Bloomsbury : The Clapham Sect.

The Clapham Sect or Clapham Saints were a group of Church of England social reformers based in Clapham, London at the beginning of the 19th century (active c. 1790–1830). They are described by the historian Stephen Tomkins as “a network of friends and families in England, with William Wilberforce as its centre of gravity, who were powerfully bound together by their shared moral and spiritual values, by their religious mission and social activism, by their love for each other, and by marriage”.^‪

Campaigns and successes

Its members were chiefly prominent and wealthy evangelical Anglicans who shared common political views concerning the liberation of slaves, the abolition of the slave trade and the reform of the penal system.

The group’s name originates from those attending Holy Trinity Church on Clapham Common, an area south-west of London then surrounded by fashionable villas. Henry Venn the founder was curate at Holy Trinity (1754) and his son John became rector (1792-1813). Wilberforce and Thornton, two of the group’s most influential leaders, resided nearby and many of the meetings were held in their houses. They were supported by Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, who sympathised with many of their aims. The term “Clapham Sect” was a later invention by James Stephen in an article of 1844 which celebrated and romanticised the work of these reformers. In their own time the group used no particular name, but they were lampooned by outsiders as “the saints”.

The group published a journal, the Christian Observer, edited by Zachary Macaulay and were also credited with the foundation of several missionary and tract societies, including the British and Foreign Bible Society and the Church Missionary Society.

They founded Freetown in Sierra Leone, the first major British colony in Africa, whose purpose in Thomas Clarkson’s words was “the abolition of the slave trade, the civilisation of Africa, and the introduction of the gospel there”.^‪

After many decades of work both in British society and in Parliament, the group saw their efforts rewarded with the final passage of the Slave Trade Act in 1807, banning the trade throughout the British Empire and, after many further years of campaigning, the total emancipation of British slaves with the passing of the Slavery Abolition Act in 1833. They also campaigned vigorously for Britain to use its influence to eradicate slavery throughout the world.

Other societies that they founded or were involved with included the Anti-Slavery Society, the Abolition Society, the Proclamation Society, the Sunday School Society, the Bettering Society, and the Small Debt Society.

The Clapham Sect have been credited with playing a significant part in the development of Victorian morality, through their writings, their societies, their influence in Parliament and their example in philanthropy and moral campaigns, especially against slavery. In the words of Tomkins, “The ethos of Clapham became the spirit of the age.”^‪

Members

Members of the Clapham Sect included:

• Thomas Fowell Buxton (1786–1845), MP and brewer
• William Dealtry (1775–1847), Rector of Clapham, mathematician
• Edward James Eliot (1758–97), parliamentarian
• Thomas Gisbourne (1758–1846), cleric and author
• Charles Grant (1746–1823), administrator, chairman of the directors of the British East India Company, father of the first Lord Glenelg
• Katherine Hankey (1834–1911), evangelist
• Zachary Macaulay (1768–1838), estate manager, colonial governor, father of Thomas Babington Macaulay
• Hannah More (1745–1833), writer and philanthropist
• Granville Sharp (1735–1813), scholar and administrator
• Charles Simeon (1759–1836), Anglican cleric, promoter of missions
• James Stephen (1758–1832), Master of Chancery, great-grandfather of Virginia Woolf.
• Lord Teignmouth (1751–1834), Governor-General of India
• Henry Thornton (1760–1815), economist, banker, philanthropist, MP for Southwark, great-grandfather of writer M. Forster
• Henry Venn (1725–97), founder of the group, father of John Venn (1759–1813) and great-grandfather of John Venn (originator of the Venn diagram)
• John Venn (1759-1813), Rector of Holy Trinity Church, Clapham
• William Wilberforce (1759–1833), MP successively for Kingston upon Hull, Yorkshire and Bramber, leading abolitionist
• William Smith (1756-1835), MP.

Bloomsbury : The Omega Workshops.

(c) University of Leeds Art Collection and Gallery; Supplied by The Public Catalogue Foundation

The Omega Workshops Ltd. was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in July 1913.‬ It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos.^‪ The Workshops were also closely associated with the Hogarth Press and the artist and critic Roger Fry, who was the principal figure behind the project, believed that artists could design, produce and sell their own works, and that writers could also be their own printers and publishers.^‪ The Directors of the firm were Fry, Duncan Grant and Vanessa Bell.^‪

Beginnings

Fry aimed to remove what he considered to be the false divisions between the decorative and fine arts, and to give his artist friends an additional income opportunity in designing furniture, textiles and other household accessories. Fry was keen to encourage a Post-Impressionist influence in designs produced for Omega. However, Cubist and Fauvist influences are also apparent, particularly in many of the textile designs.

