Studio: international art (7.1896)

The Revival of English Domestic Architecture

with which Mr. Norman Shaw will be found
most intimately associated. Of the church itself,
one of two only, from this architect's design,
little need be said. It is outside the scope
of these articles, nor does its author attach very
serious importance to it. But the aesthetic colony
in which it is situated, although owing far less
in detail to Mr. Shaw's design than the average
person imagines, is nevertheless the direct out-
come of his intention. Despite the fact that his
personal connection with it was comparatively
brief, the earliest houses were designed by him,
and it has developed in the lines he had laid
down, and in a time exercised an influence on
villadom which could hardly be exaggerated.

In this magazine it would be absurd to describe
the style of architecture for small houses which
Mr. Norman Shaw employed at Bedford Park. But
although the story need not be re-told, since every-
body knows it, there is a danger lest the very fact
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which is so patent to everybody is rated at less
than its intrinsic importance. To use red brick,
and simple painted woodwork externally, to plan
houses first and make the elevations express the
needs of the interior, to leave standing any old
trees that chanced to be on the site, to eschew
mere ornament, and trust to broad, simple effects,
these are the commonplaces of even second-best
architecture to-day. But it was not so in the late
seventies. Not all Mr. Norman Shaw's beautiful
work at Leyes Wood, Merritt Wood, Cragside,
Adcote, or the later houses such as Chesters, which
reveal other qualities as freshly conceived as the
earlier, although on new lines, are likely to have
the same share in moulding the popular taste
as the Bedford Park estate has had already.
Indeed, were it possible to blot out the whole of
the mansions and leave the modest villas, we might
still find that the new revival of domestic architec-
ture was in much the same condition. For one must