Autograph Letter Signed ('Geo. Hartley') to 'G. Woolcott Esqre'.

4to, 4 pp. Very good on lightly aged paper. Hartley has 'attentively considered' Woolcott's 'plans for your New Church with reference to an opinion of their merits as being calculated to assist the Human Voice in Rhetorical delivery'. He is 'so little of an Architect as to be unable to assist my observations with the technical terms which would facilitate the meaning of my observations', but he will give them as clearly as he can, speaking from his 'long experience in Public Delivery in (I may say) almost all kinds of enclosed spaces'. He considers the 'form of the roof and the elevation of the Building', and its span, the 'most important points of consideration'. He disapproves of 'square Roofs' and would have 'as few breaks projecting from the Walls as possible'. Mentions instances in which it is 'difficult for a speaker to qualify and controul his voice to make it articulate' and 'to find volume to render himself audible'. 'I perceive it is the fashion in some of our New Churches to place the Reading-desk on one side, and the Pulpit on the other - and thus in both instances I consider the Clergyman disadvantageously placed'. Gives 'unqualified praise to the excellent arrangement' in Woolcott's plans 'of enclosing all the spaces both under the organ and at each side of the Communion'. He is 'of opinion your Church will be admirably adapted for sound. Its size cannot be objectionable - I fancy it is very near the span of the New St Pancrass [sic] - and that certainly is not too large'. Both Hartley and Woolcott (Wollcott? Wolcott?) have proved surprisingly elusive. The poet Edward Fitzgerald addressed several letters from 19 Charlotte Street between 1844 and 1851.