Yesterday, to burnish my credentials as a proper Clough Williams-Ellis fan, I'd thought I'd try to track down a local work by him. I was only half-successful. I actually found the place I was after, but I didn't manage to established whether or not it was by him. That's a bit odd in this day and age. You'd think you'd be able to conclusively determine with some simple internet searching whether something less than a century old was, or was not, done by a very famous architect who only died less than 40 years ago, but no. The story is an illustration of how a simple point can take an inordinate amount to research...
Part of the problem seems to be that Williams-Ellis's own records were destroyed when his ancestral home, Plas Brondanw, burned down in 1951. For this reason, the helpful Wikipedia page that lists his works states that it is based, instead, on the list of drawings held in the RIBA Drawings Collection. There are a quite few entries for Surrey on the list, but a lot of these are for minor works (unspecified "additions"; "banister details" etc), and so possibly not, even with all the enthusiasm that a fanboy can muster, actually worth hiking over to see.
One of the more substantial-sounding entries was "Design for a pair of cottages for Mrs. Watts, plan & elevations, 1912" in the village of Compton. Compton is only about 4 miles away from where I live, so this seemed like a good place to start. Also, whilst it isn't clear from the Wikipedia list whether any given entry represents an actual completed building, as opposed to an unbuilt design, the appendix of commissions that appears at the back of Williams-Ellis's 1971 autobiography (which claims to omit designs not "actually ... realised") mentions a "Cottage group (Compton)". This reference to a "... group" doesn't sound like quite the same thing as the RIBA's record of a "... pair", but, nonetheless, this was reasonably promising.
Some more googling, and I established that the Compton cottages were a listed, semi-detached pair forming part of a group called "Oak Cottages", and that they had been commissioned by the painter and Arts & Crafts impresario Mary Watts. Watts had created the nearby, excellent Watts Gallery, so this all seemed quite interesting. Mysteriously though, the English Heritage listing text states that the pair of cottage were merely "[r]eputedly designed by" Williams-Ellis. So at the time of the listing, 1996, at least, English Heritage had no idea.
Was I going to be able to do any better?
I put the address into my phone, and set off on my bicycle. After a hard climb up the Hog's Back, and a quick descent into the village, before long I had found Oak Cottages. Nos. 1-4 ("probably designed by Sir Ernest George", according to the listing text) are cute, largely thanks to their front gardens and the wisteria trained on their walls:
Some uber-Arts & Crafts-y features are in evidence, such as the panes of the leaded windows being out of line with each other to a comical degree (quite visible even in the zoomed-out photo above) and mannerist touches such as a blind-arcade on the chimney, of all places:
Nos. 5-6 (ie. Williams-Ellis's ones, "... reputedly") are maybe less immediately cute, but are certainly handsome, and make more of a statement with their plunging roof-lines and unusually large gabled wings:
Taking photos of the cottages without trespassing or being seen apparently pointing a camera into someone's living room was a bit of a challenge. Whilst I was taking a picture, a wise-looking lady, possibly in her late '60s, carrying a potted plant emerged from one of the neighbouring properties (not one of the cottages). She saw me standing awkwardly with my camera and asked in a friendly manner: was I researching the Arts & Crafts movement? I said that I was, or, at least, I was writing an architecture blog. She then told me what she knew about the cottages.
Her understanding was that the terrace of 4 were the oldest, with the semi-detached pair having been built a bit later, in 1908 she thought (the English Heritage listing gives a different year, but, actually, her date makes more sense if this was a Williams-Ellis design, since in the year the listing text gives, 1895, Williams-Ellis would have been only 12 years' old). Mary Watts had built the cottages for her workers, who built the Cemetery Chapel (see below) amongst other things. The grander, semi-detached pair were, she believed, for the senior craftsmen. The workers included potters at her nearby kiln, who provided the terracotta for the chapel. Apparently, rather than hiring in skilled workers, Mrs Watts trained up locals for the work, a fact that indicates the level of commitment that she had to her Arts & Crafts 'guild', as, of course, does the fact of her providing the workers with lovingly designed homes. She mentioned that her late father had lived in one of the cottages - something I would liked to have asked more about had there been time.
The lady next-door was about to head back inside with her pot before I asked: did she happen to know if Clough Williams-Ellis had designed any of the cottages? Surprisingly, she did have some more information on this question. She explained that she had read a Country Life magazine article, about 25 or 30 years ago, which had said that the experts had decided that the cottages were probably not designed by Williams-Ellis after all. The plot thickens...
Later, when I got back home, I tried to google the relevant Country Life article, but had no luck. It would be, anyway, a bit odd if something to that effect had come out, say, 25 years ago, as the lady indicated, because that would pre-date the English Heritage listing suggesting that it was thought that Williams-Ellis probably had designed it. It then occurred to me that if I really wanted to find out the answer to the question, the thing to do would be to look at the original drawings held by in the RIBA collection and compare these to my photos of the cottages, since a lack of correspondence would pretty much rule out the Williams-Ellis connection. But this would, it transpired, on further investigation, mean pre-booking a visit to the RIBA study room at the V&A museum (where the drawings are apparently kept), and potentially all sorts of faff at actually getting hold of the drawings out of whatever archiving system they operate. Maybe on another day; maybe not...
