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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
Battersea Bridge was reconstructed in 1885–90 by the Metropolitan Board of Works and its successor, the London County Council, replacing the proprietary timber bridge designed by Henry Holland 115 years before and made famous by Whistler. Bridge-building and rebuilding in London were then in full spate. In the case of a rebuilding such as Battersea, the authority concerned would buy up both the bridge interests and the immediate approaches on either side for the purposes of clearance, widening and realignment. It could take years after the new bridge was opened to sell off even the best surplus plots of land acquired in this way for ‘improvement’. Thus on the Chelsea side of Battersea Bridge, the approach road of Beaufort Street is lined with Edwardian buildings, constructed piecemeal as and when the LCC could dispose of sites.
The text of this article is a revised version of the historical portion of a talk given at Crosby Hall as the annual lecture of the Society of Architectural Historians on 28 October 1985, under the title of ‘Ashbee, Geddes, Lethaby, Crosby Hall and the Purposes of Architectural History’. In the last quarter of the talk, not here published, I argued that despite the limitations of the attitudes of Ashbee, Geddes and Lethaby towards history and its uses, they were to be admired for insisting that the connections between architecture and history must go beyond matters of style, and for trying to work out these views in their building projects. I concluded that in an era when renewed lip-service is paid to the right uses of historical reference in architecture, historians ought to apply themselves to what those uses may properly be.
I should like to thank Alan Crawford for unstinting help and friendship both in the period before I gave the 1985 lecture and since. For a parallel account of the rebuilding of Crosby Hall from a technical angle, readers are referred to the late Emil Godfrey’s annual lecture to the Ancient Monuments Society given at Hall, Crosby in 1976, and printed in the Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 28 (1983), pp. 226–43 Google Scholar.
1 London County Council [ Edwards, Percy J.], History of London Street Improvements 1851-1897 (1897), pp. 127, 261Google Scholar; Cherry, Bridget and Pevsner, Nikolaus, The Buildings of England, London 2: South (1983), p. 714 Google Scholar.
2 LCC Minutes of Proceedings, 13 April 1897, p. 432.
3 Ibid., I June 1897, p. 616; LCC Corporate Property, Charities and Endowment Committee, Presented Papers, 1 March, 5 April and 17 May 1897.
4 Campbell, W. E., More’s Utopia and his Social Thinking (1930), pp. 50–51 Google Scholar.
5 Kautsky, K., Thomas More and his Utopia, tr. Stenning, H. J. (1927), esp. p. 91 Google Scholar. Kautsky’s book was originally published as Thomas More und seine Utopie (1887), during the author’s five-year sojourn in London (1885-90), when he was in close touch with Morris and Engels. For rival interpretations of More in the 1890s see Revd T. E. Bridgett, Life and Writings of Sir Thomas More (1891) (Catholic), and William Holden Hutton, Sir Thomas More (1895) (academic).
6 Crawford, Alan, C. R. Ashbee (1985), pp. 43, 69-73, 107-09, 115-16Google Scholar.
7 Ashbee, C. R., American Sheaves and English Seed Corn (1901), pp. 69–70 Google Scholar, from his lecture ‘Chelsea: or the Village of Palaces’.
8 Crawford, Ashbee, pp. 72-73, 259.
9 E.g. E. W. Godwin’s studio flats of 1885 in Tite Street, or those of 1891-92 by J. A.J. Keynes at 43-45 Gardens, Roland illustrated in Survey of London, vol. 41 (1983), fig. 44, p. 154 Google Scholar.
10 Crawford, Ashbee, pp. 243-45; Catalogue of the Drawings Collection of the Royal Institute of British Architects, A (1968), pp. 36-37.
11 Girouard, Mark, Sweetness and Light (1977), pp. 177-84Google Scholar.
12 Quotations from Crawford, Ashbee, p. 244, and LCC Corporate Property ... Committee Presented Papers, 28 March 1898. See further LCC Minutes of Proceedings, 5 April 1898, p. 430; LCC Corporate Property ... Committee Presented Papers, 20 Dec. 1897, 17 Jan. and 28 March 1898.
13 For Blow’s activities in the 1890s see Michael Drury, Wandering Architects (forthcoming, 1991), based on his dissertation, Detmar Blow: Building Conservation in the Arts and Crafts Tradition, submitted for the Architectural Association Conservation Course, 1985.
