Belcher’s work is the striking outcome of a traditional education in classical architecture stimulated to revolt by the Gothic revival, and producing an eclecticism which opened the way for new alliances with sculptors and painters, untrammelled by convention. He was quick to respond to new movements, and had the courage of his convictions. His work, therefore, represents the approach of architecture to the arts and crafts movement in renaissance building, as does that of his friend John Dando Sedding [q.v.] in Gothic. He was an original member of the Art Workers’ Guild, and his presidency of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1904 proved a valuable link between the two societies. He published a small book of essays, Essentials in Architecture (1893), and collaborated with Mervyn E. Macartney in publishing an important collection of photographs of houses, entitled The Later Renaissance in England (1897-1899); this has had considerable influence on contemporary building.
Belcher was elected A.R.A. in 1900 and R.A. in 1909. The Royal Institute of British Architects nominated him in 1907 for the royal gold medal of architecture. He married in 1865 Florence, daughter of Matthew Parker, a minister, of Dublin. They had no children. He died at Redholm, Champion Hill, Camberwell, 8 November 1918, and is buried in Norwood cemetery. An excellent portrait by F. Dicksee, R.A., hangs in the gallery of the Institute.
[Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 22 November and 6 December 1913; personal knowledge.]
BENSON, RICHARD MEUX (1824-1915), divine, and founder of a religious order, the second son of Thomas Starling Benson, of Champion Lodge, Surrey, by his second wife, Eliza, only child of Richard Meux, was born at his father’s London residence, Bolton House, Russell Square, 6 July 1824. His father, who was high sheriff of Surrey (1814), had no profession and gave much time to hunting, shooting, and fishing. His mother, to whom he was devoted and to whom he owed his religious training, was descended from Anne, sister of Edward IV, as well as from the seventeenth-century divine, Robert Sanderson, bishop of Lincoln [q.v.]. Through his mother Benson was also a cousin of the first Lord Brougham. After Benson’s birth his father lived at North Cray Place, Kent, until 1838 when he removed to Sketty Park, near Swansea. In 1837 the family occupied a château near Boulogne, and from 1839 to 1861 their home was the Manor House, Teddington, Middlesex, where Mr. Benson died in 1858 and his widow in 1859.
Richard Benson was educated at home with his elder brother, Henry Roxby, afterwards General Benson, who fought in the Crimea, commanded the 17th Lancers, and died in 1890. His education was sufficiently thorough to enable him, while still a youth, to escort his half-sister, Sarah Benson, to Germany in 1841, and to make a long foreign tour with her in 1848. Proceeding from Germany to Italy the brother and sister wintered in Rome, where they had the entrée to distinguished society. Benson saw much of the leading Italian theologians of the day, and used to walk with De Rossi, the archaeologist, then a youth of his own age. Cardinal Acton [q.v.] and other cardinals paid them some attention, and they had a private audience with the pope, Gregory XVI, who conversed not of theology but of Italian cities. Benson set himself to study thoroughly the Roman Church, but his studies did nothing to shake the beliefs in which he had been educated and he attended regularly the Anglican services then held in a hayloft outside the Porta del Popolo. Later they visited Naples, Venice, and Karlsbad, where Benson left his sister while he went to Dresden and Prague.
In October 1844 Benson went up to Christ Church, Oxford; in 1846 he was nominated by Dr. Pusey to a studentship and admitted on 24 December with Henry Parry Liddon, George William Kitchin, and George Ward Hunt. He retained his studentship till his death. He took his B.A. degree (second classes in literae humaniores and mathematics) in 1847, and gained the Kennicott scholarship for Hebrew in 1848, in which year he was ordained deacon by Bishop Wilberforce at Cuddesdon and became assistant curate of St. Mark’s, Surbiton, close to his home. He was ordained priest, by the same bishop, and graduated M.A. in 1849. In 1850 he became vicar of Cowley, two miles from Oxford, then a small village, although the parish extended as far as Magdalen bridge. He lived a life of study and devotion, eagerly promoted the practice of retreats, was a close friend of Henry Parry Liddon [q.v.], then vice-principal of Cuddesdon, and was much consulted by Anglicans inclined to become Roman Catholics.
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