C. H. B. Quennell (1872-1935): Architecture, history and the quest for the modern

Architectural History

Volumn 50, Issue , 2007, Pages 211-246

  McKellar, Elizabeth ^a  

^a NONE

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EID: 60949602334     PISSN: 0066622X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0066622x00002938     Document Type: Review

References (155)

1. Jeremy Gould, 'Modern Houses in Britain, 1919-1939', Architectural History Monograph, 1 (1977), p. 8.
2. Alastair Service, Victorian and Edwardian Hampstead (London, 1989), pp. 53-67;
3. Nick Collins, 'C. H. B. Quennell - A Legacy Protected?' (unpublished Historic Conservation MSc thesis, Oxford Brookes University, 2003), which includes the most comprehensive list to date of Quennell's surviving buildings;
4. Graham Thurgood, 'Silver End Garden Village 1926-32', Thirties Society Journal, 3 (1982), pp. 36-41.
5. 'Obituary', The Times, 7 December 1935.
6. The Times, 30 April 1938;
7. 'Obituary', The Times, 4 August 1972.
8. James B. Denigan, 'Sir Peter Courtney Quennell 1905-93', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004-05).
9. Peter Quennell, The Marble Foot, An Autobiography 1903-38 (London, 1976).
10. The main sources for information on Quennell's life and career in addition to those given above are RIBA Biography File and the following obituaries: Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 21 December 1935' pp. 211-12;
11. The Architects' Journal, 12 December 1935, p. 872;
12. The Builder, 13 December 1935, p. 1055.
13. P. Quennell, The Marble Foot, pp. 17-18; the name of the school is not given.
14. For information on Sedding's office, see Margaret Richardson, Architects of the Arts and Crafts Movement (London, 1983), pp. 71-75.
15. 'Obituary', by W. D. Quennell, The Times, 14 December 1935.
16. C. H. B. Quennnell, 'English Domestic Architecture', Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art (1910), p. 14.
17. This suggests that he followed the Art Workers' Guild line in the debate over architectural education in the 1890s. See R. Norman Shaw and T. G. Jackson, Architecture: A Profession or an Art? (London, 1892)
18. and R. MacLeod, Style and Society: Architectural Ideology in Britain, 1835-1914 (London, 1971).
19. Hermann Muthesius, The English House (original German edn, Berlin, 1904-05; English edn, London, 1979), pp. 185-86 for examples.
20. Noel Carrington, Industrial Design in Britain (London, 1976), p. 38.
21. Architectural Review, 51 (1922), pp. 154-55.
22. See J. H. Elder Duncan, Country Cottages and Weekend Homes (London, 1906). The houses are at Sutton Veny, Wiltshire; Farnborough, Hampshire; Camberley, Surrey; Heyshott, Sussex; Purley, Surrey; Wickham Bishops, Essex; and Northwood, Middlesex. Quennell built a substantial number of large houses in Northwood, an outer London suburb.
23. Modern Building Record, 6 (1915), pp. 32-33.
24. Modern Building Record, 4 (1913), pp. 76-79.
25. The scheme was not completed until 1927: see The Builder, 25 March 1927, pp. 480, 484-87, which also illustrates an elementary school by Quennell at Mason's Hill, Bromley, Kent (p. 487).
26. RIBA Council, 1912-15; Board of Architectural Education, 1928-30; Town Planning Committee, 1914-25.
27. Bridget Cherry and Nikolaus Pevsner, The Buildings of England. London 4: North (London, 1998), p. 231.
28. A. S. Gray, A Biographical Dictionary of Edwardian Architecture (London, 1985), p. 299.
29. See, for example, Reginald Blomfield, History of Renaissance Architecture in England 1500-1800 (London, 1897);
30. J. A. Gotch, Early Renaissance Architecture in England (London, 1901);
31. Mervyn Macartney and John Belcher, Later Renaissance Architecture in England: A Series of Examples of Domestic Buildings Erected Subsequent to the Elizabethan Period (London, 1898-1901);
32. Albert Richardson, Monumental Classic Architecture (London, 1910).
33. For a discussion, see David Watkin, The Rise of Architectural History (London, 1980), ch. 4
34. and on neo-Georgian domestic designs, Alastair Service, Edwardian Architecture (London, 1977), ch. 12.
