Francis Goodwin's 'Domestic Architecture' and Two Cockermouth Villas

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Francis Goodwin's 'Domestic Architecture' and Two Cockermouth VillasAuthor(s): Angus TaylorSource: Architectural History, Vol. 28 (1985), pp. 125-135Published by: SAHGB Publications LimitedStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1568529 .

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Francis Goodwin's

'Domestic Architecture'

and two Cockermouth villas by ANGUS TAYLOR

The Rev. William Gilpin, prophet of the Picturesque, visiting the Cumbrian town of Cockermouth in 1766 wrote enthusiastically of its charms: Cockermouth is one of the pleasantest towns in the north of England. It lies in a sinuous extended vale; screened by that circular chain of mountains, Skiddaw and its compeers ... but they do not hang over the vale, they are removed to a proper distance; and form a grand background to all the objects of it. The vale itself is beautiful; consisting of a great variety of ground, and here more adorned with wood than the scenes of the north commonly are. But its greatest ornaments are two rivers, and the ruins of a castle. The rivers [are] both rapid streams [and] at the confluence rises a peninsular knoll . . . upon this stands the ruin of the castle which is among the most magnificent in England. Besides the grand appearance they make on the spot they present an object in various parts of the vale, and dignify some very picturesque scenes. 1

Wordsworth had a special affection for his birthplace and later travellers and architectural writers right up to John Cornforth in 19822 have expressed a similar

feeling for this market town, in spite of changes brought about through its closeness to industrial west Cumberland. This is the setting for two villas of the second quarter of the nineteenth century which have their origin in Francis Goodwin's Domestic Architecture.

Domestic Architecture, Goodwin's first publication, came out in 1833, only two years before his death.3 In this belated attempt to develop a private practice after a lifetime

spent in public and church building, the architect presented fourteen designs ranging from lodges to mansions in 'every legitimate style of Domestic Architecture, as practised in the present age'.4 By this Goodwin intended the whole gamut of

picturesque styles: rustic, gothic, Old English, Grecian and Italianate. One or two, like 'Lissadell', were 'now erecting'; the rest 'have been contrived expressly with reference to the entire practicability of their erection . . . It has long been regretted by those who had a desire to build elegant and convenient dwellings, that no work had been brought out, that could afford satisfactory information upon the subject; namely to supply such elevations and plans, with correct estimates, as might enable them to determine without apprehension, the propriety of employing an architect to accomplish such an

undertaking'.5 So here is Goodwin hoping that readers of his book would be attracted by plates of perspectives, elevations or plans and then find a local architect to interpret them and turn them into reality. In the second volume of his work, of 1834, Goodwin reinforced his aims. This time W. H. Leeds, than whom 'no person we know is more

9



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28:1985

competent', wrote the text. 'The objective is not to instruct the builder or amateur how to build, but to afford the man of wealth an opportunity of choosing the sort of design he would like an architect to prepare and execute for him'.6

An anonymous reviewer of the second volume wrote that 'a great drawback of the book consists in its being entirely without sections or other details which might enable a country builder to carry any of the designs into execution or to compose any designs in a similar style'.7 Goodwin no doubt assumed, not without reason, that any provincial architect or builder would be competent to supply the omissions himself, taking only what he needed from the designs. Goodwin was offering styles, and two of them attracted the notice of someone in Cockermouth, where Design 8, 'Second Villa in the Grecian Style', and Design 9, 'Marine Villa in the Gothic Style', were realized in the mid-eighteen-forties. The questions as to who were the 'men of wealth' and who the 'architects to prepare and execute the designs' have so far only imperfect answers.