14 LCC Corporate Property ... Committee Presented Papers, 28 March, 25 April, 13 June and 24 Oct. 1898.
15 LCC Minutes of Proceedings, 1 Nov. 1898, p. 1251; LCC Corporate Property ... Committee Presented Papers, 24 Oct. and 21 Nov. 1898.
16 Diaries of F. W. Troup (kindly communicated by Neil Jackson), April-December 1898.
17 For Geddes, see now Helen Meller, Patrick Geddes, Social Evolutionist and City Planner (1990). Older books include Philip Boardman, Esquisse de l’Oeuvre Educatrice de Patrick Geddes (1936); Philip Mairet, Pioneer of Sociology (1957); Paddy Kitchen, A Most Unsettling Person (1975); Philip Boardman, The Worlds of Patrick Geddes (1978). For the best summary of Geddes’ thought, see the introduction by Helen Meller to The Ideal City (1979). I am grateful to Helen Meller for sage correspondence on Geddes, Ashbee, and Crosby Hall.
18 Encounter, 27 Sept. 1966, p. 18, from ‘The Disciple’s Rebellion, A Memoir of Patrick Geddes’.
19 On Geddes in Edinburgh see Boardman, Esquisse . . . (cited in n. 17), pp. 48-61, and Country Life 170 (1981), pp.572–74. On the concept of university halls, there is debate and an article by Geddes in University Review, 2 (1905-06), pp. 255-63, 464-69 and 558-68 and 3 (1906), pp. 297-313 and 346-51.
20 Crawford, Ashbee, pp. 157-58. It seems likely that Ashbee attended one of the Edinburgh summer schools of the 1890S and met Geddes thus.
21 Harte, Negley, The University of London 1836-1986 (1986), pp. 134-37Google Scholar.
22 Kitchen, A Most Unsettling Person, p. 224.
23 Diaries of F. W. Troup (see n. 16), 1898; especially 21 July (on site at Chelsea), 29 August (at Ramsay Garden with Geddes), 28-29 Oct. (LCC offer of site accepted, further site inspection), and Nov.-Dec. passim (frequent meetings and discussions with Lethaby, Geddes and Ross).
24 LCC Minutes of Proceedings, 1 Nov. 1898, p. 251;15 May 1899, pp. 840-41; 21 Nov. 1899, p. 1623; 28 Nov. 1899, p. 1657; 23 Jan. 1900, pp.42, 46; 22 May 1900, p. 746; 18 June 1901, p. 765.
25 Kitchen, A Most Unsettling Person, pp. 190-01, 199-203.
26 LCC Minutes of Proceedings, 7 Oct. 1902, p. 1338; 20 Oct. 1903, p. 1593; 29 March 1904, p. 493.
27 Kitchen, A Most Unsettling Person, pp. 223-24.
28 Crosby Hall Library, prospectus of 1908.
29 On the history of Crosby Hall see especially Garett, K. I., ‘Maria Hackett, Crosby Hall and Gresham’s College’, Guildhall Studies in London History, III, no. 1, Oct. 1977, pp. 42–54 Google Scholar. See also Charles W. F. Goss, Crosby Hall (1908); Reid, Hilda in Chelsea Society, Annual Report 1955, pp. 49–63 Google Scholar; and Godfrey, W. Emil in Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 26 (1982-83), pp. 228-32Google Scholar. For the background to its use as a pioneering City restaurant see Thorne, Robert in Buildings and Society ed. King, Anthony D. (1980), p. 239 Google Scholar.
30 The former LCC Historic Buildings Division (now English Heritage London Division) Crosby Hall file (no. 48) contains many press cuttings of 1907-08, notably Daily Graphic, 14 June 1907; The Tribune, 19 June 1907; Morning Advertiser, 26 July 1907; City Press, 3 Aug. 1907; Daily Chronicle, 13 Sep. 1907; and The Standard, 8 Dec. 1907.
31 Daily Graphic, 14 June 1907.
32 Pall Mall Gazette, 17 Dec. 1907; The Times, 3 Feb. 1908.
33 The Survey of London monograph is called Crosby Place, by Philip Norman F.S.A., LL.D., with an Architectural Description by W. D. Caroe, F.S.A. (1908). Caroe had lived on Cheyne Walk in the 1890s. For an account of the London Survey Committee’s reaction to the Crosby Hall crisis see Godfrey, Walter in London Topographical Record, 21 (1968), p.85 Google Scholar.
