'The scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare': Meet the buildings designed by the 'Rogue Goths'

When I say the phrase ‘Rogue Goths’, what pops into your head? Is it those spooky kids from your school days? Perhaps Robert Smith and The Cure? What they should be, according to a new book by The Victorian Society and Historic England are the architects Robert Lewis Roumieu, Joseph Peacock and Bassett Keeling.

These are the real rogue goths, as explained by author Edmund Harris, who shines a light (hisss!) on these three architects, who produced some of Victorian England’s most striking and dramatic Gothic buildings.

Roumieu is the architect of 33–35 Eastcheap in the City of London, a building described as ‘the scream you wake on at the end of a nightmare’ by Ian Nairn in Nairn’s London. He also designed Milner Square in Islington, of which John Summerson said ‘it is possible to visit… many times and still not be absolutely certain that you have seen it anywhere but in an unhappy dream’. If I ever design a building, I hope it is spoken of in similar tones.

The book is densely illustrated with photography by Robin Forster, alongside sketches and drawings, as well as supplemental imagery from Historic England’s collection. 

Mr Harris is himself an architectural historian and independent scholar. His blog, Less Eminent Victorians is dedicated to ‘fascinating but less heralded Victorian architects’.

James Fisher is deputy digital editor of Countrylife.co.uk. He lives in London