Wood's Plan of Cockermouth of 1832 shows that the plot, Croft pasture, at the west end of the town, on which Design 8 was later built was the property of William Rudd, a wealthy attorney of an old Cumberland family. Tithe returns of I 84I8 show that when he died he was living at Derwent House, almost opposite Croft pasture on which there was then no building. What is more, the land was sold in accordance with Rudd's will9 on 9 April 1844, when it was bought by Thomas Wilson, a successful hat manufacturor of Market Street and himself undoubtedly a 'man of wealth'.10 He had been 'left to his own resources in early youth [and] by a steady course of diligence, integrity and enterprise raised himself to an affluent and honourable position in society'. 1

It does then seem that it was Thomas Wilson who had Design 8 (Pls Ia and 5a), built for him as his family homel2 soon after 1844. What then can be the explanation of the glass in the staircase dome? This would be one of the last fittings in the house and yet its decorative motifs, apart from the hive of bees in the centre, are a cross botone alternating in the panels with a lion rampant in a shield. These latter are the arms and crest of the Rudds, or nearly so for the Rudd lion is gules not azure and the shield omits a canton.13 The Wilsons were not armigerous and there seems to be no satisfactory explanation for this anomaly.

The new house (Pls Ib and 5c) was known as Grecian Villa as early as I88214 and perhaps from the beginning, taking its name naturally from Goodwin's title for Design 8.

The facade of Grecian Villa is essentially Goodwin's design. Assuming that the modifications to the published elevation and the reordering of the interior were not made by Goodwin himself before his death, who was responsible? He was certainly a capable designer, sensitive to Goodwin's idiom and it is worth noting that two of the architect's former pupils had connections with Cumbria. Benjamin Baud designed the mausoleum at Lowther in I85715 and Thomas Allom travelled extensively in the northern counties in the early I830s drawing the plates for Thomas Rose's Westmorland, Cumberland, Durham and Northumberland, published in 1832, in which a view of Cockermouth forms plate 8.16 There was one architect working in Cockermouth who, in 1835-38, designed and built a new market 'in the style of St. John's Market, Liverpool'.17 This was John Dent and the market is his only accredited design, although he may well be the architect of the Doric Town Hall (1841) and other

I26



FRANCIS GOODWIN'S 'DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE'

anonymous Grecian buildings in the town. The Ionic former Savings Bank (1846) is however by Charles Eaglesfield of Maryport. 18 On the available evidence either Dent or Eaglesfield must be considered and most likely executant of Goodwin's design.

The memorable fasade, set back from the street behind a small garden of'one of the two best houses in the town'19 is entirely characteristic of its author, a man who was considered by C. R. Cockerell as 'certainly not a gentleman in his works'20 and who has attracted the epithets alarming, heroic, gargantuan, over-charged, racy, caricatured, resourceful, inventive, forbidding and grotesque. His Town Hall at Manchester (i 822-25) has been considered 'more important than Smirke's Shire Hall, Hereford, or Council House, Bristol' in the history of the Greek revival and 'an attempt to do for secular architecture what Inwood had just done for ecclesiastical'.21 Goodwin has been called 'truly a man of genius, seizing the characteristics of a style and applying them in the most powerful manner... sometimes for Grandeur [he] beats everything'.22 Certainly it is these attributes that attract attention in the largely vernacular setting of Cockermouth.

This was not the first realization of Goodwin's design. As he states in Domestic Architecture, he 'erected a structure in this style . . . for the Rev. William Leigh' as a

parsonage at Bilston in Staffordshire. In fact Bilston parsonage (Pls 2 and 5b) is earlier than might be guessed from Goodwin's words. When he designed the Grecian St Leonards at Bilston in I824-2623 a 'new and elegant parsonage house was previously erected by the Rev. Mr. Leigh at the cost of ?Iooo'.24 The date must have been about 1822, SO we may take it that Design 8 of ten years later was a reworking of the simpler parsonage, which is smaller, has plain sash windows and no sculptural enrichments. Goodwin gave the cost of the parsonage as ?I,270 but the estimate for the design he set at ?2,460.

The perspective view of the design in Domestic Architecture is 'most elegantly presented in aquatint so that we may assume we see [it] as he intended [it] should look'.25 The principle facade is an elaborately worked out rectilinear essay in shallow relief, scanned by a giant order of pilasters and carried out at Cockermouth in fine ashlar. It is not precisely as Goodwin shows it. The upper windows have been changed from a simple sash to tripartite openings like those of the ground floor but with console brackets taking the place of simple abaci. The carved frieze too has been extended right across with a rich anthemion-based design. The square piers of the porch in Goodwin's book have been replaced by an unfluted Ionic order so that the elevation of the centre bay is a reversal of that of the hall screen at Lissadell Court (I830-35).26 The west elevation of Grecian Villa is also ashlar, of four bays to the design's three and without the internal antae. Inside the house the unimaginative plan has been modified and a spacious inner hall with an open circular staircase lit by a dome rising at the back replaces the corridor and tucked-away stairs of Goodwin's original. The handrail is floridly cast-iron and here and elsewhere are heavy cornices with elephantine consoles to support the ceilings of the bay windows. All original chimney-pieces have been removed but are remembered as being of black marble.

