When British Domestic Architecture was Humane, Civilized, and Stunning

Ahead of the catastrophe of 1914-18—before “architectural education” turned managed by lefty apparatchiks whose heads ended up stuffed with poverty-stricken Modernist humbug, dictating a narrow brainwashing curriculum fairly than rounded education and learning embracing humane, civilized values—there were sites where by Vitruvian Firmness, Commodity, and Delight knowledgeable the design of buildings and locations where by individuals lived, fortunately and contentedly, with out crying out to be rescued from a dystopian hell on earth.

That was a time when the United Kingdom of Terrific Britain and Eire (as it was then) was immensely abundant, a main creditor on the earth stage: there were being a lot of aspects of its governance, political steadiness, and what it generated that were globally admired. In individuals much-off days, all above the world Britain’s electricity and status counted for some thing. There were being, even so, cracks beginning to exhibit: there was unrest in Ireland, and by 1918 not only was Britain a debtor somewhat than creditor, ruined by the Fantastic War, and acquiring to bankroll France and Imperial Russia to retain combating it (Russia, of course, still left in 1917), but 26 counties of Eire opted out of the Kingdom to turn out to be the Irish Absolutely free Condition.

Before 1914, even so, there was a lot to admire, especially on the architectural front, and notably in relation to the layout of dwellings in good shape for human beings. When domestic architecture was intended by sensitive, gifted architects who drew intelligently, creatively, imaginatively, and tastefully on historic precedents, it was invariably realized by builders who utilized correctly qualified craftsmen taught by previously generations in apprentice systems. In addition, this sort of craftsmen labored with purely natural products, usually from neighborhood resources, so new structures harmonized with the landscape from which those products had been taken, and respected other constructions presently erected in the vicinity. Indeed, British craftsmen were being educated and hugely expert, equipped to create get the job done of the greatest good quality, something that is nevertheless clear when we take a look at late-Victorian church buildings, the place the workmanship is breathtakingly fantastic, and the style wondrous, beautiful, and glowingly attractive. There was pride in such function well carried out.

The attributes of architectural layout and workmanship located in British domestic architecture at that time became acknowledged through publications, prompting the appointment of Hermann Muthesius (1861-1927), attaché at the Imperial German Embassy, London (1896-1903), to look into in depth and comprehensively British domestic architecture and style. This he duly did, travelling broadly all over Excellent Britain (which indicates the big island, united under one Crown in 1603 when James VI of Scotland grew to become James I of England and Eire, and was just a handy label for the newly joined nations, and has very little to do with grandiosity, electricity, or nearly anything of that sort), accumulating substance and illustrations, and assembly and keeping with many architects and their shoppers, some of whom turned his personal buddies. His labours culminated in the excellent Das englische Haus (The English Property), brought out by the distinguished Berlin publishers of Wasmuth in 1904-5, with a revised and even much better 2nd edition of 1908-11, which publicized is effective of quite a few British architects throughout the Continent and specifically in the German Empire.

It is a unfortunate and dim reflection of the present day that the names of many of the distinguished designers accountable for some of the very best domestic buildings ever erected in Excellent Britain have been forgotten—ignored since they did not in good shape neatly into the “Grand Narratives” of Modernism espoused by the likes of the chief drum-banger of the Modern-day Motion, Nikolaus Pevsner (1902-83). His pernicious Pioneers of the Fashionable Motion from William Morris to Walter Gropius (1936) claims it all: the Fantastic Lie was to develop fake one-way links between the Arts-and-Crafts and the Contemporary Movements, when what essentially happened was a finish rejection of the Arts-and-Crafts ethos by Gropius, the Bauhäusler, and other doctrinaire Modernists who demanded the tabula rasa, the rejection of all “Historicism,” and the embrace of a meaningless, empty design and style that suggested “functionalism,” cleanliness, industrialized developing procedures, and “modernism,” but was, in actuality, only packaging. It was also, for the first time in human heritage, a design and style devoid of ornament, labelled a “crime” by Modernists.

