Category Archives: Edwin Lutyens

India : Jaipur, Hawa Mahal, Palace Of Winds …


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Hawa Mahal (Hindi: English translation: “Palace of Winds” or “Palace of the Breeze”), is a palace in Jaipur, India, so named because it was essentially a high screen wall built so the women of the royal household could observe street festivities while unseen from the outside. Constructed of red and pink sandstone, the palace sits on the edge of the City Palace, and extends to the zenana, or women’s chambers.

History

The structure was built in 1799 by Maharaja Sawai Pratap Singh designed by Lal Chand Ustad in the form of the crown of Krishna, the Hindu god. Its unique five-storey exterior is akin to the honeycomb of a beehive with its 953 small windows called jharokhas decorated with intricate latticework. The original intention of the lattice was to allow royal ladies to observe everyday life in the street below without being seen, since they had to obey strict “purdah” (face cover). The lattice also allows cool air from the Venturi effect (doctor breeze) through the intricate pattern, air conditioning the whole area during the high temperatures in summers.

In 2006, restoration and renovation works on the Mahal were undertaken, after a gap of 50 years, to give a face lift to the monument at an estimated cost of Rs 4568 million. The corporate sector lent a hand to preserve the historical monuments of Jaipur and the Unit Trust of India has adopted Hawa Mahal to maintain it. The palace is an extended part of a huge complex. The stone-carved screens, small casements and arched roofs are some of the features of this popular tourist spot. The monument also has delicately modeled hanging cornices. Just like the other monuments of Jaipur, the palace is also constructed in pink and red colored stone.

Architecture

The palace is a five-storey pyramidal shaped monument that rises 50 feet (15 m) from its high base. The top three floors of the structure have a dimension of one room width while the first and second floors have patios in front of them. The front elevation, as seen from the street, is like a honeycomb web of a beehive, built with small portholes. Each porthole has miniature windows and carved sandstone grills, finials and domes. It gives the appearance of a mass of semi-octagonal bays, giving the monument its unique façade. The inner face on the back side of the building consists of need-based chambers built with pillars and corridors with minimal ornamentation, and reach up to the top floor. The interior of the Mahal has been described as “having rooms of different coloured marbles, relieved by inlaid panels or gilding; while fountains adorn the centre of the courtyard”.

Lal Chand Ustad was the architect of this unique structure. Built in red and pink coloured sand stone, in keeping with the décor of the other monuments in the city, its colour is a full testimony to the epithet of “Pink City” given to Jaipur. Its façade depicts 953 niches with intricately carved jharokhas (some are made of wood) is a stark contrast to the plain looking rear side of the structure. Its cultural and architectural heritage is a true reflection of a fusion of Hindu Rajput architecture and the Islamic Mughal architecture; the Rajput style is seen in the form of domed canopies, fluted pillars, lotus and floral patterns, and the Islamic style as evident in its stone inlay filigree work and arches (as distinguished from its similarity with the Panch Mahal – the palace of winds – at Fatehpur Sikri).

The entry to the Hawa Mahal from the city palace side is through an imperial door. It opens into a large courtyard, which has double storeyed buildings on three sides, with the Hawa Mahal enclosing it on the east side. An archaeological museum is also housed in this courtyard.

Hawa Mahal was also known as the chef-d’œuvre of Maharaja Jai Singh as it was his favourite resort because of the elegance and built-in interior of the Mahal. The cooling effect in the chambers, provided by the breeze passing through the small windows of the façade, was enhanced by the fountains provided at the centre of each of the chambers.

The top two floors of the Hawa Mahal are accessed only through ramps. The Mahal is maintained by the archaeological Department of the Government of Rajasthan.

Hidden London : Trinity Square Gardens, & Tower Hill Memorial …. Another Lutyens Masterpiece


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The Tower Hill Memorial is a Commonwealth War Graves Commission war memorial on the south side of Trinity Square Gardens, in London, England. The memorial commemorates those from the Merchant Navy and fishing fleets who died during both world wars and have “no grave but the sea”. The memorial was designed by Edwin Lutyens with sculpture work by William Reid Dick, the Second World War extension was designed by Edward Maufe with sculpture work by Charles Wheeler.

The First World War memorial takes the form of a vaulted corridor, 21.5 metres long, 7 metres wide and 7 to 10 metres high. Inside are 12 bronze plaques engraved with 12,000 names. Those commemorated include Victoria Cross recipient, Archibald Bisset Smith.

The Second World War memorial takes the form of a semi-circular sunken garden located behind the corridor, to its north. It contains the names of 24,000 British seamen and 50 Australian seamen, listed on the walls of the sunken garden. In the centre of the garden is a pool of bronze, engraved with a compass pointing north. Between the two memorials are two columns with statues representing an officer (western column) and a seaman (eastern).

Not all Merchant Seamen who died during wartime, and have no known grave, are commemorated here – they may be commemorated elsewhere, for example, the Liverpool Naval Memorial.

The memorial was unveiled by Queen Mary on 12 December 1928 and the Second World War extension by Queen Elizabeth II on 5 November 1955.

People : Thomas Mawson, Garden Designer, Town Planner and Exceptional Landscape Architect.


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Thomas Hayton Mawson (5 May 1861 – 14 November 1933), known as T. H. Mawson, was a British garden designer, landscape architect, and town planner.

Personal life

Mawson was born in Nether Wyresdale, Lancashire and left school at age 12. His father, who died in 1877, was a warper in a cotton mill and later started a building business. He married Anna Prentice in 1884 and the Mawsons made their family home in Windermere, Westmorland in 1885. They had four sons and five daughters. His eldest son, Edward Prentice Mawson was a successful landscape architect and took over the running of his father’s firm when his father developed Parkinson’s disease in 1923. Another son, John Mawson, moved to New Zealand in 1928 as Director of Town Planning for that country. He died at Applegarth, Hest Bank, near Lancaster, Lancashire, aged 72 and is buried in Bowness Cemetery within a few miles of some of his best gardens and overlooking Windermere.

Working life

To make a living, he worked first in the building trade in Lancaster, then at a London nursery where he gained experience in landscape gardening. In the 1880s he moved back north, where he and two brothers started the Lakeland Nursery in Windermere. The firm became sufficiently successful for him to be able to turn his attention to garden design.

Mawson’s first commission was a local property, Graythwaite Hall, and his work there showed his hallmark blend of architecture and planting. He went on to design other gardens in Cumbria such as Langdale Chase, Holehird, Brockhole, and Holker Hall around the turn of the century.

