Tag Archives: william morris

William Morris lived here in Oxfordshire but did not make wallpaper

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THE NATIONAL TRUST looks after a house in Oxfordshire, which was once owned by William Morris. When I came across this property, Nuffield Place, I was surprised, because I believed that the artist and socialist William Morris (1834-1896) had lived in properties in Hammersmith, Walthamstow, Bexleyheath, and Gloucestershire, but not in Oxfordshire.

Nuffield Place was the home of another William Morris, who became Baron Nuffield in 1934, and later in 1938, Viscount Nuffield. He lived from 1877 until 1963. At the age of 15, he set up his own bicycle repair business. By 1901, he had a bicycle repair and sales shop on the High Street in Oxford. Two years later, he was manufacturing motorcycles. In 1903, he married Elizabeth Anstey (1884-1959), a seamstress whom he met when both were members of a cycling club. They never produced children.

By 1909, he had set up the Morris Garage in Oxford, and was selling and repairing cars. In 1913, he and his small team of workers had built the first car he had designed. By the time the First World War had begun he had acquired larger premises in Cowley on the edge of Oxford. He was already producing cars that were affordable to the popular market, but during the war, his factory switched to producing products needed for the war effort. While doing this, which was not very profitable, he developed much experience in the techniques of mass-production. One of the many models turned out by the Morris factory was the Morris Oxford. This car has made its mark in India because it was the prototype for the Hindustan Ambassador, which was made in India between 1957 and 2014.

After WW1, Morris began making huge numbers of affordable Morris cars, which sold well. William Morris became incredibly rich. However, he was a modest man and extremely generous. He spent most of his money on philanthropy, particularly in the medical field. Many of the institutions he paid for, which bear the Nuffield name, including Oxford’s Nuffield College, still exist. The number of ways in which he helped are far too numerous to be listed. As a child, he wanted to study medicine, but economic circumstances did not allow that to happen. However, because of all he did to promote healthcare and medical research, he was made a Fellow of the Royal College of Surgeons in 1948.

Nuffield Place, the house which William Morris purchased in 1933 and lived in for the rest of his life, was built for the shipping magnate Sir John Bowring Wimble, also chairman of an insurance company, in 1914. It was designed by Oswald Partridge Milne (1881-1968), who worked in the office of Edwin Lutyens between 1902 and 1904. When Sir John died in 1927, his widow sold the house, which was then called ‘Merrow Mount’, to Morris in 1933.

The house is spacious and must have been comfortable to live in, but it is remarkably modest to have been the sole residence of a man as wealthy as the automobile manufacturer William Morris. We were shown around it by a knowledgeable lady, who helped us to appreciate how modest were the lives led by William and Elizabeth Morris. Among the many things that interested me was William Morris’s bedroom. In one corner of it, there is what looks like a wardrobe. However, when the doors are open, it can be seen to be filled with tools and a workbench. Morris had his own workshop in his bedroom. His wife continued her seamstress skills, and many chairs were covered with textiles she had worked on. The house contains many books on a variety of subjects including history and politics. One bookshelf is filled with medical treatises. Morris, although he never became a doctor, was interested in reading about medicine.

Nuffield Place contains an iron lung machine, such as was used to help sufferers of poliomyelitis to breathe. On learning that there was a shortage of these machines in Britain, Morris used his factories to produce many of them to distribute to hospitals that needed them. The model he helped design, and his factories manufactured, has some curious details. The handles that were used to adjust the apparatus look just like car door handles. And some other components on the iron lung look very much like the hinges of car doors. These iron lungs were a valuable contribution to the treatment of diseases such as polio.

I could describe much more of what we saw at Nuffield Place, but it would be better if you visit the it. Lovers of gardens will also enjoy visiting this house owned by a William Morris, who did not design flowery wallpapers.