35. For a more in-depth exploration of contemporary attitudes to the Georgian, see Elizabeth McKellar, 'Representing the Georgian: Constructing Interiors in Early Twentieth-Century Publications, 1890-1930', Journal of Design History (Autumn 2007).
36. 'Architecture and Crafts at the Royal Academy', The Architectural Review, 6 (July 1899), Special supplement, 3rd series, 30:2.
37. The idea that late seventeenth-century Classicism could be assimilated as a native English style was first developed by J. J. Stevenson and Basil Champneys in the 1870s. See Mark Girouard, Sweetness and Light: The 'Queen Anne' Movement, 1860-1900 (Oxford, 1977), pp. 61-62.
38. Marjorie and C. H. B. Quennell, A History of Everyday Things in England 1500-1799, 1960 edn (London, 1919), 2, p. 206.
39. This provides an example of what his son called his 'jackdaw-mind', (P. Quennell, The Marble Foot, p. 86).
40. The passage echoes a review by Halsey Ricardo of Belcher and Macartney's Later Renaissance Architecture, in which Ricardo wrote that, 'The doctor's and the lawyer's house in nearly every country town is as good as - and often a great deal better than - the Highworth example shown'. The Architectural Review, 4 (1898), pp. 270-71.
41. The British Architect, 50 (1898), pp. 112 and 166.
42. C. H. B. Quennell, Studio Yearbook of Decorative Art, p. 2.
43. Jefferson Hunter, Edwardian Fiction (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1982), pp. 161-62.
44. Jose Harris, Private Lives, Public Spirit: Britain 1870-1914 (London, 1994), p. 5.
45. C. H. B. Quennell, Modern Suburban Houses: A Series of Examples Erected at Hampstead & Elsewhere from Designs by C. H. B. Quennell (London, 1906), Introductory Notes, p. vii.
46. On Quennell's sensitivity to landscape, see Duncan, Country Cottages, which includes a house in Northwood 'built round a corner with the object of saving a fine old tree' (p. 131).
47. C. H. B. Quennell, Modern Suburban Houses, p. viii.
48. Muthesius, The English House, pp. 71-74.
49. He returned to the theme again, see 'Preparing for Peace. V - The Building Trade and Land Tenure', The Architects' and Builders' Journal, 13 March 1918, pp. 112-13.
50. For reports of the conference, see Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 17 (1909-10), pp. 775-97;
51. Town Planning Review, 1:3 (1910), pp. 178-97.
52. For transcriptions of the papers and details of the accompanying exhibition, see Town Planning Conference, London 10-15 October 1910, Transactions, RIBA (London, 1910).
53. Obituary, Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 21 December 1935, p. 212.
54. W. R. Lethaby, 'Modern German Architecture and What We May Learn from It', in Form and Civilization: Collected Papers on Art and Labour (London, 1922), pp. 96-105.
55. On contacts between England and Germany, see Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture (London, 1995), ch.8.
56. C. H. B. Quennell, Studio Yearbook, p. 1.
57. A. W. N. Pugin, True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841), pp. 585-89.
58. See Pugin, True Principles (Reading, 2003 edn), Introduction by Timothy Brittain-Catlin, p. v.
59. See Otto Wagner, Moderne Architektur (1894), trans. Harry Francis Margrave (Santa Monica, California, 1988);
60. Hermann Muthesius, Stilarchitecktur und Baukunst (Berlin, 1903);
61. Adolf Opel (ed.), Adolf Loos - Ornament and Crime: Selected Essays (Riverside, California, 1998).
62. Marjorie and C H. B. Quennell, The Good New Days (London, 1935) provides a passing mention of his visit to Germany (p. 62).