To ensure items were bought only for the quality of the work, and not the reputation of the artist, Fry insisted works be shown anonymously, marked only with the letter omega. The products were in general expensive, and aimed at an exclusive market.

Designers and manufacturers

In addition to offering a wide range of individual products, such as painted furniture, painted murals, mosaics, stained glass, and textiles, Omega Workshops offered interior design themes for various living spaces. A commission was taken to decorate a room for the 1913 Ideal Home Exhibition, and an illustrated catalogue, including text written by Fry, was published in autumn 1914.

Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant produced designs for Omega, and Wyndham Lewis was initially part of the operation. Lewis, however, split off at an early stage, taking with him several other participants to start the rival decorative workshop Rebel Art Centre after accusing Fry of misappropriating a commission to decorate a room at the Ideal Home Exhibition in the autumn of 1913. In October 1913, Wyndham Lewis, Frederick Etchells, Edward Wadsworth and Cuthbert Hamilton announced their resignation from Omega in a letter, known as the ‘Round Robin’, to its shareholders and patrons. This letter contained accusations particularly against Fry, criticising the workshop’s products and ideology. This split led to the formation not only of the Rebel Art Centre, but also of the Vorticist movement.

Most manufacturing for Omega was outsourced to professional craftsmen, such as J. Kallenborn & Sons of Stanhope Street, London, for marquetry furniture and Dryad Limited of Leicester for tall cane-seat chairs.^‪‬ A company in France was used to manufacture early printed linens.

In the autumn of 1913 Fry, who also created the designs for Omega’s tall cane-seat chairs, started designing and making pottery. After he considered book design and publishing in July 1915, the superintendent of printing at Central School of Arts and Crafts collaborated with Omega in designing four books that were later outsourced for printing. The management of the Omega Workshop was passed to Winifred Gill from 1914 as the men started to become involved in the First World War. ^‪

One artist exhibitions included those of Edward McKnight Kauffer, Alvaro Guevara, Mikhail Larionov and Vanessa Bell’s first solo exhibition in 1916.^‪

The range of products continued to increase throughout Omega Workshops’ six-year existence, and in April 1915 Vanessa Bell began using Omega fabrics in dress design, after which dressmaking became a successful part of the business.

Edward Wolfe worked at the Omega Workshops, hand-painting candle-shades and trays, and decorating furniture. Wolfe, who died in 1982, was one of the last of the Bloomsbury painters.

In January 1918, Omega were commissioned to design sets and costumes in the Israel Zangwill play Too Much Money.

Closure and legacy

Omega closed in 1919, after a clearance sale, and was officially liquidated on 24 July 1920. A series of poor financial decisions and internal conflicts all contributed to its decline. At the time of its closure, Fry was the only remaining original member working regularly at the workshop. Despite this, Omega became influential in interior design in the 1920s.

A revival of interest in Omega designs in the 1980s led to a reassessment of the place of the Bloomsbury Group in visual arts.

Bloomsbury : Clive Bell.

by Vanessa Bell (nÈe Stephen), enlarged snapshot print, 1922

Arthur Clive Heward Bell (16 September 1881 – 18 September 1964) was an English art critic, associated with formalism and the Bloomsbury Group. Bell died, aged 83, in London.

Biography

Origins

Bell was born in East Shefford, Berkshire, in 1881, the third of four children of William Heward Bell (1849–1927) and Hannah Taylor Cory (1850–1942). He had an elder brother (Cory), an elder sister (Lorna, Mrs Acton), and a younger sister (Dorothy, Mrs Hony). His father was a civil engineer who built his fortune in the family coal mines in Wiltshire in England and Merthyr Tydfil in Wales, and the family was well off. They lived at Cleve House in Seend, near Devizes, Wiltshire, which was adorned with Squire Bell’s many hunting trophies.