Ceilings with perforations in the home of William Morris

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THE RED HOUSE in south-east London’s Bexley Heath was the only residence that William Morris (1834-1896) owned, rather than rented. The architect Philip Webb (1831-1915) designed it in a style that resembled that of the Arts and Crafts Movement, which only became prevalent in the last quarter of the 19th century. It was completed in 1860, before Morris began his now famous decorative arts company (in 1861). The house is now maintained by the National Trust, which organises guided tours though its interior. The visitor gets to see art and furniture created by Morris, his wife Jane, Edward Burne-Jones, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, and others associated with the Pre-Raphaelite Movement.

Amongst the many interesting things that the guide pointed out, one feature particularly intrigued me. That is, many of the ceilings in the house can be seen to have numerous tiny holes or perforations. If you look closely, these holes are not random, but are arranged in patterns. These patterns vary from room to room. In the large entrance hallway, which contains a couple of door panels with paintings by Morris, the ceiling is now painted white, but the perforations are arranged in a discernible pattern.

Other ceilings not only have these perforations, but are also covered with colourful hand-painted patterns. Apparently, these were painted by friends of William and Jane Morris. They used to be invited as house guests, fed, and lodged, and then expected to climb on ladders to paint patterns on the ceilings. If you look at these patterned ceilings carefully, you will notice that the painted shapes correspond to the patterns of tiny holes that perforate the ceiling panels. This is no accidental coincidence. Before the ceiling panels were installed, the perforations were made using pieces of wood in which nails had been arranged to create the pattern required for a particular ceiling. The panels were then pressed with these beds of nails to produce the desired pattern on the panels. The perforations helped the painters to create the designs that Morris had chosen for them. Although at first sight, the ceilings look as if the patterns  were mass produced, careful examination reveals that the hand painted elements of each design are not precisely identical. The painters probably tried to reproduce the elements of the designs accurately, but being hand-painted rather than mechanically reproduced, tiny differences can be discerned. This is what Morris wanted: his ideal was old-fashioned craftsmanship rather than industrial mass-production.

While showing us the ceiling above the stairwell, our guide pointed out something that Morris might not have wanted. Hidden behind a beam, and quite difficult to see, there is what we now call a ‘smiley face’ instead of an element of the pattern seen on the rest of the ceiling. It might possibly have been put there by one of his unpaid friends, who was getting bored.

The Red House, which is now embedded in the aesthetically unexciting suburban sprawl of south-east London, was once in open countryside. It is well worth visiting this place, which is one of the earliest examples of what was later to become known as the Arts and Crafts style, but you do need to book your tour in advance.

Hanging on the walls at a house in Hammersmith

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FACING THE THAMES near to The Dove pub in Hammersmith, there is an interesting little museum dedicated to exhibits relating to William Morris. In my book “BEYOND MARYLEBONE AND MAYFAIR: EXPLORING WEST LONDON”, I wrote about the museum as follows:

“ … Kelmscott House. Built on the site of an old warehouse, this became the home of Sir Francis Ronalds (1788-1873) in the early 19th century. Sir Francis, an inventor, laid eight miles of insulated electrical cable in the house’s extensive garden, which in his time stretched as far inland as King Street, and with that he demonstrated the use of telegraphy for the first time in history in 1816. When he reported his discovery to Lord Melville, the First Lord of The Admiralty, he was told (by Melville) that telegraphs were totally unnecessary, because the semaphore did the job of communication just as well.

In 1878, Ronalds’s house, known then as ‘The Retreat’, was bought by the writer and artist William Morris (1834-1896), who was a leading exponent of the Arts and Crafts Movement and a social reformer. According to his biographer Fiona MacCarthy, Morris did not like its name because ‘Retreat’ suggested that it might be regarded as an asylum.  So, he renamed it Kelmscott House (the name of Morris’s Thames side dwelling in Oxfordshire).”

I wrote that the museum is housed in the:

“… long narrow coach house attached to the west side of Kelmscott House which was used as a lecture hall in William Morris’s time. It hosted many meetings of groups sympathetic to socialism, including one that which Morris joined in 1883: the ‘Democratic Federation’, later known as the ‘Social Democratic Federation’. Like some of today’s leading British socialists, Morris was also far wealthier than the people whom he hoped to help with his left-wing political sympathies.