63. C R. Ashbee also became interested in mass-production in the pre-War period. See Raymond Plummer, Nothing Need be Ugly - the First 70 Years of the DIA (London, 1985), pp. 1-2, and Carrington, industrial Design, who relates that he went on to become a founder of MARS in 1933 (p. 27).
64. For Lethaby's theories on the modern, see Gillian Naylor, 'Lethaby and the Myth of Modernism', in W. R. Lethaby 1857-1931: Architecture, Design and Education, ed. Sylvia Backemeyer and Theresa Gronberg (London, 1984), pp. 42-48.
65. For Lethaby's writings more generally, see Peter Fuller's essay in W. R. Lethaby 1857-1931, pp. 32-41
66. and Godfrey Rubens, William Richard Lethaby: His Life and Work 1857-1931 (London, 1986), ch. 9.
67. Lethaby, 'The Architecture of Adventure', in Form and Civilization, p. 95.
68. Both of these essays were reproduced in Form and Civilization. The quote on 'Efficiency Style' is from 'Design and Industry', p. 51.
69. Peter Davey, Arts and Crafts Architecture: The Search for Earthly Paradise (London, 1980), p. 108.
70. On the Foreign Architectural Book, see Ian Horton, 'The Foreign Architectural Book Society and architectural élitism' (unpublished PhD, Open University, 1998). I am grateful to Tim Benton for this reference.
71. On the DIA, see Carrington, Industrial Design;
72. Plummer, Nothing Need be Ugly;
73. and Julian Holder, '"Design in Everyday Things": Promoting Modernism in Britain, 1912-1944', in Modernism in Design, ed. Paul Greenhalgh (London, 1980), pp. 123-44.
74. It did not contain any works by Adolf Loos, who was the sworn enemy of these groups, although he is mentioned in the introductory essay by Levetus. See A. S. Levetus, 'Austrian Architecture and Decoration', Studio Yearbook (1910), p. 219.
75. F. H. Crittall, Fifty Years of Work and Play (London, 1934).
76. Modern Building Record, 3 (1912), pp. 300-02. The contractor was George Hart.
77. For Wickham Bishops, see Ariel Crittall, 'The Story of the Crittall Family', in David J. Blake, Window Vision (1989), p. 180.
78. This is presumably the house illustrated in Duncan, Country Cottages, pp. 132 and 167. Crittall's house was at the other end of the New London Road (at the junction with Moulsham Street) and was built in association with the local firm of Charles and W. H. Pertwee in 1912. Information kindly supplied by James Bettley, derived from drawings in the Essex Record Office.
79. Crittall, 'The Story of the Crittall Family', p. 182.
80. 'In Memorium. Christine Elizabeth Crittall', St Hugh's College Chronicle (Oxford, 2005-06), pp. 81-83.
81. C. H. B. Quennell, 'The Case for Modern Furniture', in The House and its Equipment, ed. Lawrence Weaver (London, 1912), p. 56.
82. C. H. B. Quennell, 'The Case for Modern Furniture', pp. 59-60.
83. Hunter, Edwardian Fiction.
84. C. H. B. Quennell, 'Kitchens and Sculleries', in Weaver, The House and its Equipment, pp. 89-90.
85. G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency (Oxford, 1971), p. 193.
86. Charles S. Maier, 'Between Taylorism and Technocracy: European Ideologies and the Vision of Industrial Productivity in the 1920's', Journal of Contemporary History, 5:2 (1970), pp. 27-61.
87. Le Corbusier, for example, only became interested in Taylor's ideas once the War had begun: Mary McLeod, '"Architecture or Revolution": Taylorism, Technocracy and Social Change', Art Journal, 43/12 (1983), pp. 132-47.
88. 'Obituary', Journal of the RIBA, 21 December 1935, pp. 211-12.
89. Lawrence Weaver, Small Country Houses of Today (London, 1911), p. 133.
90. Lawrence Weaver, 'The Children's Attic', in Weaver, The House and its Equipment, pp. 50-51.
91. Weaver, 'The Children's Attic', p. 51.
92. Architectural Review, 39 (1916), pp. 64 and 78-79.
93. The standard account is Mark Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes: The Politics and Architecture of Early State Housing in Britain (London, 1981).