Marriage and other relationships

He was educated at Marlborough and Trinity College, Cambridge,^‪ where he studied history. In 1902 he received an Earl of Derby scholarship to study in Paris, where his interest in art originated. Upon his return to England, he moved to London, where he met and married artist Vanessa Stephen, sister of Virginia Woolf, in 1907.^‪

By World War I their marriage was over. Vanessa had begun a lifelong relationship with Duncan Grant and Clive had a number of liaisons with other women such as Mary Hutchinson. However, Clive and Vanessa never officially separated or divorced. Not only did they keep visiting each other regularly, they also sometimes spent holidays together and paid “family” visits to Clive’s parents. Clive lived in London but often spent long stretches of time at the idyllic farmhouse of Charleston, where Vanessa lived with Duncan and her three children by Clive and Duncan. He fully supported her wish to have a child by Duncan and allowed this daughter, Angelica, to bear his surname. Clive and Vanessa had two sons (Julian and Quentin), who both became writers. Julian fought and died aged at age 29 in the Spanish Civil War in 1937.

Vanessa’s daughter by Duncan, Angelica Garnett (née Bell), was raised as Clive’s daughter until she married. She was informed, by her mother Vanessa, just prior to her marriage and shortly after her brother Julian’s death that in fact Duncan Grant was her biological father. This deception forms the central message of her memoir, Deceived with Kindness (1984).

According to historian Stanley Rosenbaum, “Bell may, indeed, be the least liked member of Bloomsbury. Bell has been found wanting by biographers and critics of the Group – as a husband, a father, and especially a brother-in-law. It is undeniable that he was a wealthy snob, hedonist, and womaniser, a racist and an anti-Semite (but not a homophobe), who changed from a liberal socialist and pacifist into a reactionary appeaser. Bell’s reputation has led to his being underestimated in the history of Bloomsbury.”^‪‬

Political views

Bell was at one point an adherent of absolute pacifism, and during the First World War was a conscientious objector, allowed to perform Work of National Importance by assisting on the farm of Philip Morrell. MP, at Garsington Manor. In his 1938 pamphlet War Mongers, he opposed any attempt by Britain to use military force, arguing “the worst tyranny is better than the best war”.^‪‬ However, by 1940 Bell was a supporter of the British war effort, calling for a “ceaseless war against Hitler”.^‪

Works.

• Art (1914)
• Pot-boilers (1918)
• Since Cézanne (1922)
• Civilization (1928)
• Proust (1929)
• An Account of French Painting (1931)
• Old Friends (1956)

Bloomsbury : John Maynard Keynes.

by Unknown photographer, bromide print, 1933

John Maynard Keynes, 1st Baron Keynes,^‪ CB, FBA (5 June 1883 – 21 April 1946), was a British economist whose ideas fundamentally affected the theory and practice of modern macroeconomics and the economic policies of governments. He built on and greatly refined earlier work on the causes of business cycles, and is widely considered to be one of the most influential economists of the 20th century and the founder of modern macroeconomics.‬ His ideas are the basis for the school of thought known as Keynesian economics and its various offshoots.

In the 1930s, Keynes spearheaded a revolution in economic thinking, challenging the ideas of neoclassical economics that held that free markets would, in the short to medium term, automatically provide full employment, as long as workers were flexible in their wage demands. He instead argued that aggregate demand determined the overall level of economic activity and that inadequate aggregate demand could lead to prolonged periods of high unemployment. According to Keynesian economics, state intervention was necessary to moderate “boom and bust” cycles of economic activity.^‪ Keynes advocated the use of fiscal and monetary policies to mitigate the adverse effects of economic recessions and depressions. Following the outbreak of World War II, Keynes’ ideas concerning economic policy were adopted by leading Western economies. In 1942, Keynes was awarded a hereditary peerage as Baron Keynes of Tilton in the County of Sussex.^‪‬ Keynes died in 1946; but, during the 1950s and 1960s, the success of Keynesian economics resulted in almost all capitalist governments adopting its policy recommendations.