In 1891 Mawson was commissioned to design and construct Belle Vue Park in Newport, Monmouthshire, Mawson’s first win in an open competition. His design was, in fact, designed for the neighbouring field, the site of the then Newport and Monmouthshire Hospital after Mawson misunderstood directions on his first visit. The mistake was not realised until the first site visit, after the contract had been awarded. Between 1894 and 1909 Mawson was commissioned to design and construct Dyffryn Gardens near Cardiff. The Rushton Hall estate in Northamptonshire has early 20th century formal terraced gardens designed by Mawson between 1905–1909 and implemented by his brother Robert.

Later Mawson designed gardens in various parts of Britain, and others in Europe and Canada. In London he designed gardens at The Hill, in Hampstead for Lord Leverhulme. The impressive 800 ft long pergola is now open to the public as part of the West Heath. He designed Rivington Gardens and Lever Park in Lancashire also for Lord Leverhulme. Padiham Memorial Park (1921) was another commission in Lancashire. Mawson also designed the gardens at Wood Hall near Cockermouth, Cumbria, which were completed in 1920. Much of this garden still survives today.

From 1910 to 1924 he lectured frequently at the school of civic design, Liverpool University. He also contributed articles on garden design to The Studio magazine and its annual The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art. In the 1920s he designed gardens for Dunira, a country house in Perthshire.

In 1923 he became president of the Town Planning Institute, and in 1929 the first president of the Institute of Landscape Architects.

International work

In 1908 he won a competition to lay out the Peace Palace gardens at The Hague. He also advised on the development of the Great Smoky Mountains National Park in the United States. In 1912 Mawson toured several Canadian cities, beginning in Halifax and ending up in Victoria, British Columbia. As well as giving talks, he proposed several (unaccepted) designs including for Wascana Centre in Regina, Brockton Point lighthouse, Coal Harbour and Lost Lagoon in Vancouver, and urban design plans for Banff and downtown Calgary. Mawson’s vision for Calgary, had it been implemented, would have changed what was then a dusty prairie town, into a city of the City Beautiful movement.

Legacy

With the passage of time some of the original features have deteriorated. A number of Mawson’s parks were restored in the early twenty-first century. For example, the two municipal parks at Stoke-on-Trent (Hanley Park and Burslem Park) and a rose garden at Bushey were restored as part of the “Parks for People” programme for historic parks and cemeteries in the UK.

Archive

More than 14,000 plans and drawings together with 6,500 glass plate negatives and photographs comprise the archive of Mawson documents. They are stored at Kendal Record Office having been offered to the Cumbria Archive Service following the closure of Thomas H. Mawson & Son of Lancaster and Windermere in 1978. As at 2010, the material has not been fully catalogued and conservation is proving difficult.

Selected writings

  • 1900: The Art and Craft of Garden Making, 1st edn 1900, 5th edn (recommended), 1926.
  • 1908: “The Designing of Gardens”, article in The Studio Year Book of Decorative Art 1908
  • 1911: Civic Art Covers the principles of town planning
  • 1927: The Life and Work of an English Landscape Architect

 

People : Richard Norman Shaw, Architect, Designer of New Scotland Yard & Phileas Fogg’s Club……


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Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912) was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings.

Life

Shaw was born in Edinburgh, and trained in the London office of William Burn with George Edmund Street and attended the Royal Academy classes, receiving a thorough grounding in classicism, and met William Eden Nesfield, with whom he was briefly in partnership. In 1854–1856 he travelled with a Royal Academy scholarship, collecting sketches that were published as Architectural Sketches from the Continent, 1858.

In 1863, after sixteen years of training, he opened a practice for a short time with Nesfield. In 1872, Shaw was elected an Associate of the Royal Academy.

He worked, among others, for the artists John Callcott Horsley and George Henry Boughton, and the industrialist Lord Armstrong. He designed large houses such as Cragside and Grim’s Dyke, as well as a series of commercial buildings in a wide range of styles.

Shaw was elected to the Royal Academy in 1877, and co-edited (with Sir Thomas Jackson RA) the 1892 collection of essays, Architecture, a profession or an Art?. He firmly believed it was an art. In later years, Shaw moved to a heavier classical style which influenced the emerging Edwardian Classicism of the early 20th century. Shaw died in London, where he had designed residential buildings in areas such as Pont Street, and public buildings such as New Scotland Yard.

His picturesque early country houses avoided the current Neo-Gothic and the academic styles, reviving vernacular materials like half timber and hanging tiles, with projecting gables and tall massive chimneys with “inglenooks” for warm seating. The result was free and fresh, not slavishly imitating his Jacobean and vernacular models, yet warmly familiar, a parallel to the Arts and Crafts movement. Richard Norman Shaw’s houses soon attracted the misnomer the “Queen Anne style”. As his powers developed, he dropped some of the mannered detailing, his buildings gained in dignity, and acquired an air of serenity and a quiet homely charm which were less conspicuous in his earlier works; half timber construction was more sparingly used, and finally disappeared entirely.

His work is characterised by ingenious open planning, the Great Hall or “sitting hall” with a staircase running up the side that became familiar in mass-produced housing of the 1890s.

He was also involved in ecclesiastical architecture. He restored St. John’s Church, Leeds and designed new churches such as St. Margaret’s, Ilkley, All Saints’, Leek and All Saints’, Richards Castle.

Shaw died in London on 17 November 1912.

