Arts & Crafts House Styles 9781846742309, 1846742307

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ARTS&CRAFTS

HOUSE STYLES Trevor Yorke

COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS NEWBURY BERKSHIRE

First published 2011 © Trevor Yorke 2011 All rights reserved. No reproduction permitted without the prior permission of the publisher: COUNTRYSIDE BOOKS 3 Catherine Road Newbury, Berkshire To view our complete range of books, please visit us at www.countrysidebooks.co.uk ISBN 978 1 84674 230 9 Designed by Peter Davies, Nautilus Design Produced through MRM Associates Ltd., Reading Printed by Information Press, Oxford

Contents Introduction  4

Chapter 1 The Arts & Crafts Movement  6 Definition and Origins

Chapter 2 Arts & Crafts Styles  17 Architects and Houses

Chapter 3 Arts & Crafts Housing  38 Speculative Housing and Social Housing Schemes

Chapter 4 Arts & Crafts Details  50 Doors, Windows and Fittings

Chapter 5 Arts & Crafts Interiors  59 Space and Light

Places to Visit  73 Glossary  75 Index  78

Arts & Crafts House Styles

Introduction ‘To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction.’ This golden rule of physics would have found resonance with the leading figures in Victorian culture. A nation whose apparent glory had been founded upon groundbreaking industrial developments and inventive entrepreneurs was very adept at masking the effects of such rapid change – a dark underbelly of social discontent created by poor living conditions, long working hours and a monotonous factory system. In response to this, a new generation of social reformers, architects and designers sought in the latter half of the 19th century to restore dignity and pride to workers and create buildings and objects of simplicity and beauty based upon an idealised medieval world. The Arts & Crafts movement, as it would become known, began a revolution in design and drew attention to the plight of industrial workers but it was the houses that its adherents built and the fittings they crafted that are their most distinctive and notable contribution. Yet, unlike other styles based upon an easily recognisable architectural feature or rule, Arts & Crafts buildings can be found with many sources of inspiration and no single detail common to them all. One of the movement’s characteristics is the inventiveness of its exponents, who not only created modern forms based upon a wide variety of historic styles but also used the surrounding landscape and the demands of the interior to shape the structure of the houses so that no two are alike. Identifying them is made all the more complicated because, in addition to the designs of the leading independent designers, there were hundreds of local architects producing work inspired by them and thousands of speculative builders applying their fashionable details to standard terraces and semis. Despite this, there are some key characteristics that were shared by many of those working in the movement, and contemporary features and regulations that can help with dating a building and make their revolutionary designs stand out from the majority of Victorian and Edwardian housing. This book sets out to explain the background, introduce the most notable architects and show, using clearly labelled illustrations and photographs, what makes Arts & Crafts houses different from others produced in this period. The first chapter defines the basic rules that link them, the significant figures who inspired the formation of the movement and its effect upon contemporary and later culture. The second chapter looks at the work of the leading architects, giving a brief biography of each and examples of their work, along with a more detailed description of the style. The next chapter describes the attempts to produce large-scale estates within the ethical rules of the movement and helps the reader to differentiate the work of famous architects from those buildings today referred to as ‘Arts & Crafts’ but which are usually mass-produced housing, with fashionable fittings and materials added to standard structures. The fourth chapter has

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Introduction photographs of distinctive features and details that can help identify the style and aid renovation, while the final part looks inside at the rooms and the decoration that so revolutionised interior design. For anyone who simply wants to recognise the style, understand the contribution of key characters and appreciate what makes Arts & Crafts houses special, this book offers an easy-to-follow introduction to the subject. If the reader is fortunate enough to own such a house, then the illustrations and text will hopefully assist any planned renovation or redecoration while the list of places to visit and contacts at the end can help take any studies further. For those of us who can but look on and admire, I hope the book helps clarify the true essence of the style and why it is such a unique and valuable contribution to a street, a community or even a town, one which should be better appreciated and lovingly protected. Trevor Yorke

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Chapter 1

fig 1.1: The Arts & Crafts movement was instrumental in bringing the countryside into the town and shaping the distinctive housing estates of the first half of the 20th century.

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1

The Arts and Crafts Movement

Definition and Origins What is an Arts & Crafts House? A true Arts & Crafts house is one where traditional materials, techniques and styles from the local area (vernacular) were used to create a building of good quality and simple form, in which the function of the interior spaces was as important as the shape of the exterior. The architect was usually involved in the design of every detail, from the structure down to the handle on the front door, while craftsmen hand-made the decorative details used to enliven the surface of the house, which relied upon variety in texture of materials to break up their otherwise plain form. Although some houses have been built to this strict doctrine over the past 150 years and can rightly be described as Arts & Crafts style, the buildings that are usually referred to as such were mainly erected from the 1870s to the early 1900s by architects working loosely under the banner of the Arts & Crafts movement and are described in detail in Chapter 2. By their very nature of being custom-designed and hand-made, these houses were very expensive and were usually reserved for the upper middle classes. Attempts to create homes for the masses using some of these principles were made most notably fig 1.2: A fine detached Arts & Crafts style house with a rendered exterior broken up by exposed stonework, tall plain chimneys and a distinctive long, low mullion window. Although plain compared with the busy Gothic piles that preceded it there was still scope for homely features such as bow windows, colourful patterned glass and low-slung tiled roofs.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles in workers’ estates linked to factories like Port Sunlight and Bournville or later at Letchworth Garden City. However, for the majority, their terraced houses were built to standard forms with little expression of style. For those who could afford to pay a little more rent (few homes were owned in this period) the builder could mask the brickwork or add mass-produced details to imitate the Arts & Crafts houses, a fashion that became widespread in the early 1900s. It is the terraces, semis and detached houses built in social housing schemes or by speculative builders, dating from 1870–1914, that today are often referred to as Arts & Crafts and although not strictly true in origin are still of note and hence are covered in detail in Chapter 3. Arts & Crafts is today a broad banner often used to describe buildings that at the time had little to do with the movement. Most architects in the late 19th century were inspired by timber-framed farmhouses, old stone manor houses and late 17th-century

fig 1.3: An end terrace house built in the Arts & Crafts style as part of a large workers’ estate, with its form, plan and fittings designed by an architect for this specific site. Note the mix of render, brick and stone and the decorative rainwater trap. fig 1.4: Part of a row of massproduced terrace houses onto which the speculative builder has added details from various sources, including the Arts & Crafts style, as was typical in the 1890s and early 1900s. Rendered first floors, timberframed gables, muscular bow windows and terracotta plaques were common.

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The Arts and Crafts Movement brick structures, a domestic revival led by influential men such as Richard Norman Shaw (many Arts & Crafts architects started work in his practice) creating Old English, Queen Anne and Neo-Georgian styles. The details from these contemporary styles were often jumbled up by speculative builders, and some of the features that are distinctive of this period, like decorative plaques, mouldings and bargeboards, are included in the Arts & Crafts style illustrations in Chapter 4.

The Origins of Arts & Crafts The Victorian age was more complex than it first appears. Fortunes fluctuated dramatically, factories appeared indiscriminately and an Empire born out of commerce became a national obsession. Society maintained its order, with an aristocracy actively involved in trade and industry staving off the revolutions that swept across Europe in the early 19th century, partly by empowering the middle classes with the vote so that they became a dominant group in their own right, with aspirations to emulate their social superiors. The mass of the working population, which accounted for up to four out of every five people, had to wait until the fig 1.5: Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin (1812–1852) closing decades of Queen was one of the first to study medieval buildings in detail and Victoria’s reign before they identify Gothic as an indigenous style that was more honest and were enfranchised, and appropriate than those from the Ancient World. He designed that only happened when churches and buildings like these at Cotton College, Staffordshire, fear of an uprising and the making red brick and the pointed arch fashionable once again. His growing power of trade writings and studies of Gothic architecture were hugely influential unions had provoked those to the architects and designers who would follow and who in turn above into action. Through went on to inspire the Arts & Crafts movement, although Pugin all levels of society there died at the tragically young age of 40. was a general acceptance of a Victorian doctrine that individual effort and high moral values were key to progress, self-help was the order of the day and the authorities prided themselves on minimum interference in trade and industry. When Victoria came to the throne the country, which had boomed in population and global influence, was searching for a cultural identity, one that would be separate from

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

fig 1.6: John Ruskin was the most influential cultural icon of his generation, a highly articulate writer and thinker who guided painters, architects and designers on the approach and execution of their work, paying special attention to the close study of nature. He promoted the Gothic style as it represented what he thought to have been a more moral and deeply religious time; his love of this mystical Middle Ages partly encouraging others to reject machines and industry and look to a home-grown rustic past for inspiration. Ruskin also linked art and morality, laying the seeds for its close association with Socialism, the re-emergence of the traditional craftsman and the importance of the artist being involved in every aspect from design to construction. His most notable book, The Stones of Venice, was studied closely by many who went on to influence the Arts & Crafts movement.

the European styles that had dominated domestic art and architecture for centuries. Men of taste argued between Classicism and Gothic, a battle of styles that was ultimately won by the latter, especially after it was chosen as the theme for the new Houses of Parliament. These were in part designed by Augustus Pugin, the most learned and passionate advocate of Medievalism. The hugely influential critic John Ruskin had preached the value of these domestic historic forms on moral as well as aesthetic grounds. The obsession with the pointed arch was further crystallised by declining outside influence; no longer did wealthy young men travel to Europe on grand tours to study the wonders of the ancient world and import foreign pieces of art and architectural styles. Now they were posted to the far corners of a growing Empire in which British morals and taste were exported to its subjects. This created a sense of isolationism and distrust of anything Continental in the second half of the 19th century. Those who absorbed new European culture, like Oscar Wilde, were viewed as immoral, and impressionist artwork by masters such as Van Gogh, Cézanne and Gauguin was publicly derided when exhibited here in 1910. There were also problems with industry. Despite the country being at the forefront of technology, in the early 1800s criticism grew about the quality of goods and exports dropped, encouraging the government to look into the matter and conclude that a lack of training in design was the root cause, with national schools for the arts being established in response. There was also a growing awareness of the plight of those who kept the wheels of industry turning. The long hours and lack of support when work dried up meant that employees in factories and mines often faced poor

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The Arts and Crafts Movement

fig 1.7: Saltaire, West Yorkshire: When building his new mill alongside the River Aire near Bradford, Titus Salt established a small village with quality housing for his staff. Saltaire, named after himself and the river that powered his mills, was a revelation and was copied and improved upon by others like the Cadburys at Bournville and Levers at Port Sunlight later in the century.

living conditions and destitution, with little opportunity to escape. The rumbling of discontent empowered the fledgling Socialist movement and encouraged the authorities to establish museums, libraries and schools to educate and inspire the working classes, and the widespread literacy by the end of the century created a boom in the popular press and magazines. Since the late 18th century there had been a growing interest in home-grown history. Ruined abbeys and castles were appreciated for their dramatic and picturesque settings and tales of medieval chivalry made popular reading. This rather rose-tinted view of the past combined with isolation from European culture, the discontent felt by many about the effects of factory conditions upon the labouring classes, and the perceived poor quality of mass-produced goods led some Victorians to look back to the way of life and buildings of the Middle Ages for an answer to the present-day ills. By the 1850s, romantic anti-industrialism and a growing appreciation for nature and the countryside could be found expressed in the Pre-Raphaelite brotherhood of artists who produced stunningly detailed paintings inspired by Ruskin’s belief in the accurate study of flora and fauna, and in the buildings of the Gothic revival led by Pugin’s energetic but shortlived output of churches, houses and interiors. There was one giant of a figure, however, who emerged at this time, putting many of these theoretical threads into practical use, a multi-talented artist, social reformer and powerful orator who revolutionised design and inspired a future generation, William Morris.

William Morris Seen by many as the father figure of the Arts & Crafts movement, he was not only a guiding light to the guilds and groups that were established under its banner but also – due to his incredible range of talents – someone who had contact with many of the key

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Arts & Crafts House Styles figures in architecture, art, literature and design at the time. William Morris was born into a wealthy middle class family in March 1834 and was educated at Marlborough College and then Exeter College, Oxford, where he met Edward Burne-Jones, a fellow artist and designer who would remain a lifelong associate. The two young men, fuelled by an appreciation of Ruskin’s book The Stones of Venice, established themselves in Bloomsbury in 1856 where they shared accommodation with Rossetti, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, with Morris working for a time in the practice of the architect G.E. Street. Here he met Philip Webb, who designed for him the Red House, the Bexleyheath home that Morris and his new wife would move into in 1860. Although Morris had ambitions to be an artist, his self-critical view of his paintings and the founding of Morris, Marshall and Faulkner in 1861 encouraged him to abandon that course and concentrate on design, with the company, which would become Morris and Co, expanding its scope to include stained glass, wallpapers, fabrics and tiles. At the same time he became a leading poet, held in such high regard that he was even considered for the position of Poet Laureate after Tennyson. As the company grew Fig 1.8: William Morris was not only a talented designer, poet and artist but also a visionary who helped break down the barriers between fine art and handmade crafts and revolutionised the approach to design. He was one of the first educated men who was happy to get his hands dirty, not passing on any job in his workshop that he would not have been able and prepared to do himself and promoting his belief that designers should be involved in all aspects of the production of their work, and that art was key to improving the quality of goods. He encouraged others to form collectives, believing that the mutual support from a group based upon medieval guilds would aid production. Unlike many of his contemporaries, he was a practical man who turned much of this theory into a successful business, and he looked forward to a day when ‘the millions of those who sit in darkness will be enlightened by an art made by the people and for the people, a joy to the maker and the user’.

