A fascinating study of Edwardian domestic architecture brings out its debt to both progressive politics and the romanticism of the age, finds Charles Holland
‘Edwardians and Their Houses: The New Life of Old England’
Timothy Brittain-Catlin
Lund Humphries, 224pp, £45
Timothy Brittain-Catlin begins and ends his fascinating new book ‘The Edwardians and Their Houses’ with the strange story of Kingsgate Castle on the east Kent coast. Originally built as one of a number of Georgian follies by Lord Holland, the faux-castle was purchased by Lord Avebury in 1901 who converted it into an elaborate country house with help of the architect WH Romain Walker.
Avebury was an Edwardian polymath: archaeologist, politician, amateur scientist and originator of the bank holiday. He was awarded his title in recognition of his work conserving Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire and he was a pioneer in the study and preservation of historic buildings.
Brittain-Catlin describes Avebury’s work at Kingsgate as a form of archaeological discovery, and the rebuilding of the castle as a quasi-scientific exercise in historic building techniques. Avebury attempted to make a fake into the genuine article while at the same time adapting it to contemporary life. In doing so, he defined many of the contradictory impulses of the Edwardian era.
This book describes the political and social ambitions of Edwardian life, linking the development of its residential architecture to the land reforms brought in by progressive politicians. The Liberal political class were both patrons and champions of new housing, combining an enthusiasm for country pursuits and weekend retreats with a progressive interest in alleviating rural poverty and poor housing.
The Edwardian imagination combined this rational interest in the development of new forms of housing with a taste for the dreamlike, as evidenced by their idealisation of childhood and the fantasies of writers such as E Nesbit and Frances Hodgson Burnett. Brittain-Catlin draws a revealing comparison between the latter’s book ‘The Secret Garden’ – a story about restoration and rejuvenation – and the Edwardian fascination with restoring historic buildings.
The father of this obsession was the Victorian architect George Devey. Devey’s innovation was to revisit the materials and details of historic domestic architecture in his designs for new houses. His work became a deliberate exercise in the restoration of traditional techniques. He also employed Charles Voysey, one of the era’s most original and inventive designers. Voysey took Devey’s historic elements and pulled them into tighter, more controlled compositions. Brittain-Catlin argues convincingly that Voysey’s brilliantly white, roughcast walls were a deliberate device to allow his historically derived elements to be read more legibly.
The role of Country Life magazine was also highly significant. It might seem an odd place to look for progressive interests, but Country Life combined its valorisation of English pastoralism with a commitment to improving rural housing in general. As well as championing the work of specific architects, the magazine sponsored architectural competitions and promoted improvements in the incorporation of plumbing, electrics and space standards.
While this book includes the work of the major architects of the time – as well as Voysey, there are sections focusing on Edwin Lutyens and Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott – the author is ultimately more concerned with the milieu in which they worked and the general trends which surrounded them. Similarly, he devotes less time to radical social experiments such as Letchworth Garden City than to the comparatively more conservative ‘garden suburb’ of Gidea Park on the north-eastern edge of London. Developed by a trio of Liberal politicians, Gidea Park remains a relatively unknown treasure-trove of Edwardian housing, with notable designs by Parker and Unwin, Baillie-Scott and Clough Williams Ellis.
Conventional art history has it that styles emerge, develop and then degrade before being replaced by new ones. In ‘The Edwardians and their Houses’, Brittain-Catlin refutes this familiar teleology, suggesting that styles have greater longevity and are less tied to specific eras than we usually think. Edwardian architects designed in a wide variety of styles, most of them historically derived and many of them intentionally archaic. They combined this with innovations in use, technology and spatial organisation. Like Lord Avebury, they blurred the boundaries between the old and new, the scientific and the fantastic and the rational and the romantic.
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