William Burges - Death

Death

Burges died, aged 53, at The Tower House on 20 April 1881. While on a tour of works at Cardiff, he caught a chill and returned to London, half-paralysed, where he lay dying for some three weeks. Among his last visitors were Oscar Wilde and James Whistler. He was buried in the tomb he designed for his mother at West Norwood. London. On his death, John Starling Chapple, Burges's office manager and close associate for more than twenty years, wrote "a constant relationship ... with one of the brightest ornaments of the profession has rendered the parting most severe. Thank God his work will live and ... be the admiration of future students. I have hardly got to realize my lonely position yet. He was almost all the world to me." Lady Bute, wife of his greatest patron, wrote, "Dear Burges, ugly Burges, who designed such lovely things – what a duck."

" the most dazzling exponent of the High Victorian Dream. Pugin conceived that dream; Rossetti and Burne-Jones painted it; Tennyson sang its glories; Ruskin and Morris formulated its philosophy; but only Burges built it."

In St Fin Barre's, together with memorials to his mother and sister, there is a memorial plaque to Burges, designed by him, and erected by his father. It shows the King of Heaven presiding over the four apostles, who hold open the Word of God. Under the inscription "Architect of this cathedral" is a simple shield and a small, worn, plaque with a mosaic surround, bearing Burges's entwined initials and name. Legal complications obstructed Burges's wish to be buried in the cathedral he had built. Burges's own words on St Fin Barre's, in his letter of January 1877 to the Bishop of Cork, sum up his career, "Fifty years hence, the whole affair will be on its trial and, the elements of time and cost being forgotten, the result only will be looked at. The great questions will then be, first, is this work beautiful and, secondly, have those to whom it was entrusted, done it with all their heart and all their ability."