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The Arts and Crafts Movement

Fig 1.9: Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent: Two faces of this revolutionary house by Philip Webb, which had an asymmetrical plan, stylised Gothic forms and vernacular features. Despite his love for the place Morris moved out in 1865 as the commuting from here to the company studios 12 miles away in central London was taking three or four hours a day! in stature and Morris’s free-flowing designs of flora and fauna became appreciated, especially amongst a booming suburban middle class, he sought even greater perfection in its products, which avoided the use of modern materials. He spent a number of years from 1875 visiting Thomas Wardle’s dye works in Leek, Staffordshire, to try to find a wide range of colours for fabrics, using natural ingredients and traditional methods, a key part of his design work. It was while he was in this industrious little mill town that he came face to face with the factory system he had despised from a distance. He was now inspired to speak out publicly against it and become a key figure in the early Socialist movement. Fig 1.10: While he was working in the Staffordshire mill town of Leek, Morris became aware of the problems created by the factory system and the poor conditions workers had to endure. The town today has many houses built in the late Victorian and Edwardian period, inspired by the Arts & Crafts movement, which he helped establish, among them these workers’ cottages connected with the Co-op (the left-hand one was originally a shop).

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Arts & Crafts House Styles In his later years with Morris and Co, a household name, he spent more time at Kelmscott Manor in the Cotswolds, a house he had rented (but never owned) since 1871 and which became a focal point for family and associates, although never the artistic commune he had longed for since his time at the Red House. When he died in October 1896 his obituary referred to him principally as a writer and poet. However, it was his linking of art to social reform and the practical benefits he believed came from empowering workers to design and create their own products – a return to preindustrial craftsmanship – that were of greater influence. This was especially true to a new generation of designers and architects who during the 1880s and 90s began founding guilds and groups based around his ideals and under the banner of the Arts & Crafts movement.

The Arts & Crafts Movement Several threads come together in the Arts & Crafts movement in the last decades of the 19th century. The Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood had shown how a collection of artists could work under a single banner with similar beliefs and aims while the Aesthetic movement in the 1870s had rejected commercialism and moralising and sought beauty and sensation in the arts, with the focus upon colour, tone and texture. These sources of inspiration encouraged young artists, designers and architects, clutching their books by John Ruskin and fuelled by the writings of William Morris, to seek a new approach to their work. In effect, they became craftsmen, raising the status of decorative products carved, turned, or polished by hand to that of the fine arts, but at the same time finding beauty in their simple form and functional efficiency. Whether it was a house, furniture or simple fittings, they would usually be involved from the original design through to the finished article, with an emphasis upon using traditional methods and materials and with close association to the countryside and nature rather than industry and the city. Many formed themselves into collectives based upon the ideals of brotherhood and artistic communes that Morris had sought. One of the earliest was the Art Workers’ Guild, formed in 1884 by Ernest Newton, W.R. Lethaby, Edward Prior, Gerald Horsley and Mervyn Macartney, all of whom had worked in the architectural practice of Richard Norman Shaw. This brotherhood of artists, promoting the equal status of all forms of art, tripled its membership to around 150 after only six years. In 1888 the guild set up a separate organisation to act as its public face, the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society; its name being used afterwards for the movement as a whole. Another influential group was founded by C.R. Ashbee in the same year, the Guild and School of Handicraft, at first in the East End of London but later moving out to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds. Ernest Gimson and Sidney Barnsley took it a stage further by establishing an artists’ commune in the tiny Gloucestershire village of Sapperton, with the new houses to the north and east of the existing settlement built with such respect to local styles and materials as to be hardly distinguishable from their older neighbours. Regional guilds were established in the early 1890s and a Central School for Arts & Crafts in 1896, so that by 1900 there were probably over a hundred separate groups working within the movement. Other architects and craftsmen preferred to work on their own, and although tied into the movement by similar artistic ideals they may have had less interest in its social reforming aspects.

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The Arts and Crafts Movement

Fig 1.11: A hall and church built in an Arts & Crafts style with the distinctive simplified vernacular forms and rows of short windows, which were plain enough to be modern in appearance. Some features like the eyebrow dormer window (right) and the angled wings with their narrow slits (left) demonstrate the inventiveness of many architects working under the Arts & Crafts banner, a term that did not come into widespread use until the end of the 1890s, shortly before these buildings were designed.

The End of the Movement and Later Influence There were problems, however, with some of these high-minded ideals right from the start. William Morris had been held up as a champion of the movement by many of its guilds but he had reservations about their practical success and had little involvement with them, seeing their establishment as doing little to solve the problems created by the factory system, issues in which he was passionately interested. Although today we might find his own solutions to the problems – turning the clock back to a mystical past – to be backward and simplistic, he was always aware of the need to combine the role of the craftsmen with the machine and of the practical economics of business, as he had demonstrated with his successful company. His ideal was for a time when nothing made either by hand or machine would ‘be ugly, but will have its due form, and its due ornament, and will tell the tale of its making and the tale of its use’. The work produced by the Arts & Crafts movement with its avoidance of mass production became, by its very nature, expensive, being commissioned or bought by wealthy and artistic members of the middle classes. C.R. Ashbee stated with resignation when the Guild and School of Handicraft was wound up in 1908 that ‘we have made of a great social movement, a narrow and tiresome little aristocracy working with great skill for the very rich’. W.R. Lethaby also saw problems with their rejection of the machine, stating ‘we have passed into a scientific age, and the old practical arts, produced instinctively, belong to an entirely different era’. The beautiful, simple and high-quality buildings and products made by the movement can still be appreciated today but of more far-reaching influence was the doctrine of form and function in design, an appreciation of historic styles and the countryside and the unification of all types of art. German-speaking countries embraced the work

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 1.12: William Morris and other members of the Arts & Crafts movement were also involved with founding the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, which sought to counter vigorous Victorian restoration that destroyed much of what they were meant to be preserving. They were also key in helping to found the National Trust, its first acquisition being Alfriston Clergy House, East Sussex, in 1896 (pictured here) a Wealden-type, timberframed structure that was just the type of building to have inspired many of the architects involved in the movement. of Arts & Crafts designers, Muthesius promoted the English house and the Secession Group founded in Vienna in 1897 and Wiener Werkstatte of 1903 were influenced by the work of Charles Rennie Mackintosh and Ashbee and claimed kinship with Morris. In America their own Arts & Crafts movement developed, with leading figures like Frank Lloyd Wright, who used the style of the Shakers and indigenous peoples for inspiration in his buildings, but although they remained close to nature in essence they did not turn their back on the machine, making their products available to a wider market. In Europe similar Arts & Crafts groups were formed, the writings of Morris and the work of Mackintosh being two of the rare contributions to Continental culture from Britain in this period. Some of the founders of the Modern movement that evolved after the First World War echoed the views of Arts & Crafts designers, who helped shape its initial ideals, in effect bridging the architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries.

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Chapter 2

Fig 2.1: Broadleys, Windermere: Architects like C.F.A. Voysey used old vernacular buildings as inspiration for their bright, simple and modern houses, as in this example with its distinctive bay windows.

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Arts & Crafts Styles

Architects and Houses The Style of Houses The houses of leading Arts & Crafts architects could be designed with great individuality and inventiveness but were produced within certain rules, which bound them together. Most shared the same source of inspiration in the timber-framed, brick and stone cottages, farm and manor houses of the 16th and 17th century, some refreshingly simplified versions of originals, others combining a variety of elements and materials to create busy vernacular façades. Unlike many Victorian structures that were built in prominent positions, dominating the skyline with towers and turrets, Arts & Crafts houses kept a low profile, seeming to grow out of the landscape; and many were created to give the impression that they had developed over centuries, with parts offset or built with different heights. Some architects believed in honesty in construction, which meant that the materials used were carrying out a specific task and not masking or imitating something they were not, while there was also an emphasis upon displaying constructional elements, like the pegs on timber framing. Roofs were usually steep pitched, many with long slopes reaching down to the top of the ground floor (low-slung) with deep overhanging eaves. Fig 2.2: Arts & Crafts houses were bound by structural honesty, originality in design, and the use of vernacular materials, as in this house by Voysey whose work Lutyens described as an ‘old world made new’ (the roughcast render that covers the exterior is a traditional protective coating).

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Arts & Crafts Styles

Fig 2.3: An Arts & Crafts semi-detached house with labels of some of the movement’s distinctive features. This pair was designed by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin, using a revival of the style of a Cheshire timber-framed house with its distinctive black and white colour scheme. Windows were often low; many formed into distinctive ribbons separated by mullions. Unlike the large sheets of glass that filled the frames of speculative built houses, these ‘mullion windows’ were broken down by glazing bars or lead cames (the strips that hold the glass in place). Doors were generally plain, with either vertical strips or small windows in the upper part, and decoration limited to the hinges and handles. Some were set in deeply-recessed porches with wide arched openings, others within recessed bands of semi-circular arches. Corners were often supported by buttresses, distinctively plain, with a single steep-angled slope to their outside face.

Plans The control of interior space became a distinguishing feature of Arts & Crafts houses. Free from the strict rules of academic architecture, with its insistence upon symmetry, and the formal arrangement of most Victorian houses, architects designed imaginative layouts and introduced new ideas in the use of space to revolutionise interior design

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Arts & Crafts House Styles Fig 2.4: A plan of a large, detached Arts & Crafts house. The prominent squareplan hall and the inclusion of the kitchen and service rooms within the main body of the house were key new developments in this period. and inspire much of the work of 20th-century designers. The plan of the interior was laid out to give priority to the function of each room rather than the effect it would have upon the exterior. Rooms were given different heights to create imposing halls or intimate spaces, and could be further subdivided with raised floors, a high gallery or large inglenook fireplaces. The sequence of rooms was also more flexible than in

Fig 2.5: A cut-away view based upon Baillie Scott’s ideal suburban house, with the distinctive two-storey hall overlooked by a high gallery linking the bedrooms.

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Arts & Crafts Styles conventional housing; the hall in which a medieval family lived was reintroduced as a small-scale meeting place with a fireplace and other rooms leading from it. The level of the ground on which the house was built could also affect the interior, with designers sometimes picking an awkward sloping site hewn out of rock and making a feature of the changing interior levels. This individuality, which is one of the most striking features of Arts & Crafts houses, means that there is no standard layout or form; some replicated buildings of the past, while others looked forward to the open plan of the 20th century.

Materials The wide range of materials used in Arts & Crafts houses is another of their distinctive features. In much of the earlier Victorian housing, stucco (a cement render, painted and scoured to look like masonry) masked the brick walls, which were often of poor quality, a dishonesty in architecture that was reviled by Arts & Crafts architects. They only used pebbledash (where small stones were thrown at a wet render) and roughcast (in which small chippings were pre-mixed within the render) as a traditional protective barrier and because its texture added more variety to the façade. Weatherboarding and hanging tiles, which had been used in the past in certain regions for the same purpose, were now also revived. In the 18th and 19th centuries timber-framed houses had often been covered up to make them look more up to date, but now their weathered, irregular timbers were put back on show, while architects used their form to create patterns on new houses. In many building projects old sections of stone or brick wall, which previously would have been flattened, were now prized and retained, and much of the output of Arts & Crafts architects was involved with sympathetically restoring and extending existing houses, with a respect for the original method of construction and materials rarely shown by the previous generation. Stone was widely used, but only from the local area in order to maintain the vernacular theme; in some cases it was even quarried from the site. It could be finished with a high-quality smooth surface and fine joints (ashlar) or be left in its natural state and built up like a dry stone wall (rubble walls). Other traditional stones, such as pebbles, Fig 2.6: Roughcast (left) was formed with small chippings mixed into the render while pebbledash (right) had the stones thrown at the final coat to leave them exposed. Originally most would have been left in their natural state, only in some areas were they whitewashed.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 2.7: A section of brick wall in English bond with alternate layers of headers (the short end of a brick) and stretchers (the long exposed side).

cobbles, clunch (a hard chalk) and flints – all having fallen from use in many areas as industrialisation and improved transport made brick much cheaper and more widely available – were reintroduced, although ashlar or brick were used for the footings and quoins (corner stone). Brick itself was often used for the whole structure but again it had to be produced in the locality to maintain the unique colour and texture produced by the clay in a particular area. A significant change came in the way the bricks were arranged in a wall (the bonding). For the past two hundred years Flemish bond, with alternate headers (the short end) and stretchers (the long side) along each course, had been universally used, but now in the late 19th century English bond, with a row of headers followed by a row of stretchers, was reintroduced as a more appropriate traditional form. A few houses were even built from mud, known as cob or witchert. This traditional form of wall, used on cottages in Devon and Buckinghamshire respectively, was made from building up slabs of clay mixed with straw and other ingredients to create thick and surprisingly substantial structures which, when lime-washed and fitted with a deep overhanging roof to keep heavy rain off, could last for centuries. Fig 2.8: A map showing the areas where certain stones and other vernacular building materials used by Arts & Crafts architects originated. Timber-framing was widespread across the country before the 17th century but the black and white colouring was probably localised in the west.