34 Sociological Review, 24 (1932), pp. 362-64.
35 Ibid.; Kitchen, A Most Unsettling Person, pp. 224-26; LCC Local Government, Records and Museum Committee Presented Papers, 2 and 10 April and 3 May 1908; Builders’ Journal, 1 April 1908, p. 282 and 20 May 1908, p. 430.
36 Kitchen, loc. cit.; Sociological Review, 24 (1932), pp. 362-64.
37 LCC Local Government, Records and Museum Committee Presented Papers, 3 and 15 May 1908; The Times 13 and 16 April 1908; The Architectural Review, 24, Nov. 1908, pp. 212-13 (Belcher’s scheme).
38 Sturge, who was chairman of the LCC Local Government, Records and Museum Committee at the critical stage, was specially important in the Crosby Hall campaign: see Godfrey, W. Emil in Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 26 (1982-83), pp. 232, 236Google Scholar.
39 Re-erection of Crosby Hall on More’s Garden, Chelsea (1908) (Greater London Record Office Library 92.2 CHE), p. 7. The idea of further Outlook Towers is proposed by Geddes, in Sociological Papers 3 (1907), pp. 197–246, esp. p. 226Google Scholar.
40 Dunn and Watson’s continued involvement in Crosby Hall in May 1908 is testified by a scheme preserved in the former LCC Historic Buildings Division’s Crosby Hall file (see n. 30). For Walter Godfrey’s involvement see Godfrey, W. Emil, Transactions of the Ancient Monuments Society, 29 (1982-83), p. 234 Google Scholar.
41 For Geddes’s involvement with The Survey of London see Greater London Record Office, A/LSC/2 (Minute Book of the London Survey Committee, 1907-08), especially minutes of 17 Dec. 1907, when Geddes becomes (briefly) an ‘active member of the Committee’ and proposes links with the Sociological Society. On the history of the London Survey Committee see London Topographical Record, 21 (1958), pp. 79-92.
42 LCC Historic Buildings Division file (see n. 30); Greater London Record Office, A/LSC/2, 20 Oct. and 18 Nov. 1908; LCC Local Government, Records and Museum Committee Presented Papers, 12 June 1908.
43 A description of the building at Chelsea is given in Survey of London, vol. 4 (1913), pp. 15-17. See also The Builder, 4 June 1910, pp. 630-31 and Godfrey, W. Emil, Trans, of the Ancient Monuments Society, 29, pp. 240-41Google Scholar.
44 University and City Association of London, Chelsea a Collegiate City (1908), p. 11. For Geddes’s final summary of his ideals and purposes for Crosby Hall see his Cities in Evolution (1915), pp. 367-75.
45 Sociological Review, 24 (1932), pp. 362-64.
46 A masque planned for opening Crosby Hall was cancelled because of Edward VII’s death. For subsequent uses see Geddes, , Cities in Evolution (1915), p. 257 Google Scholar, and for a previous Chelsea masque, held at the Chelsea Hospital, The Chelsea Historical Pageant (1908).
47 For Ashbee’s design, see Crawford, Ashbee, pp. 251-52.
48 Ashbee, C. R., Where the Great City Stands (1917), pp. 84–85 Google Scholar, and On the Architectural Significance of Modern University Development (1912), Ashbee papers, King’s College, Cambridge. Ashbee ascribes the initiative for buying the site (at 40-45 Cheyne Walk) to the Chelsea Association. On the Universities Congress of 1912, see Forgan, Sophie, ‘The Architecture of Science and the Idea of a University’ in Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science, vol. 20, no. 4, (1989), pp. 431-33CrossRefGoogle Scholar, citing also A. Hill (ed.), Congress of the Universities of the Empire (1912).
49 LCC Improvements Committee Minutes, 4 Dec. 1913, and Presented Papers, 22 Oct. 1913.
50 Biddulph-Pinchard’s scheme is illustrated and described in The Architect, 14 Jan. 1921, pp. 20-21.
51 See Patrick Geddes in India, ed. Jaqueline Tyrwhitt (1947).
52 Sociological Review, 24 (1932), pp. 362-64.
53 Henry James, Refugees in Chelsea (1920), originally in Times Literary Supplement, 23 March 1916.
54 LCC Improvements Committee Minutes, 28 July 1925, pp. 336-37; British Federation of University Women, Annual Reports, 1922-26; Chelsea Society, Annual Report 1955, pp. 64-67.
55 Chelsea Society, Annual Report 1955, pp. 71-75.