Today, the coach house, which bears a plaque in memory of Sir Francis Ronalds, houses the offices of the William Morris Society and a small museum.”

Recently (June 2024), we visited the museum, which has a temporary exhibition called “The Art of Wallpaper: Morris & Co. in Context”. It will remain in place until the 11th of August 2024. According to the museum’s website (https://williammorrissociety.org/whats-on/):

“This exhibition focuses on William Morris (1834–1896), placing his wallpaper designs within the context of the radical changes in taste witnessed during the Victorian era. His distinctive patterning is set against a backdrop of the fanciful, naturalistic patterns that typified fashionable English and French papers in Morris’s youth.”

The visitor can admire a collection of framed, highly decorative wallpaper samples, including many designed by Morris and his associates. Apart from the Morris designed wall papers, there are examples of styles that were fashionable in the 19th century: French style, Reform Movement Styles (e.g., by Pugin), Japanese-influenced designs, and the Arts and Crafts Movement. The most interesting exhibit was a wooden printing block, which would have been carefully inked up in different colours, and used to create the wall papers. Next to this, there were a couple of pages from the Morris logbook used to record the colours and designs of the papers produced by Morris and his company.

The small museum is well worth a visit. It is a shame that the main house to which it is attached is not open to the public at present.

PS The book is available as a paperback and a Kindle from AMAZON

A composer who lived by the River Thames

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THE COMPOSER GUSTAV Holst (1874-1934) is best known for his orchestral suite “The Planets”, which was composed between 1914 and 1916. This work does not include the planet Pluto, which was only discovered in 1930. Son of a professional musician, Holst was born in Cheltenham (Gloucestershire). Between 1886 and 1891, he was a pupil at Cheltenham Grammar School, where at the age of 12 he composed his first piece, “Horatius” for an ensemble of strings, woodwind, brass, and percussion. From 1891, he studied counterpoint for several months with the organist of Merton College in Oxford. Next, Holst studied composition at the Royal College of Music (‘RCM’) in London’s Kensington.

After graduation at the RCM, Holst worked as a professional trombonist in the Carl Rosa Opera Company and the Scottish Orchestra. During this time, he continued composing and also became interested in translations of Sanskrit literature. Several of his compositions reflect his heartfelt interest in the “Rig Veda”, “Ramayana”, and the “Bhagavad Gita”, all of which struck a meaningful chord with him. In 1903, he accepted a teaching role at James Allen’s Girls’ School in Dulwich.  Two years later, he left Dulwich to become Director of Music at St Paul’s Girls School in Hammersmith, a position he retained until his death.

Gustav Holst lived here in Barnes

Between 1908 and 1913, Holst lived not too far from the school: at Barnes in a house facing the River Thames on a road called The Terrace. His daughter Imogen Holst (1907-1984), herself a composer, wrote a biography of her father (published 1938). In it she described the house in Barnes:

“… a beautiful bow-fronted brick house overlooking the river. He had a large music room on the top floor, and in the evenings the grey, muddy river would collect all the colours of the sky and shine with a magical light …”

However:

“It was an unhealthy house to live in, for at the spring tides the river overflowed into the streets, and often the floods would come in at the front door. He never felt really well there, and was perpetually suffering from a relaxed throat …”

Before moving to Barnes, Holst began to become interested in socialism, and having read some of the writings of William Morris (1834-1896), who had been living next to the Thames near Hammersmith in Kelmscott House since 1878. Imogen Holst wrote of her father’s interest in socialism:

“… [he] began to hear about Socialism, and after reading several books by William Morris he joined the Hammersmith Socialist Club and listened to Bernard Shaw’s lectures at Kelmscott House. Here he found a new sort of comradeship, and here he became aware of other ways of searching for beauty…. His socialism was never very active, and although he admired William Morris as a man, he found that the glamour of his romantic Mediaevalism soon wore off. But he remained in the club for the sake of good companionship, and in 1897 he accepted an invitation to conduct the Socialist Choir.”