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Arts & Crafts Styles

The Architects and Designers C.R. Ashbee Charles Robert Ashbee was a colourful character. He inherited some of his wealthy father’s business sense, though not his notorious passion for erotic publications. His mother and sisters were supporters of the Suffragette movement, and he was gay at a time when being so was illegal, marrying to cover up his sexual orientation. He was born in London in May 1863, studied history at Cambridge and then worked under the architect G.F. Bodley before establishing the Guild and School of Handicraft in 1888 in the East End. It taught the skills of traditional crafts to students and operated a collective of artists and craftsmen who produced high-quality furniture, jewellery, leather and ironwork that could be sold through their shop in Mayfair. In 1901 Ashbee moved the guild to Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, taking around 150 of its members and their families. The venture was well supported by the locals but being too far from its main market in London and with increased competition, especially from polytechnic institutes ironically established along his model for the guild, it closed down in 1908. Ashbee lamented that their limited clientele and expensive production had removed them from their early Socialist inspired ideals, reinforcing Morris’s concerns about the business sense of many of the Arts & Crafts groups. Despite this setback Ashbee continued to be busy writing novels, re-establishing Morris’s Kelmscott Press as the Essex House Press in 1898, keeping in contact with the famous American architect Frank Lloyd Wright and working for a time in Palestine, advising on building projects and protecting ancient sites in Jerusalem. He died in May 1942. Fig 2.9: Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House, BownessOn-Windermere: Built as a holiday retreat for the wealthy brewer Sir Edward Holt, it enabled Baillie Scott to put his ideas on space and light into practice on a large scale. After the family leased it out it became a school and then offices, ensuring that most of its fittings survived for it to be restored into the finest Arts & Crafts house in the country.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles M.H. Baillie Scott Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott was one of the finest Arts & Crafts architects, especially in his design of interior spaces and their fittings. He was born in Kent in October 1865, the son of a rich Scottish landowner, and spent his early academic years at Cirencester Agricultural College, with the intention of managing the family sheep farms in Australia. However, he excelled at drawing and science and chose instead to take up architecture, entering the practice of Major C.E. Davies in Bath in 1886. Following a holiday on the Isle of Man in 1889, Baillie Scott went to live in Douglas, later stating his reason for moving there to be because he had been so seasick on the trip over that he couldn’t face the journey back! Here he worked for a land agent and gained a certificate to teach art before establishing his own practice in 1892. He designed numerous houses on the island, at first similar to Richard Norman Shaw with half-timbered exteriors, but later in a more unique simplified style, working on interior fittings with Archibald Knox, the celebrated designer whom Baillie Scott would later introduce to Liberty’s where he made his name. Alongside this he produced designs for furniture and interiors, including one for the Grand Duke of Hesse in which he collaborated with Ashbee and his Guild and School of Handicraft in 1898. He entered pieces for Arts & Crafts exhibitions, becoming aligned with the movement during this period, and published plans for innovative houses, winning the highest award for his design for a House for an Art Lover in the Innen-Dekoration competition in 1901. It was in this year he relocated to Bedford and set up a new practice, which despite moves to and from London he would work in until retiring in 1939 after designing hundreds of houses. Unfortunately, fire at his house in 1912 and the bombing of his old offices in 1942 destroyed the majority of his drawings. He was one of the earliest architects to control not just the structure but the furnishings and fittings within. His great Fig 2.10: Horwood House, Little legacy lay in his innovative interiors, in Horwood, Buckinghamshire: Like many which moods were created by changing architects, Blow’s houses were shaped by the heights and forming intimate spaces, as whims of their clients, in this case Frederick well as by the decoration and colour. All Arthur Denny who had made his fortune this can be best appreciated at Blackwell, from pork and bacon. He commissioned him which can be visited at Bowness-on- to design the house based upon a building Windermere. he had seen in the West Country in the style of an Elizabethan or Jacobean manor house D.J. Blow in 1911–12. Percy Thrower, the celebrated Detmar Jellings Blow was a contemporary gardener, was born here in 1913 while his of Lutyens, designing country houses for father Harry was head gardener. wealthy clients, including the Duke of

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Arts & Crafts Styles Westminster, the breakdown of the relationship between them leading to his fall from grace. He was born in 1867 and was inspired by Ruskin, whom he accompanied on his final trip to Europe. In his early career he travelled around, odd jobbing with masons, including building cottages for Gimson (see Fig 2.12). His country houses were built in an Arts & Crafts style but later work was more varied, influenced by the desires of his aristocratic clients; however, at home he maintained a simple life with his family, eating with the servants and singing folksongs! His appointment as estate manager for the Duke of Westminster was divisive and he became embroiled in a scandal, being accused of embezzlement, resulting in his family being shunned by polite society and leading to his breakdown and eventual death in 1939.

Fig 2.11: Tudor Buckland’s own house in Edgbaston, Birmingham, built in 1899 as part of a row of Arts & Crafts style homes designed by him.

H. T. Buckland Herbert Tudor Buckland was a Birmingham architect who, although being less well known than his leading contemporaries, produced some of the finest Arts & Crafts houses in the years before the First World War. Born in Wales in November 1869, he was educated in Birmingham and it was here he established his own practice in 1897, forming a partnership with Edward Haywood Farmer and later with William Haywood. Despite specialising in schools and civic projects, for which they gained a national reputation, Tudor Buckland was a talented designer of domestic houses, demonstrating originality in the façades and forming a unique style that is still refreshing today. The most ambitious project for the practice was Elan Village, built to house maintenance workers for the new dam near Rhayader, Powys. This included eleven houses, estate buildings and a bridge built from local stone in an Arts & Crafts style (although the contrasting stone around doors and windows was imported).

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Arts & Crafts House Styles E. Gimson And The Barnsley Brothers Ernest William Gimson was one of the few Arts & Crafts architects and designers who took his passion for old buildings and the countryside to the lengths of moving to a village and establishing a rural craftsman community. He was born in Leicester in December 1864 and was recommended by William Morris – whom he met at a lecture Morris was giving on Art and Socialism – to J.D. Sedding’s architectural practice in London. Sedding’s and Norman Shaw’s practices were at the forefront of design in the 1880s and Gimson was just one of a group of young architects in both offices who would go on to become leading members of the Arts & Crafts movement in the following decades. It was Fig 2.12: An elongated Z-shaped stone cottage, seeming to here he met two brothers grow out of the rock from which it was hewn on the hills from Birmingham, Ernest north of Leicester, by Ernest Gimson. His design was built Barnsley who worked by Detmer Blow, who at the time was a travelling craftswith Gimson at Sedding’s men and builder before becoming a leading architect. and Sidney Barnsley at Shaw’s practice, the two forming a line of communication and thought between the establishments. It was in this period that the three learnt the value and techniques of craftsmanship, the study of nature and the importance of being involved closely with the complete building project (Sidney is said to have lived in a tent in the shadow of a church he was building!). The three soon went their own ways. Ernest Barnsley married and set up his own practice in Birmingham in 1887, Sidney travelled to Greece to study Byzantine architecture, and Gimson, after leaving Sedding’s office in 1888, was a founder member of Kenton and Co, along with W.R. Lethaby and Sidney (upon his return). This furniture company was more of a design studio than a practical business and soon collapsed, leaving Gimson and Sidney Barnsley free to pursue a new venture – not based in London offices, like their contemporaries, but actually working, studying and living in a closeknit rural community. They persuaded Ernest Barnsley and his family to join them in the Cotswolds while they searched for an ideal location, finally moving to Sapperton in 1894. Here they took over the Pinbury estate, living in a dilapidated farmhouse in part dating back to the 11th century, which they would restore while paying a low rent to the Bathhurst family who owned the land. From this village they continued their architectural practices, Gimson designing furniture and interiors while working on projects that included a number of Arts & Crafts houses in the Leicester area. They

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Arts & Crafts Styles fulfilled their passion for a rural way of life, even keeping livestock and integrating into the community, becoming its lifeblood and designing many of the new buildings for Earl Bathhurst. The young aristocrat was so impressed by their work restoring Pinbury that he gave them land on the estate for their own houses so he could use the farmhouse for his family, a move that was completed in 1903 when Gimson had finished Leasowes, a thatched stone cottage built to his own design (now with a slate roof after a firebomb burnt it in 1941). Gimson continued to work from his studio at the back of his house and at Daneway House, the furniture workshop they rented from Earl Bathhurst after the move from Pinbury, up until his early death in 1919. Despite Gimson’s love for his new home, the success of their tight-knit craft community and the fine-quality furniture he is best known for, his architectural output was rather meagre, suffering in his own admission from the relocation away from London. He always considered himself an architect above designer and his houses demonstrate his skill and understanding of rural traditions, vernacular materials and craftsmanship.

W.R. Lethaby William Richard Lethaby was one of the most influential architects of the Arts & Crafts movement, not only in his designs of buildings but in his theories on architecture and restoration, breaking down the barriers that existed between the arts and craftsmanship and forming a link into the Modern movement of the next generation. He was born in Barnstaple in January 1857, became chief clerk for Richard Norman Shaw and was one of the Fig 2.13: All Saints’ Church, Brockhampton, key members in the formation of Herefordshire: This church by Lethaby the Art Workers’ Guild in 1884. demonstrates many of the ideals of the Arts & Crafts Lethaby was also involved in movement, especially the use of various vernacular the Society for the Protection of materials, inventive form and control of light in Ancient Buildings, a group that its wonderfully simply and evocative interior. It endeavoured to promote accurate was built for Alice Foster in 1902 in memory of her study and restoration in the face parents and was Lethaby’s last major work. of the contemporary over-zealous and virtual redesigning of old churches, through his becoming friends with William Morris and Philip Webb who were among its founders. He finally left Shaw’s practice in 1892 and produced a number of important houses over the following decade, at the same time as writing books on architectural theory, studying symbolism in building and founding the Central School of Arts & Crafts (in 1896). In this latter establishment,

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Arts & Crafts House Styles design and production were treated with equality, a prime ideal of the Arts & Crafts movement, with Lethaby himself becoming the first Professor of Design at the Royal College of Arts in 1901. His later years were spent mainly teaching and writing while also working on the accurate restoration of parts of Westminster Abbey, setting the standard for similar projects throughout the new century. Lethaby was also the guide for the German Cultural Attaché Hermann Muthesius, who made a study of English architecture, concluding that contemporary houses were its greatest contribution to European culture and through his 1905 book Das Englishche Haus became an influence on the early pioneers of Bauhaus and the Modern movement.

E.L. Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens is one of Britain’s greatest architects. He was confident working with multiple styles and on buildings ranging from country houses to cathedrals, including the Cenotaph in Whitehall for the Imperial War Graves Commission and the vast imperial government buildings at New Delhi, India. Born in London in March 1869, he began his career building large Arts & Crafts style houses, many in Surrey where he grew up, and formed a fruitful partnership with Gertrude Jekyll whose revolutionary

Fig 2.14: Deanery Gardens, Sonning, Berkshire: This private house was designed by Lutyens for the owner of Country Life, Edward Hudson, and was completed in 1901, with gardens by Gertrude Jekyll. Unlike most contemporary building projects, a 16th-century brick wall around the site was retained by Lutyens.

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Arts & Crafts Styles planting schemes complemented his Tudor-influenced brick structures. Key to his success was Edward Hudson, the founder of Country Life. He was an admirer of Lutyens’ work and not only commissioned several buildings from him but also featured many of his houses in the magazine, bringing him to the attention of potential wealthy clients. He was not an integral part of the Arts & Crafts movement but initially worked alongside it, producing influential buildings of similar character with an emphasis on detail and the retention of existing materials. He then, like Richard Norman Shaw before him, turned his attention to Classical architecture, designing unique houses and imperial buildings based upon the ancient orders but incorporating vernacular styles and other sources. From 1912 he began planning New Delhi, which was to be the seat of government in India and included a parliament building, offices and the Viceroy’s House, now the residence of the Indian president, a vast project in which he combined Classical architecture with Indian styles to create a unique form and a new order. In addition to his work for the Imperial War Graves Commission, he designed churches, offices and Castle Drogo, regarded as the last major country house built in this country. Lutyens also began work on what would have been the largest place of worship in Christendom, the Catholic cathedral in Liverpool, a huge domed structure, of which only the base and crypt were built before funds ran short in the aftermath of the Second World War (Lutyens had died in January 1944) and the smaller ‘Paddy’s Wigwam’ was erected upon it (you can still see Lutyens’ crypt below it today).