Built work

  • 1–2 St. James Street, London, 1882–83
  • Glen Andred, at Withyham, Sussex, 1867
  • Leyswood, at Withyham, Sussex, 1866–69
  • Knight’s Bank, at Farnham, Surrey, 1868 (demolished 1932)
  • Cragside, at Rothbury, Northumberland, 1869/1870–1885
  • Preen Manor, Shropshire
  • Grim’s Dyke, Harrow, London, 1870
  • New Zealand Chambers, Leadenhall Street, London, 1871–73
  • Pierrepont and Merrist Wood, Surrey
  • Lowther Lodge, Kensington, 1873–75, headquarters of the Royal Geographical Society
  • 6 Ellerdale Road, Hampstead, London, built for himself
  • House of Bethany, St. Clement’s Road, Bournemouth, Dorset, 1874–75
  • Wispers, West Sussex, 1874–76
  • 8 Melbury Road, Kensington, London, built for painter Marcus Stone, 1872–73
  • Woodland House, 31 Melbury Road, Kensington, London, built for painter Luke Fildes, 1876–77
  • Pierrepont House, Frensham, 1876–78
  • Swan House, 17 Chelsea Embankment, London, 1875–77
  • Ellern Mede, 31 Totteridge Common, Barnet, 1877
  • Bedford Park, London, the first “garden city” suburban development: housing, including St. Michael and All Angels Church, 1879–82
  • Albert Hall Mansions, at Kensington Gore, London, 1879–86
  • Tabard Hotel, Chiswick, London
  • Adcote, Little Ness, Shropshire, 1876–81
  • Flete House, Devonshire
  • Greenham Lodge, Berkshire
  • Dawpool, Cheshire (demolished, 1920s)
  • Bryanston School, Dorset, 1898
  • Chesters, Northumberland
  • New Scotland Yard, on the Thames Embankment, London, 1887–1906 (built as the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police, now known as the Norman Shaw Buildings and used as Parliamentary offices)
  • Albion House, James Street, Liverpool, 1896–98
  • House for Kate Greenaway, Frognal, London, 1885
  • Swanscombe Church in Kent
  • White Lodge and White Lodge West, Bingley, West Yorkshire
  • Bannow, Residential Care Home, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, 1877
  • Claremont School, originally the Ebden family home named Baldslow Place, St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex 1888
  • 4 – 6 Page Heath Lane, Bickley, Kent, 1864
  • The Corner House, 114 Shortlands Road, Beckenham, Kent, 1869
  • 1 St. James’s Street, London, 1904
  • Bailiff’s Cottage, Bromley Palace Estate, Bromley, Kent, 1864 (demolished)
  • Town Hall, Market Square, Bromley, Kent, 1863 (unexecuted)
  • Bradford City Hall extension, 1909
  • Holy Trinity Church, Bingley, Yorkshire 1866–68 (demolished 1974)
  • Holme Grange School, Wokingham, Berkshire East Sussex 1883
  • Flora Fountain, Mumbai, India, 1864
  • Highdown School, Emmer Green, Reading, Berkshire, 1878–80
  • Alderbrook Park, Cranleigh, Surrey 1881 (house for Pandeli Ralli, demolished 1956)
  • Trevanion, Totteridge Lane, Barnet, 1883–84
  • Piccadilly Hotel, Piccadilly Circus, London, England, 1905–08; his last work

People : André Le Nôtre , From Versailles To Greenwich Park, Garden Designer to the Kings…..


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André Le Nôtre (12 March 1613 – 15 September 1700, occasionally rendered as André Le Nostre) was a French landscape architect and the principal gardener of King Louis XIV of France. Most notably, he was the landscape architect who made the design and construction for the park of the Palace of Versailles, and his work represents the height of the French formal garden style, or jardin à la française.

Prior to working on Versailles, Le Nôtre collaborated with Louis Le Vau and Charles Le Brun on the park at Vaux-le-Vicomte. His other works include the design of gardens and parks at Chantilly, Fontainebleau, Saint-Cloud and Saint-Germain. His contribution to planning was also significant: at the Tuileries he extended the westward vista, which later became the avenue of the Champs-Élysées and comprise the Axe historique.

Biography

Early life

André Le Nôtre was born in Paris, into a family of gardeners. Pierre Le Nôtre, who was in charge of the gardens of the Palais des Tuileries in 1572, may have been his grandfather. André’s father Jean Le Nôtre was also responsible for sections of the Tuileries gardens, initially under Claude Mollet, and later as head gardener, during the reign of Louis XIII. André was born on 12 March 1613, and was baptised at the Église Saint-Roch. His godfather at the ceremony was an administrator of the royal gardens, and his godmother was the wife of Claude Mollet.

The family lived in a house within the Tuilieries, and André thus grew up surrounded by gardening, and quickly acquired both practical and theoretical knowledge. The location also allowed him to study in the nearby Palais du Louvre, part of which was then used as an academy of the arts. He learned mathematics, painting and architecture, and entered the atelier of Simon Vouet, painter to Louis XIII, where he met and befriended the painter Charles Le Brun. He learned classical art and perspective, and studied for several years under the architect François Mansart, a friend of Le Brun.

Career

In 1635, Le Nôtre was named the principal gardener of the king’s brother Gaston, duc d’Orléans. On 26 June 1637, Le Nôtre was appointed head gardener at the Tuileries, taking over his father’s position. He had primary responsibiliity for the areas of the garden closest to the palace, including the orangery built by Simon Bouchard. In 1643 he was appointed “draughtsman of plants and terraces” for Anne of Austria, the queen mother, and from 1645 to 1646 he worked on the modernisation of the gardens of the Château de Fontainebleau.

He was later put in charge of all the royal gardens of France, and in 1657 he was further appointed Controller-General of the Royal Buildings. There are few direct references to Le Nôtre in the royal accounts, and Le Nôtre himself seldom wrote down his ideas or approach to gardening. He expressed himself purely through his gardens. He became a trusted advisor to Louis XIV, and in 1675 he was ennobled by the King. He and Le Brun even accompanied the court at the siege of Cambrai in 1677.

In 1640, he married Françoise Langlois. They had three children, although none survived to adulthood.

Vaux-le-Vicomte

André Le Nôtre’s first major garden design was undertaken for Nicolas Fouquet, Louis XIV’s Superintendent of Finances. Fouquet began work on the Château de Vaux-le-Vicomte in 1657, employing the architect Louis Le Vau, the painter Charles Le Brun, and Le Nôtre. The three designers worked in partnership, with Le Nôtre laying out a grand, symmetrical arrangement of parterres, pools and gravel walks. Le Vau and Le Nôtre exploited the changing levels across the site, so that the canal is invisible from the house, and employed forced perspective to make the grotto appear closer than it really is. The gardens were complete by 1661, when Fouquet held a grand entertainment for the king. But only three weeks later, on 10 September 1661, Fouquet was arrested for embezzling state funds, and his artists and craftsmen were taken into the king’s service.

Versailles

From 1661, Le Nôtre was working for Louis XIV to build and enhance the garden and parks of the Château de Versailles. Louis extended the existing hunting lodge, eventually making it his primary residence and seat of power. Le Nôtre also laid out the radiating city plan of Versailles, which included the largest avenue yet seen in Europe, the Avenue de Paris.

In the following century, the Versailles design influenced Pierre Charles L’Enfant’s master plan for Washington, D.C. See, L’Enfant Plan.

