M192 Design for an unidentified church

One of the drawings that remained in Mackintosh's possession at his death is a damaged pencil sketch for the entrance front of a Gothic Revival church. The inclusion of a scale suggests this was a proposal for an actual building, not just an imaginative exercise, but there is no inscription identifying the intended location. The proposed materials appear to have been brick with stone dressings, a combination also found in the work of J. D. Sedding (1838–1891) and Henry Wilson (1864–1934), two architects admired by Mackintosh. The way the tracery merges into a panel of sculpture in the gable is also comparable to designs by Wilson, such as that for a cathedral for Victoria, British Columbia. 1 The sketch seems to have been cut from a larger sheet, and had probably already been torn in half horizontally before being mounted on a sheet of card. To judge from the age of the mount, it may have been Mackintosh himself who decided to preserve it in this way.

Authorship: The style of both architecture and draughtsmanship is Mackintosh's. The flowing tracery of the W. window is similar to his competition design for Liverpool Cathedral.