Hope, Alexander James Beresford

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Hope, Alexander James Beresford (1820–87). English writer, collector, and patron, the son of Thomas Hope. At Cambridge he befriended Benjamin Webb (1819–85), cofounder (with John Mason Neale (1818–66) ) of the Cambridge Camden Society (later The Ecclesiological Society) (see ecclesiology. On inheriting the English estate of his stepfather, General Viscount Beresford (1768–1854), he changed his name to Beresford Hope. Hope became the most energetic and influential lay member of the society, helped to edit The Ecclesiologist, and promoted ‘urban minsters’ using tough materials and structural polychromy: his was the guiding force that helped to create the society's exemplary Church of All Saints, Margaret Street, London (1849–59), by Butterfield. His The English Cathedral of the Nineteenth Century (1861) and other writings were important influences on the development of the Gothic Revival, on the planning of Anglican churches, and on the growing High Church party with its emphasis on symbolism and ritual within an appropriate architectural setting. He was President of the RIBA (1865–7).

Bibliography

AH, viii (1965), 73–9;
C. Brooks (1999);
J. Curl (2002b);
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004);
Jane Turner (1996);
J. White (1962)

A Dictionary of Architecture and Landscape Architecture

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