Description
George Shaw of Uppermill was a major nineteenth-century Saddleworth figure. Architect, church builder, major local employer, antiquarian, forger of antiques, yet pillar of society, his importance has been relatively undersestimated until recent times. Gilbert Howcroft’s short book is the first attempt to review George Shaw’s works and his significance. Shaw’s family background and his early life working as a salesman for his father’s woollen business are described and the way his antiquarian interests led to his remodelling of the Georgian family house in Uppermill, turning it into a romantic Gothic ediface with its own ‘medieval’ chapel. His transition to a self-taught church architect followed and in the next three decades he designed, built and furnished over 20 churches across the North of England, remodelled several others and built a number of iconic Gothic buildings, such as Wharmton Tower and Ashway Gap. His friendships with a number of aristocrastic antiquarians led to a number of commissions including Gladstone’s Hawarden Castle and the churches and schools sponsored by local gentry and industrialists such as the Saddleworth Platts, Whiteheads and the Deardens, Lords of the Manor of Rochdale. Shaw’s workshops also produced finely carved church furnishings, graveyard monuments and stained glass. This is the only work to review the whole range of Shaw’s activities but as a trained architect, Howcroft’s assessment of Shaw’s architectural significance perhaps reflects the twentieth century view of Victorian Gothic. The book was published nearly fifty years ago and since then Shaw’s works have been rediscovered and reassessed, most of them now Grade II listed and all now positively featuring in the Pevsner guides.