Keynes’s influence waned in the 1970s, partly as a result of problems with inflation that began to afflict the Anglo-American economies from the start of the decade and partly because of critiques from Milton Friedman and other economists who were pessimistic about the ability of governments to regulate the business cycle with fiscal policy.^‪‬ However, the advent of the global financial crisis of 2007–08 caused a resurgence in Keynesian thought. Keynesian economics provided the theoretical underpinning for economic policies undertaken in response to the crisis by President Barack Obama of the United States, Prime Minister Gordon Brown of the United Kingdom, and other heads of governments.^‪

In 1999, Time magazine included Keynes in their list of the 100 most important and influential people of the 20th century, commenting that: “His radical idea that governments should spend money they don’t have may have saved capitalism.”^‪ He has been described by The Economist as “Britain’s most famous 20th-century economist.” In addition to being an economist, Keynes was also a civil servant, a director of the Bank of England, a part of the Bloomsbury Group of intellectuals,^‪‬ a patron of the arts and an art collector, a director of the British Eugenics Society, an advisor to several charitable trusts, a successful private investor, a writer, a philosopher, and a farmer.

Keynes’s early romantic and sexual relationships were exclusively with men.^‪‬ Keynes had been in relationships while at Eton and Cambridge; significant among these early partners were Dilly Knox and Daniel Macmillan.^‪ Keynes was open about his affairs, and between 1901 to 1915, kept separate diaries in which he tabulated his many sexual encounters.^‪‬ Keynes’s relationship and later close friendship with Macmillan was to be fortuitous, as Macmillan’s company first published his tract, Economic Consequences of the Peace.^‪‬

Attitudes in the Bloomsbury Group, in which Keynes was avidly involved, were relaxed about homosexuality. Keynes, together with writer Lytton Strachey, had reshaped the Victorian attitudes of the Cambridge Apostles: “since [their] time, homosexual relations among the members were for a time common”, wrote Bertrand Russell.^‪The artist Duncan Grant, whom he met in 1908, was one of Keynes’s great loves. Keynes was also involved with Lytton Strachey,^‪‬ though they were for the most part love rivals, and not lovers. Keynes had won the affections of Arthur Hobhouse,^‪‬ as well as Grant, both times falling out with a jealous Strachey for it.^‪ Strachey had previously found himself put off by Keynes, not least because of his manner of “treat[ing] his love affairs statistically”.^‪

Political opponents have used Keynes’ sexuality to attack his academic work.^‪ One line of attack held that he was uninterested in the long term ramifications of his theories because he had no children.^‪

Keynes’ friends in the Bloomsbury Group were initially surprised when, in his later years, he began dating and pursuing affairs with women,^‪‬ demonstrating himself to be bisexual.^‪‬ Ray Costelloe (who would later marry Oliver Strachey) was an early heterosexual interest of Keynes.^‪ In 1906, Keynes had written of this infatuation that, “I seem to have fallen in love with Ray a little bit, but as she isn’t male I haven’t [been] able to think of any suitable steps to take.”^‪

Throughout his life, Keynes worked energetically for the benefit both of the public and his friends; even when his health was poor, he laboured to sort out the finances of his old college,^‪ and at Bretton Woods he worked to institute an international monetary system that would be beneficial for the world economy. Keynes suffered a series of heart attacks, which ultimately proved fatal, beginning during negotiations for an Anglo-American loan in Savannah, Georgia, where he was trying to secure favourable terms for the United Kingdom from the United States, a process he described as “absolute hell”.^‪‬ A few weeks after returning from the United States, Keynes died of a heart attack at Tilton, his farmhouse home near Firle, East Sussex, England, on 21 April 1946 at the age of 62.^‪

Both of Keynes’s parents outlived him: his father John Neville Keynes (1852–1949) by three years, and his mother Florence Ada Keynes (1861–1958) by twelve. Keynes’s brother Sir Geoffrey Keynes (1887–1982) was a distinguished surgeon, scholar, and bibliophile. His nephews include Richard Keynes (1919–2010) (a physiologist) and Quentin Keynes (1921–2003) (an adventurer and bibliophile). His widow, Lydia Lopokova, died in 1981. Keynes had no children.

Bloomsbury : Roger Fry.

Roger Eliot Fry (14 December 1866 – 9 September 1934) was an English painter and critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism. He was the first figure to raise public awareness of modern art in Britain, and emphasised the formal properties of paintings over the “associated ideas” conjured in the viewer by their representational content. He was described by the art historian Kenneth Clark as “incomparably the greatest influence on taste since Ruskin … In so far as taste can be changed by one man, it was changed by Roger Fry”.^‪

Life

Born in London, the son of the judge Edward Fry, he grew up in a wealthy Quaker family in Highgate. Fry was educated at Clifton College and King’s College, Cambridge,‬ where he was a member of the Cambridge Apostles. After taking a first in the Natural Science tripos, he went to Paris and then Italy to study art. Eventually he specialised in landscape painting.