94. C. H. B. Quennell review of Stanley Ramsey, 'Small Houses of the Late Georgian Period 1750-1820', Architectural Review, 46 (August 1919), pp. 49-51.
95. Charles Reilly and the Liverpool School of Architecture, 1904-33 (Liverpool, 1996).
96. Swenarton, Homes Fit for Heroes, p. 17.
97. 'Standardization and the Eighteenth Century', Architectural Review, 43 (June 1918), 'Notes of the Month', p. xx.
98. Simon Pepper and Mark Swenarton, 'Neo-Georgian Maison Type', Architectural Review, 1002 (August 1980), pp. 87-92.
99. C. H. B. Quennell, review of J. Alfred Gotch, 'The English Home from Charles I to George IV, Architectural Review, 44 (October 1918), pp. 82-84.
100. C. H. B. Quennell, review of Gotch, p. 84.
101. Quennells, Everyday Things, 1066-1499, 1 (London, 1918), 1948 edn, Introduction, p. vii.
102. Julian Holder points out the prevalence and resonances of the term 'everyday life' or 'everyday things' in the period; see Holder, 'Design in Everyday Things', particularly pp. 124-26. The examples given in the relevant footnote mainly date from the 1930s and 1940s (p. 136, n. 9).
103. For more on Batsfords, see A Batsford Century 1843-1943, ed. Hector Bolitho (London, 1943).
104. See Simon Houfe, Alan Powers and John Wilton-Ely, Sir Albert Richardson, 1880-1964 (London, 1999), p. 36.
105. F. R. Hiorns, 'Everyday Things in Britain: Mr and Mrs Quennell's Holiday Lectures to Children', Journal of the Royal Institute of British Architects, 35 (14 January 1925), p. 148;
106. The Times, 5 January 1928, p. 10.
107. Frank Roscoe, Late Secretary of the Royal Society of Teachers, A Note on the Methods and Influence of CHB and Marjorie Quennell on History Teaching in Schools (n.p., 1936).
108. The Times, Anonymous review, '"Everyday Things": The Man and the Machine', 8 December 1933, p. 19.
109. Quennells, Everyday Things, 1500-1799, 2 (London, 1919), 1960 edn, Preface, p. ix.
110. Times Literary Supplement, 15 December 1921, letter from C. H. B. Quennell, 'On Imagination in Children', p. 844.
111. P. Quennell, The Marble Fool, p. 84.
112. Quennells, Everyday Things, 1733-1851, 3 (1933), 1961 edn, Preface.
113. Quennells, Everyday Things, 2, Preface, p. xi.
114. The Times, 22 November 1929, p. 15;
115. see also his Obituaries in The Times, The Builder, and The Architects' Journal (for details see n. 7).]
116. Neil Burton, The Geffrye Almshouses (London, 1979).
117. The Quennells do not seem to have been involved with the original campaign to establish the Museum. Their names do not appear in the Petition presented by 'persons especially interested in the Education of Craftsmen in the various art industries of the Country'. Burton, The Geffrye, pp. 67 and 71.
118. M. Quennell, 'The Geffrye Museum, Kingsland Road, E.', Apollo, 27 (January 1938), pp. 11-14.
119. The Times, 21 March 1939, p. 56.
120. The Times, 10 November 1937, p. 11.
121. M. Quennell, 'The Geffrye', p. 11.
122. C. H. B. Quennell, 'Preparing for Peace', The Architects' and Builders' Journal, 47 (1918), pp. 26-27, 46-47, 69-70, 89-90,112-13 and 140-41.
123. See Mark Swenarton, Artisans and Architects: The Ruskinian Tradition in Architectural Thought (Basingstoke, 1989), ch. 6, 'A. J. Penty and the Building Guilds', pp. 167-88.
124. C. H. B. Quennell, 'Preparing for Peace', p. 69.
125. See Tony Crosby, 'Silver End Model Village for Crittall Manufacturing Co Ltd', Industrial Archaeology Review, 20 (1998), pp. 69-82, which includes details of the earlier Clockhouse Way scheme;
126. On model villages, see Gillian Darley, Villages of Vision (London, 1975); ch. 14 includes Silver End but not the Clockhouse Way Estate.