He met his wife, Isobel (née Harrison), when she joined the choir as a new soprano, and they married several years later.

Holst travelled a great deal to places where the climate was better suited to his asthma. While visiting North Africa in 1908, he heard a street musician playing a repetitive tune on a flute in a street in Algeria. This haunted him and led to his composing a lovely orchestral suite “Beni Mora”, which is amongst my favourite pieces by Holst. I first heard this when a musical friend of mine, the late Roger Apps, played a recording of it for me in his home in Rainham (Kent).

A keen walker, Gustav and Isobel went rambling in England. On one of these outings, they visited Thaxted in northern Essex, where they bought one cottage (and then moved to another), in which Gustav spent as much time as possible. I will describe his musical associations with Thaxted in far greater detail in the future. Suffice it to say that some parts of “The Planets” suite were composed there.

In 1913, St Pauls School opened a new music wing, in which Holst was given a large soundproof room for his composing work. That same year, mainly for health-related reasons, he and his family moved from the house in Barnes to a house in Brook Green close to the school.

Holst’s former home in Barnes is still standing and marked with a commemorative plaque. Despite its once unhealthy features, it is now a highly desirable residence. In December 2021, it was on the market with a price tag of £3.5 million (www.countrylife.co.uk/property/the-thames-side-home-of-the-composer-gustav-holst-is-up-for-sale-a-true-gem-in-one-of-londons-most-desirable-villages-236144).

PS: Dame Ninette de Valois (1898-2001), founder of the Royal Ballet, also lived on The Terrace, not far from Holst’s former home.

Young Poland

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WILLIAM MORRIS (1834-1896) was amongst other things a textile designer, printer, writer, and a Socialist. He was closely associated with the British Arts and Crafts Movement which lasted from the late 19th century into the early 20th. This movement can be considered part of the wider Art Nouveau/Jugendstil movements on the mainland of Europe. Morris’s Socialist leanings were embodied in his desire to make beautiful objects available to people of all social classes. His creations were not purely aesthetic but also politically motivated.

As a child, Morris lived in a grand Georgian house in northeast London’s Walthamstow district between 1848 and 1856. This became the home of the publisher Edward Lloyd (1815-1890) between 1857 and 1885. Today, this building is the home of the William Morris Gallery, which has several rooms dedicated to exhibits illustrating the achievements of Morris and his movement. It also hosts temporary exhibitions. One of these, which we visited today on its final day, the 30th of January 2022, was aptly housed in a building dedicated to such an important person in the Arts and Crafts Movement.

Between 1795 and soon after WW1, Poland did not exist as an independent country; its territories were divided amongst the Russian, Austrian, and Prussian empires. Polish language and nationalistic aspirations were suppressed. Between about 1890 and 1918, the Young Poland movement flourished. It was a wide-ranging artistic development with many similarities to what was happening in the Arts and Crafts Movement that was initiated by John Ruskin and William Morris. Just as Morris was concerned that industrialisation and mass-production might lead to the loss of beauty associated with the works of traditional craftsmen; this was also the worry expressed by members of the Young Poland movement. Like Morris and his collaborators, Young Poland was also hoping to expose all social groups to objects of beauty. As a placard in the exhibition explains:

“Like William Morris, Young Poland makers believed in cultural democracy: that everyone had a right to beauty in daily life; the spiritual benefits of handiwork; and the equal value of all the arts irrespective of materials or techniques used.”

The Young Poland movement had another motive in addition to making beauty available for all. Many of their creations illustrated and celebrated aspects of Polish tradition and national pride. It was not only an artistic movement but a fairly subtle way of expressing the desire for independence of the Polish people and Roman Catholicism during a time when more overt nationalistic expressiveness would have attracted adverse reactions from the invaders, who were then dominating the Poles.

