Bishopsbarns, ST George's Place, York

Walter Brierley built Bishopsbarns in 1906 for his own occupation, commissioning Gertrude Jekyll to design the garden. It is built of handmade bricks and tiles, set back behind a cobbled forecourt of pebbles from the beach at Flamborough. The house still boasts many of its original features including elaborate plasterwork by George Bankart, gun metal fire grates with Hoptonwood stone surrounds and timber mantles, oak woodblock floors and panelling. There is brass door furniture and leaded lights.  Accommodation comprised entrance hall, cloakroom, sitting room, study drawing room, garden hall, dining room, kitchen, two larders, pantry, a butler’s pantry and cellars. There are five first floor bedrooms, three bathrooms and a laundry room. On the second floor, there are two bedrooms plus a sitting room and bathroom. The south-facing, three-quarters of an acre garden was divided into a series of “garden rooms,” with herringbone brick paths and a central bowling green still surrounded by the original yew hedging, a tennis lawn and rose garden.

BISHOPSBARNS derives its delightful name not from any barnlike quality in itself, but from the fact that its site belonged to the See of York, and that barns were on the spot where the house is. It stands in a suburb of York, but Mr. Brierley has so ingeniously placed it on its site that it lacks no country quality either in plan or treatment. As the site is not deep from north to south, no attempt was made to secure a front garden, but the house is set back from the road just so much as was needful to provide an open fore- court. This has been paved with black and white pebbles from the beach at  Flamborough in a design of plain chequers, which have this large advantage, that they give an air of coolness to a colour scheme dominated by the rich red brick of the house itself. Such paving has the practical advantage that it needs no up-keep as does a gravel drive. We pass through a lobby into the staircase hall, separated from the sitting hall by a screen of stout square – wrought balusters. Here and elsewhere throughout the house, panelling and doors have the look of satinwood, but they are made of Kauri pine untouched save for elbow and wax polishing. This is an admirable treatment and inexpensive for the charming effect it gives, but it is possible only if done in picked pine, free from defects and perfectly seasoned. The sitting hall is a good room to sit in, and looks out through a long range of casements to the brick parlour or loggia which faces due south. The fireplace is of unpolished Hopton Wood stone, a material of so quiet a colour that one marvels it is not more generally used for

such purposes. Separated from the sitting hall by wide folding doors is the drawing room. On the other side of the sitting hall is the dining room, with doors both from the entrance hall and from the kitchen quarters. The loggia or brick parlour is so spacious that in summer many meals are taken there. As it is set under the main roof and thus protected fully from east and west, it is practical in every way. In this word "practical" one reads the reason for success at Bishopsbarns. The arrangement of the house is a compendium of domestic comfort, and makes for a perfect organisation of household affairs. The kitchen is a business kitchen, with a capacious sink, and the larder and pots-room open from it. There is no scullery, and none is needed, for all work is done in the kitchen, and the servants' sitting-room is the place for their meals. This plan need not absorb more space than the provision of a scullery involves, and it adds vastly to the servants' comfort. The tradesman's entrance is well away from the kitchen, which is placed so that there is no traffic through it, and the art and mystery of cooking can thus be pursued without interruption. In the housemaid's pantry there are three sets of cupboards,for glass, silver and china respectively. The lower range is kept for the things in daily use, the upper series is consecrated to spare sets. Here is fixed a gas stove, a thoughtful arrangement which prevents the kitchen being disturbed by so light a matter as the preparation of afternoon tea, and leaves the field clear for the later solemnities of dinner. Next to this pantry is the storeroom, a sanctuary of capacious cupboards, where also flowers may be arranged. Altogether it would be difficult to devise a plan for the working quarters of a house more convenient for their purposes. We go upstairs by a simple, spacious stairway, to find a scheme of floors which has many merits. The corridor runs east and west, and, with the outer hall below, divides the house in an ingenious fashion which gives a first floor only on the south side, where are the principal bedrooms, and first and second floors on the north side. The first of the latter is taken up chiefly by storerooms, housemaid's room, etc., and the second by the servants' bedrooms. This enables the ground floor and first floor rooms on the south side to be lofty (a necessary condition where, as in the drawing-room, the ceiling is arched). At the same time, it gives plenty of light and pleasant rooms on the north, for the extra space on that side is gained by keeping the ground floor offices low, height being there needless and, indeed, wasteful. The exterior of the house is characterised by that breadth of treatment and sedulous care for sound building which belong to the architectural traditions of Yorkshire, and find no more successful exponent than Mr. Walter Brierley. A great architect of the last century, who lacked a reputation for designing cheap buildings, used to say, " People forget about the expense of building. They never forget bad work, for it is always there to remind them." There is a massive common sense about this observation, which one wishes could make it more widely accepted by those who build. It has obviously been in this spirit that Mr. Brierley designs for himself and others.

Anthony Trollope made a jesting reference to an architectural truth when he commented on the taste in dress of one of his characters, “She well knew the great architectural secret of decorating her constructions, and never descended to construct a decoration." At Bishopsbarns there is no line and no decoration that does not arise out of the nature of the materials and their workmanlike use. Both bricks and tiles are hand-made; the former are only 2 inches thick and of a rich red, while the latter are a full inch thick and have weathered to a dark brown. Ignorance in the right use of materials drives people to make bricks thick when they should be thin, and tiles thin when they should be thick. For the garden at Bishopsbarns there can be nothing but praise, for though it is small the best use has been made of the available space, and its planting was devised by Miss Jekyll. It is superfluous to say more than that the colour schemes are worthy of her, and that for summer and winter alike they were worked out in consummate detail. Sitting in the loggia, one sees across the warm brick paving of the path the grey of stachys receding through the light turquoise of Japanese iris and the powerful blues of delphinium to the backing of deep green in the trim yew hedge. Fine play is made with lupins, and enough can be seen to establish for Bishopsbarns the charm of its setting. [L Weaver: Small Country Houses of Today page 145-150]