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ARTS & CRAFTS STYLES |
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.
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).
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.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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, 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).
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.
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).
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.
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, BOWNESS-ON-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.
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 legacy lay in his innovative interiors, in which moods were created by changing heights and forming intimate spaces, as well as by the decoration and colour. All this can be best appreciated at Blackwell, which can be visited at Bowness-on-Windermere.
FIG 2.10: HORWOOD HOUSE, LITTLE HORWOOD, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE: Like many architects, Blow’s houses were shaped by the whims of their clients, in this case Frederick Arthur Denny who had made his fortune from pork and bacon. He commissioned him to design the house based upon a building he had seen in the West Country in the style of an Elizabethan or Jacobean manor house in 1911–12. Percy Thrower, the celebrated gardener, was born here in 1913 while his father Harry was head gardener.
Detmar Jellings Blow was a contemporary of Lutyens, designing country houses for wealthy clients, including the Duke of 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.
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).
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 here he met two brothers from Birmingham, Ernest Barnsley who worked with Gimson at Sedding’s 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!).
FIG 2.12: An elongated Z-shaped stone cottage, seeming to grow out of the rock from which it was hewn on the hills north of Leicester, by Ernest Gimson. His design was built by Detmer Blow, who at the time was a travelling craftsmen and builder before becoming a leading architect.
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 close-knit 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 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.
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 key members in the formation of the Art Workers’ Guild in 1884. Lethaby was also involved in the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, a group that endeavoured to promote accurate study and restoration in the face 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, 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.
FIG 2.13: ALL SAINTS’ CHURCH, BROCKHAMPTON, HEREFORDSHIRE: This church by Lethaby demonstrates many of the ideals of the Arts & Crafts movement, especially the use of various vernacular materials, inventive form and control of light in its wonderfully simply and evocative interior. It was built for Alice Foster in 1902 in memory of her parents and was Lethaby’s last major work.
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 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.
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.
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).
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.
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 Innen-Dekoration 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).
Most of his buildings and interiors 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.
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.
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.
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.
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) 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.
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.
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.
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 Edmund Street, taking evening classes at the Royal Academy and travelling around Europe on a scholarship, studying Gothic churches. He set up 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 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.
FIG 2.19: CRAGSIDE, ROTHBURY, NORTHUMBERLAND: What had originally been a modest house was totally transformed by Norman Shaw from 1869–84 for Sir William George Armstrong. This inventive industrialist also made it the first house in the world to be powered by hydro electricity and lit by incandescent light bulbs.
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.
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 (for which he was renowned at the time), textiles and tiles, his early Gothic inspired patterns becoming simplified and flatter, with silhouettes of naturalistic forms. His most productive stage of house building 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, 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.
FIG 2.20: LITTLEHOLME, KENDAL, CUMBRIA: A square-plan house with a distinctive large semi-circular arch over the porch designed by Voysey for Arthur W. Simpson, himself a notable local wood carver and Arts & Crafts designer.
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 heart-shaped motif and delicate long strap hinges on the door.
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 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.
FIG 2.22: RED HOUSE, BEXLEYHEATH, KENT (see also Fig 1.9).
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.
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.