Other gardens

France

In 1661, Le Nôtre was also working on the gardens at the Palace of Fontainebleau. In 1663 he was engaged at Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, and Château de Saint-Cloud, residence of Philippe d’Orléans, where he would oversee works for many years. Also from 1663, Le Nôtre was engaged at Château de Chantilly, property of the Prince de Condé, where he worked with his brother-in-law Pierre Desgots until the 1680s. From 1664 he was rebuilding the gardens of the Tuileries, at the behest of Colbert, Louis’s chief minister, who still hoped the king would remain in Paris. In 1667 Le Nôtre extended the main axis of the gardens westward, creating the avenue which would become the Champs-Élysées. Colbert commissioned Le Nôtre in 1670, to alter the gardens of his own château de Sceaux, which was ongoing until 1683.

Abroad

In 1662, he provided designs for Greenwich Park in London, for Charles II of England. In 1670 Le Nôtre conceived a project for the Castle of Racconigi in Italy, and between 1674 and 1698 he remodelled the gardens of Venaria Reale, near Turin. In 1679, he visited Italy. His later advice was provided for Charlottenburg Palace and château de Cassel in Germany, and with plans for Windsor Castle.

Final works

Between 1679 and 1691, he was involved in the planning of the gardens of Château de Meudon for François-Michel le Tellier, Marquis.

His work has often been favorably compared and contrasted (“the antithesis”) to the œuvre of Lancelot “Capability” Brown, the English landscape architect.

People : Leonard Stokes, Who Designed Our Telephone Exchanges ? Prolific Art & Crafts Architect, Why Don’t We Know More About Him ?


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Leonard Aloysius Scott Stokes (1858 – 25 December 1925) was an English architect.Leonard Stokes was born in Southport (then in Lancashire) in 1858. He trained in London and travelled in Germany and Italy. Most of his designs were for Roman Catholic buildings, including churches, convents and schools. His first outstanding work was the Church of St Clare, Liverpool. He also designed country houses and around 20 telephone exchanges. In 1919 he was awarded the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, having served as their president from 1910 to 1912. Sir Albert Edward Richardson, who later became President of the Royal Society, trained in his offices.

He died in 1925 in Chelsea

People : Christopher Lloyd, Great Dixter’s Founder and Gardening Impressario……


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Christopher Hamilton Lloyd, OBE (2 March 1921 – 27 January 2006) was a British gardener and author. He was the 20th Century chronicler for the heavily planted, labour-intensive, country garden.

Life

Lloyd was born in Great Dixter, into an upper-middle-class family, the youngest of six children. In 1910, his father, Nathaniel Lloyd (an Arts and Crafts designer of posters and other images for confectionery companies), purchased Great Dixter, a manor house in Northiam, East Sussex near the south coast of England. Edwin Lutyens was hired to renovate and extend the gardens attached to the house. Nathaniel Lloyd loved gardens, designed some of the garden himself, and imparted that love to his son. Lloyd learned the skills required of a gardener from his mother Daisy, who did the actual gardening and who introduced him to Gertrude Jekyll.

After Rugby School, he attended King’s College, Cambridge, where he read modern languages before entering the Army during World War II. After the war he received his bachelors in Decorative Horticulture (Designing and Planning) from Wye College, University of London, in 1949. He stayed on there as an assistant lecturer in Horticulture until 1954.

In 1954, Lloyd moved home to Great Dixter and set up a nursery, specialising in unusual plants. He regularly opened the house and gardens to the public.

In 1979 Lloyd received the Victoria Medal of Honour, the highest award of the Royal Horticultural Society, for his promotion of gardening and his extensive work on their Floral Committee. Lloyd was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Open University in 1996 and was appointed as an officer of the Order of the British Empire in 2000.

Philosophy

Lloyd was firmly rooted in the Arts and Crafts style of garden. In most ways he was, like his mother and Gertrude Jekyll, a practical gardener. He said “I couldn’t design a garden. I just go along and carp.” Despite his extensive work with flowers, he had an appreciation for the garden as a whole. He also understood human nature. One professional gardener likes to quote Lloyd from his book Foliage Plants where he says: “For it is an indisputable fact that appreciation of foliage comes at a later stage in our education, if it comes at all”.

Oeuvre

Lloyd rapidly felt the need to share his gardening discoveries and published The Mixed Border in 1957, which was followed by Clematis in 1965 and The Well-Tempered Garden in 1970. Lloyd had begun a book on the use of exotic plants in British gardens when he died, his gardening friends and colleagues completed the book, Exotic Planting for Adventurous Gardeners, in 2007.

Great Dixter his house in Northiam, East Sussex, England. Was built in 1910–12 by architect Edwin Lutyens, who combined an existing mid-15th century house on the site with a similar structure brought from Benenden, Kent, together with his own additions. It is a Grade I listed building. The garden, widely known for its continuous tradition of sophisticated plantsmanship, is Grade I listed in the National Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

House

The original Northiam house, known as Dixter, dating from the mid-15th century, was acquired by a businessman named Nathaniel Lloyd in 1909. He had a 16th-century house in a similar style moved from Kent and the two were combined with new work by Lutyens to create a much larger house, which was rechristened Great Dixter. It is a romantic recreation of a medieval manor house, complete with great hall, parlour, solar and yeoman’s hall.

Garden

Lloyd and Lutyens began the garden at Great Dixter, but it was Lloyd’s son Christopher Lloyd, a well known garden writer and television personality, who made it famous. The garden is in the arts and crafts style, and features topiary, a long border, an orchard and a wild flower meadow. The planting is profuse, yet structured, and has featured many bold experiments of form, colour and combination. The garden is currently managed by Fergus Garrett, who worked closely with Lloyd up until his death in 2006 as Head Gardener and introduced a number of innovations into the planting scheme.

In the grounds of Great Dixter are three 18th-century oast houses, under a common roof, and a 15th-century barn. These are Grade II* listed.

People : Edwin Lutyens, Architect of an Era


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Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens, OM, KCIE, PRA, FRIBA 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944), was a British architect who is known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses.

He has been referred to as “the greatest British architect” and is known best for having an instrumental role in designing and building a section of the metropolis of Delhi, known as New Delhi, which would later on serve as the seat of the Government of India. In recognition of his contribution, New Delhi is also known as “Lutyens’ Delhi”. In collaboration with Sir Herbert Baker, he was also the main architect of several monuments in New Delhi such as the India Gate; he also designed Viceroy’s House, which is now known as the Rashtrapati Bhavan.

Early life

He was born in London and grew up in Thursley, Surrey. He was named after a friend of his father, the painter and sculptor Edwin Henry Landseer. For many years he worked from offices at 29 Bloomsbury Square, London. Lutyens studied architecture at South Kensington School of Art, London from 1885 to 1887. After college he joined the Ernest George and Harold Peto architectural practice. It was here that he first met Sir Herbert Baker.