127. Thurgood, 'Silver End Garden Village', p. 36.
128. See F. S. Daniels, Particulars of The Freehold Estate Known as The Clockhouse Estate, Cressing Road (1948). Kindly supplied by the National Monuments Record.
129. R. Randal Phillips, 'Unit Concrete Cottages', Country Life, 8 November 1919, pp. 599-600. I am grateful to Julian Holder for this reference.
130. See Lawrence Weaver, The 'Country Life' Book of Cottages, 2nd edn (London, 1919), pp. 54-58 and 151-52.
131. 'Concrete Building on the Unit Principle', Architectural Review, 45 (1919), p. 66.
132. Gould, 'Modern Houses', p. 10.
133. The fullest account of Walter is by his daughter-in-law, Ariel Crittall: 'The Crittall Family', n. 72.
134. Anthony Cleminson, 'Silver End Beginnings', The Architectural Review, 1046 (1979), pp. 271-304.
135. Blake, Window Vision, p. 40.
136. Phillips, 'Unit Concrete Cottages', p. 599.
137. 'Obituary', The Builder.
138. Also see W. F. Crittall, 'Silver End', Design and Industries Association Journal, 13 (1930), pp. 8-10.
139. Crittall, Fifty Years, p. 146.
140. Crittall, Fifty Years: on Silver End, see pp. 121, 127-31 and 142-48; for Braintree, see pp. 127-28.
141. The Clockhouse Way estate was sold off by the company in 1948; see Daniels, Particulars.
142. C. H. B. Quennnell, Modern Suburban Houses, Preface.
143. Nikolaus Pevsner, Buildings of England: Essex (London, 1965), p. 52. He does not mention Aymas Connell's High and Over, of 1926.
144. Quennell designed at least one other house in the road although there is some confusion as to which one. Cherry and Pevsner in Buildings of England. London 4: North, p. 229, has it as number 13, but as this is of the late 1930s it rules out Quennell's direct involvement (he died in 1935).
145. For example in C. H. B. Quennnell, 'British Domestic Architecture', Quennell categorized Palladio's two great sins as: 1. standardization which led to a lack of spontaneity 2. use of stucco in imitation of stone (p. 6). The beginnings of a renewed interest in Palladio can be traced in publications such as Bannister Fletcher's Andrea Palladio: his Life and Works (London, 1902)
146. or Reginald Blomfield's essay 'Andrea Palladio' in his Studies in Architecture (London, 1905).
147. However, Blomfield is highly critical of Palladio and especially of his legacy in England. His review of Bannister Fletcher's book is interesting for his thoughts on Palladio's relevance for contemporary architecture: Architectural Review, 13 (April 1903), pp. 126-39.
148. For Fletcher's response, see Architectural Review, 13 (May 1903), p. 326.
149. On interpretations of Palladianism in the 1930s, see Jane Pavitt, 'The Georgians and the Moderns: Preservation and Modernism in Britain in the 1930s' (unpublished MA Thesis, Royal College of Art, 1991);
150. Elizabeth McKellar, 'Popularism Versus Professionalism: John Summerson and the Twentieth-Century Creation of the "Georgian"', in Articulating British Classicism: New Approaches to Eighteenth-Century Architecture, ed. Barbara Arciszewska and Elizabeth McKellar (Aldershot and Burlington, Vermont, 2004), pp. 35-56.
151. Another book was published posthumously co-written with Peter Quennell: Somerset, Shell Guide (London, 1938).
152. Other works which rely on similar visual comparisons include John Summerson and Clough Williams-Ellis, Architecture Here and Now (London, 1934)
153. and Anthony Bertram, Design (London, 1938).
154. Quennells, The Good New Days, pp. 63-65.
155. Chris Miele, 'Art or Craft: Morris & Co Revisited', Victorian Society Annual Report (1996), pp. 15-20.