Samuel Sanders Teulon


Samuel Sanders Teulon was a 19th-century English Gothic Revival architect, noted for his use of polychrome brickwork and the complex planning of his buildings.

Family

Teulon was born in 1812 in Greenwich, Kent, the son of a cabinet-maker from a French Huguenot family. His younger brother William Milford Teulon also became an architect.

Career

He was articled to George Legg, and later worked as an assistant to the Bermondsey-based architect George Porter. He also studied in the drawing schools of the Royal Academy. He set up his own independent practice in 1838, and in 1840 won the competition to design some almshouses for the Dyers' Company at Ball's Pond, Islington. After this his practice expanded rapidly. During the next few years his works mainly consisted of parish schools, parsonages and similar buildings, mostly in the Home Counties.
He was a friend of George Gilbert Scott and became a member of the Council of the Royal Institute of British Architects on 6 January 1835. Between 1841 and 1842 he undertook a long study tour of continental Europe with Ewan Christian who remained a lifelong friend and became his executor. Also in company during the tour was Horace Jones who was later knighted and became architect to the Corporation of the City of London and Hayter Lewis, later Professor of Architecture at University College, London.
He built his first church, the Early English-style St Paul, Bermondsey, in 1846. Soon after this he designed St Stephen, Southwark, a building adapted to its square site by being planned in the form of a Greek cross, with the recessed angles filled in by the tower, vestry, chancel aisles.
Teulon's religious views were Low Church, and his patrons were predominantly members of established aristocratic families who shared his outlook. In 1848 he received a commission from the 7th Duke of Bedford to design cottages for the Thorney estate, and the next year he built Tortworth Court, Gloucestershire, a substantial mansion in a kind of Neo-Tudor style, with a large central tower, for the Earl of Ducie. Other clients included John Sumner, archbishop of Canterbury, who commissioned Christ Church in Croydon; the Duke of Marlborough, for whom he refitted the chapel at Blenheim Palace in 1857-9; the 10th Duke of St Albans and Prince Albert.
His work included the remodelling of several unfashionable 18th-century churches to suit contemporary tastes. Archibald Tait, the Bishop of London, praised his alterations at St. Mary's, Ealing, as "the transformation of a Georgian monstrosity into the semblance of a Byzantine Basilica".
As well as Gothic Revival churches, he designed several country houses and even complete villages, as he did at Hunstanworth in County Durham in 1863.

Style

Despite his classical training, Teulon's early designs were mostly in imitation of Tudor and Elizabethan styles, and he soon became an enthusiastic follower of the latest developments of the Gothic Revival. He was an enthusiastic user of Polychrome brickwork. His planning was often elaborate: Henry-Russell Hitchcock called his mansion at Elvetham Park in Hampshire "so complex in its composition and so varied in its detailing that it quite defies description". Some of his later work was, however, more restrained: for instance at St Stephen's Church, Rosslyn Hill, Hampstead, the exterior is of purple-brown brick, of subtly varied tones with light stone trimming. The massing of the building is also simpler than in his earlier designs.

Death

Teulon died at his home in Hampstead on 2 May 1873 and was buried in Highgate Cemetery. His great great great nephew, Alan Teulon, published a book on S.S. Teulon in
2009. He was survived by four sons and four daughters.

Works