THE GOTHIC FANTASIES OF BUTE AND BURGES

In 1863, as Wales began to flourish in a coal-powered industrial revolution, a casual introduction between two men resulted in one of the most extraordinary artistic partnerships of Victoria’s reign. One of the men was only eighteen. He was the 3rd Marquess of Bute – a Scots nobleman who had inherited one of the world’s richest coalfields (Fig. 1). The other was a short, bumbling, somewhat eccentric thirty-eight year-old architect called William Burges. It proved a meeting of minds, a coming together of talent and imagination, and marked the start of a fruitful friendship that produced some of the most fascinating buildings and interiors of the age.

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