In 1896, he married the artist Helen Coombe and they subsequently had two children, Pamela and Julian. Helen soon became seriously mentally ill, and in 1910 was committed to a mental institution, where she remained for the rest of her life. Fry took over the care of their children with the help of his sister, Joan Fry. That same year, Fry met the artists Vanessa Bell and her husband Clive Bell, and it was through them that he was introduced to the Bloomsbury Group. Vanessa’s sister, the author Virginia Woolf later wrote in her biography of Fry that “He had more knowledge and experience than the rest of us put together”. The artist William Rothenstein, however, observed around the same time that he considered Fry “a bit crazy”.

In 1911, Fry began an affair with Vanessa Bell, who was recovering from a miscarriage. Fry offered her the tenderness and care she felt was lacking from her husband. They remained lifelong close friends, even though Fry’s heart was broken in 1913 when Vanessa fell in love with Duncan Grant and decided to live permanently with him.

After short affairs with such artists as Nina Hamnett and Josette Coatmellec, Fry too found happiness with Helen Maitland Anrep. She became his emotional anchor for the rest of his life, although they never married (she too had had an unhappy first marriage, to the mosaicist Boris Anrep).

Fry died very unexpectedly after a fall at his home in London. His death caused great sorrow among the members of the Bloomsbury Group, who loved him for his generosity and warmth. Vanessa Bell decorated his casket before his ashes were placed in the vault of Kings College Chapel in Cambridge. Virginia Woolf, Vanessa’s sister, novelist and a close friend of his as well, was entrusted with writing his biography, published in 1940.

Career

In the 1900s, Fry started to teach art history at the Slade School of Fine Art, University College London.

In 1903 Fry was involved in the foundation of The Burlington Magazine, the first scholarly periodical dedicated to art history in Britain. Fry was its co-editor between 1909 and 1919 (first with Lionel Cust, then with Cust and More Adey) but his influence on The Burlington Magazine continued until his death: Fry was in the Consultative Committee of The Burlington since its beginnings and when he left the editorship, following a dispute with Cust and Adey regarding the editorial policy on modern art, he was able to use his influence on the Committee to choose the successor he considered appropriate, Robert Rattray Tatlock.^‪ Fry wrote for The Burlington from 1903 until his death: he published over two hundred pieces of eclectic subjects – from children’s drawings to bushman art. From the pages of The Burlington it is also possible to follow Fry’s growing interests for Post-Impressionism.

In 1906 Fry was appointed Curator of Paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. This was also the year in which he “discovered” the art of Paul Cézanne, also the year the artist died, beginning the shift in his scholarly interests away from the Italian Old Masters and towards modern French art.

In November 1910, Fry organised the exhibition Manet and the Post-Impressionists (a term which he coined) at the Grafton Galleries, London. This exhibition was the first to prominently feature Gauguin, Manet, Matisse, and Van Gogh in England and brought their art to the public. Virginia Woolf later said, “On or about December 1910 human character changed,” referring to the effect this exhibit had on the world. Fry followed it up with the Second Post-Impressionist Exhibition in 1912. It was patronised by Lady Ottoline Morrell, with whom Fry had a fleeting romantic attachment.

In 1913 he founded the Omega Workshops, a design workshop based in London’s Fitzroy Square, whose members included Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant. In 1933, he was appointed the Slade Professor at Cambridge, a position that Fry had much desired.

A Blue plaque was unveiled in Fitzroy Square on 20 May 2010.

Works

• Vision and Design (1920), see: formal analysis
• Heresies of an Artist (1921)
• Transformations (1926)
• Cézanne. A Study of His Development (1927)
• Henri Matisse (1930)
• French Art (1932)
• Reflections on British Painting (1934)
• Giovanni Bellini (1899)

Bloomsbury : Leonard Woolf .

Leonard Sidney Woolf (25 November 1880 – 14 August 1969) was an English political theorist, author, publisher and civil servant, and husband of author Virginia Woolf.

