Did Prince Charles invent that carbuncle insult? Take a look at this Times leader

As the Prince of Wales dons his flak jacket to go and talk to the Royal Institute of British Architects tonight, it seems he may be addressing some empty seats.

It's 25 years since his colourful put-down for the National Gallery extension design by Ahrends, Burton and Koralek - "what is proposed is like a monstrous carbuncle on the face of a much-loved and elegant friend" - which resulted in the design being dropped and a public reaction against modern architecture in general. Now a group of prize-winning architects are calling for a boycott of his speech, which Clarence House officials had hoped would be the start of a détente.

That carbuncle is always being bandied about in architectural discussion now, but can the Prince take all the credit for it? It has made one appearance before.

In 1827, Queen Charlotte's private home, Buckingham House, was being rebuilt at public expense to provide a similar refuge for her son, George IV, away from the formality of St James's Palace. In the course of the work the King apparently changed his mind and hired John Nash to do a complete makeover and turn the building into Buckingham Palace - a new official residence, fit to be "the intended abode of royalty".

Unsurprisingly costs soared, and the buiding work came under close scrutiny. By the summer of 1827, The Times had seen enough. 

The people of England have paid before now for frivolous and useless undertakings - for mean jobs - for thriftless and foolish quackeries of various descriptions - political, military, naval, architectural; but surely such a job as this new erection, or fabrication, or whatever it may be; under the name of a rebuilding of Buckingham-house, was never before inflicted on a community which had eyes to see with.

The leader writer had no axe to grind with Nash who, it said, had washed his hands of the project.

This heap (for it is nothing better) presents what has not been often equalled in works which pretend to be works of art, a mixture of magnitude and meanness, of laboriousness and insignificance, of intricacy and poverty, of frivolous caprice with heavy and lumbering vulgarity.

And in case you didn't get the message that the writer really didn't like the building:

Three or four lumps or knobs protrude themselves, not unlike so many carbuncles on the proboscis of a bloated visage, with no link of relationship between them, or of connexion with the edifice of which they are said to be members.

So who had got his hands on Nash's design, and hanky-pankied with it?

No professional or educated mind could ever have produced such a piece of monstrous meagreness ... . If intermeddling or dictation has been suffered from an irresponsible quarter, there is no language strong enough to express our contempt for the unmanly servility which has endured it.

There are other outspoken articles from the period which condemn the vulgarity of the Brighton Pavilion. Was that architectural vandal the King himself?

You can read the leader in full here.

Also in the Archive blog: The horse that could spell Victoria and Albert

Queen Victoria's last journey

Was Prince Albert a hero - or just clumsy?

Want to explore 200 years of The Times Archive for yourself? Check out the Archive homepage or  subscribe here

Comments

[Anthony]

Blimy! It has to be remembered that Nash was doing revoluntionary design for his time, much like the 'radical' architechs of today, so its no surprise there were some strong objectors. I'd assume that the likelihood is the average Times reporter of 1827 was mostly conservative in his outlook so the outrage is understandable. Fortunately, this is one example of where the experiment paid off. Most don't, whether in 1827 or today. To be fair, even today i'd suggest most people visit Buckingham Palace for what it represents rather than how it actually looks. The extravagent monarchy of George IV wasn't exactly in the hard pressed taxpayers good books. In the same way that most people know how much the Scottish Parliament cost but have no idea what it looks like, stupendous expense on a house so soon after the wars with France would cloud peoples judgement of its beauty behind a mist of resentful fury. They would have hated it whatever it looked like. But can you imagine the outrage if someone tomorrow suggested knocking it down and replacing it with a modernist minimalistic version? At a cost of £2bn? Question is will the same arguments over contempory architecture now look equally misplaced in 200years time?

I doubt it.

[J Tepper]

Prince Charles is a quack and a fool. The sooner people stop paying attention to him, the better. He's a carbuncle on a much loved country.