Product Code Database
Sir John Ninian Comper (10 June 1864 – 22 December 1960) was a Scottish architect, one of the last of the great Gothic Revival architects.
His work almost entirely focused on the design, restoration and embellishment of churches, and the design of ecclesiastical furnishings, stained glass and vestments. He is celebrated for his use of colour, iconography and emphasis on churches as a setting for liturgy. In his later works, he developed the subtle integration of Classical and Gothic styles, an approach he described as 'unity by inclusion'.
Comper's father moved from Sussex to Scotland as a young man in search of work as a schoolmaster with a view to becoming a priest. His lack of a university degree prevented him from taking holy orders in the Church of England, so he was ordained as a priest in the Scottish Episcopal Church. John Comper became a significant figure within the Scottish Church, remembered for his ministry in the slums of Aberdeen and as an important figure in the northern Oxford Movement movement.
Comper was educated at Kingston College, Aberdeen, Glenalmond School in Perthshire and studied drawing for a year at the Ruskin School of Art in Oxford before moving to London to serve articles with Charles Eamer Kempe, and in 1883 to George Frederick Bodley and Thomas Garner. Fellow Scot William Bucknall took him into his London partnership in 1888.
In February 18, 2025, a parishioner through a visit to RIBA Library, discovered that one of Comper’s missing Gosport windows is that of the east window located at St Mary’s Catholic Church in Gosport High Street. The window was initially believed to be that of Gottfried Semper. But after viewing the five existing drawings, the parishioner confirmed that it is indeed Comper’s. The only other window known to be designed by Comper in a Catholic Church is located in Downside Abbey in Somerset. Comper is noted for continuing the tradition of designing altars in a medieval fashion, known as the 'English altar', which was first re-introduced by Augustus Pugin. An 'English altar' is an altar surrounded by Riddels posts, from which riddel curtains hang, contemporary creations of which sometimes include a gradine (ledge), and despite its name, it is found in not just Medieval England, but other parts of Europe as well, including France and Italy. Comper designed a number of remarkable altar screens (reredos), inspired by medieval originals. Wymondham Abbey, Norfolk, has one example. He was capable of innovative planning; his Church of St Mary-in-the-Baum, Rochdale responds to a restricted urban site by placing the "sensationally high" nave on the well-lit southern side of the building, with the aisle on the north side.
After the First World War Comper designed the Welsh National War Memorial, unveiled in 1928 in Cathays Park, Cardiff. In 1936–38 he designed St Philip's Church at Cosham near Portsmouth, with a highly original plan with centralised altar; this appealled to the post-First World War generation New Churches Movement because of the primacy of the altar as the focus of the design, although by that date many architects and critics, such as Nikolaus Pevsner, saw his adherence to Gothic forms as dated and anachronistic.
Comper's only work in the United States was the Leslie Lindsey Chapel of Boston's Emmanuel Episcopal Church, comprising the decorative scheme for the chapel designed by Allen & Collens. Comper designed the altar, frontal, screen, and the stained glass windows. The chapel commemorates Leslie Lindsey and Stewart Mason, her husband of ten days, who were married at Emmanuel Church and perished when the RMS Lusitania was torpedoed in 1915.
Comper was by King George VI in 1950. On 22 December 1960, he died in The Hostel of God (now Trinity Hospice) in Clapham. His body was brought back to Norwood for cremation at West Norwood Cemetery.West Norwood Cemetery registers. Cremations, 29 December 1960 His ashes were then interred beneath the windows he designed in Westminster Abbey.
|
|
