Unexecuted Design for a house on Windermere Cumberland

This unexecuted design for a luxurious house on Windermere, showing very clearly its American Shingle Style antecedents, provoked a caustic letter from M H Baillie Scott to the Builder’s Journal in 1901. Parker and Unwin had made the design for the Manchester brewer Edward Holt, but he had been dissatisfied and had instead engaged Baillie Scott, whose design for 'Blackwell' was completed in 1901 Then on the 18 September 1901, the Daily Mail published a review of Parker and Unwin's new book The Art of Building a Home (1901) The review illustrated three designs by Parker and Unwin each with price tags affixed to their roofs, and this perspective appeared with the caption 'A £10,000 Artistic House, built upon the same general plan as a middle class residence, but embellished in an extremely sumptuous manner inside and out' The theme of the review was that for the sum of £500 a man of moderate income could obtain as pleasant a house as the huge residence costing £10,000. Baillie Scott strongly objected to this form of advertising under the general title 'How to Build your House; Concerning the Coming Revolution in Domestic Architecture', and on the 25 September 1901, wrote a sharp letter to the Builder's Journal 'Sir, Have you observed the coming revolution in domestic architecture as set forth in the Daily Mail Have you noticed the new construction in our £l0,000 article where arches appear without abutments and stone gables rest on glass? One assumes a chapter 'On the Constructional Use of Window Panes'  .... Here is a very superior article indeed at £10,000 in which we have introduced the 'new construction' No, it is not imported from America; it is of home manufacture, I assure you, Madame, all the work of our Mr De Piarcy Sharper. But excuse me, did you not tell me just now that Mr De Shaiper was an architect? Quite so, Madame. But I thought architects weren't supposed to advertise? Ah, Madame, that was before the revolution in domestic architecture. We have changed all that now! Yours truly, M H Baillie Scott.' One wonders  if Baillie Scott knew that the £10,000 house illustrated was Parker and Unwin's rejected design for Edward Holt and which he had supplanted.

Parker and Unwin, together with Baillie Scott, pioneered the use of open plan living rooms in England. In this rather overstretched design the Hall has become the main living area of the house, and its spaces have been run together in the manner of the American 'Shingle Style houses which were increasingly published in the English journals in the late 1880s. They said that if your big room is to be comfortable it must have recesses. There is a great charm in a room broken up.in plan, where that slight feeling of mystery is given to it which arises when you cannot see the whole room from any one position which you are likely to sit: when there is always something round the corner' (The Art of Building a Home 1901). The drawing also shows Parker's odd style of draughtsmanship which is characterised by a method of cross- hatching which often disturbs the planes of the perspective but adds to a feeling of rough-hewn simplicity.

Reference    The Craftsman  Volume XXI November 1911 page 177; Modern country homes in England: number nineteen, Parker, Barry pp. 165-179
Illustration    RIBA - Design for a house on Windermere, Cumberland, for Edward Holt, c..1897 1898. Pen on card (365 x 445).
Illustration    Preliminary sketch for a house on Windermere : The main entrance. [The Craftsman November 1911, page 177].