Meanwhile, I decided to pay a quick return visit to the Watts Gallery and the Cemetery Chapel to remind myself of the handiwork of the potters associated with the cottages. Here is the extraordinary brick and terracotta Chapel:
And this, in the grounds of the Gallery, is the area around Mary's kiln, where there is restored "Pug Mill", the device used by her team to grind the raw clay:
The Pug Mill is also mentioned in tiled plaque on the wall of one of the buildings, commemorating David Real, a "POTTER AT THE COMPTON POTTERY". This sort of thing epitomises the worker-elevating ethic of the Arts & Crafts movement. I love the somewhat awkward prose of the inscription, obviously Mr Real's own words:
Perhaps this guy was an inhabitant of one of the cottages? At any rate, this was a nice, tangible bit of history that made the outing worthwhile.
One of the more substantial-sounding entries was "Design for a pair of cottages for Mrs. Watts, plan & elevations, 1912" in the village of Compton. Compton is only about 4 miles away from where I live, so this seemed like a good place to start. Also, whilst it isn't clear from the Wikipedia list whether any given entry represents an actual completed building, as opposed to an unbuilt design, the appendix of commissions that appears at the back of Williams-Ellis's 1971 autobiography (which claims to omit designs not "actually ... realised") mentions a "Cottage group (Compton)". This reference to a "... group" doesn't sound like quite the same thing as the RIBA's record of a "... pair", but, nonetheless, this was reasonably promising.
Some more googling, and I established that the Compton cottages were a listed, semi-detached pair forming part of a group called "Oak Cottages", and that they had been commissioned by the painter and Arts & Crafts impresario Mary Watts. Watts had created the nearby, excellent Watts Gallery, so this all seemed quite interesting. Mysteriously though, the English Heritage listing text states that the pair of cottage were merely "[r]eputedly designed by" Williams-Ellis. So at the time of the listing, 1996, at least, English Heritage had no idea.
Was I going to be able to do any better?
I put the address into my phone, and set off on my bicycle. After a hard climb up the Hog's Back, and a quick descent into the village, before long I had found Oak Cottages. Nos. 1-4 ("probably designed by Sir Ernest George", according to the listing text) are cute, largely thanks to their front gardens and the wisteria trained on their walls:
Some uber-Arts & Crafts-y features are in evidence, such as the panes of the leaded windows being out of line with each other to a comical degree (quite visible even in the zoomed-out photo above) and mannerist touches such as a blind-arcade on the chimney, of all places:
Nos. 5-6 (ie. Williams-Ellis's ones, "... reputedly") are maybe less immediately cute, but are certainly handsome, and make more of a statement with their plunging roof-lines and unusually large gabled wings:
Taking photos of the cottages without trespassing or being seen apparently pointing a camera into someone's living room was a bit of a challenge. Whilst I was taking a picture, a wise-looking lady, possibly in her late '60s, carrying a potted plant emerged from one of the neighbouring properties (not one of the cottages). She saw me standing awkwardly with my camera and asked in a friendly manner: was I researching the Arts & Crafts movement? I said that I was, or, at least, I was writing an architecture blog. She then told me what she knew about the cottages.
Her understanding was that the terrace of 4 were the oldest, with the semi-detached pair having been built a bit later, in 1908 she thought (the English Heritage listing gives a different year, but, actually, her date makes more sense if this was a Williams-Ellis design, since in the year the listing text gives, 1895, Williams-Ellis would have been only 12 years' old). Mary Watts had built the cottages for her workers, who built the Cemetery Chapel (see below) amongst other things. The grander, semi-detached pair were, she believed, for the senior craftsmen. The workers included potters at her nearby kiln, who provided the terracotta for the chapel. Apparently, rather than hiring in skilled workers, Mrs Watts trained up locals for the work, a fact that indicates the level of commitment that she had to her Arts & Crafts 'guild', as, of course, does the fact of her providing the workers with lovingly designed homes. She mentioned that her late father had lived in one of the cottages - something I would liked to have asked more about had there been time.
The lady next-door was about to head back inside with her pot before I asked: did she happen to know if Clough Williams-Ellis had designed any of the cottages? Surprisingly, she did have some more information on this question. She explained that she had read a Country Life magazine article, about 25 or 30 years ago, which had said that the experts had decided that the cottages were probably not designed by Williams-Ellis after all. The plot thickens...
Later, when I got back home, I tried to google the relevant Country Life article, but had no luck. It would be, anyway, a bit odd if something to that effect had come out, say, 25 years ago, as the lady indicated, because that would pre-date the English Heritage listing suggesting that it was thought that Williams-Ellis probably had designed it. It then occurred to me that if I really wanted to find out the answer to the question, the thing to do would be to look at the original drawings held by in the RIBA collection and compare these to my photos of the cottages, since a lack of correspondence would pretty much rule out the Williams-Ellis connection. But this would, it transpired, on further investigation, mean pre-booking a visit to the RIBA study room at the V&A museum (where the drawings are apparently kept), and potentially all sorts of faff at actually getting hold of the drawings out of whatever archiving system they operate. Maybe on another day; maybe not...
Meanwhile, I decided to pay a quick return visit to the Watts Gallery and the Cemetery Chapel to remind myself of the handiwork of the potters associated with the cottages. Here is the extraordinary brick and terracotta Chapel:
And this, in the grounds of the Gallery, is the area around Mary's kiln, where there is restored "Pug Mill", the device used by her team to grind the raw clay:
The Pug Mill is also mentioned in tiled plaque on the wall of one of the buildings, commemorating David Real, a "POTTER AT THE COMPTON POTTERY". This sort of thing epitomises the worker-elevating ethic of the Arts & Crafts movement. I love the somewhat awkward prose of the inscription, obviously Mr Real's own words:
Perhaps this guy was an inhabitant of one of the cottages? At any rate, this was a nice, tangible bit of history that made the outing worthwhile.
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