Brockhampton-by-Ross, Herefordshire

Hidden among the green hills and evergreens of rural Herefordshire is All Saints, Brockhampton, the perfect Arts and Crafts church, built in the first years of the 20th century to the designs of W. R. Lethaby, the architect about whom I enthused in the previous post. Although it’s constructed mainly of local sandstone and looks perfectly at home in its quiet corner of Herefordshire, this church is quite unlike anything else you’ll find locally – or anywhere else.

It’s outstanding in several ways – the resourceful use of materials (timber and thatch as well as stone), the pleasing balance of masses (the two towers, the porch and transept), the careful fit of building and site. More than this, there’s an artful combination of simplicity (the pointed entrance arch, the rectangular window openings on either side of it, the plain thatch of the nave roof) with decoration (the more ornate windows of the tower, transept and chancel, and the decorated chancel thatch). The decoration, in other words, emphasizes the eastern end of the church, the most sacred space where the high altar is placed. Inside, once we’ve got over the pleasant surprise of the sweeping vault (concrete with stone ribs), there’s a similar effect. Looking down the simple nave, one sees the choir beyond, flooded with light from the tower windows above, and beyond it the chancel. This is a holy of holies, but it’s made special not by being screened off from the rest of the building, as a medieval church would have been, but by being beautifully furnished with tapestries, altar hangings, and carvings. It’s lit by a lovely three-light window with a charming Star-of-David-shaped opening above.

The story of the Arts and Crafts movement is a two-fold one. On the one hand there’s the traditionalism – the respect for craftsmanship, the interest in ancient forms, the love of the imagery of nature. On the other hand, there’s the sense in which Lethaby and his peers were pioneering modern design, with bold forms like this church’s vault, and touches like the light fittings that hang from the ceiling. These two sides of the Arts and Crafts movement sometimes seem at odds, but at Brockhampton they fit beautifully together to make a building that’s both fascinating and moving.Detail, font, Brockhampton

Colmore Row, Birmingham

William Richard Lethaby is one of my architectural heroes. Born in Devon in 1857 he served his apprenticeship locally before working for Richard Norman Shaw, one of the most versatile and influential late-Victorian architects. Through Shaw, he met William Morris and joined Morris’s circle, becoming an early member of the SPAB. He was committed to craftsmanship, the tactful treatment of old buildings, and to old-fashioned quality – what he called ‘Good honest building’. As a result he had a significant influence on the Arts and Crafts movement.

He had another side, yearning for a quality of efficiency in building that has led some to see him as a precursor of Le Corbusier and the modernists. ‘A house should be as efficient as a bicycle,’ he said. These two sides of Lethaby come together in interesting ways. His stunning church at Brockhampton-by-Ross, Herefordshire (subject of a post on this blog soon, I hope) has stone walls, thatched roofs – and a concrete vault. And the building illustrated here, one of Birmingham’s finest, is a happy marriage of craftsmanlike detail and rather modern lines. It was built as the offices of the Eagle Insurance Company, though nowadays, in keeping with these sybaritic times, it’s a coffee house. I love the big window, making a bold statement on Colmore Row, and the decorated parapet, which still has its emblematic eagle. The door on the left is simply stunning, a piece of beaten metalwork under a curving stone canopy that must have given Lethaby particular pleasure.
So why isn’t England full of landmark buildings by this fine architect? The rigours of life on site don’t seem to have suited Lethaby that well. Bad experiences managing the construction of the church at Brockhampton caused him major problems – he acted as master builder as well as architect and when things did not go smoothly Lethaby suffered both financial loss and severe mental strain. It was his last building.

But Lethaby had at least three other creative lives. At Westminster Abbey, where he was surveyor to the fabric, he had the chance to put into practice his ideas about restoration. He was also a pioneering educator, founder of the Central School of Art and Design in London and, from 1901, first Professor of Design at the Royal College of Art. Third, he worked in architectural history and theory, publishing on medieval art, on the great church of Hagia Sophia in Istanbul (to get inside of which he apparently had to disguise himself as a woman, the building being closed to western men at the time), and on Architecture, Mysticism, and Myth. That rather odd title perhaps sums up his mixture of interests: like the really great modern artists, he could be very old and very new at once. Hats off to William Richard Lethaby.