The exhibition was large enough to be spread over several rooms. The exhibits, most of which came from collections in Poland,  are stylistically similar to what was produced in the British Arts and Crafts Movement are beautiful as well as being typically Polish in subject matter. The artists and the various subdivisions of the Young Poland movement are summarised in the gallery’s website (https://youngpolandartsandcrafts.org.uk/exhibition/).  One of the many works, which I liked and that illustrates the nationalist sentiments of Young Poland, was a painting, “Dawn at the Foot of Wawel Hill”, by Stanisław Wyspiański (1869-1907). He was, like Morris, a polymath. The picture depicts Wawel Hill in Krakow during the time when this area of the city was being used as a barracks by the Austrian occupiers. The picture is in muted drab colours except for one bright light on a lamppost. The glowing lamp represents the Poles’ eternal hope for independence, which was only achieved in 1918, 24 years after the painting was completed.

One room in the exhibition is dedicated to drawings and paintings by the playwright Maria Pawlikowska-Jasnorzewska (1891-1945), who died in Manchester (UK) having come to England from Poland in 1939. Although she would have been too young to have been a member of Young Poland, her rarely seen artworks were included, according to the gallery’s website, because:

“These bold and intimate watercolours feature fantastical and macabre elements inspired by Polish folk traditions.”

It was these traditions that also are reflected in the works by the Young Poland creators.

The exhibition was both fascinating and uplifting. I am glad we managed to see it and hope that it will be held again somewhere so that all of you reading this will not have to miss out on what was a wonderful experience.

A socialist by the River Thames

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ISLEWORTH IN WEST London was until this month, March 2021, a place where I had never before set foot. A road direction sign with the words “Historic Isleworth Waterfront” tempted us to investigate the place and we found it to be a delightful location despite it being under a flight path for aeroplanes coming into land at nearby Heathrow Airport. After enjoying the view across the River Thames from Old Isleworth, my eye alighted on a house with a circular memorial plaque placed to remember someone significant of whom I had never heard.

–

Arthur Joseph Penty (1875-1937) lived at 59 Church Street in Isleworth between 1926 and his death. The commemorative plaque bears the words:

“Architect and pioneer of Guild Socialism”

Penty was born in York, eldest of the two sons of the architect Walter Green Penty (1852-1902) of York. Arthur first worked in his father’s architectural practice before moving to London in 1902, where he increased his involvement in the Arts and Crafts Movement. Shortly before his move, he met Alfred Richard Orage (1873-1934). He was an influential British socialist and a Theosophist. He edited a journal called “The New Age”, which was inspired by Fabian Socialism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_New_Age).

Old Isleworth

In London, Penty collaborated with the architect Raymond Unwin, who was responsible for much of the planning and design of Hampstead Garden Suburb, whose construction began in about 1904. Penty, working in Unwin’s office, is believed to have designed some of the details of two large buildings, Temple Fortune House and Arcade House, in Temple Fortune, as well as aspects of the so-called ‘Great Wall’ that separates part of the Suburb from the northern edge of Hampstead Heath Extension (www.hgs.org.uk/tour/tour00045000.html).

Apart from architecture, Penty was an important exponent of Guild Socialism. Many of his thoughts on the subject were published in Orage’s “The New Age”. I had never heard of Guild Socialism before seeing Penty’s house in Isleworth. Let me see if I can make any sense of this now long-outdated form of socialism, whose ideas were influenced by the great designer William Morris (1834-1896) and his associates. Guild Socialism opposed capitalism. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica (www.britannica.com/event/Guild-Socialism), Guild Socialism is:

“…a movement that called for workers’ control of industry through a system of national guilds operating in an implied contractual relationship with the public.”