Early life

Woolf was born in London, the third of ten children of Solomon Rees Sidney Woolf (known as Sidney Woolf), a barrister and Queen’s Counsel, and Marie (née de Jongh). His family was Jewish. After his father died in 1892 Woolf was sent to board at Arlington House School near Brighton, Sussex. From 1894 to 1899 he attended St Paul’s School, and in 1899 he won a classical scholarship to Trinity College, Cambridge,^‪‬ where he was elected to the Cambridge Apostles. Other members included Lytton Strachey, John Maynard Keynes, GE Moore and EM Forster. Thoby Stephen, Virginia Stephen’s brother, was friendly with the Apostles, though not a member himself. Woolf was awarded his BA in 1902, but stayed for another year to study for the Civil Service examinations.

In October 1904 Woolf moved to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to become a cadet in the Ceylon Civil Service, in Jaffna and later Kandy,^‪ and by August 1908 was named an assistant government agent in the Southern Province, where he administered the District of Hambantota. Woolf returned to England in May 1911 for a year’s leave. Instead, however, he resigned in early 1912 and that same year married Virginia Stephen (Virginia Woolf).

Together Leonard and Virginia Woolf became influential in the Bloomsbury group, which also included various other former Apostles.

In December 1917 Woolf became one of the co-founders of the 1917 Club, which met in Gerrard Street, Soho.

Writing

After marriage, Woolf turned his hand to writing and in 1913 published his first novel, The Village in the Jungle, which is based on his years in Sri Lanka. A series of books followed at roughly two-yearly intervals.

On the introduction of conscription in 1916, during the First World War, Woolf was rejected for military service on medical grounds, and turned to politics and sociology. He joined the Labour Party and the Fabian Society, and became a regular contributor to the New Statesman. In 1916 he wrote International Government, proposing an international agency to enforce world peace.

As his wife’s mental health worsened, Woolf devoted much of his time to caring for her (he himself suffered from depression). In 1917 the Woolfs bought a small hand-operated printing press and with it they founded the Hogarth Press. Their first project was a pamphlet, hand-printed and bound by themselves. Within ten years the Press had become a full-scale publishing house, issuing Virginia’s novels, Leonard’s tracts and, among other works, the first edition of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. Woolf continued as the main director of the Press until his death. His wife suffered from severe bouts of mental illness throughout her life, until her suicide by drowning in 1941. Later Leonard fell in love with a married artist, Trekkie Parsons.

In 1919 Woolf became editor of the International Review. He also edited the international section of the Contemporary Review from 1920 to 1922. He was literary editor of The Nation and Atheneum, generally referred to simply as The Nation, from 1923 to 1930), and joint founder and editor of The Political Quarterly from 1931 to 1959), and for a time he served as secretary of the Labour Party’s advisory committees on international and colonial questions.

In 1960 Woolf revisited Sri Lanka and was surprised at the warmth of the welcome he received, and even the fact that he was still remembered.^‪‬ Woolf accepted an honorary doctorate from the then-new University of Sussex in 1964 and in 1965 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He declined the offer of CH in the Queen’s Birthday honours list in 1966

Family

Among his nine siblings, Bella Woolf was also an author.

Death

Woolf died on 14 August 1969 from a stroke. He was cremated and his ashes were buried alongside his wife’s beneath an elm tree in his beloved garden at Monk’s House, Rodmell, Sussex. The tree subsequently blew down and Woolf’s remains have since been marked by a bronze bust.

His papers are held by the University of Sussex at Falmer.

Works

• The Village in the Jungle – 1913
• The Wise Virgins – 1914 (Republished in 2003 by Persephone Books)
• International Government – 1916
• The Future of Constantinople – 1917
• The Framework of a Lasting Peace – 1917
• Cooperation and the Future of Industry – 1918
• Economic Imperialism – 1920
• Empire and Commerce in Africa – 1920
• Socialism and Co-operation – 1921
• International co-operative trade – 1922
• Fear and Politics – 1925
• Essays on Literature, History, Politics – 1927
• Hunting the Highbrow – 1927
• Imperialism and Civilization – 1928
• After the Deluge (Principia Politica), 3 vols. – 1931, 1939, 1953
• Quack! Quack! – 1935
• Barbarians at the Gate – 1939
• The War for Peace – 1940
• A Calendar of Consolation – selected by Leonard Woolf, 1967

Quex Park & Gardens , An Odd But Perfect Place To Buy A Curry ….

