“Correct Style:” Ecclesiological Views on Church Architecture, Furnishings, and Worship in the Anglican Diocese of Toronto, 1849-1850

During the 1840s, many substantial Anglican Gothic Revival churches of brick and stone arose in Canada West, but very few of them displayed the style promulgated in Britain by Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin and the Cambridge Camden Society. Some of the Anglican clergy there had some familiarity with the architectural views of the Ecclesiologists and the shift from a read to a sung liturgy that was taking place in England, but these ideas made little impact in the pages of The Church, the official publication of the Diocese of Toronto.
This would change dramatically in early 1849 with the publication in January of an account of the choral service of St. Mark’s College, Chelsea, the “Cradle of the Movement” revive of a sung liturgy and the publication of a letter attributed to “A. B” that attacked the architecture of existing Anglican churches in Canada West and held forth a church designed by Frank Wills as an example of “correct” architecture.  These articles encouraged others to write in support of “correct” architecture and worship and eventually led to the publication in The Church in April 1850 and the adoption by the Church Society of the Diocese of Toronto in September 1850 of a series of detailed “Recommendations by the Church Building Committee of the Church Society, in Regard to Churches and their Precincts.”  With this document, Ecclesiological became official policy in Canada West.