Private practice

He began his own practice in 1888, his first commission being a private house at Crooksbury, Farnham, Surrey. During this work, he met the garden designer and horticulturalist Gertrude Jekyll. In 1896 he began work on a house for Jekyll at Munstead Wood near Godalming, Surrey. It was the beginning of a professional partnership that would define the look of many Lutyens country houses.

The “Lutyens-Jekyll” garden overflowed with hardy shrubbery and herbaceous plantings within a firm classicising architecture of stairs and balustraded terraces. This combined style, of the formal with the informal, exemplified by brick paths, softened by billowing herbaceous borders, full of lilies, lupins, delphiniums and lavender, was in direct contrast to the very formal bedding schemes favoured by the previous generation in the 19th century. This new “natural” style was to define the “English garden” until modern times.

Lutyens’ fame grew largely through the popularity of the new lifestyle magazine Country Life created by Edward Hudson, which featured many of his house designs. Hudson was a great admirer of Lutyens’ style and commissioned Lutyens for a number of projects, including Lindisfarne Castle and the Country Life headquarters building in London, at 8 Tavistock Street. One of his assistants in the 1890s was Maxwell Ayrton.

Works

Initially, his designs were all Arts and Crafts style, a good example being Overstrand Hall Norfolk and Le Bois des Moutiers (1898) in France, but during the early 1900s his work became more classical in style. His commissions were of a varied nature from private houses to two churches for the new Hampstead Garden Suburb in London to Julius Drewe’s Castle Drogo near Drewsteignton in Devon and on to his contributions to India’s new imperial capital, New Delhi, (where he worked as chief architect with Herbert Baker and others). Here he added elements of local architectural styles to his classicism, and based his urbanisation scheme on Mughal water gardens. He also designed the Hyderabad House for the last Nizam of Hyderabad, as his Delhi palace.

He also designed a chalk building, Marsh Court, in Hampshire, England. Built between 1901 and 1905, it is the last of his Tudor designs and was based on a variant of ancient rammed earth building techniques. In 1903 the main school building of Amesbury Prep School in Hindhead, Surrey, was designed and built as a private residence. It is now a Grade 2* listed building of National Significance.

He also designed a Columbarium for the Hannen family in Wargrave.

Before the end of World War I, he was appointed one of three principal architects for the Imperial War Graves Commission (now Commonwealth War Graves Commission) and was involved with the creation of many monuments to commemorate the dead. Larger cemeteries have a Stone of Remembrance, designed by himself. The best known of these monuments are the Cenotaph in Whitehall, Westminster, and the Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Thiepval. The Cenotaph was originally commissioned by David Lloyd George as a temporary structure to be the centrepiece of the Allied Victory Parade in 1919. Lloyd George proposed a catafalque, a low empty platform, but it was Lutyens’ idea for the taller monument. The design took less than six hours to complete. Many local war memorials (such as the one at All Saints’, Northampton), Montréal, Toronto, Hamilton (Ontario), Victoria (British Columbia), and Vancouver are Lutyens designs, based on the Cenotaph. So is the war memorial in Hyde Park, Sydney. He also designed the War Memorial Gardens in Dublin, which were restored in the 1990s. Other works include the Tower Hill memorial, and (similar to his later India Gate design) a memorial in Victoria Park in Leicester.

Lutyens also refurbished Lindisfarne Castle for its wealthy owner.

He was knighted in 1918 and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy in 1921. In 1924, he was appointed a member of the newly created Royal Fine Art Commission, a position he held until his death.

While work continued in New Delhi, Lutyens continued to receive other commissions including several commercial buildings in London and the British Embassy in Washington, DC.

In 1924 he completed the supervision of the construction of what is perhaps his most popular design: Queen Mary’s Dolls’ House. This four-storey Palladian villa was built in 1/12 scale and is now a permanent exhibit in the public area of Windsor Castle. It was not conceived or built as a plaything for children; its goal was to exhibit the finest British craftsmanship of the period.

Lutyens was commissioned in 1929 to design a new Roman Catholic cathedral in Liverpool. He planned a vast building of brick and granite, topped with towers and a 510-foot dome, with commissioned sculpture work by Charles Sargeant Jagger and W. C. H. King. Work on this magnificent building started in 1933, but was halted during the Second World War. After the war, the project ended due to a shortage of funding, with only the crypt completed. A model of Lutyens’ unrealised building was given to and restored by the Walker Art Gallery in 1975 and is now on display in the Museum of Liverpool. The architect of the present Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral, which was built over land adjacent to the crypt and consecrated in 1967, was Sir Frederick Gibberd.

In 1945, a year after his death, A Plan for the City & County of Kingston upon Hull was published. Lutyens worked on the plan with Sir Patrick Abercrombie and they are credited as its co-authors. Abercrombie’s introduction in the plan makes special reference to Lutyens’ contribution. The plan was, however, rejected by the City Council of Hull.

He received the AIA Gold Medal in 1925.

Furniture

Less well known is that Lutyens has also designed furniture. Some of his designs are still on the market today.

New Delhi

Largely designed by Lutyens over twenty or so years (1912 to 1930), New Delhi, situated within the metropolis of Delhi, popularly known as ‘Lutyens’ Delhi’, was chosen to replace Calcutta as the seat of the British Indian government in 1912; the project was completed in 1929 and officially inaugurated in 1931. In undertaking this project, Lutyens invented his own new order of classical architecture, which has become known as the Delhi Order and was used by him for several designs in England, such as Campion Hall, Oxford. Unlike the more traditional British architects who came before him, he was both inspired by and incorporated various features from the local and traditional Indian architecture—something most clearly seen in the great drum-mounted Buddhist dome of Viceroy’s House, now Rashtrapati Bhavan. This palatial building, containing 340 rooms, is built on an area of some 330 acres (1.3 km2) and incorporates a private garden also designed by Lutyens. The building was designed as the official residence of the Viceroy of India and is now the official residence of the President of India.

The Delhi Order columns at the front entrance of the palace have bells carved into them, which, it has been suggested, Lutyens had designed with the idea that as the bells were silent the British rule would never come to an end. At one time, more than 2,000 people were required to care for the building and serve the Viceroy’s household.

The new city contains both the Parliament buildings and government offices (many designed by Herbert Baker) and was built distinctively of the local red sandstone using the traditional Mughal style.