A new finely illustrated e-book, The Edwardians and their Homes: The New Existence of Old England, by Timothy Brittain-Catlin, with many amazing photographs specifically taken for it by Robert Forster, encapsulates the astonishingly progressive, imaginative, and artistic Edwardian time period (the reign of King-Emperor Edward VII, 1901-10), when beautifully crafted dwellings have been erected to the styles of grossly underestimated architects this sort of as William Henry Romaine-Walker (1854-1940), George Herbert Kitchin (1870-1951), Charles Edward Mallows (1864-1915), and Henry Avray Tipping (1855-1933). It rightly emphasizes the literature of the time period, such as the remarkably influential article content on architecture in Nation Lifestyle, the journal founded in 1897 by Edward Burgess Hudson (1854-1936), which introduced out finely illustrated weekly articles or blog posts on state residences, employed Gertrude Jekyll (1843-1932) to present the “Garden Notes” column for some a few many years, and promoted the occupation of Edwin Landseer Lutyens (1869-1944) who was to style and design the Deanery Backyard garden, Sonning, Berkshire (1899, restore Lindisfarne Castle, Holy Island (1902), and create the enchanting Plumpton Spot, Sussex (1927-8, all for Hudson. That great journal also performed an crucial role in disseminating flavor as a result of the copious writings of Lawrence Walter William Weaver (1876-1930) and Avray Tipping. Image guides aimed at the builders of smaller, humbler dwellings are not overlooked, and the influence of leading circles inside the when-mighty Liberal Occasion, in producing an outstanding total of good domestic architecture to be realized from terrific properties to humble cottages, is acknowledged, delivering exemplars for new developments all in excess of the state. 

Such figures as John Lubbock (1834-1913, 1st Baron Avebury from 1900, today generally remembered for laws involved with the preservation of historic monuments), termed on Romaine-Walker to transform Kingsgate Castle, Kent (1901-12), and the identical architect worked at Rhinefield, in the vicinity of Brockenhurst, Hampshire (with its lavishly colored Hispano-Moresque smoking-room), intended for Edward Lionel Walker-Munro (1862-1920). Romaine-Walker was liable for new is effective and transformations for Robert William Hudson (1856-1937) at Medmenham Abbey on the Thames, Buckinghamshire, and Danesfield, around Marlow, in the exact same County. That architect developed some 28 cottages all-around Medmenham in a Domestic Revival design, the planning of which was significantly praised in Place Everyday living. The guide describes the hitherto underrated back garden-suburb of Gidea Park, Essex, a constructed exhibition of model residences costing concerning £350 and £500, like earnings and costs: made by architects together with Courtenay Melville Crickmer (1879-1971), Thomas Geoffry Lucas (1872-1947), Ronald Potter Jones (1876-1965), Bertram Clough Williams-Ellis (1883-1978), Richard Barry Parker (1867-1947) with Raymond Unwin (1863-1940), Reginald Thelwall Longden (1879-1941), and many others. The Gidea Park dwellings are diversified, exciting, aesthetically pleasing, and finely crafted. They continue being a reproach to the architecturally illiterate, jerry-built, insufficient, obscenely more than-priced boxes inflicted on unfortunates searching for roofs around their heads in these benighted instances.

The writer of this amazing, dazzling e book, Timothy Brittain-Catlin, is a Cambridge-educated tutorial and architect, who has provided us several other perceptive matters to savour and get pleasure from, not the very least his study of the early 19th-century English Parsonage (2008), and his Bleak Houses: Disappointment and Failure in Architecture (2014). He observes of that excellent taste-previous, Country Lifestyle, that its “genius” lay in its capability to merge disciplined and technically precise editorial strains on the architecture of both of those new and remodeled properties with sentimental stories and dreams and gardens, and pictures of heiresses and Highland cattle, and of happy small children splashing in streams, therefore fascinating its readership. Additionally, Nation Life’s writers experienced an “astonishing potential to recognize the meaning” encapsulated in architecture (does architecture have any this means currently other than as a demonstration of overweening vanity and greed on the element of the uglifiers responsible for it?). His guide is felicitously created, finely illustrated, and celebrates pleasant, agreeable habitats for human beings made and built by delicate gurus: individuals habitats place to disgrace the ghastly mess that passes for “architecture” and “planning” currently, many thanks to the pseudo-spiritual cult of Modernism, the foundations of which lie on sinking sands.

Professor James Stevens Curl’s Building Dytopia: The Strange Rise and Survival of Architectural Barbarism is published by Oxford College Press, causing significantly gnashing of teeth amongst dystopians. In 2019 he was honoured with an Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition for Historical past & Writing by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Artwork (ICAA), Usa. This New Urbanism collection is supported by the Richard H. Driehaus Basis.