Outliving Ozymandias

In 1842, a wealthy heiress called Sarah Losh built a church in Wreay (rhymes with ‘near’, apparently), close to Carlisle. Coupling carvings of caterpillars with turtle gargoyles and a spattering of pinecones, she was, stylistically, half a century before her time. As a female architect and builder, she was still more precocious.

The Pinecone by Jenny Uglow is the true, largely forgotten story of one of nineteenth-century England’s most forward-looking architects and – paradox standing – antiquarians. Sarah and her sister Katharine inherited land from their parents when their brother transpired to be ‘slow’. Sarah, the more ambitious of the sisters, tried her hand at various pursuits, always inspired by her uncle James, a barrister who had been a familiar face in republican circles of the late eighteenth century. He emerges as one of the more complex characters of the story.