At almost the same moment as this enriched version of Design 8 was rising on the edge of the town another house (P1. 3b) was going up on the hill across the river.27 Now known as Hames Hall it was built as Derwent Bank for the attorney John Steel (1788-

127



ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28:I985

1868) by, it is said, Sir Robert Smirke in I846.28 There is no evidence for this attribution29 and Smirke had given up his practice in I845. As at Grecian Villa we may imagine the same local architect choosing with his client another design from Good- win's book. For there can be no doubt that Derwent Bank was also derived from Domestic Architecture, in this case Design 9, 'Marine Villa in the Gothic Style' (P1. 3a).

As in its contrasting style - Tudor (Gothic is Goodwin's word) with military touches - so too in its setting in a small but picturesquely undulating park Derwent Bank is the antithesis of Grecian Villa, something entirely consistent with the purposes of Goodwin's book. Like Grecian Villa it is of three bays by four, but where the service

wing of the former is hidden behind the house, as the site demanded, and plays no part in the design - in Domestic Architecture it is concealed by shrubberies - at Derwent Bank the long north wing is essential to the picturesque composition. In Design 9 too a

slightly more elaborate wing of varying recession plays its part to the left of the entrance front. The centre bay of this front projects slightly and rises higher than the side bays. It is flanked by slim octagonal turrets and between these on the first floor is an oriel above a projecting porch. This latter has a crenellated gable over a four-centred arch and from the carved stops of the hood-mould over the arch vertical members rise to join the gable moulding.30 All this is matched at Derwent Bank with no more than minor variations. The curious battlements of the design with their round-headed merlons,31 survive in the porch of the house and the fenestration has become symmet- rical where in the design it is not quite so. Parallels in the garden front are as striking. In the first section with its large canted bay and a window sequence of one-light, two-

lights, one-light all under one continuous hood-mould design and house exactly correspond. In both too the next bay projects slightly with a two-light over a three-

light window. The elevation ends in an octagonal tower. In the design this is higher than at Derwent Bank and has an attached turret rising higher still, but the hood- moulds rising and falling busily over windows and shields are common to both. Goodwin gives no pattern for a rear elevation and that of the house is uneventful.32 Inside, the plan shows a staircase leading off the hall at right-angles as it does at Derwent Bank, but Goodwin lights it from a lantern whereas at the house it has a large gothic window in the north wall.33

Not only in remote Cockermouth but elsewhere in the north of England Domestic Architecture was put to use as its author intended and two suburban Yorkshire villas also have their starting points in Design 8.

In Leeds, 49 Headingley Lane (Pls 4a and 5d) is less uncompromisingly Greek than the Cockermouth villa, but the central loggia with its Ionic (here fluted) order is at once recognizable. The console brackets of the upper opening have been reduced to decorative relief carving on a continuous square lintel and the balconies of the windows flanking this have probably been taken from Design 7, another Grecian villa. Inside is a circular central domed hall with a gallery at first-floor level. All details ofjoinery and plaster-work are characteristic of the Greek Revival. 34 The house can be dated c. 183 5; it does not appear on Danson's Map of Leeds of 1832 but is marked on Barnes & Newsome's of 1839.

