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Castles in the Air: Philip Webb’s Rejected Commission for the Earl and Countess of Airlie
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Extract
Almost all of Philip Webb’s work was for a small circle of artists and art-patrons known to one another and, in some cases, related. His reluctance to accept commissions from clients whose taste and judgement were not in sympathy with his has been well documented. He was consistently retiring and self-contained, and during his entire life-work of forty years only fifty to sixty complete buildings, large and small, were erected, an unusually small number. Those who trusted him acquired houses which were unique, each reflecting their own lifestyles and the characteristics of the chosen location; houses which possessed, according to the late John Brandon-Jones, ‘a feeling of reality and solidity that contrasted with the scenic effects achieved by his rivals’ (Fig. 1).
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- Copyright © Society of Architectural Historians of Great Britain 2000
References
Notes
1 Brandon-Jones, John, ‘Philip Webb’, in Ferriday, P. (ed.), Victorian Architecture (London, 1963), p. 260–61Google Scholar.
2 Lethaby, W. R., Philip Webb and His Work (London, 1979), first published 1935, p. iii Google Scholar. For fuller account of the building of Clouds House see Dakers, Caroline, Clouds: The Biography of a Country House (New Haven, 1993)Google Scholar.
3 For fuller account of Blanche Airlie’s salon, also the patronage of George and Rosalind Howard, see Dakers, Caroline, The Holland Park Circle: Artists and Victorian Society (New Haven, 1999)Google Scholar.
4 Webb made alterations to Lowthian Bell’s Washington Hall, County Durham, 1864-65; he designed Red Barns at Redcar for Bell’s son Hugh, 1868; Bell’s new country house Rounton Grange, 1872–76; Smeaton Manor for Bell’s son-in-law Major Godman, 1876; he provided designs for Bell Brothers Ironworks in Port Clarence, Cleveland, 1867 and in Middlesbrough, 1883.
5 Airlie Papers, Blanche, Countess of Airlie to her mother Lady Stanley, 6 August 1868.
6 Ibid.
7 Castle Howard Archives, J22, Philip Webb to George and Rosalind Howard, 10 August 1868.
8 Ibid., J23, Blanche Airlie to Rosalind Howard, 7 November 1868.
9 Airlie Papers, Blanche Airlie to Lady Stanley, 10 December 1868.
10 Ibid.
11 Castle Howard Archives, Rosalind Howard’s diary, 13 March 1869.
12 Ibid., J23, Blanche Airlie to Rosalind Howard, 1 August 1869.
13 Ibid., Lord Airlie to George Howard, 5 November 1869.
14 Ibid., George Howard to Lord Airlie, 6 November 1869.
15 Ibid.
16 Ibid.
17 Airlie Papers, Blanche Airlie to Lady Stanley, 18 November 1869.
18 Ibid., 22 November 1869.
19 Castle Howard Archives, Rosalind Howard’s diary, 9 December 1869.
20 Airlie Papers, Blanche Airlie to Lady Staley, 31 January 1870.
21 Castle Howard Archives, J23, Blanche Airlie to Rosalind Howard, 26 October [n.y.].
22 See Caroline Dakers, The Holland Park Circle, chapter 10.
23 W. R. Lethaby, Philip Webb, p. 112.
23 Private collection, Philip Webb to Percy Wyndham, 28 December 1876.