Aims
This course aims to:
• identify the tastes and aspirations of the people who created these houses and gardens
• contrast the expression of power with an appreciation of craft
• relate the historic background to the properties and landscapes created
Content
We will analyse the expression An Englishman’s home is his castle in relation to six contrasting domains created in the 16th, 19th and 20th centuries. We engage with owners who exercised and expressed their eclectic tastes in architecture, gardens and interiors. Elizabethan England sets the scene with Kenilworth Castle, gifted by the Queen to Robert Dudley, where he designed a symbolic setting in which to woo her, unsuccessfully on the last count. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert’s Osborne House encapsulates industry and technology with a taste for Italian architecture, as well as an expression of Victorian family values. A horror of 19th-century industrialisation inspired William Morris to advise: Have nothing in your houses that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful. The Red House, an exemplar of the English Arts and Crafts movement, was designed by Philip Webb to illustrate all Morris’s ideals. His final home, the Elizabethan Kelmscott Manor encapsulated a sense of unchanging history and craftsmanship. The collaboration of Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens led to the ‘Surrey Style’, perfected in her house and gardens at Munstead Wood. Finally, Chartwell where Winston Churchill’s artistic abilities gave respite from politics, in his studio where he painted, in the gardens where he walked and undertook bricklaying walls and a small house for his daughter which he named Marycot.
Presentation of the course
PowerPoint lectures will provide detailed illustrations of each site, active participation is encouraged, raising questions and discussions form an integral part of the course. Where possible contemporary and relevant books, articles and plants will be provided daily.
Course sessions
1. To woo a queen – Robert Dudley and Kenilworth Castle
Against a background of Tudor England, Dudley created a prodigious architectural and scenic setting in which to entertain Queen Elizabeth I. The ruins today still testify to the status of this castle.
2. Innovation and romance – Victoria and Albert at Osborne House
‘A place of one’s own, quiet and retired’ according to the Queen where she and the Prince Consort built using the latest in technology with a taste for Italian architecture. A home to demonstrate what became known as Victorian family values.
3. English arts and crafts ‘beauty and utility’ – William Morris, the Red House and Kelmscott Manor
Morris commissioned Philip Webb to design, the result was a synthesis of romantic utopianism and practicality – the birth of ‘honest architecture’. His final home Elizabethan Kelmscott allowed him and his daughter May to live his philosophy.
4. English arts and crafts, the golden afternoon – Gertrude Jekyll and Edwin Lutyens
The home of artist, craftswoman and gardener, Gertrude Jekyll encapsulates the elegance of country living and an appreciation of local materials. An exemplar which still dominates English designs.
5. Winston Churchill at home – Chartwell
The impractical, dilapidated house was discovered on a ‘heavenly tree-crowned hill’ in Kent in the 1920s, here he rode, farmed, kept ornamental fish and became a noted artist and bricklayer. An antidote to politics and war.
Learning outcomes
You are expected to gain from this series of classroom sessions a greater understanding of the subject and of the core issues and arguments central to the course.
The learning outcomes for this course are:
• identify how contemporary mores and influences shaped the six properties studied
• evaluate architectural changes in craftsmanship and design as well as usage
• an increased understanding when visiting English houses and gardens of why a home can be a ‘castle’