When composing the plans for New Delhi, Lutyens planned for the new city to lie southwest of the walled city of Shahjahanbad. His plans for the city also laid out the street plan for New Delhi consisting of wide tree-lined avenues.

Built in the spirit of British colonial rule, the place where the new imperial city and the older native settlement met was intended to be a market; it was there that Lutyens imagined the Indian traders would participate in “the grand shopping centre for the residents of Shahjahanabad and New Delhi”, thus giving rise to the D-shaped market seen today.

Many of the garden-ringed villas in the Lutyens’ Bungalow Zone (LBZ)—also known as Lutyens’ Delhi—that were part of Lutyens’ original scheme for New Delhi are under threat due to the constant pressure for development in Delhi. The LBZ was placed on the 2002 World Monuments Fund Watch List of 100 Most Endangered Sites. It should be noted that none of the bungalows in the LBZ were designed by Lutyens—he only designed the four bungalows in the Presidential Estate surrounding Rashtrapati Bhavan at Willingdon Crescent now known as Mother Teresa Crescent. Other buildings in Delhi that Lutyens designed include Baroda House, Bikaner House, Hyderabad House, and Patiala House.

Lutyens was made a Knight Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire (KCIE) on 1 January 1930.

A bust of Lutyens in the former Viceroy’s House is the only statue of a Westerner left in its original position in New Delhi. Lutyens’ work in New Delhi is the focus of Robert Grant Irving’s book Indian Summer. In spite of his monumental work in India, Lutyens had views on the peoples of the Indian sub-continent that, although commonly held by those of his class and times, would now be considered racist.

Ireland

Works in Ireland include the Irish National War Memorial Gardens in Islandbridge in Dublin, which consists of a bridge over the railway and a bridge over the River Liffey (unbuilt) and two tiered sunken gardens; Heywood Gardens, County Laois (open to the public), consisting of a hedge garden, lawns, tiered sunken garden and a belvedere; extensive changes and extensions to Lambay Castle, Lambay Island, near Dublin, consisting of a circular battlement enclosing the restored and extended castle and farm building complex, upgraded cottages and stores near the harbour, a real tennis court, a large guest house (The White House), a boathouse and a chapel; alterations and extensions to Howth Castle, County Dublin; the unbuilt Hugh Lane gallery straddling the River Liffey on the site of the Ha’penny Bridge and the unbuilt Hugh Lane Gallery on the west side of St Stephen’s Green; and Costelloe Lodge at Casla (also known as Costelloe), County Galway (that was used for refuge by J. Bruce Ismay, the Chairman of the White Star Line, following the sinking of the R.M.S. Titanic).

Lutyens is thought to have designed Tranarossan House, located just north of Downings on the Rosguill Peninsula on the north coast of County Donegal.

Spain

In Madrid Lutyens’ work can be seen in the interiors of the Liria Palace, a neoclassical building which was severely damaged during the Spanish Civil War. The palace was originally built in the eighteenth century for James FitzJames, 1st Duke of Berwick, and still belongs to his descendants. Lutyens’ reconstruction was commissioned by Jacobo Fitz-James Stuart, 17th Duke of Alba. The Duke had met Lutyens while he was the Spanish ambassador to Great Britain.

Marriage and later life

Two years after she proposed to him and in the face of parental disapproval, Lady Emily Bulwer-Lytton (1874–1964), third daughter of The 1st Earl of Lytton, a former Viceroy of India, and Edith (née) Villiers, married Lutyens on 4 August 1897 at Knebworth, Hertfordshire. They had five children, but the union was largely unsatisfactory, practically from the start. The Lutyens’ marriage quickly deteriorated, with Lady Emily becoming interested in theosophy, Eastern religions and a fascination – emotional and philosophical – with Jiddu Krishnamurti.

The couple’s daughter Elisabeth Lutyens became a well-known composer; another daughter, Mary Lutyens, became a writer known for her books about Krishnamurti. A grandson was Nicholas Ridley, cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher.

Children

  • Barbara Lutyens (1898–1981) married 10 May 1920 (as his 2nd wife) Capt. The Rt. Hon. (David) Euan Wallace, MC, MP, PC (1892–1941). (Euan Wallace was first married 1913–1919 to Lady Idina Sackville, and had two sons by her.) Barbara’s third and only surviving son (Wallace and the two older sons died in the Second World War) was Billy Wallace (b. 1927), a former escort of Princess Margaret. Barbara Lutyens married secondly in 1945 Lieutenant Commander Herbert Agar, USNR.
  • Robert Lutyens (1901–1971/1972), an architect with his father; he was also an interior designer, journalist and writer. He married twice and had a son by his first marriage and a daughter Candia, a furniture maker, by his second marriage.
  • Ursula (1904–1967) married 1924 The 3rd Viscount Ridley, by whom issue included The 4th Viscount Ridley (1925–2012), his brother Nicholas Ridley, Baron Ridley of Liddesdale (1929–1993), the father of Jane Ridley, who has written a biography of Lutyens, and also a daughter.
  • Agnes Elisabeth Lutyens (1906–1983); twice married, and had issue, one son and twin daughters by her first husband. By her second husband Edward Clark, she had a son born in 1941 before marriage in 1943.
  • Edith Mary Lutyens (1908–1999); married firstly a stockbroker Anthony Rupert Herbert Franklin Sewell. They had issue, one daughter. She married secondly 1945 the art historian and royal furrier J. G. Links (d. 1997).

During the later years of his life, Lutyens suffered with several bouts of pneumonia. In the early 1940s he was diagnosed with cancer. He died on 1 January 1944 and was cremated at Golders Green Crematorium where he had designed the Philipson Mausoleum in 1914–1916. His memorial, designed by his friend and fellow architect William Curtis Green, is in the crypt of St. Paul’s Cathedral in the City of London.

Major buildings and projects

  • 1901: Deanery Garden, England
  • 1925: British Medical Association, London, England
  • 1925: Old City Hall Cenotaph, Toronto, Canada
  • 1928: Hyderabad House, New Delhi, India
  • 1929: Rashtrapathi Bhavan, New Delhi, India
  • 1930: Castle Drogo, Drewsteignton, Devon, England
  • 1935: The Midland Bank, Manchester, England

1936: Baroda House, New Delhi, India

People : Herbert Baker, Global Architect Extraordinaire, but Always In Lutyens Shadow ?


220px-Dead_Memorial,_Kimberley Herbert_Baker00 herbert-baker-buildings-and-structures-u3

Herbert Baker (9 June 1862 – 4 February 1946) was an English architect remembered as the dominant force in South African architecture for two decades. He was born and died at Owletts in Cobham, Kent.