Quex Park is 250 acres (1.0 km²) of parkland and gardens, along with Quex House and other buildings, located in Birchington-on-Sea in England. It is home to the Powell-Cotton Museum and to the Waterloo tower, an unusual secular bell tower.

History

There has been a house on the Quex site since the early 1400s, and gained its Quex name from the ownership of the rich wool merchant Quekes family in the 1500s. The house was purchased by John Powell-Cotton in 1777, and his nephew, also John, demolished the existing mansion, and replaced it with a regency home. The house is still owned by the Powell-Cotton family.

In the 19th century, the family amalgamated two farms to form Quex Park, and began a programme of tree planting and landscaping to create the current park land.

During World War I, Quex House became an Auxiliary Military Hospital run by the Birchington Voluntary Aid Detachment. In 1923, the Memorial Ground was donated to the village by Mr H. A. Erlebach for sport and recreational use. Mr Erlebach owned the village’s now defunct Woodfood House School and purchased land from the Quex House estate for the school. He gave the southern part of the land to the people of Birchington and dedicated it in memory of his three sons who had been killed in World War I. The land is now owned by Thanet District Council.

Powell-Cotton Museum

In 1896, Major Percy Horace Gordon Powell-Cotton, F.Z.S., F.R.G.S., a Major in the Northumberland Fusiliers, founded the Powell-Cotton Museum at Quex Park to display his collection of mammals and artefacts acquired on his expeditions to Africa and Asia.[7] The animals were mounted by the noted taxidermist Rowland Ward. His expeditions were conducted for scientific research, and would sometimes take 18 months.

The Powell-Cotton Museum houses three galleries of stuffed animal displays, depicting more than 500 African and Asian animals against their natural habitats.[10] Further galleries display a vast collection of African artefacts, European firearms, European and Asian cutting weapons, European and Chinese porcelain, and important archaeological finds from Thanet and East Kent. The total amount of artefacts have not been counted, though the ethnography items alone total approximately 18,000.

Several rooms in Quex House, decorated with oriental and English period furniture, are open to visitors, and guided tours are provided.

Current uses

In addition to the museum, Quex Park also hosts a variety of events, including music concerts and festivals, alongside weddings and corporate entertainment. The estate also has its own food range, Quex Foods.

Hadlow Tower & Castle : May’s Folly, The Tallest Victorian Folly In England….

Hadlow Castle is a Grade I listed country house and tower in Hadlow, Kent, England.

History

Hadlow Castle replaced the manor house of Hadlow Court Lodge. It was built over a number of years from the late 1780s, commissioned by Walter May in an ornate Gothic style. The architect was J. Dugdale. his son, Walter Barton May inherited the estate in 1823, and another inheritance in 1832 from his wife’s family. He added a 170 feet (52 m) octagonal tower in 1838, the architect was George Ledwell Taylor. A 40 feet (12 m) octagonal lantern was added in 1840 and another smaller tower was added in 1852. This was dismantled in 1905. Walter Barton May died in 1858 and the estate was sold. Subsequent owners were Robert Rodger, JP, High Sheriff of Kent, in 1865. He died in 1882 and the castle was bought by Dr. MacGeagh, a Harley Street specialist in 1891. He would drive in his carriage to Tonbridge and catch the train to London thus being an early commuter. The castle passed to T E Foster MacGeagh and he sold it in 1919 to Henry Thomas Pearson, whose family occupied it until 1946. During the war it was used as a watchtower by the Royal Observer Corps. The unoccupied castle changed hands several times after the Pearsons’ left, and was demolished in 1951, except for the servants’ quarters, several stables and the Coach House, which was saved by the painter Bernard Hailstone. The Tower was already a Listed Building, having been listed on 17th April 1951. Now the entrance gateway and lodges of the Castle still stand – a heavy Gothic presence on the street – as does the Stable Court with two turreted pavilions, which are all in private ownerships, and new homes have been built in the grounds.

Tower

Hadlow Tower, 51°13′21″N 0°20′20″E known locally as May’s Folly, is a Victorian Gothic tower, and one of the largest in Britain. The top 40 feet (12 m) is an octagonal lantern.

