MS British Library: Coleridge Family Papers E: Add MSS 86206 Yonge JTC

My dear Sir William,
Julian and I have been looking over the plans in the Church, and find every proof (except Repton’s plan) that the history of the matter was as you believed.

The original design was made out between Repton and my father, and Carter was employed to make the drawings but finding him not up the requirements of a taste so fastidious and minute as my father’s was, he (my father) collected examples, made designs, stood over Carter, and then did every drawing over again himself for the workmen. There is, I suppose thus much ground for Mr Colson’s assertion that in the present day the business he did would be left to a clerk of the works:- I mean making working drawings on a large scale – But as you remember, the collection of materials (if I may so call them) was his doing – the examples I mean – the bell turret from Carstone the finials from Walsingham, the finial of the open benches from an ornament on a little gothic crown – These are but a few of what we have drawings of his and my mother’s to prove –

There are two copies of specifications, each signed on every single sheet by my father, Mr Keble, Mr Chamberlayne and the builders. One is entirely in my father’s handwriting, the other in my mother’s.

I suppose the professional esprit de corps of architects would prevent them from ever believing the real facts, but thirty years age there was no study of ecclesiastical architecture, and Mr Carter could not do much more than draw from models set before him.

It is fair to say however that among the mass of drawings we found a rough copy of part of a notice evidently intended for the county paper, in my father’s writing, saying that the Church “reflected the greatest credit on Mr Carter, the architect who –” There it breaks off and and another rough copy begins of a note to some person about the state of the roof, mentioning a small drawing of Carter’s and a large one of his own to be worked from. It is an instance of the way everything was done. The calling Mr Carter the architect in the paper was no doubt from the kindly wish to make the most of what he had done as to advertise him, but the huge mass of papers we turned over quite substantiate whose was the head and hand that designed and carried out the design.

Of the Ampfield plans we have none. I think you must have had them made over to you.

I think you fully understand how the case stood, and I can see how Mr Colson’s allegiance to his old historic [?] has led him to make the claim on his behalf – But to make the statement minutely correct, it would be enough to add that of the drawings for Otterbourne were executed by Carter The truth was that he was tried as architect but not found efficient.

This is at great length but I could not explain more shortly.
Yours affectionately
C M Yonge