Arts & Crafts On Sea

East Court - Victoria Parade, Ramsgate (© Ellen Leslie)

The English seaside never ceases to surprise me when it comes to architecture. But it shouldn't really as people have gravitated to the coast for health, recreation and inspiration since at least the 18th century!  The variety of architecture in English seaside towns reflects the evolution of a place and none more so than in Ramsgate on the east Kent coast.

Of course, Ramsgate is most famous for The Grange, the home of Augustus Pugin, one of our most celebrated 19th century architects. The town also has an amazing collection of 18th and 19th century townhouses in their typical seaside distressed elegance and if you look closely, there are small tucked away cottages of an earlier century. However, this weekend I wasn't prepared for East Court up on Victoria Parade, north of the town.

The house shouts Arts and Crafts (my architectural weakness) sitting in among more prosaic Victorian terraced houses and streamlined 1930s buildings.  The main block stands over two floors with an additional attic level. The long window range on this latter level facing the sea is particularly striking as are the other jettied windows. What cannot be ignored are the green (Westmoreland) slates in a fish scale setting on the exterior walls and roofs which contrast beautifully with the red brickwork on the ground floor and chimney stacks. This immense house also boasts its own matching stable block. It also stands out with the intriguing initials "WHW" stamped on the rainwater hopper on the front of the house. Obviously the initials of the person who commissioned the house.  

However, what was particularly exciting was that I had seen many of the specific architectural features before. I recalled a Lutyens house I researched many years ago, near Godalming.  That house was one of Lutyen’s earliest commissions, dating to 1891. So I gingerly put a similar date on this seafront construction.  There was the same “bottle-bottom” glazed front door, the heavily studded oak side door and the timbered verandah overlooking the sunken garden; all very familiar. But it didn't feel completely Lutyens. Early Lutyens was more Tudorbethan. This was far more sophisticated. What also puzzled me were the ground floor Venetian windows, which I would date as slightly older than works by Lutyens. The last time I saw this specific design of fenestration was in Cadogan Square in the centre of London, which was built in the 1870s and 1880s. But I knew Lutyens is not necessarily associated with its Queen Anne style or Flemish architecture.  But, what I found out would make perfect sense.

The bottle-bottom glazed front door reminiscent of early Lutyens designs (© Ellen Leslie)

(© Ellen Leslie)

This Grade II house was designed by the architects Sir Ernest George and Harold Ainsworth Peto for William Henry Wills (1st Lord Winterstock) in 1889/90. In later years it went on to be a nursery and a school. The George and Peto partnership was one of the most prolific and successful architectural practices in London in the 1880s (although they also worked all over the country). The Cadogan Square link held true as George and Peto were responsible for several  buildings in that square and nearby streets. But East Court is certainly a departure from the “Pont Street Dutch” of Cadogan Square and the “Tudorbethan” style they favoured for their country clients. In fact I'd say East Court has ingredients of both those styles but heavily coated with the burgeoning popularity of Arts and Crafts.  And what of Lutyens? The young architect had been a paying apprentice at the George and Peto practice just one year before East Court was built. So the question is does East Court carry Lutyens contributions or was the house I researched in Godalming an homage to George and Peto. Maybe we will never know. 

Original Drawing of East Court ((© RIBA Library)

Simple, Beautiful & Dignified

Earlier this year, I was commissioned to research the Cenotaph in St Peter’s Square in Manchester. This memorial and others around the country serve to commemorate those from all over the British Empire and then the Commonwealth and the Allies, who lost their lives in both World Wars and subsequent conflicts. The design of the Cenotaph in Manchester is a virtual copy on one that stands in the middle of Whitehall in London. It was designed by one of Britain’s most celebrated architects, Sir Edwin Lutyens. While my research brief was to investigate the structural aspects of Manchester’s cenotaph I had to go back and look at the original London version to acquire the full picture. While I may have been asked to investigate the physical structure, through the research it was impossible to ignore the human story of how these memorials came about.

Sir Edwin Lutyens

Sir Alfred Mond

In the summer of 1919 the Prime Minister, Lloyd George, gave Lutyens two weeks to design a temporary memorial, to serve as a “saluting base” for the Peace Day Parade in London on 19 July. Lutyens was already working with the Imperial War Graves Commission designing Allied war cemeteries in France. However, the impetus for Lloyd George to commission Lutyens was his own visit to France in 1919, where the Arc de Triomphe and the temporarily constructed catafalque had “envisaged our need for a point of homage to stand as a symbol of remembrance worthy of the reverent salute of an Empire mourning its million dead.”

Lutyens Original Rough Design of The Cenotaph (Image: Imperial War Museum)

Lutyen’s simple and unfussy design (an empty coffin on a high column surmounted by a laurel wreath) was constructed of timber and plaster, being only temporary. But the public grasped the appropriateness of the monument and on that day the base of the monument was covered in flowers brought by the mourning general public. For weeks after, there were queues of people waiting to place wreaths there. It became obvious that a permanent memorial had to be constructed.

Mourners in July 1919

The ensuing months saw Lutyens and his “ally” in Government Sir Alfred Mond (later 1^st Lord Melchett) the First Commissioner of Works, struggle to reign in the demands of the Cabinet to create a grander and more elaborate war memorial. In a memo to the Cabinet in July 1920 Sir Alfred wrote: “Sir Edwin Lutyens’ authority on a point like this can surely not be in question. His is the genius which has created this monument which has been universally acclaimed. It is quite simple beautiful and dignified and his whole reputation is naturally involved in the final result …”

On 11^th November 1920, in Whitehall, King George V unveiled the permanent Portland stone memorial replacing the one made of timber and plaster. Lutyens had caught the right tone with his understated, yet proud design. The permanent Cenotaph in Whitehall weighed 120 tons and stood 35 ft high. It was constructed by Messrs Holland, Hannen and Cubitts Limited and cost £10,000 to construct.

Lutyens called the memorial a “Cenotaph”, from the Greek that broadly translates as an “empty tomb”, there to honour those buried elsewhere. In addition to the laurel wreath on the top of the Cenotaph, there are two more on each end and on each side three flagstaffs. The sculptor Derwent Wood designed the wreaths. The inscription “The Glorious Dead” was chosen by Lutyens; rejecting other more effusive and even mawkish suggestions. The design was so popular that 55 similar structures were erected in Britain, including the one in St Peter’s Square in Manchester. This latter one has the figure of a soldier lying on top of the memorial.

Lutyens didn’t take a penny in payment for what was arguably one of his most important works. Benefited by his insight, we have a focal point of few words and embellishments that at the same time says and demonstrates everything we would want to express to “The Glorious Dead”.