together they played an important role in a swift reshaping of architectural taste. Some of Street's first independent work was executed in Cornwall while he was still employed by Scott. In 1849, he established his own practice, first in London and then in Wantage, Berkshire. He served as Oxford diocesan architect from 1850 until his death. In 1856, having begun to establish a national reputation, he returned to London, renting a house at 33 Montague Place. He maintained his principal residence in London for the rest of his life, moving to 51 Russell Square in 1862 and to a great house at 14 Cavendish Place in 1870.
Street was a strenuous logician who, more effectively than any other architect of his generation, explained the rationale and modus operandi of eclectic design. He travelled widely, traversing France, Germany, and the Low Countries and following the footsteps of John Ruskin to northern Italy-all in the early 1850s. He reported on these travels with lectures and publications, and laid out his philosophical position in articles in The Ecclesiologist and two influential books on northern Italian and Spanish Gothic.
In his early use of polychromy Street was only a half step behind William Butterfield, whose church of All Saints, Margaret Street, in London (1849-59), was the first large embodiment of the fashion. Street's greatest commission, the Royal Courts of Justice [Law Courts] in London, was designed during the time when High Victorian tastes were waning. Large projects of great prestige joined the law courts in keeping Street's office fully occupied through the last years of his life. These included the nave and towered west façade for Bristol Cathedral (1867-88) and an almost total reconstruction of Christ Church, Dublin (1868-78). The vastness of these projects did not deter Street from maintaining an unusually high degree of artistic control over all of them, unlike some of his contemporaries.
Street received all the honours of his profession. He was elected an associate of the Royal Academy in 1866 and a full member in 1871. In 1874 he was awarded the gold medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA), which he loyally accepted after Ruskin turned it down to chastise architects for their restoration practices, and in 1881, the year of his death, he served both as president of RIBA and as professor of architecture at the Royal Academy.
Street died at his home, 14 Cavendish Place, London, on 18 December 1881, after suffering two strokes. His death at the age of fifty-seven was surely hastened by the physical and emotional strain of work, and his greatest commission, the Royal Courts of Justice, was opened a year after his death. Street was buried on 29 December in Westminster Abbey, near his old friend and former employer Sir Gilbert Scott, and beneath a brass designed by George Frederick Bodley, with whom he had worked in Scott's office. His only son, Arthur Edmund Street (d. 1938), oversaw the completion of many of his works.
Please note - this description is taken from David B. Brownlee, 'Street, George Edmund (1824-1881)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/26659, accessed 7 Nov 2017]