Goodwin was known in Leeds where he had designed the Central Market, built between 1824 and I827,35 and competed for the Commercial Buildings in I825.36 In

I28



FRANCIS GOODWIN'S 'DOMESTIC ARCHITECTURE'

Bradford too he makes an appearance. In 1827-28 he provided designs for a suite of Public Rooms for the Philosophical Society.37 These were in a plain version of his Greek style with a Doric porch in antis in Piccadilly and a pilastered apse to Kirkgate. 38 The vice-president of the Society was J. G. Horsfall, a prominent worsted manufac- turer who introduced power-looms to Bradford in about 1826. In 1830 he bought a thirty-five acre estate at Manningham, to the north and built himself a house, Bolton Royd (P1. 4b). This three-bay villa, similar in size and disposition (its plan is a near mirror-image) to Design 8 has a Greek Doric porch instead of the double loggia. The motif of paired consoles is here carved on the lintels of all three upper windows at the front.39 Inside the plasterwork is Grecian but the white Carrara chimneypieces40 have been removed.

It seems likely that in Leeds and Bradford it was the example of Goodwin's public buildings which, a few years later, led to the use of Domestic Architecture by local architects.41 In Cockermouth, however, its adoption is less easily explained.42

NOTES

I William Gilpin, Observations . . . Particularly the Highlands ofScotland (1789), II, I48-49. 2 Country Life, I6 and 23 December 1982. 3 Francis Goodwin, Domestic Architecture, (I833). Volume II appeared in 1834 and the work was reissued with a supplement as Rural Architecture in 1835. There were posthumous editions in 1843 and I85o. 4 Domestic Architecture, p. viii. 5 Ibid., Design 8, preamble. 6 J. Loudon, The Architectural Magazine (1834-38), I, 132-36. Leeds is thought to have written articles in the magazine including those hostile to Greek Revival architecture. Goodwin's anonymous reviewer has little good to say of his Greek designs reserving his approval for the 'Old English' ones. 7 Ibid. 8 The map used was surveyed by Jonathan Stanwix in 1839 (Cumbria Record Office, Carlisle). 9 Borthwick Institute, York, Will of William Rudd. 10 When Wordsworth was raising subscriptions for a new church in Cockermouth Wilson offered ?Ioo. (Letters of W. and D. Wordsworth, 2nd edn vI, pt 3 (1982), 295, W. Wordsworth toJoshua Watson, 26 September 1836.

I From his monumental inscription in All Saints church. 12 J. B. Bradbury, A History of Cockermouth (Isle of White, 1981), p. 183. The Wilsons came from Belfast but Thomas was born in Cockermouth in 1791. 13 The tombstone ofJohn Rudd, William's brother, at Blyth, Notts. has only a cross botone. 14 Porter, Directory of Whitehaven (1882). 15 N. Pevsner, The Buildings of England: Cumberland and Westmorland (Harmondsworth, I967), p. 273, where he is called Band. The carving is by Thomas and/orJames Nelson of Carlisle (R. Gunnis, Dictionary of British Sculptors, 166o-1851, n.d., p. 271. I6 WithJohn Weightman he designed the William Brown Library, Liverpool, in 1857. N. Pevsner, The Buildings ofEngland: South Lancashire (Harmondsworth, I969), p. 159. 17 J. Askew, A Guide to Cockermouth (Cockermouth, 1866), p. 6. John Foster's plans for the market, opened in 1822, were published in the Architectural Magazine, II (1835), 129. It was a utilitarian structure with Ionic columns marking the entrances. Dent may well have subscribed to Loudon's publication. i8 Recorded in a Minute Book for that year formerly at the bank. He built the gothic Methodist church in i850 (Askew, op. cit. p. 5). 19 Pevsner, Cumberland and Westmorland, p. 109. The other is Wordsworth House, mid-eighteenth-century. 20 On visiting Goodwin's gaol at Derby when building in 1825. Quoted in J. M. Crook, The Greek Revival (1972), p. 126. 21 J. Summerson, Architecture in Britain, 1530-1830, 4th ed. (Harmondsworth, 1963), p. 310. 22 Cockerell in Crook, loc. cit. 23 Plans 1824, completed 1826. G. T. Lawley, A History ofBilston (Bilston, 1893), pp. 178, i80. 24 Ibid. p. I27. The money came from Queen Anne's Bounty. The house is rendered. 25 H-R. Hitchcock, Early Victorian Architecture (1954), II, 33. The plate was coloured only in later editions. 26 Country Life, 6 October I977, p. 915, fig. 4.