C. R. Mackintosh Charles Rennie Mackintosh was one of our most talented and revolutionary architects and interior designers whose distinctive style, influenced by Japanese design and Scottish vernacular forms, had more influence on Continental Art Nouveau than the contemporary domestic market. He was born in Glasgow in June 1868 and worked in the offices of architects Honeyman and Keppie from 1889, taking a break the following year after winning a travelling scholarship to study ‘ancient classical architecture’. Evening classes at Glasgow School of Art brought him into contact with Margaret Macdonald, whom he would later marry and work closely with. Along with her sister Frances and Herbert MacNair, they formed a close-knit group who became known as ‘The Four’ and their exhibitions in Europe would greatly enhance Mackintosh’s reputation. Most of his buildings and interiors

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Fig 2.15: House For An Art Lover, Glasgow: This was only built from 1987–1996, nearly a hundred years after Mackintosh had designed it for the InnenDekoration competition in 1901. Although regarded as the finest entry, it was disqualified through lack of submitted drawings (there was no first prize, with Baillie Scott’s winning entry officially second).

Arts & Crafts House Styles were produced in the years from 1896–1906, the style he developed being functional and simple, with natural forms and sharp right angles, and a masterly control of light and space to create strikingly modern exteriors and interiors. In his formal and stylised floral decoration he has more in common with the Continental Art Nouveau, which was characterised by sinuous natural forms and a more open mind to the machine, although his use of textures and appreciation of vernacular styles aligned him with contemporary Arts & Crafts architects. Much of Mackintosh’s work was considered too daring for a conservative home market, with most of his output concentrated in Glasgow, and many of his most adventurous designs were never executed. His style has finally found the appreciation it deserved in recent decades, long after his death in 1928, and his distinctive interiors can now be viewed at 78 Derngate, Northampton and the House for an Art Lover and The Mackintosh House in Glasgow. Fig 2.16: 25 Cadogan Gardens, London: Arts & Crafts architects also designed urban houses, although the limitations of the plots meant that their style was more freely expressed in the interior. This red-brick studio house was designed by Mackmurdo in 1893 for the painter, Mortimer Menpes, and is now incorporated within the Peter Jones department store.

A.H. Mackmurdo Arthur Heygate Mackmurdo founded the first Arts & Crafts group modelled upon the ideas of Ruskin and Morris, the Century Guild of Artists, in 1882. Born in December 1851, Mackmurdo started his own architectural practice in 1874, the same year as he travelled to Italy with John Ruskin. When he set up the guild eight years later with Selwyn Image, he encouraged its artists to make the products they designed, with their own hands, and to raise the standard of crafts to that of fine art (thereby differing from Morris, who sought to level them). The guild dissolved, though, in 1888.

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Arts & Crafts Styles E.J. May Edward John May was responsible for much of the finest work in the Bedford Park development in West London and a vast catalogue of houses subsequently around Chislehurst in Kent after moving to the area at the turn of the 20th century. He was born in 1853 and worked in Richard Norman Shaw’s office, winning the RIBA Pugin Prize in 1876, and then succeeding Shaw as Estate Architect for Bedford Park four years later. Over the next five years he was responsible for continuing the laying out of the development, designing numerous houses and keeping a close eye on the construction – a task made easier as he moved onto the estate in 1881 and the building under his stewardship seemed of better quality, perhaps as a result. The constant financial difficulties of Jonathan Carr, the developer of the site, and his attempts to avoid paying bills added tension to the relationships he had with his architects, as Shaw noted when writing to May in 1882: ‘So you have tired of old Carr? I must look him up. I expect you have made at least twice as much out of the place as I have.’ After finishing at Bedford Park, May continued in practice until 1932, designing numerous houses, although his great skill seems to have been displayed in his original designs and fine draughtsmanship rather than in the finished building.

Fig 2.17: Houses in Bedford Park, West London where May was estate architect from 1880 to 1885.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles E. Newton Ernest Newton was a prolific designer of individual homes and, later, country houses, mainly in Kent, from the 1880s and into the early 1900s. He was born in September 1856 and served his apprenticeship at Richard Norman Shaw’s office before setting up his own practice in 1880. Newton was one of the founders of the Art Workers’ Guild and designed a large range of houses, none of which was the same as another, and went on to become President of the RIBA shortly before his death in 1922.

E.S. Prior Edward Schroeder Prior was one of the great architectural theorists and a leading Arts & Crafts figure. His buildings demonstrate an inventive use of shapes and angles, experiments with textures and materials and a close understanding of construction. He was born in July 1852, went to Harrow and then Cambridge where he was a noted athlete and became British Amateur High Jump Champion in 1872, two years later entering Richard Norman Shaw’s practice. Here he came into contact with many of the new generation of architects who would found the guilds and societies that formed the backbone of the Arts & Crafts movement. He was also encouraged by Shaw to supervise building work, mainly because his master hated that part of the job, and he gained a better understanding of construction than most of his contemporaries. Prior set up his own practice in 1880 and over the next 30 years designed houses, churches and halls, his later work being some of the finest – this included The Barn, Exmouth (Fig 2.18)

Fig 2.18: The Barn, Exmouth: This distinctive butterfly-plan house, with two wings radiating from a six-sided central hall, was built in 1896, a year after Prior had exhibited a similar model at the Royal Academy to much acclaim. It also displays his love of textures, with walls made from sandstone with rough boulders and areas of pebbles set in concrete.

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Arts & Crafts Styles with its welcoming angled wings and variety of textures, forms and materials. He also experimented with reinforced concrete in some of his buildings, his close control of works ensuring that they did not suffer the problems of many later ones. Prior helped form the Art Workers’ Guild (he came up with the title) and the Arts & Crafts Exhibition Society and became interested in the study of Gothic architecture, lecturing and education. As his commissions dropped in the late 1890s he began producing notable books on the subject and then became Slade Professor of Art in Cambridge, going on to develop a new school of architecture before his death in 1932.

J.D. Sedding John Dando Sedding was a key figure in the establishment of the Arts & Crafts movement, being one of the first to emphasise the importance of bringing design and craftsmanship together and the accurate study of naturalistic forms drawn from life. Born in April 1838 he, like Morris, Webb and Shaw, studied under the great Victorian architect G.E. Street and was influenced later by meeting John Ruskin. Most of his output was in designing and restoring churches but he also wrote about the house and garden, was a member of the Art Workers’ Guild and was keen to encourage his pupils to study old buildings close at hand.

R. N. Shaw The most notable and influential architect of the late 19th century, Richard Norman Shaw had an impressive portfolio, including country houses, churches, offices and town halls. He was born in Edinburgh in May 1831 and his family moved to London after his father’s death; it was here that he began learning about architecture, working under the great Victorian architects William Burn, Anthony Salvin and George Fig 2.19: Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland: Edmund Street, taking evening What had originally been a modest house was totally classes at the Royal Academy transformed by Norman Shaw from 1869–84 for Sir and travelling around Europe William George Armstrong. This inventive industrialist on a scholarship, studying also made it the first house in the world to be powered Gothic churches. He set up by hydro electricity and lit by incandescent light bulbs. his own practice in the early 1860s, sharing offices for a while with his friend W.E. Nesfield, with whom he went on a drawing trip around Sussex, studying old farmhouses and manor houses. As a result, the pair were inspired to develop an Old English style, and Shaw was to become

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Arts & Crafts House Styles synonymous with this. The houses he designed in the 1860s and 70s had a characteristic low profile, rambling half-timbered and stone exteriors with low-slung roofs and tall brick chimneys – buildings that were dramatic in form, not only in layout but also in the variety of height and control of light in the interior. They ranged from detached homes built in the emerging commuter belt for successful stockbrokers, lawyers and artists up to Cragside in Rothbury, Northumberland, the most notable work in his early style. During the late 1870s he began designing buildings with distinctive warm red bricks, white woodwork (most windows and doors were stained or painted dark colours at the time) and details from late 17th-century vernacular houses, a so-called ‘Queen Anne style’ that would greatly influence speculative building in the 1880s and 90s. In his later career Shaw began exploring Classical architecture, which would become a popular imperial form in the Edwardian period. This modest, enthusiastic and humorous architect set the style of houses and principles of design that would be used by later Arts & Crafts architects, without him being part of the movement itself, and he made time to help the development of those who worked within his office, including May, Gimson, the Barnsleys, Newton, Lethaby and Prior.

C.F.A. Voysey Charles Francis Annesley Voysey was one of the most talented and complete Arts & Crafts architects and designers. This devout, private man formed highly individualistic houses while working independently from the main flow of the movement, his Christianity (his father was a rather rebellious minister) and uncompromising right-wing views conflicting with the Socialism of many of his contemporaries. He was born in Yorkshire in May 1857 and set up his own practice in 1882. While commissions were slow to materialise he concentrated more on designing wallpapers Fig 2.20: Littleholme, Kendal, (for which he was renowned at the time), Cumbria: A square-plan house with a textiles and tiles, his early Gothic inspired distinctive large semi-circular arch over patterns becoming simplified and flatter, the porch designed by Voysey for Arthur with silhouettes of naturalistic forms. His W. Simpson, himself a notable local wood most productive stage of house building carver and Arts & Crafts designer. came in the 1890s and early 1900s where his unique style, with long sloping roofs, ribbon windows and white roughcast-covered walls, became popular with a wealthy clientele. He created houses on an intimate scale, with low, wide doors and deep eaves; they had an emphasis on simplicity, with plain surfaces and wood left unstained to expose its natural grain. Decoration was limited to details like hinges and handles, with the heart his signature symbol (H.G. Wells,

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Arts & Crafts Styles Fig 2.21: Annesley Lodge, Hampstead, London: This L-shaped house (converted into flats in 1983) set along the rear of a square corner plot was designed by Voysey for his father, the Rev Charles Voysey. Note the distinctive heartshaped motif and delicate long strap hinges on the door. for whom he built a house, argued with him over this and had them turned upside down to form spades). Of most significance was his involvement in the design of every aspect, from the structure down to the furniture, decoration and fittings. Although he was seen by many later commentators to have been a forefather of the modern style of architecture, he had a more direct influence on speculative suburban building, with many of his features and use of roughcast appearing on inter-war semis.

P.S. Webb Philip Speakman Webb is one of the father figures of the Arts & Crafts movement, an innovative architect who worked closely with William Morris and, despite not producing a vast catalogue of buildings, had a great influence upon house design in the last decades of the 19th century. He was born in Oxford in January 1831 and was a junior assistant for G.E. Street, where he met Morris, before setting up his own practice in 1858. His first major work was

Fig 2.22: Red House, Bexleyheath, Kent (see also Fig 1.9).

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 2.23: Standen, East Grinstead, West Sussex: This last major work of Philip Webb was designed for James Beale, a wealthy London solicitor, who had purchased part of an estate, including three farmhouses, in 1890 for his new country residence. Webb retained one of these, Great Hollybush, and incorporated it into the design (although the house was named after another of the three, which stood to the south and was demolished in 1896). The house is one of the most notable in the Arts & Crafts style, with its layout contrived to appear as if it had grown organically over centuries and a busy variety of textures from vernacular materials, including oak weatherboarding, hanging tiles, render, old bricks and sandstone dug out from the site. The prominent tower provided a viewing platform although its primary purpose was to hold the water tank (these are common on Victorian houses to provide water to taps under pressure in the days before a mains supply was laid on). This National Trust property contains decoration and fittings by William Morris and other leading Arts & Crafts architects. Red House in Bexleyheath for the newly-wed Morris. At a time when stucco-covered classical buildings were still popular, its deep red-brick, asymmetrical façades and inventive use of Gothic forms were at the forefront of design. Its interior layout broke with convention, was decorated with playful medieval patterns and featured a notable simple wooden staircase, while the garden outside was planned as a series of rooms extending from the house, Muthesius referring to it as the first (modern house) to be conceived and built as a unified whole, inside and out. The Clouds near East Knoyle in Wiltshire, completed in 1886, is regarded as his masterpiece – its plain interiors with unstained woods were a revolution in interior decoration – while Standen in West Sussex, finished eight years later, was distinctive for its use of multiple vernacular materials and forms on its exterior. Webb retired in 1900, disillusioned with the direction in which he saw architecture progressing, and died in April 1915.

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Arts & Crafts Styles These notable architects working in and around the Arts & Crafts movement were designing, on the whole, for the upper middle classes and aristocrats. Most of them came from wealthy and educated backgrounds and despite the Socialist leanings of many, such as Morris and Webb, they made little direct impact on the housing for the masses. It was left to benevolent individuals and trusts to try to improve the conditions of workers in this period, and to speculative builders to erect the endless suburban terraces for the burgeoning middle classes. Many of the estates and houses they built were inspired or styled in imitation of the work of leading Arts & Crafts architects, featured in leading magazines and other publications. It is these mass-produced homes, today often labelled as being of this style, that will be covered in the next chapter. Fig 2.24: During most of the Victorian period, architects were locally based and even some of the most talented might practise in a fairly limited area; the only time they ventured further afield was for a locally-based client who had property elsewhere in the country. In most towns and cities less well known architects erected Arts & Crafts style houses inspired by the leading men whose offices they had worked in or whom they had studied in the increasing number of publications and magazines. One such example is Larner Sugden from Leek, the small Staffordshire mill town where Morris spent time working and lecturing. He designed this row of four terraces in 1877, with cut brick and terracotta decorative work and delicate stained glass windows, and as was typical at the time the builder made the end house larger and more impressive as it was for himself. Another of his local buildings was the huge and imposing Nicholson Institute. This would have usually been positioned in a prominent location but, as a 17th-century house stood at the front of the site, it was set back behind it, the retention making an awkward approach but adhering to Arts & Crafts ideals. Sugden was also active in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and established a William Morris Labour Church after the great man’s death in 1896, with fittings inside from leading Arts & Crafts designers such as Walter Crane.