Among the many churches, schools and houses he designed in South Africa are the Union Buildings in Pretoria, St. John’s College, Johannesburg, the Wynberg Boys’ High School, Groote Schuur in Cape Town, and the Champagne Homestead and Rhodes Cottage on Boschendal, between Franschhoek and Stellenbosch. With Edwin Lutyens he was instrumental in designing New Delhi, which in 1931 became the capital of the British Raj. His tomb is in Westminster Abbey.

Life and career

The fourth son of nine children of Thomas Henry Baker and Frances Georgina Davis, Herbert was from the outset exposed to a tradition of good craftsmanship, preserved through isolation in the neighbourhood of his home. As a boy, walking and exploring the historical ruins found in the area were his favourite pastimes. Here he observed and learned to appreciate the time-honoured materials of brick and plaster, and the various aspects of timber use, especially in roof construction—tie-beam and arch-braced collar-beam trusses. He was profoundly influenced by the stone construction used in Norman cathedrals and Anglo-Saxon churches, as well as the ornamentation and symbolism of the Renaissance buildings in Kent. This early influence is apparent in the churches, schools and houses he later designed in South Africa.

He was educated at Tonbridge School. In 1879 he was articled to his cousin Arthur Baker, embarking on the accepted pattern of architectural education comprising three years of apprenticeship and the attending of classes at the Architectural Association School and the Royal Academy Schools. Study tours of Europe were regarded as an essential part of the course. In 1891 Baker passed his examination for Associateship of the Royal Institute of British Architects and was awarded the Ashpitel Prize for being top of his class.

He worked initially for Ernest George and Harold Peto in London from 1882–87, then opened his own office in Gravesend, Kent in 1890. From 1902 – 1913 he developed his career in South Africa. In 1913 he returned to England and began practice in London in partnership with Alexander Scott. Near the end of this most productive phase of his career, Baker received a knighthood, was elected to the Royal Academy, had conferred on him the Gold Medal of the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1927, and received honorary degrees from Witwatersrand and Oxford Universities. Baker’s autobiography ‘Architecture & Personalities’ was published in 1944.

South Africa

He embarked for South Africa in 1892 ostensibly to visit his brother, and was commissioned in 1893 by Cecil Rhodes to remodel Groote Schuur, Rhodes’ house on the slopes of Table Mountain in Cape Town, and the residence of South African prime ministers. Rhodes sponsored Baker’s further education in Greece, Italy and Egypt, after which he returned to South Africa and stayed the next 20 years.

He had the patronage of Lord Milner, and was invited to the Transvaal to design and build residences for the British colonials. Much taken with the country, and notably with the Cape Dutch homes in the Cape Province, Baker resolved to remain in South Africa and to establish an architectural practice, which went under the name of Herbert Baker, Kendall & Morris. Baker undertook work in widespread parts of the country including Durban, Grahamstown, King William’s Town, Bloemfontein, George and Oudtshoorn, and even further afield in Salisbury, Rhodesia where he designed the Anglican Cathedral and a house for Julius Weil, the general merchant.

In 1902 Baker left his practice at the Cape in the hands of his partner and went to live in Johannesburg, where he built Stonehouse. On a visit to Britain in 1904 he married his cousin, Florence Edmeades, daughter of Gen. Henry Edmund Edmeades, bringing her back to Johannesburg, where two sons, the first of four children, were born. Baker quickly became noted for his work, and was commissioned by a number of the “Randlords” (the wealthy mining magnates of Johannesburg) to design houses, particularly in the suburbs of Parktown and Westcliff. He also designed commercial premises and public buildings.

Some Herbert Baker buildings in South Africa

  • St Boniface Church Germiston
  • Bishop Bavin School St. George’s
  • Bishop’s Lea, George
  • Cecil John Rhodes Cottage, Boschendal
  • Champagne Homestead, Boschendal
  • Dale College Boys’ High School, King William’s Town
  • Glenshiel, Johannesburg
  • Grey College, Bloemfontein
  • Honoured Dead Memorial in Kimberley, Northern Cape
  • McClean telescope building, Royal Observatory, Cape Town
  • Michaelhouse, Balgowan, KwaZulu-Natal
  • The Outspan, Parktown, Johannesburg
  • Pallinghurst, Parktown, Johannesburg
  • Northwards, Johannesburg
  • Pilrig House, 1 Rockridge Road, Parktown
  • Pretoria Station
  • Rhodes Memorial, Cape Town. Baker used a design similar to the Greek Temple at Segesta.
  • Rhodes University, Grahamstown
  • Roedean School, Johannesburg
  • Sandown House, Rondebosch, Cape Town. Built for MP John Molteno.
  • School House, Bishops Diocesan College, Rondebosch, Cape Town
  • South African Institute for Medical Research, Johannesburg
  • Andrew’s College, Grahamstown chapel
  • St Andrew’s School for Girls, Johannesburg
  • St Anne’s College Chapel in Pietermaritzburg
  • George’s Cathedral, Cape Town
  • John’s College, Johannesburg
  • St Margaret’s (1905) Rockridge Road, Parktown
  • St Mary’s Cathedral, Johannesburg
  • St Michael and All Angels, Observatory, Cape Town
  • St Michael and All Angels Anglican Church, Boksburg
  • Stone House, Rockridge Road, Parktown. Baker’s own house and the first he built in Johannesburg
  • Union Buildings, Pretoria
  • Villa Arcadia, Johannesburg
  • Workers Village at Lanquedoc, Boschendal
  • Welgelegen Manor, Johannesburg
  • Wynberg Boys’ High School, Cape Town

Union Buildings, South Africa

In 1909 Herbert Baker was commissioned to design the Government Building of the Union of South Africa (which was formed on 31 May 1910) in Pretoria. Pretoria was to become the administrative centre for the new government. In November 1910 the cornerstone of the Union Building was laid.

Lord Selborne and H. C. Hull, a member of the first Union Cabinet, chose Meintjieskop as the site for Baker’s design. The site was that of a disused quarry and the existing excavations were used to create the amphitheatre, which was set about with ornamental pools, fountains, sculptures, balustrades and trees.

The design consisted of two identical wings, joined by a semicircular colonnade forming the backdrop of the amphitheatre. The colonnade was terminated on either side by a tower. Each wing had a basement and three floors above ground. The interiors were created in the Cape Dutch Style with carved teak fanlights, heavy doors, dark ceiling beams contrasting with white plaster walls and heavy wood furniture. Baker used indigenous materials as far as possible. The granite was quarried on site while Buiskop sandstone was used for the courtyards. Stinkwood and Rhodesian teak were used for timber and wood panelling. The roof tiles and quarry tiles for the floors were made in Vereeniging. The Union Buildings were completed in 1913, after which Herbert Baker left for New Delhi from where he returned home to England.