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ARCHITECTURAL HISTORY 28:1985

27 Tuscan Villa in nearby Workington is said to be by the same builder as Grecian Villa. In spite of its name it is a gabled Tudor house with bizarre details very much in Goodwin's style. Built before 1847 when John Guy lived there. (Mannex & Whellan, History, Gazetteer & Directory of Cumberland (Beverley, 1847) ), p. I47. 28 An attribution repeated by Pevsner (Cumberland and Westmorland, p. o09). 29 H. Colvin, Dictionary ofBritish Architects, 1600-1840 (1978), p. 741, His last domestic work was the completion of Stafford House, 1835-38 (ibid., p. 746). However Sydney Smirke worked in Cumberland, e.g. extending his elder brother's Edmond Castle (1824-26) in 1844-48. (Designs at the castle.). 30 An unusual feature used also in Design 6. 31 Goodwin probably derived this detail from the balustrades of late sixteenth-century houses, e.g. Moreton Corbet, Salop (1579), Heath Old Hall, Yorks., and Barlborough Hall, Derbyshire (both 58os). 32 There is a detached crenellated round tower at this side of the house. 33 Goodwin recommended neither Greek nor Gothic for the Lakes but Italianate. On the hill above Grecian Villa its balconied facade facing the mountains stands Holmewood, a towered asymmetrical Italian villa which fulfills many of the requirements of the text of Design I 3. It was built as late as I866 for Joseph Brown by an unknown architect. The earliest Italianate building in the Lakes was probably the Royal Hotel, Bowness, enlarged and remodelled in 1839 by George Webster for the visit of Queen Adelaide in 1840. 34 The pattern of the cast-iron gallery railing occurs elsewhere in the area at e.g. Leeds, Woodhouse House, and Wakefield, StJohn's North. 35 Colvin, op. cit., p. 353. 36 John Clark's design was chosen (D. Linstrum, West Yorkshire, Architects and Architecture (1978), p. 332). For Goodwin's involvement with work for the Church Commissioners in Leeds see Architectural History, I (1958), 61-72. 37 Colvin, loc. cit. 38 The building survives, much altered. The pilastered apsed facade to Kirkgate was rebuilt to a rectangular plan and the Piccadilly front refenestrated in the nineteenth century when two storeys were converted to three. 39 The anonymous author of A Series of Picturesque Views of Castles and Country Houses in Yorkshire (Bradford, 1885), n.p., states that the facade was reconstructed in 1862 when it was bought by a Mr Anderton, but this must refer to the attached wing with its Frenchy pavilion roof. No architects are recorded. 40 Ibid. 41 Goodwin's assistant, John King, was last noted in 1829 as an exhibitor at the RA (Colvin, op. cit., p. 495). J. King was practising as an architect in Bradford about 1840 (Piggot's National and Commercial Directory, 1841). This is probably no more than coincidence and no buildings by him seem to be recorded. Goodwin's influence in Bradford can be seen in the warehouses facing the Public Rooms in Piccadilly by James Richardby, I830-34 (Linstrum, op. cit., p. 383) and in Perkin and Backhouse's now demolished Mechanics' Institute, 839-40. 42 See note I7 above.

I30



P 1. ..

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P1. ia Francis Goodwin, Domestic Architecture, Villa in the Grecian style, Design No. 8, Pl. 21

P1. ib Cockermouth, Grecian Villa



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P1. 2 Bilston Rectory

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P1. 3a Francis Goodwin, Domestic Architecture, Marine Villa in the Gothic Style, Design No. 9, Pl. 24

P1. 3b Cockermouth, Derwent Bank (Hames Hall),from the south-west



P1. 4a Leeds, 49 Headingley Lane

P1. 4b Bradford, Bolton Royd, 288 Manningham Lane



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0 10 20 30 40 feet I I I i X

P1. 5a-d Plans: Top left, Domestic Architecture, Design No. 8, Pl. 22; top right, Bilston Rectory; above left, Cockermouth, Grecian villa; above right, Leeds, 49 Headingley Lane

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Documents

Francis Goodwin's 'Domestic Architecture' and Two Cockermouth Villas