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Chapter 3

Fig 3.1: Although the machine and factory were seen as the cause of social ills by many in the Arts & Crafts movement, it was leading industrialists who created large-scale housing schemes in this style, as here at Port Sunlight.

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3

Arts and Crafts Housing

Speculative Housing and Social Housing Schemes Speculative Building In the Victorian period the vast majority of houses were erected by speculative builders, usually small-scale operators. A row of three or four terraced homes might be completed at a time, with a wait for payment to be received before the next project could be started. A block of land released for development could have a number of builders working upon it, each with their own designs and methods of construction and, unless the landlord retained tight control, there was little thought for the overall finished appearance of the street. As there was no town planning, what existed before was, in most cases, removed and a new grid of straight roads was laid out, with as many houses as reasonably possible fitted in along them. With a turbulent market and limited capital, most small builders had to play safe with their designs to ensure they could be passed on quickly. As a result, most of the terraces they erected had similar plans, depending upon the class at which they were aimed, and had any decorative features ordered from a catalogue and applied to the exterior. The style of house was influenced by these mass-produced parts and followed whatever the builders thought potential clients would prefer or the latest designs from trade publications. Their readiness to imitate, use cheap materials and cram as much in as possible Fig 3.2: Although a row of Victorian terraces may appear to be all of one build, closer inspection often reveals staggered joints or gaps where one builder finished and another started, or the same one at a later date.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 3.3: The Aesthetic movement of the 1870s not only focused upon the beauty in art and architecture but also emphasised vernacular and traditional styles and materials. The Queen Anne style popularised in this period by Richard Norman Shaw became the key design for Bedford Park, the first example of an idealised small rural community in a city, and was imitated by speculative builders across the country.

Fig 3.4: By the Edwardian period a mix of styles referred to as Old English, Tudor, Quaint or Jacobean (evolved from the Queen Anne style) were marketed with most medium or large terraces, featuring some of the decorative treatment illustrated here. Casement windows, rendered surfaces and timber-framing had been inspired by the work of Arts & Crafts architects.

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Arts & Crafts Housing Fig 3.5: Arts & Crafts style semis with distinctive roughcast render, long casement windows and low-slung roof. Green was a popular colour on Arts & Crafts buildings, as in this example. Houses like these could have been built as part of a rural estate, for factory workers, or by a benevolent society or individual but rarely would a speculative builder take a risk with what was regarded at the time to be a daring and cosmopolitan design. so as to maintain profit conflicted with Arts & Crafts doctrine, yet in the last decades of the 19th century the work of the leading architects was copied on a smaller scale by thousands of speculative builders with varying degrees of success. The Queen Anne style, which had been perfected by Richard Norman Shaw, was popular (the title is misleading as it jumbled together features from a wider period and more varied sources), with rich red-brick, white-painted woodwork, cut brick details, terracotta decoration and Dutch gables. In the 1890s and early 1900s the work of Arts & Crafts architects was copied, with roughcast render, mock timber-frames and wide recessed porches fitted to otherwise conventional terraces. Increasingly, there were exceptions to this rather broad rule. At the top end of the market some speculative-built houses might reflect the skills of an exceptionally talented builder and be hard to differentiate from the work of an architect, while some landlords who retained an interest in the development might be keen to attract a certain class of resident and put rules in place to ensure the homes matched their ambitions.

Bedford Park The first time a large-scale development was laid out with as much attention paid to the appearance of the estate as the houses themselves was at Bedford Park in West London in the late 1870s. Here a cloth merchant and enthusiastic property speculator, Jonathan Carr, bought some land next to Turnham Green station from his father-in-law, with the intention of laying out a housing estate that would attract educated artistic families, with a rural setting and carefully planned streets, inspired by the ideas of Morris and Ruskin yet within easy commuting distance of the city. He bought designs for a couple of houses firstly off the architect Edward William Godwin but, after bad press, quickly

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Arts & Crafts House Styles turned to Richard Norman Fig 3.6: Houses in Shaw, who produced plans Bedford Park and for not just homes but the the surrounding streets as well, much to the estate ranged in size delight of Carr. Probably from modest terraces due to the developer’s lack of to larger detached enthusiasm in settling bills, houses designed by Shaw resigned and put his leading architects. assistant May in place, and Some, as in this he was responsible for the example, were in bulk of what stands today. an Arts & Crafts Existing roads and mature style with timbertrees were retained, streets framing, herringbone laid out with pavements, brickwork, hanging front gardens bordered with tiles and casement wooden fences and houses set windows. back with Queen Anne style decoration. There was variety in the planning to break up the monotony of terraces, and other areas where detached houses were individually designed by architects. Although the estate was not a financial success for Carr himself, it was the first of its kind and inspired others to take these ideas a stage further.

Workers’ Estates Bournville When the Cadbury brothers found their central Birmingham premises too limiting, they moved the company their father had established to a new suburban site four miles to the south. It had good connections to the railway, which brought in the cocoa, and the canal, from which milk supplies were delivered. The new factory was completed in 1879 and the area named Bournville (after the local Bourn brook). In 1893 George Cadbury purchased 120 acres of land close to the factory and began laying out a model village that would create better living

Fig 3.7: Bournville, Birmingham: Bournville was one of the first estates to be built for workers with gardens, trees and green spaces.

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Arts & Crafts Housing conditions for industrious workers (less than half were actually employed by Cadbury’s) based upon a rural village setting, with large green spaces, trees and spacious front gardens. The houses were designed to be individual, offset from each other, with a mix of detached, semi-detached and short terraces, along roads that wound through the new settlement. The resident architect was William Alexander Harvey and most were built in a Queen Anne or Arts & Crafts style, with innovative planning inside, providing better arrangements and fittings than most workers moving in had been used to. The Quaker Cadburys were also keen to promote health and fitness and most of the facilities provided in the new village were to encourage outdoor activities, while pubs have never been allowed within its bounds. By 1900 the estate contained more than 300 houses and has expanded further since, with its original core a Fig 3.8: Eyebrow windows, where the roof appears to have conservation zone since been lifted up above them, are a distinctive feature of some 1971. Arts & Crafts buildings, as in this example from Bournville.

Port Sunlight At the same time as the Cadburys were founding their model village, so William Lever was beginning a similar scheme alongside his new soap factory on the Wirral. Lever had been brought up on a strict diet of hard work and self-improvement but combined with a wide range of interests, influences and an enthusiasm for health and fitness. As a result, when he built his new factory to produce Sunlight soap on the banks of the Mersey, he wanted to provide his staff with more than a place of work. This was not just a benevolent action as Lever firmly believed that spacious accommodation, with running water, bathrooms and gardens set in pleasant surroundings would give his workers the opportunity to improve themselves and hence increase productivity in the factory. In addition to the houses, he would provide schools, a library, institutes and public buildings in an estate that was exclusively for workers at Lever Brothers. His strict disapproval of alcohol meant that, as with most similar schemes, there would be no pubs. The first houses were built in 1889 by William Owen of Warrington in an Old English style and then, over the next two decades, a total of 700 homes were completed, each of great individuality. Many reflected the work of Arts & Crafts architects, a few were even

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Arts & Crafts House Styles Fig 3.9: Port Sunlight, The Wirral: Port Sunlight, established as a village for workers at the Lever Brothers soap factory, has a remarkably varied range of buildings. This example is finished off with favourite Arts & Crafts details like timberframing, hanging tiles, roughcast, tall chimneys and the distinctive sloping buttress. designed by prominent men like Lutyens, although Lever tried to use local architects as much as possible. Despite the varied appearances, there were only two forms of house, the Parlour type, which had an extra bedroom and living room, and the more basic Kitchen type. The streets were wide and tree-lined, similar to Continental boulevards, with greens and front gardens creating a rural idyll amongst industry and urbanisation.

Fig 3.10: Port Sunlight, The Wirral: The layout of the estate, with wide streets and greens planted with trees, replicated the appearance of a village, while traditional styles and materials were used to create great variety in the appearance of houses. Most were designed by the Warrington architect William Owen, a friend of William Lever, although a number were built to the designs of Sir Edwin Lutyens.

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Garden Cities and Suburbs Letchworth Estates like Bournville and Port Sunlight, which brought the countryside into the town and introduced spacious accommodation and style to a class that had formerly been cooped up in city centre slums, were among the first developments planned on this scale for the workers. Many of these ideals were taken a stage further by a parliamentary shorthand writer and social reformer, Ebenezer Howard, in his 1898 book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform (republished in 1902 as Garden Cities of Tomorrow). In this he advocated the establishment of new self-supporting communities, divided into zones, with industry separated from housing and an emphasis upon greenery and space, combining the best aspects of the town and the country. Through contacts and lectures Howard raised sufficient interest for the Garden City Association to be formed in 1900 to formulate ways of making the plans a reality and the Garden City Pioneer Company in 1902 to select and acquire a suitable site, with William Lever and George Cadbury as two of the principal shareholders. William Morris had advocated living conditions with ample space, well-built, clean and healthy housing, abundant garden areas, and preservation of the natural landscape, free of pollution and litter. Raymond Unwin, who had joined the Socialist League and worked with him, was the one chosen, along with his partner Barry Parker, to design the first garden city at a site on the old Letchworth Manor estate. The pair had been responsible for numerous Arts & Crafts style houses and had planned a new workers’ estate at New Earswick, York, for the Rowntrees (another family deeply concerned with slum conditions), taking ideas from their former projects into this revolution in town planning at Letchworth Garden City. Fig 3.11: Letchworth, Hertfordshire: The First Garden City Heritage Museum is now housed in this Arts & Crafts house designed by Barry Parker who was the resident architect along with Raymond Unwin, the pair being responsible for many other similar projects. Thatched roofs, like this example, were common on Arts & Crafts houses, although they have now frequently been replaced due to fire.

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Fig 3.12: Letchworth, Hertfordshire: Examples of cottages set amongst gardens with hedges and trees, rather than being crammed tightly together for profit. Smaller examples had a living room and a rear scullery with a couple of bedrooms above. There was originally no bathroom; instead a bath was sited in the scullery under a lift-up worktop for the once weekly bath night! Cottage-style houses with variety in appearance were set amongst tree-lined roads and green spaces, with existing features retained (only one tree was removed in the initial stage of building). Although the size of accommodation was small compared with later council houses, they were a vast improvement on the squalid terraces most families moving in had been used too and provided running water, a bath and front and back gardens so they could grow their own crops. The new city was not only notable for applying some of the Arts & Crafts ideology on a large scale but also for trying to tackle the problem of providing cheap accommodation for the working classes. Traditional methods of construction made new housing too expensive for many to rent, so two competitions were held where houses designed by leading architects were erected to illustrate how ideas like prefabrication and new materials could reduce costs. These popular events, which were sponsored by the Daily Mail (its proprietor was a principal shareholder in the Garden City), inspired the paper to start its own Ideal Home Exhibition in 1908.

Hampstead Garden Suburb Letchworth was of great influence in setting new standards for housing and beginning the concept of town planning, yet only a few other schemes – including Welwyn, which was also founded by Ebenezer Howard – were actually built. A variation of his idea was more readily adopted; the Garden Suburb, which did not establish a complete selfsupporting community (in fact Howard was opposed to this sort of suburban development) but formed co-partnerships in which residents had shares in the company that owned the estate. One of the most notable of these was the brainchild of Dame Henrietta Barnett, who had already been involved in the establishment of charitable institutions like Toynbee Hall (where Ashbee had first established his Guild and School of Handicraft in 1888). Now, in the wake of a planned tube line across Hampstead, she set out to

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Fig 3.13: Wavertree Garden Suburb, Liverpool: Established in 1910 on the outskirts of Liverpool, this was another notable garden suburb. As with Hampstead it was founded as a co-partnership housing scheme, with the estate owned by Liverpool Garden Suburb Tenants Ltd and the residents as shareholders, so most of the profit could be ploughed back into expanding and improving the development. Unlike the terraces being built at the time in the city, where around forty were crammed into each acre, Wavertree had its cottagestyle houses spaced out with only eleven in the same area, with greens, trees and tennis courts fulfilling the ideal of health and fitness. Although the style of architecture was very much inspired by Arts & Crafts architects (Raymond Unwin planned the first phase), costs were kept down by purchasing bricks, tiles and windows in bulk from around the country and then distributing them by rail to individual schemes rather than using vernacular materials. Even with these measures, the cost of rent and buying shares meant that the residents were not from the poorest classes, although it was argued that the houses they vacated would free space to relieve overcrowding in the slums. In the end only 360 out of the planned 1,800 houses were built, the First World War bringing construction to a halt, and afterwards the remaining land was sold off to speculative builders, with the houses bought by owner-occupiers, and the overall company was wound up in 1938.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles protect its heath and at the same time create a settlement planned so that the area would not be swamped with grids of terraces, as had happened in other suburban areas of London. With the help of influential friends, she established a company in 1906 to develop an estate that would welcome all social classes, and be laid out with wide streets and frontages set Fig 3.14: Brentham Garden Suburb, London: This was the back, featuring hous- first co-partnership scheme and was established in 1901 with help es with gardens sepa- from Liberal MP Henry Vivian. From 1905 Unwin and Parker, rated by hedges and through the Co-Partnership Tenants Housing Council, advised on retaining as much the layout of the estate and building accelerated so that by 1915 of the existing land- over 500 houses had been built. This corner block resembles the scape as possible. butterfly plan used by E.S. Prior (see Fig 2.18). The first problem she had was that rigid local bye-laws controlled this urban area, which was the reason why the Garden City and other similar schemes had been built out of town and away from their restrictive influence. So, Barnett had a Private Bill passed to give them the power to shape the development as she wished. The plan of the estate and much of the early housing was designed by Unwin and Parker although this time they worked alongside Lutyens, who was involved from the start. He designed many of the main public buildings including the huge Anglican and Catholic churches that dominate the centre. Houses were carefully planned and grouped to reflect their position, in a variety of styles. However, with the increase in building costs after the First World War, the original separation of the classes to maintain a balanced community was thrown out in preference to completing the estate with conventional housing. It was not until after the horrors of the First World War that the ideals of William Morris, the Arts & Crafts movement, Garden City planners and social reformers began to improve the living conditions of the working classes on a large scale, here and abroad. The Victorian doctrine of self-help and minimal Government involvement had to be swept aside in order to provide ‘Homes fit for Heroes’ as hundreds of thousands of soldiers returned, expecting decent accommodation. Raymond Unwin was appointed