The Grade I listed tower was badly damaged in the Great Storm of 1987, and the lantern was removed in 1996. The tower’s condition then worsened rapidly. The cost of repairs was estimated at £4 million. In July 2006, Tonbridge and Malling borough council announced that it would issue a compulsory purchase order (CPO) on the tower in an effort to save it. This CPO was confirmed in March 2008 by the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, with plans for the council to take possession of the Tower and transfer it to the Vivat Trust in late 2009, so that the necessary repair and restoration work can be undertaken; plans included short-term holiday accommodation, with a separate exhibition centre on part of the ground floor.

In January 2011, it was announced that the tower had been compulsorily purchased by Tonbridge and Malling District Council; the council sold it to the Vivat Trust for £1. Restoration of the tower, including the replacement of the lantern commenced in February 2011, with completion then scheduled for September 2012. The project was funded by grants from English Heritage and the Heritage Lottery Fund. The latter granted £2,000,000 of the estimated £4,000,000 restoration cost. Now restored, the tower offers holiday accommodation, with public exhibition space on the ground floor. On 24 February 2011, Hadlow Castle was transferred to the Vivat Trust.

The restoration was completed in February 2013, making it the tallest folly in the United Kingdom. In October 2013, the restoration of the tower was recognised when the Vivat Trust and the Save Hadlow Tower Action Group (SHTAG) won a Lloyd-Webber Angel Award. Work was completed on the interior; the exhibition centre in the tower is open on Thursdays from May to October. Visits are organised by SHTAG

Plant Hunters : Tom Hart – Dyke, Young Inspirational Man on a Mission….. His Story Would Make For an Exceptional Film…..

Thomas Guy Hart Dyke (born 12 April 1976) is an English horticulturist and plant hunter. He is the son and heir of Guy and Sarah Hart Dyke at the family seat of Lullingstone Castle, Eynsford, Kent. He is the designer of the World Garden of Plants located on the property. The World Garden contains approximately 8,000 species of plants, many collected by Hart Dyke from their native environments. He presented an episode of Great British Garden Revival in 2013.

Early life and education

Hart Dyke attended a state primary school in Eynsford and then transferred to St. Michael’s School in Otford. He attended Stanbridge Earls in Hampshire until age seventeen and then entered Sparsholt College Hampshire, near Winchester, where he studied tree surgery and forestry.

In an interview in 2006, Hart Dyke credits his grandmother as having first interested him in plants at age three.

Tom Hart Dyke is first cousin of the English comedian Miranda Hart.

Kidnapping

Hart Dyke follows a tradition of Victorian and Edwardian British plant hunters, such as Francis Masson, who risked life and limb to acquire rare species of plant. In 2000, Hart Dyke was kidnapped by suspected FARC guerrillas in the Darién Gap between Panama and Colombia while hunting for rare orchids, a plant for which he has a particular passion.

He and his travel companion, Paul Winder, were held captive for nine months and threatened with death. He kept himself going by creating a design for a garden containing plants collected on his trips, laid out in the shape of a world map according to their continent of origin.

Tom wrote about his experiences in Colombia in his book, The Cloud Garden. The story of his kidnapping ordeal was dramatised in the Sky1 documentary series “My Holiday Hostage Hell”.

World Garden of Plants

On his return home, Hart Dyke put his design into practice within the walls of the family’s Victorian herb garden. The story of the creation of The World Garden of Plants was the subject of a BBC2 6-episode series, “Save Lullingstone Castle” (KEO Films) in 2006. This was followed by a second 6-episode series, “Return To Lullingstone Castle” on BBC2 in 2007.

In May 2006, Hart Dyke managed to get an Australian Eucalyptus caesia plant (common name Silver Princess) to flower for the first time in the UK. He was inspired by orchids at his first school, St. Michaels, Otford, Kent.

Hart Dyke featured in the PBS Nova programme in 2002, Orchid Hunter that documented his return to hunting rare orchids in dangerous terrain in another politically unstable area in Irian Jaya in the rainforests of Western New Guinea.

Toms books are a fascinating read and a real inspiration and i highly recommend them both. As for the ‘World Garden’ this is developing beautifully now and i enjoy going throughout the season to appreciate differing elements. Well worth a visit, the whole family really welcome you and are happy to talk and explain. Tom’s enthusiasm is infectious and i challenge anyone not to want to pick up a trowel the moment you get home.

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

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