Rhodes Cottage, Boschendal South Africa

In 1897, Cecil John Rhodes started large scale fruit farming in the Drakenstein Valley and commissioned Sir Herbert Baker to design his country retreat on the farm Nieuwedorp at Boschendal. In contrast to the spectacular mountain views, the brief was to design a simple country cottage combining Cape cottage features and incorporating indigenous yellowwood and stinkwood in the interior. It was intended to accommodate only Rhodes, his secretary and a butler.

The first name recorded in the guestbook was that of Sir Alfred Milner, erstwhile Governor of the Cape Colony and British High Commissioner at the outbreak of the South African War (Boer War). The cottage was later to host the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire, the Earl of Athlone, former Governor-General of South Africa and his wife Princess Alice, granddaughter of Queen Victoria.

In the 1990s the cottage was revamped and refitted while preserving its character. It stands on Estate 20, one of the Founders’ Estates which form Phase 1 of the residential development of Boschendal.

India

In 1912 Baker went to India to work with Lutyens, and went on to design the Secretariat Building, New Delhi and Parliament House in New Delhi and the bungalows of Members of Parliament. Baker designed the two Secretariat buildings flanking the great axis leading to what was then the Viceroy of India’s Palace, now known as Rashtrapati Bhavan (President’s House).

United Kingdom

Works from 1913 include:

  • War Memorial Building, Harrow on the Hill (English Heritage TQ1534987385)
  • South Africa House, the South African High Commission building in Trafalgar Square, London
  • India House, Aldwych (1925–1930), the Indian High Commission, opened by King George V on 8 July 1930.
  • The Port Lympne Mansion (now a zoo) in Kent in south-east England
  • One of the grandstands at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London; Baker presented the Marylebone Cricket Club with Old Father Time, a weather vane in the shape of Father Time, which adorned his stand until it was replaced in 1996. The weather vane, now a famous symbol of the home of cricket, was moved to another stand at the ground. He also designed the Grace Gates at Lord’s.
  • The North Range of Downing College The design was based on that of the original architect of the college, Williams Wilkins, but ‘changed the original design just enough to annoy’
  • Rebuilding of the Bank of England, London, demolishing most of Sir John Soane’s original building. Described by Nikolaus Pevsner in ‘Buildings of England’ as “the greatest architectural crime, in the City of London, of the twentieth century”.
  • The War Cloister in Winchester College.
  • Rhodes House in Oxford, headquarters of the Rhodes Scholarships.
  • Goodenough College, London.
  • Busby’s House, Westminster School, situated at 23 Great College Street. The building was erected in 1936.

Belgium

Following the First World War, Baker was approached to assist in the design of suitable monuments to the efforts of British Commonwealth soldiers. Out of this came the design for Tyne Cot Cemetery, the largest British war cemetery in the world sited in Passchendaele near Ypres in Belgium, unveiled in July 1927. Baker had earlier designed the war memorial at Winchester College, influences for which he carried over to his work on Tyne Cot.

Kenya

Sir Edward Grigg, Governor of Kenya from 1925 to 1931, invited Baker to visit Kenya in 1925.

Baker wrote: “The Governor and Director of Education were much concerned to provide a healthy education for the European youth under the conditions of the climate. So with their encouragement I designed a school at Nairobi with a crypt as a playground – like the undercroft of Wren’s library at Trinity College, Cambridge, – where the boys could stay at mid-day instead of going home under the vertical rays of the sun. At the larger ‘public school’ at Kabete all the detached classrooms and houses were designed and built with connecting colonnades, in which respect I followed the excellent example set by [United States] President Jefferson in his beautiful University of Virginia.” The use of colonnades accords with advice given to Baker by T. E. Lawrence, who regarded the tropical sun as “an enemy” and told him “All pavements should be covered over with light vaulting.” The foundation stone was laid by Sir Edward Grigg on 24 September 1929, and the Prince of Wales School was opened in 1931 – (the original idea for the name of the school was Kabete Boys Secondary School, but the first headmaster, Captain Bertram W. L. Nicholson,[9] thought this to be too clumsy and therefore the name of The Prince of Wales School was suggested and eventually adopted).

Other impressive buildings in Nairobi designed by Baker and completed with his assistant, Jan Hoogterp, include the Law Courts and Government House (now State House), described as a Palladian mansion. However, the building with the closest resemblance to the Prince of Wales School may well be Baker’s Government House (now State House) near the lighthouse at Ras Serani, Mombasa. Not only has it “large columned loggias”, but it also has an archway, through which can be glimpsed the Indian Ocean, leading Baker to wax poetic: “One can live out between these columns both by day and night in the warm and soft sea air.”

  • Prince of Wales School, Nairobi

France

Post the First World War, Baker’s worked on cemeteries in France including:

  • Adanac Military Cemetery
  • Australian Imperial Force burial ground
  • Delville Wood Cemetery and Memorial
  • Courcelette Memorial, Canadian war memorial
  • Dantzig Alley British Cemetery
  • Flatiron Copse Cemetery
  • Le Trou Aid Post Cemetery
  • London Cemetery and Extension
  • Loos Memorial, Loos-en-Gohelle
  • Ovillers Military Cemetery
  • Quarry Cemetery

Australia

Fairbridge Chapel was built at Pinjarra, Western Australia in 1924 according to Herbert Baker’s design, which he provided free of charge. The farm was started by Kingsley Fairbridge as part of a scheme to help destitute English children improve their lot by emigration to Australia and Canada.

  • Fairbridge Church, Pinjarra Western Australia

People : Edward Hudson , The Simon Cowell of the day making stars out of Edwin Lutyens and Gertrude Jekyll.


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Edward Burgess Hudson (1854–1936) was the founder of Country Life magazine in 1897.

Country Life was an early lifestyle magazine. Edward Hudson was the owner of Lindisfarne Castle (1901-21) and two other Lutyens-designed houses, Deanery Gardens in Sonning (c1899-1907), designed and built 1899–1901, and Plumpton Place, Sussex (1928-36 but not occupied), both featured in the magazine in 1903 and 1933 respectively. Hudson and Lutyens were great friends.

Gertrude Jekyll used to write an article periodically for Hudson’s Country Life and also.