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Arts & Crafts Housing the Chief Town Planning Inspector and played his part in forming the Act that after 1919 gave local authorities financial incentives to build council estates with low density, Garden City style housing. Although the distinctive semis of these inter-war developments were still more costly to rent than older terraces and the strict estate rules maintained by inspectors were much disliked, they did begin the job of emptying the slums, a process that accelerated in the late 1940s and 50s as new, cheaper methods of construction were applied. Speculative building was also affected by the Arts & Crafts movement, certainly not by its ideals but noticeably in the appearance of houses. Roughcast, mock timber framing, deeply recessed porches and other details were imitated from the work of architects like Voysey and mass-produced to create fashionable rural-style estates only a short train ride from town and city centres. The work of Ruskin, Morris and the Arts & Crafts movement had not resulted in the Utopian society they had dreamed of but it had played its part in improving living conditions for all and created an urban respect and love of the countryside that has dominated domestic culture ever since.

Fig 3.15: Hampstead Garden Suburb, London: The Neo-Georgian style, which combined vernacular materials and details with Classical symmetry, was a popular feature of this estate.

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Chapter 4

Fig 4.1: Much of the interest in the exterior of Arts & Crafts houses lies in the details: from timber-frame designs and cut bricks down to delicate patterned glass, as in this example.

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4

Arts & Crafts Details

Doors,Windows and Fittings By their very nature the exteriors of many Arts & Crafts houses were relatively simple and plain, relying upon their form and a variety in the texture of materials for their beauty, with the shape and type of porch, windows and doors enhancing the character of the building. It was in the detail that the craftsman could express himself: from rustic planked doors with intricate strap hinges down to rainwater traps under the guttering with floral patterns embossed upon their face. As well as the exclusive housing designed by leading Arts & Crafts architects there were the speculative-built semis, terraces and detached houses, onto which mass-produced fittings were added to create the fashionable appearance the builder felt would best appeal to his clients. The following examples illustrate the range of details that were applied to both of these types of houses in the late Victorian and Edwardian periods, both today referred to as ‘Arts & Crafts’. Fig 4.2: Porches: It was a distinctive feature of many Arts & Crafts houses to have the door recessed within a porch, which could either feature receding arches in the style of Norman Shaw and early Lutyens (top right) or a large, plain opening (top left, note the sloping buttresses). There were numerous other forms used, inspired by old buildings, ranging from simple gabled entrances (bottom left) to stone or metal hoods (bottom right).

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Fig 4.3: Dormer Windows: As Arts & Crafts houses often had a single-storey façade below a low-slung roof, dormer windows were frequently required to cast light into upper floor rooms and attics. Some replicated 17th-century types with small gabled roofs and casement windows with leaded lights (right) while others were built as low horizontal openings with flat tops (above). Fig 4.4: Mullion Windows: A distinctive feature of most Arts & Crafts houses was the use of low, horizontal windows divided up by short vertical posts (mullions). Unlike original 15th- and 16thcentury types, the carving of the frame was usually simple, either chamfered (top right), completely plain (bottom left) or with just a simple moulding at best (bottom right).

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Fig 4.5: Windows: There was a wide variety of other types of windows used on houses, based upon historic or vernacular styles. Some had cut brick chamfered openings (top left), delicate leaded lights set in timber frames (top centre) or Ipswich-style windows with an arched central section (top and bottom right). Casement windows (ones that open with hinges up the side) were reintroduced, usually with a small section above featuring stained glass, or glazing bars on speculative housing. With a relaxation in fire regulations these could now project from the façade.

Fig 4.6: Smaller windows in a variety of geometric shapes (left and right) or intersecting corners (centre) were also distinctive of Arts & Crafts houses.

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Fig 4.7: Doors: Plain, wooden doors with vertical planks were very popular, often with the gap between them covered by protruding fillets. Some doors had glazed upper sections featuring coloured glass patterns.

Fig 4.8: Chimneys: Many Arts & Crafts chimneys were covered with roughcast or plain render; some were cylindrical, based upon vernacular types from the Lake District. Alternatives included tall and prominent stacks with cut brick patterns based upon 16th-century types.

Fig 4.9: Roofs: Local stone tiles, where available, were often used, with the roofer sorting the sizes out before laying them, with the largest above the eaves and smallest at the ridge (the heavier pieces would be directly above the wall). Thatch (right) was also popular on some of the finer houses while clay tiles (left) popularised by Arts & Crafts architects began replacing slate as the most common form of covering in the early 20th century (centre).

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Fig 4.10: Timber work was very popular on Edwardian Arts & Crafts and speculative-built houses, especially timber-framed patterns in the gables, white painted fretwork and carved decoration. Fig 4.11: Stained Glass: Stained or coloured glass formed into patterns was very popular, especially in the upper sections of casement windows on speculative-built houses. This was one of the places where the Continental Art Nouveau style with its flowing stylised flowers could be found. In the finest Arts & Crafts buildings elaborate stained glass windows were a speciality of many of the movement’s designers.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles Fig 4.12: The reintroduction of terracotta from the mid-19th century gave architects the opportunity to add decorative pieces including ridge tiles, finials and plaques. On many Arts & Crafts and speculative-built houses elaborate plaques were inset with the sunflower (right) a popular symbol. Fig 4.13: Patterns and horizontal string courses could also be formed from bricks (left), moulded, cut or rubbed into shapes and mass-produced for speculative builders to fit on site.

Fig 4.14: Examples of terracotta tiles and plaques, which could be supplied – principally from the Staffordshire Potteries – in a variety of finishes, although unglazed orange/red was usual on Arts & Crafts style houses.

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Fig 4.15: Door Furniture: Handles, knobs and hinges were an area where the Arts & Crafts designers could exhibit their skill, especially as the doors themselves were generally plain. Cast iron handles and knobs painted black were distinctive of the style although brass, which had been popular from the mid-9th century, and other metals were also used. Long strap hinges were fitted to planked doors, usually with a rough-hammered, hand crafted appearance with simple shapes or patterns, as in these examples (top right has Voysey’s signature heart shape).

Fig 4.16: Rainwater Traps: Another of the few areas on the exterior where the skill of the metalworker could be displayed was on the trap at the top of the vertical gutter down pipe through which the rainwater off the roof was fed. On the finest houses they were hand crafted with highly decorative patterns, usually including the date at which they were fitted and the initials of the owner or designer. Be wary of the dates as Arts & Crafts architects were often involved in extending and remodelling older houses and the year stated might be that of a make-over rather than that of the whole house.

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Fig 4.17: The gables of Arts & Crafts houses were often plain, with decoration limited to horizontal bands or simple patterns formed out of brick or tiles slightly extending out from the vertical face. Other finishes included timber-framing, often in black and white (sometimes referred to as magpie work) and hanging tiles, these options popular on speculative mass housing.

Fig 4.18: Bargeboards were sometimes fitted around the edge of the gable. These were generally plain or featured simple geometric patterns. More elaborate carvings had been popular on earlier Gothic revival houses but can occasionally be found on the timberframed gables of some late Victorian houses.

Fig 4.19: Some gables on Arts & Crafts style buildings featured patterns raised or embossed in render, imitating traditional pargeting. This distinctive feature of East Anglian houses was revived by designers and where it is found today on old buildings it tends to date from this period rather than the original date of the house.

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Fig 4.20: Thin, curved metal supports for the guttering were a distinctive feature of some Arts & Crafts houses.

Chapter 5

Fig 5.1: Arts & Crafts interiors could range dramatically from rich historic designs with beautifully crafted fittings to revolutionary bright and simple spaces as here at C.F.A. Voysey’s own house, The Orchard, in Chorleywood, Hertfordshire.

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Arts and Crafts Interiors

Space and Light Arts & Crafts designers swept through the clutter of a Victorian house like a breath of fresh air. The dark sludgy colours, multiple busy patterns and scattered collections of furniture, plants and ornaments that characterise 19th-century interiors were cleared out of fashionable middle class homes in its last decade and replaced by simple, natural and lighter schemes that were both spacious and bright, letting in the sunshine and fresh air. The interior was no longer controlled by the demands of the exterior: now rooms could be arranged to make the most of the brighter and warmer south side or shaped to form tall, open meeting places or low, intimate spaces for private conversation. Arts & Crafts architects were encouraged to take control of all aspects of the home including the interior decoration and fixtures, while some like Voysey designed every detail, even down to the hinges on the door. With the greater freedom in structure they could better adapt the rooms to suit the individual demands of the owner, in order to make a beautiful and comfortable home. At the same time they took greater consideration for the servants, those vital cogs in the running of most middle and upper class homes, who were becoming difficult to retain as new industries offered better incentives. Therefore, basements were replaced by dry, bright service rooms and facilities provided closer to hand to make the daily chores less arduous. Fig 5.2: An Edwardian middle class drawing room, with labels of the fixtures and fittings that might be found. Arts & Crafts interiors were simple and lighter than those before but still may appear traditional and busy to modern eyes, with dark colours and strong patterns still employed, especially in the dining room.

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Fig 5.3: An interior view of Broad Leys by Voysey who thought rooms should be light, bright and cheerful, easily cleaned and inexpensive to maintain, with the architect designing every detail down to the hinges on the door. In his own house, The Orchard (see Fig 5.1) he had whitewashed walls, white or natural oak ceilings, plain carpets and simple oak furniture, and large tiled fireplaces were a feature. For those middle classes moving into their new speculative-built suburban home it became easier to emulate the Arts & Crafts houses of their social superiors. They might be tempted to fill all the available shelving with ornaments but now they would be beautiful and artistic, purchased from shops like Heal’s and Liberty’s rather than the hideous mass-produced items that had to content their parents. Furniture that had often been over-worked and ostentatious copies of historic styles with highly polished veneered woods were replaced by more honest, simple and solid pieces with an emphasis upon exposing the natural grain – although they could still be decorative and elaborate as long as the beauty of the craftsmanship was revealed. Restricted by the regular layout of their semis and terraces, owners had to rely upon the use of lighter patterns, strong colours and natural woods to create moods in different rooms, although without the guiding hand of an architect they were quite content to mix

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Fig 5.4: Liberty’s was the first call for the fashionable middle classes happily adopting the Arts & Crafts style but not buying into its ethical message. It was founded by Arthur Lazenby Liberty (1843–1917), a draper from Chesham, Buckinghamshire, who with financial backing from his second wife’s father established his shop on Regent Street, London, in 1875 selling Oriental art, fabrics, silverware and small pieces of furniture. Much of their work was produced by machine with hand-made details and were copies of pieces by leading Arts & Crafts designers. Ashbee was one who objected to this, blaming them in part for the failure of his guild. Designers who produced work for Liberty’s, like Archibald Knox who designed the chalice illustrated here, remained anonymous as their work was stamped with ‘Liberty and Co’. up styles from various historic sources. At the same time they had to bear in mind practical concerns, such as sanitation and cleanliness and the increasing shortage of servants.

The Rooms The hall, which had gradually been reduced from the centre point of the medieval house to a mere passageway in the Victorian period, was now revived as an important meeting place. In many Arts & Crafts homes the door opened into a small vestibule or directly into a square-planned room complete with fireplace and seating. In the Fig 5.5: Arts & Crafts furniture like this cabinet by Voysey emphasised the natural grain of the wood and often featured highly decorative metalwork. Heal’s of Tottenham Court Road, London, was one of the leading suppliers of simple, robust pieces, many designed by Ambrose Heal (1872–1959), a cabinet maker, who joined the family business in 1893.

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Fig 5.6: The hall from Blackwell, Windermere, by Baillie Scott. This large welcoming room was described as a ‘living hall’ with its distinctive open plan broken down by partitions and varying height, with carefully planned windows emphasising the grandeur, while a gallery and lowered ceilings created intimate spaces.

