‘A Stern Thinker and Most Able Constructor’: Philip Webb, Architect

Extract

That great educator, architect, historic buildings man, historian of architecture and inspirer of others, William Richard Lethaby, wrote of his essays on Webb which in 1935 were gathered up and republished as a book on Philip Webb and His Work that he was drawn ‘by a most uncritical admiration and reverence to make this little memorial’, and that Webb ‘did, or tried to do, for building what Browning attempted for poetry: to revitalize it by returning to contact with reality.’ He also wrote that ‘No other man ever loved old buildings as Ruskin and Morris did — except Webb’, thereby emphasizing and refocusing attention on something which has now been unfairly forgotten, namely that we owe our appreciation of the special qualities of old buildings, their textures and (as we would say today) their ‘authenticity’ to Webb as much as to Ruskin and to Morris. Moreover, we owe to Webb something else which those other two great giants of historic buildings preservation could not provide us with, namely a methodology for repairing old buildings which takes into account their original methods of construction, respects their materials and the qualities of the original craftsmanship, and is largely non-destructive. By so doing, Webb became the originator of a tradition of skilful repair of old buildings which has been passed down by a series of influential figures including Lethaby himself, Hugh Thackeray Turner, William Weir, A. R. Powys and a whole host of other and later architects, conservators and craftsmen who are fostered to this day by the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings which Webb did as much as Morris to found; and which he made into not simply a campaigning body for saving old buildings, which Morris could have done quite effectively enough on his own, but gave credibility by showing that there was indeed an alternative to destruction and neglect, that old buildings could be sensitively repaired, and that they could very often be transformed and given a new lease of life by skilful adaptation and additions.