It began in 1906 with the publication of “The Restoration of the Gild System”, written by Penty. The Guild Socialists believed that industry should be owned by the state but controlled by workers through national guilds organised by their members democratically. The system proposed was a kind of nostalgic revival of the mediaeval guild system. During WW1, Guild Socialism was enhanced by the actions of left-wing shop stewards demanding ‘workers’ control’ of the war industries. The movement declined with the onset of the economic slump of 1921 and the subsequent policies of both the Labour and Socialist Parties in Great Britain.  

As Penty neared the end of his life, he became attracted to the ideas of Fascism that were prevalent in the Europe of the 1930s. The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-53509?rskey=IABIgM&result=1) reveals that by the early 1930s, Penty:

“… was attracted to the anti-modernism of the far right. He admired the corporatist* economic organization of Mussolini’s Italy, supported the nationalists in the Spanish Civil War, and interested himself in the ideas of Oswald Mosley. At the same time he denounced Italian imperialism in Abyssinia and rejected Nazism for its racial doctrines and its statism.”

Penty, who dedicated his life to the revival of mediaeval craftsmanship and guilds, died at 59 Church Street in Old Isleworth on the 19th of January 1937. This late 18th century building bears the name “Manor House”. According to one source (http://edithsstreets.blogspot.com/2016/10/riverside-north-of-river-and-west-of_12.html), this is neither the manor house nor is it on the site of the real manor house. It was bought by Michael Penty, who also bought the manor of Isleworth. Michael’s father was Arthur Penty (http://www.panoramaofthethames.com/pott/isleworth-2006/59-church-street-isleworth). His name is on the front door, along with a brass plate bearing the words:

“MICHAEL PENTY Solicitor & Commissioner for Oaths

LORD OF THE MANOR OF ISLEWORTH RECTORY”

Had it been open, we would have enjoyed a drink at the riverside pub, “The London Apprentice”, which is a few steps away from the house where Arthur Penty once lived, but it was closed. However, a short walk away across the Duke of Northumberland’s River, we found a small café called South Street that served beverages and locally made ice-cream to take away.

*Note:

“Corporatism is a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groups, such as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associations, on the basis of their common interests.” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism).

Going without …

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“It’s estimated that 8.5 million people in the UK have now gone “gluten free” and it’s a very fast-growing section of the supermarket with an expanding (and expensive) range of gluten-free alternative foods on sale.” (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-37292174)

Food intolerances can very debilitating to those who suffer from them. Take gluten intolerance, for example. It can cause a variety of uncomfortable and sometimes dangerous symptoms. The incidence of gluten-related medical problems is uncertain. It may be as high as 1 in a 100 people according to one source (https://glutenintoleranceschool.com/gluten-intolerance-statistics/#2), or, possibly not nearly so high. A study published in 2015 (Digestion, 2015;92(1):8-13) found that 86% of patients complaining that they had non-coeliac gluten sensitivity were found to have neither Non Coeliac Gluten Sensitivity, nor Coeliac Disease, nor Wheat Allergy. Whatever the actual figures may be, it is estimated that the incidence of Coeliac Disease in the UK is 1 in 100.

To summarise, the greater majority of people in the UK are unlikely to be intolerant to gluten. You may wonder why I am ‘going on’ about gluten intolerance in this blog. Well here is the reason.

Recently, I visited the superb William Morris Gallery in Walthamstow in north London. It has a beautiful cafeteria overlooking the extensive gardens behind the lovely house where William Morris once lived. I was looking forward to having a hot beverage with a cake or pastry. When I looked at what was on offer, I was surprised. All of the cakes and pastries were labelled as being ‘gluten free’ The only gluten containing item on offer was an unexciting looking scone. I tried a gluten free orange polenta cake, which was just about acceptable.

Afterwards, I wondered why the majority of the baked goods on offer were gluten free when most of the public in the UK are not gluten intolerant. Is there an abnormally high incidence of gluten intolerance in Walthamstow, or does this lovely place attract a large number of visitors who believe themselves to be gluten intolerant without having taken the trouble to have medical tests to confirm or dispel their beliefs?