Fig 5.7: The hall in an Edwardian suburban terrace with Arts & Crafts style paper and a black and white tiled floor. With muddy streets and a sooty atmosphere outside, the hall tended to avoid plain surfaces in order to hide the dirt. finest examples it could almost emulate the busy and noisy hall of the Middle Ages, with a double height, open plan broken down into areas for groups to gather, talk and play. In most suburban houses the hall might be wider than before so a small fireplace and chair for people waiting to be welcomed in by the owner could be fitted. For most, though, the concern was to make a favourable impression and at the same time hide the dirt that got dragged in. Walls still had dado rails to protect them as people entered and passed through, and Lincrusta and Anaglypta wall-coverings were fitted below for the same reason. The principal rooms could range from a suite of specialised spaces designed for gentlemen and ladies to dine, entertain and retire, down to the typical front and back room of a middle

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Arts & Crafts House Styles Fig 5.8: A section of the dining room at Blackwell by Baillie Scott. This masculine room had wooden panels on the walls and ceiling, strong coloured paper and rugs on the boarded floor. The inglenook fireplace flanked by windows and the blue and white Delft tiles were popular features with Arts & Crafts designers. class terrace. In all there would be a dining room (usually at the front in a terrace), a masculine room with strong colours and luxurious fittings emphasising the wealth of the owner and his good taste, although Arts & Crafts examples would be lighter than many contemporary schemes. An oak or similar-quality wooden floor, an opulent fireplace, wall panelling and exposed beams or plaster mouldings on the ceiling could all be found in the finest examples, with stained wood and mass-produced plaster kits enabling the owner of smaller houses to copy the style. The drawing room was a lighter space, reflecting its feminine nature. In a large house it was traditionally where the ladies would withdraw to (hence ‘drawing’) while the men remained in the dining room, perhaps becoming progressively drunk and offensive! Light and delicate floral patterned papers, comfortable upholstered chairs and white painted fireplaces with overmantels could all be found, and there was often access to the garden or a recessed window seat. In a more modest terrace it would have been more of a living room, a general family space, usually at the rear of the house, Fig 5.9: A drawing room from an and although not as dark as the front room Edwardian terrace. This more feminine it must still have seemed closed-in when room was lighter than the dining room furniture, a clock and a piano had been at the front of the house, in this example added. Morris wallpapers like ‘Willow’ were with floral papers and a complementary popular here although a number of patterns frieze on top, an overmantel above the could be used within the room as long as copper-hooded fire grate and French they balanced each other. windows opening onto the garden.

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Fig 5.10: The kitchen in an Arts & Crafts house, like most contemporary houses, was now within the main structure of the house, with the versatile but unreliable and tiresome-to-clean range cooker at its centre. Service rooms had emerged from the basement: the kitchen, larders and scullery were now usually incorporated within the main structure, rear extension or wing of an Arts & Crafts house, providing the staff with lighter and drier conditions than before. There would have been a cast iron closed range to provide hot water, as well as an oven and hot plates, while in the largest houses there may have been an additional open fire for roasting joints. A large central table for the preparation of food and dressers around the wall for utensils were always included

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Fig 5.11: An Edwardian bedroom with rugs on the floorboards, light floral wallpaper and a washstand (although bathrooms were fitted, most people still preferred to wash in the bedroom).

Arts & Crafts House Styles in larger kitchens but if there was a sink it was only used as part of the cooking process, as all washing was done in a separate scullery. Upstairs the bedrooms would continue the simple theme, with owners encouraged to use free-standing furniture and light colours for the walls and curtains. Four-poster beds, which kept the cold out for occupants, had fallen from fashion; half testers with drapes at the head of the bed were still found but conventional iron or brass bedsteads were now becoming common. A fireplace was fitted in most bedrooms in a larger house but it would only be lit when an elderly or infirm member of the family was using the room. Muslin, chintz and other light fabrics were used for curtains, white walls were popular, often coordinated with green, and an Fig 5.12: An Edwardian bathroom was embroidered or patchwork quilt over the bed small, with fittings left open to make was another favourite Arts & Crafts touch. the room easy to clean (where large Bathrooms, which were fitted into most examples are found today in old houses middle class houses, were a relatively new they will often turn out to be a rear feature; those lower down the ladder still used a bedroom converted into a bathroom at tin bath in front of the fire, while many wealthy a later date). owners had servants to bring hot water to them and were reluctant to change to plumbed-in facilities! The rooms were usually small, with only a bath and wash basin; the water closet was in a separate room next door. As sanitation and health were major issues, most late Victorian and Edwardian bathroom suites were left open beneath with the pipes exposed, though some can still be found with the slightly earlier fashion of having them boxed in a traditional wood casing. There was little room for expression of style, although plain glazed tiles were usually run halfway up the wall with decoration in the border, or the small window might have featured stained-glass patterns.

The Decoration Most Victorian interiors were a sham! Fireplaces and staircases were painted to appear like marble or a fine-quality timber; wooden floors and the trim around the walls were stained and grained to look like maple, oak or mahogany; and mass-produced mouldings were used on the ceiling to imitate fine hand-made plasterwork. Arts & Crafts designers advocated honesty in materials and used wood in its natural form, emphasising the grain and beauty of the timber in furniture, floors and fittings. Walls could be plain, with skirtings and picture rails painted white (Morris was one of the first to recommend this last idea – a shockingly modern concept at the time), although in most Arts & Crafts houses wallpapers were used on at least a few walls. These had only become mass-produced onto rolls from the 1840s and although widespread

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Fig 5.13: Wallpapers with stylised natural forms, continuously flowing designs and carefully arranged repeats were hallmarks of the best pattern designers like Morris and Voysey. In the Edwardian Arts & Crafts houses they were often further simplified with two-dimensional designs and a pair of co-ordinating colours or a single colour on a cream or off-white background (centre and right). Art Nouveau wallpapers became popular in the first decade of the 20th century with colours like mustard yellow and lime green and patterned birds and foliage. Other distinctive colours that could be found on fabrics and wallpapers included peacock blue, russet brown, madder reds, subtle yellows and sage green. One of the most popular producers of papers was the Silver Studio, founded by Arthur Silver (1853–96), a fabric designer who supplied Liberty’s with some of its most characteristic designs. Fig 5.14: Anaglypta and Lincrusta embossed papers were popular in the hall in terraced houses, in this example featuring a distinctive Art Nouveau stylised floral design. in middle class homes were still out of reach for many poorer families, who stencilled instead. Dado rails were only to be found in hallways and occasionally in dining rooms, most walls having a deep and sometimes elaborately moulded skirting with a picture rail above. In the Edwardian period this was often dropped down to line up with the top of the doorway, so a large space above could have a decorative frieze fitted, sometimes up to 3 or 4 ft tall. Windows could be covered by multiple layers of fabric in Victorian homes. This was simplified by the turn of the 20th century to two or three, with linen, muslin or cotton curtains, and in the Edwardian period chintzes in plain colours or with printed stylised natural patterns hung from brass or wooden poles. Strong colours and bold designs in most Arts & Crafts interiors were restricted to small areas, most notably the tiles around the fireplace, which was the centre point of

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 5.15: Wall tiles could have raised or embossed mass-produced stylised floral designs (left-hand two) or, in the finest houses, glazed hand-painted patterns (right-hand two). principal rooms. Art Nouveau with stylised natural forms or more exotic colourful handpainted types could be found, although Morris and other leading designers loved Delft tiles, with their distinctive blue and white rustic scenes of rural Dutch life. Although simplicity was the theme, designers were not afraid to mix up different patterns within the same room as long as there was some balance between them. Fig 5.16: Arts & Crafts styled fireplaces tended to have simple wooden frames, often with an overmantel in the Edwardian period, surrounding a cast iron register grate, with tiles flanking the sides.

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Arts & Crafts Interiors Fig 5.17: Fireplaces were the key feature of most Arts & Crafts rooms. They could range from imposing inglenook types with seating (left and Figs 5.6 and 5.8) down to simple openings with a grate (below). Decoration on them could have a medieval, Renaissance, Islamic or Oriental theme and copper or brass hammered hoods were also popular (below left).

Fig 5.18: A distinctive Mackintosh fireplace surround from The Hill House, Helensburgh. This one is so simplified it appears around fifty years ahead of its time.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 5.19: Overmantels with mirrors or display cupboards, with the wood painted white, ebonised or left natural to match the walls or furniture, were common in Arts & Crafts houses (especially the drawing room). Some, like this example, could be extended to almost fill the whole wall.

Fig 5:21: Wood floorboards, parquet block or natural stone floors were used in the finest Arts & Crafts houses. Parquet was made from small blocks of wood set into a bitumen base and formed into patterns. Fig 5.22: Staircases could range from copies of finely carved 17th-century types to simple cut boards with flowing silhouettes and shapes. In exceptional houses they could be simplified to such an effect that they appear modern even to our eyes (see Fig 5.1).

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Fig 5.20: The Victorians had perfected ways of producing large flat sheets of glass and fitted them to at least the bottom sash if not both. Architects like Baillie Scott, however, had a preference for old glass, ‘it welcomes you with a twinkle rather than sullen stare’, and fitted it within the leaded windows they often used.

Arts & Crafts Interiors Fig 5.23: Internal doors were generally simple in form and were either panelled (left and centre) or plank and batten (right) in service areas. The only decoration was in the door furniture and small windows that featured in some of them. Fig 5.24: Door furniture in Arts & Crafts houses tended to be made from brass and iron with wrought and hammered designs distinctive of the movement.

Fig 5.25: Casement window fittings were another detail that was carefully designed.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles

Fig 5.26: Arts & Crafts architects loved fitting window seats into wide windows or bowed and square bays where light flowed in and beautiful views of the garden or countryside could be enjoyed.

Fig 5.27: Exposed beams and handcrafted plaster-patterned ceilings were often featured in the finest Arts & Crafts houses and imitated with mass-produced mouldings in terraces.

Fig 5.28: Beautifully crafted metalwork was a hallmark of Arts & Crafts interiors, as in this distinctive light fitting

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Places to Visit Despite the popularity of the style and our love of old buildings there are very few Arts & Crafts houses open to the public. The following are the most notable although there are a number of other properties that are older but contain interiors that have been re-fashioned in the style or have collections of Arts & Crafts work. Blackwell, The Arts & Crafts House, Bowness-on-Windemere, Cumbria LA23 3JT (Figs 2.9, 5.6 and 5.8), tel. 01539 446139, www.blackwell.org.uk. The best example of Arts & Crafts at it simplest and most ingenious. Cragside, Rothbury, Northumberland NE65 7PX (Fig 2.18), tel. 01699 620333 (National Trust), www.nationaltrust.org. Norman Shaw’s epic mansion. Emery Walker’s House, 7 Hammersmith Terrace, London W6 9TS, tel. 020 8741 4104, www.emerywalker.org.uk. Well-preserved Arts & Crafts interiors. Red House, Red House Lane, Bexleyheath, Kent DA6 8JF (Figs 1.9 and 2.22), tel. 020 8304 9878 (National Trust), www.nationaltrust.org.uk or www.friends-redhouse.co.uk. William Morris’s house by Philip Webb. Rodmarton Manor, Rodmarton, Cirencester, Gloucestershire GL7 6PF, tel. 01285 841253, www.rodmarton-manor.co.uk. Interiors by Gimson and the Barnsleys. Standen, East Grinstead, West Sussex RH19 4NE (Fig 2.23), tel. 01342 323029 (National Trust), www.nationaltrust.org.uk. The best example of the use of vernacular materials, with excellent Morris interiors. Wightwick Manor, Wightwick Bank, Wolverhampton WV6 8EE, tel. 01902 761108 (National Trust), www.nationaltrust.org.uk. Late 19th-century Old English house with Arts & Crafts interiors. There are also a number of houses designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh: 78 Derngate, Northampton NN1 1UH, tel. 01604 603407, www.78derngate.org.uk The Hill House, Upper Colquhoun Street, Helensburgh G84 9AJ (Fig 5.18), tel. 0844 493 2208 (National Trust for Scotland), www.nts.org.uk House for an Art Lover, Bellahouston Park, Dumbreck Road, Glasgow G41 5BW (Fig 2.15), tel. 0141 353 4770, www.houseforanartlover.co.uk The Mackintosh House, University of Glasgow, Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QQ, tel. 0141 330 5431, www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk

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Arts & Crafts House Styles There are also housing estates inspired by the Arts & Crafts style, which can be visited: Bedford Park, Turnham Green, West London (Figs 2.17 and 3.6), www.bedfordpark.org.uk Bournville Village, Birmingham (Figs 3.7 and 3.8), www.bournville-web.net or www.bournvillevillage.com Hampstead Garden Suburb, North London NW11 7AG (Fig 3.15), www.hgs.org.uk Letchworth Garden City: First Garden City Heritage Museum, 296 Norton Way South, Letchworth, Hertfordshire SG6 1SU (Figs 3.11 and 3.12), tel. 01462 48271, www.gardencitymuseum.org Port Sunlight, Wirral, Mersyside CH62 5DX (Figs 3.1, 3.9 and 3.10), tel. 0151 644 6466, www.portsunlightvillage.com There are also a number of museums and galleries that have collections of Arts & Crafts work: Birmingham Musem and Art Gallery, Chamberlain Square, Birmingham B3 3DH, tel. 0121 303 2834, www.bmag.org.uk Brighton Museum and Art Gallery, Church Street, Brighton BN 1EE tel. 03000 290900, www.brighton-museum.rpml.org.uk Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum, Clarence Street, Cheltenham GL50 3JT, tel. 01242 237431, www.cheltenhammuseum.org.uk or www.artsandcraftsmuseum.org. uk. One of the finest collections of Arts & Crafts work in the world. Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery, 82 Hillhead Street, Glasgow G12 8QQ, tel. 0141 330 4221, www.hunterian.gla.ac.uk The Museum of Domestic Design and Architecture, Middlesex University, Cat Hill, Barnet, Hertfordshire EN4 8HT, tel. 020 8411 5244, www.moda.mdx.ac.uk Victoria and Albert Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 2RL, tel. 020 7942 2000, www.vam.ac.uk The Whitworth Art Gallery, Oxford Road, Manchester M15 6ER, tel. 0161 275 7450, www.whitworth.manchester.ac.uk William Morris Gallery, Lloyd Park, Forest Road, London E17 4PP, tel. 020 8496 4390, www.walthamforest.gov.uk/william-morris Useful websites that can help with further research, contacts and places to visit: www.artsandcraftsmuseum.org.uk www.achome.co.uk www.bricksandbrass.co.uk www.victorianweb.org.uk www.morrissociety.org.uk

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Glossary ANAGLYPTA: An embossed paper, lighter and more versatile than the earlier lincrusta. ARCHITRAVE: The moulding around a door, window or niche. ASHLAR: Large blocks of stone cut square with fine joints. BALUSTER: Plain or decorated post supporting the stair rail. A balustrade is a row of balusters with a rail along the top. BARGEBOARD: External vertical boards, often decorated, that protect the ends of the sloping roof on a gable. BAY WINDOW: A window projecting from the façade of a house, of varying height but always resting on the ground. BITUMEN: A petroleum derivative used for waterproofing flat roofs and forming a damp proof layer in walls or under floors. BOND: The way bricks are laid in a wall, with the different patterns formed by alternative arrangements of headers (the short ends) and stretchers (the long side). BOW WINDOW: A bay window with a curved profile. BUTTRESS: A vertical support angled up against a wall. Arts & Crafts types tended to have a steep slope down its full height. CAMES: Lead work that holds the small panes (quarries) of glass in a window. CASEMENT WINDOW: A window that is hinged along one side. CAST IRON: Brittle metal formed in moulds, whereas wrought iron is pliable and forged into decorative patterns. CORNICE: A decorative moulding that runs around the top of an external or internal wall. DADO: The lower section of a wall. The moulding along the top of this is the dado rail. DAMP PROOF MEMBRANE (DPM): A waterproof barrier incorporated within walls and ground floors to stop rising damp penetrating the structure above. DORMER WINDOW: A window projecting out of the roof, with a flat or gabled top. EAVES: The section of the roof timbers under the tiles or slates where they meet the wall, usually protected by a fascia board.

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Arts & Crafts House Styles FAÇADE: The main vertical face of the house. FLUE: The duct for smoke from the fireplace up into the chimney. FRIEZE: The horizontal strip of decoration above the picture rail. In this period it was often a paper complementing the wallpaper below. In Arts & Crafts houses it was commonly painted white. GABLE: The pointed upper section of wall at the end of a pitched roof. A Dutch gable is shaped with concave and convex curves. GOTHIC: Medieval architecture that used the pointed arch. GOTHIC REVIVAL: The rediscovery of Gothic architecture, which was championed by Pugin and Ruskin and dominated building from the 1850s to the 1870s. GOTHICK: A less accurate and more whimsical form of Gothic that was popular in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Characterised by wide arched windows with Y-shaped tracery. HANGING TILES: Clay tiles hung vertically off thin strips of wood to cover walls and used by Arts & Crafts architects for their visual appeal. HERRINGBONE: Brickwork laid in a zig-zag. HIPPED ROOF: A roof with a slope on all four sides. INGLENOOK: A recessed space for a fire, with seating to the sides. JAMBS: The sides of an opening for a door or window. JETTY: The projection of an upper storey of a timber-framed building. JOGGLE: Stone blocks with a notch on one face and matching recess on the other to prevent them slipping (see Figs 5.6 and 5.8). JOISTS: Timber, concrete or steel beams that support the floor. LINCRUSTA: An embossed paper which appeared in the 1870s and was made by a similar process to linoleum floor tiles but with wood pulp rather than cork. LINTEL: A flat beam that is fitted above a door or window to take the load of the wall above. LOAD BEARING: A wall that has to support a load – usually floors and a roof. MADDER RED: A colour made from the madder root plant which was a bright red, with a hint of purple, often known as rose madder. MANSARD ROOF: A roof formed from two slopes at a different angle with a profile like the top of a 50p coin, which allows more height for a room within. MOULDING: A decorative strip of wood, stone or plaster. MULLION: The vertical member dividing up a window. A low, long window with only mullions is known as a mullion window.

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Glossary MUNTIN: A vertical framing member set between two rails in a door or panelling. ORIEL WINDOW: A projecting window on an upper storey. PANELLING: Wooden lining of interior walls with vertical muntins and horizontal rails framing the panels. PARAPET: The top section of wall continuing above the sloping end of the roof. PARGETING: Patterns raised or incised in plaster on the exterior surface of a house. PEBBLEDASH: Render with small pebbles and stones thrown against it while drying. PILASTER: A flat column. PITCH: The angle by which a roof slopes. A plain sloping roof of two sides is called a pitched roof. PURLIN: Large timbers that run the length of the roof, supporting the rafters. QUOINS: Raised or highlighted stones up the corner of a building. RAFTERS: Timbers that are set in a row along the slope of the roof, with laths running across their upper surface onto which the tiles are fixed. RENDER: A protective covering for a wall, made from two or three layers of cement. REVEAL: The sides (jambs) of a recessed window or door opening. ROUGHCAST: A render with small stones mixed within to give a rough texture when dried. SCREED: A mix of sand and cement used to pour over and form the upper layer of the ground floor. Tiles or carpet were fitted directly to its dried surface. STRING: The side support panel for a staircase. STRING COURSE: A horizontal band running across a façade and usually projecting. TERRACOTTA: Fine clay moulded and fired into decorative pieces, usually left unglazed on Arts & Crafts buildings. TRACERY: The stone ribs forming geometric shapes and intersecting patterns in the upper half of a medieval window. TRUSS: An arrangement of timber or steel pieces incorporating triangles to form a long beam or support for a roof. When carefully designed they can stretch further than a single beam. VERNACULAR: Buildings made from local materials in styles and method of construction passed down within a distinct area, as opposed to architect-designed structures made from mass-produced materials. WEATHERBOARDING: Overlapping horizontal planks used to protect timberframed structures from the elements and added by Arts & Crafts architects for the visual appeal.

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Index A Aesthetic movement 14, 40 Alfriston Clergy House, East Sussex 16 Art Nouveau 29, 30, 55, 67, 68 Art Workers’ Guild 14, 27, 32, 33 Arts and Crafts Exhibition Society 14, 33 Ashbee, C.R 14, 15, 16, 23, 24, 46, 62.

B Baillee Scott, M.H. 20, 23, 24, 63, 70 Barnsley, Sidney and Ernest 14, 26–27, 34 Barnstaple, Devon 27 bath/ bathrooms 24, 43, 65, 66 bay windows 5, 17, 72, 75 Bedford 24 Bedford Park, West London 31, 40, 41–42, 74 bedrooms 20, 44, 65, 66 Birmingham 25, 26, 42 Blackwell, Bowness on Windermere 23, 63, 64, 73 Blow, Detmar 24–25, 27 Bodley, G.F. 23 Bournville 8, 11, 42–43, 45, 74 bow windows 7, 8, 75 Brentham, London 48 bricks 8, 9, 18, 22, 28, 36, 37, 41, 42, 47, 49, 53

Broad Leys, Windermere 17, 61 Brockhampton, Hereford 27 Buckland, H.T. 25 Burne-Jones, Edward 12

fabrics 12, 66, 67 fireplaces and overmantels 21, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67–69 furniture 61, 62, 64, 65, 66

C

G

Cambridge 23, 32, 33 Castle Drogo, Devon 29 Century Guild of Artists 30 chimneys 7, 19, 34, 44, 54 Chipping Campden, Glos. 14, 23 Chislehurst, Kent 31 Cirencester 24 Cotswolds 14, 23, 26 Cragside, Northumberland 33, 34, 73 Crane, Walter 37

gables 5, 8, 19, 41, 55, 58, 76 gardens 36, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 48 garden cities and suburbs 45–49, 74 Gimson, Ernest 14, 25, 26–27, 34 Glasgow 29, 30, 73 Godwin, E.W. 41 Guild and School of Handicrafts 14, 15, 23, 24, 46

D Derngate, 78, Northampton 30, 73 dining rooms 20, 64 doors/door furniture 19, 51, 54, 57, 71 drawing rooms 20, 64

E Edgbaston, Birmingham 25 Edinburgh 33 Emery Walker’s House, London 73 Exmouth, Devon 32

F

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H Halls 20, 21, 62–63 Hampstead, London 35, 46–48, 49, 74 Harvey, W.A. 43 Heals 61, 62 Hill House, The, Helensburgh 69, 73 Horsley, Gerald 14 House for an Art Lover, Glasgow 29, 30, 73 Howard, Ebenezer 45

I Ideal Home Exhibition (Daily Mail) 46 Isle of Man 24

Index J Jekyll, Gertrude  28

K Kelmscott Manor  14 Kendal, Cumbria  34 Kenton and Co  26 kitchens  20, 44, 65 Knox, Archibald  24, 62

L Leek, Staffs  12, 13, 37 Leicester 26 Letchworth  8, 45–46, 74. Lethaby, W.R.  14, 15, 26, 27, 34 Liberty’s  24, 61, 62, 67 Little Horwood, Bucks  24 Liverpool  29, 47 living rooms  44 London  13, 14, 23, 24, 26, 27, 28, 30, 33, 36, 41, 48, 49, 62 Lutyens, Edwin  18, 24, 28–29, 44, 48, 51

M Macartney, Mervyn  14 Mackintosh, C.R.  16, 29–30, 69 Mackintosh House, The  30, 73 Mackmurdo, A.H. 30 May, E.J.  31, 34, 42 Morris, William  11–14, 15, 16, 23, 26, 27, 30, 33, 35, 36, 37, 41, 45, 48, 49, 66, 68, 74. Muthesius, Hermann 16, 28, 36

N National Trust  16, 36 Neo Georgian style  9, 49 Nesfield, W.E.  33 New Earswick, York  45 Newton, Ernest  14, 32, 34

Northampton 30

O Old English (Tudor, Jacobean and Quaint) style  9, 40 Orchard, The  18, 59 Oxford  12, 35

P panelling  64, 77 Parker, Barry  19, 45, 48 pargeting  58, 77 parlours 44 porches  5, 19, 41, 49, 51 Port Sunlight  8, 11, 38, 43–44, 45, 74 Pre Raphaelites  11, 12, 14 Prior, E.S. 14, 32, 34, 48 Pugin, A.W.N.  9, 10

Q Queen Anne style  9, 34, 40, 41, 43

R rainwater traps  8, 51, 57 Red House, Kent  12, 13, 35–36, 73 render (roughcast and pebbledash)  5, 7, 8, 18, 21, 34, 35, 36, 40, 41, 44, 49, 54, 77 Rodmarton Manor, Glos.  73 roofs  5, 18, 34, 35, 41, 45, 54, 76 Ruskin, John  10, 11, 12, 14, 25, 30, 33, 41, 49

S Saltaire, West Yorks  11 Sapperton, Glos 14, 26 scullery  46, 65, 66 Sedding, J.D.  26, 33 Shaw, R.N.  9, 14, 24, 26, 27, 29, 31, 32, 33–34, 40, 41, 42, 51

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Silver Studio  67 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings  16, 27, 37 Sonning, Berks.  28 stained /coloured glass  5, 12, 37, 55, 66 staircases 70 Standen, West Sussex  36, 73 Street, G.E. 12, 33, 35 Sugden, Larner  37

T terracotta  5, 8, 37, 41, 56, 77 tiles  5, 12, 21, 34, 36, 42, 44, 47, 66, 67, 68, 76 timber-framing/cladding 5, 8,16, 18, 19, 21, 22, 34, 40, 41, 42, 44, 49, 50, 55, 58.

U Unwin, Raymond  19, 45, 47, 48

V Voysey, C.F.A.  17, 18, 34–35, 49, 59, 60, 62

W wallpaper  12, 34, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67 Wardle, Thomas  12 Wavertree, Liverpool  47 weatherboarding  21, 36, 77 Webb, Philip  12, 13, 27, 33, 35–36 Wightwick Manor, Wolverhampton 73 windows (casement)  5, 40, 41, 42, 53, 75; (dormer)  5, 15, 52, 75; (mullion)  5, 19, 52, 76 window seats  72 Wright, Frank Lloyd  16, 23

Other titles in the series include

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