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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 April 2016
The RIBA's Waterhouse Collection can now be consulted in the RIBA Study Room at the Victoria and Albert Museum, having been transferred there from Portman Square, along with the rest of the RIBA Drawings Collection. This transfer has been of particular significance for Waterhouse's work since, in fact, it has opened up the possibility of fully consulting his drawings and archive for the very first time. With well over nine thousand drawings, representing over one hundred and sixty commissions, this forms a substantial collection, indeed one of the largest single holdings of the RIBA Drawings Collection. By a strange twist of historical circumstances, the catalogue for this collection has been completed at virtually the same time as the collection has, at last, become available to scholars. It therefore seems apposite to draw together a series of observations on this collection and its catalogue, and on how the two together can inform our understanding of the workings of a particular Victorian architect's office, and indeed, to some degree, of the ways in which Victorian architects more generally may have worked.
1 The actual number of drawings is 9,183, although that includes several by other architects found with the Waterhouse Collection and therefore catalogued here.
2 The catalogue will shortly be available on-line via the RIBA website.
3 These have been included in the catalogue although, in conformity with normal practice in the RIBA Drawings and Archives, these items will, in due course, be transferred to the archives collection.
4 The curtains were for Allerton Priory in Liverpool, built in 1867 for Robert Grant Morris. The curtain sample was the gift of the late Miss Ethné Morris, the client’s great-granddaughter. Sadly, no drawings survive for the house for which the curtains were supplied. The fabric is separately stored and separately catalogued.
5 Drawings should be listed in the order of sketches, preliminary designs, design, contract and working drawings. Within that framework plans are taken first, followed by elevations, sections and perspectives. For each drawing the title is recorded first, followed by the scale, a record of what is inscribed on the drawing (other than the title), signature, medium and size (in centimetres), a record of any damage, a note of known publication or exhibition of the drawing and finally, where necessary, a cataloguer’s explanatory note on the drawing. Italic is used to denote anything actually written on the drawing, otherwise entries are in Roman type. Clearly, this system cannot take easy account of such items as revised sketches or alternative designs developed after the contract was signed, of which there are a great many on the Waterhouse Collection. Nor does it easily allow for major schemes where a number of different contracts were involved, as in the northern universities.
6 Volume 1 appeared in 1968.
7 Paul, Alfred Waterhouse’s eldest son, was in partnership with his father from the early 1880s.
8 There are even a few drawings for alterations to buildings by Alfred Waterhouse made long after his death, such as those for alterations to the Cambridge Union Society by Michael Waterhouse dating from 1927.
9 There are three exceptions. One drawing for Bristol Prudential and two for the headquarters building at Furnival’s Inn were found with other drawings in the Waterhouse Collection and are, therefore, catalogued here. They will, presumably, require repeat entries when the Prudential catalogue is written.
10 Waterhouse is well known as the architect of Prudential buildings. Less well known is the fact that his office, in Staple Inn, was in a building designed by him but owned by the Prudential Assurance Company. It is understandable, therefore, that the storage was arranged in another of his landlord’s buildings.
11 Cunningham, Colin, Victorian and Edwardian Town Halls (London, 1981).Google Scholar
12 Sally Maltby shared this task with me and acted as joint curator of the subsequent exhibition.
13 Smith’s thesis was soon supplemented by his chapter on Waterhouse in Seven Victorian Architects, ed. Jane Fawcett and Nikolaus Pevsner (London, 1976).
14 Maltby, Sally, MacDonald, Sally and Cunningham, Colin, Alfred Waterhouse 1830–1905 (London, 1983)Google Scholar. This booklet was published with financial support from the Prudential Corporation.
15 Cunningham, Colin and Waterhouse, Prudence, Alfred Waterhouse 1830–1905: Biography of a Practice (Oxford, 1992).Google Scholar
16 It is interesting, in passing, to compare the way in which this project has been funded with the arrangements now in hand for the study and management of the Spence archive (see Newsletter, 85). It is good to see that the sort of painstaking work involved is sufficiently valued by the AHRC to allow the employment of a post-doctoral research assistant and a doctoral student to work alongside two senior architectural historians as a research team.
17 The drawings from David Waterhouse’s collection include a number of important perspectives and, perhaps most important of all, 249 detail drawings for Waterhouse’s own house and estate at Yattendon, Berkshire.
18 At the time of going to press the precise format of the on-line catalogue is still under discussion. The detailed rationale expands on the decisions taken in relating the standard RIBA criteria to this collection, giving examples of the ways in which the cataloguers have needed to modify or depart from those criteria. The RIBA on-line catalogue will be available by logging on at www.architecture.com and following the links to the library.
19 One immediate constraint has been the physical condition of the archive. The working drawings show signs of much use and are often in poor condition. Many are torn or damaged and the very nature of nineteenth-century oiled tracing paper has mean that tracings have suffered over the years, most being torn and quite a few in pieces. It was imperative, therefore, to minimize the handling of drawings, and that influenced the way in which we worked. Drawings were catalogued in batches as they were left after unpacking and flattening. The entries for each scheme were then co-ordinated and sequentially numbered (the ‘catalogue number’) on a database without further reference to the drawings. Finally the drawings were re-ordered and renumbered in the course of storing and packing the collection for transfer to the Victoria and Albert Museum.
20 The total number of drawings for Eaton Hall surviving in the RIBA collection is 1,933, but there are clearly many drawings missing. There are, in addition, a few further drawings in the Eaton archive, in the Chester Record Office and in the estate office at Eaton.
21 A total of twenty-six different sections are used in the catalogue, which consists of a general and a miscellaneous section and twenty-four other named sections. Even so, it has sometimes been difficult to distinguish between the refurbishment work to the old laundry and the eventual design of the new laundry on a different site (both catalogued as ‘laundry buildings’). There were abortive designs for the conversion of an estate farmhouse to a laundry. Thereafter the old laundry buildings were further altered to make a bathhouse for servants, a gun room and a game larder, linked to a cloister leading to the private wing. The drawings for this work have been listed together as ‘game larder’.
22 For ease of use, we have set aside a section at the beginning of the catalogue for each of the larger schemes as a ‘general’ section with plans of the whole site or large parts of it.
23 His system of numbering drawings was in use as early as 1852 (see LIVERPOOL: Sheridan Street Cow House PA1517/Wat A [53], Nos 1–10), so it may be presumed that he learned it from Richard Lane. See also MS letter J. Willey to Edwin Waterhouse, 22 February 1865 (RIBA Drawings and Archives, Letter Book II, November 1864-May 1865), which is concerned with refining the system of book-keeping so that charges can be properly recorded and duly made.
24 The ‘office’ numbers run in sequence and are usually of four or five digits, presumably reflecting the number of entries in the register. One assumes they would begin at 1, although no examples survive of less than three digits. The numbers can be made out in Figures 2, 4, 7 and 8.
25 The ‘job’ numbers evidently do begin at ‘1’, and often run to three or even, in larger schemes, four digits. They are regularly inscribed under the ‘office’ number and sometimes surrounded by a circle.
26 There are a very few cases where the system seems to have broken down. In a tracing for Cambridge Union Society (PA1512/Wat A [18], No. 31) the sheet bears an office number but no ‘job number’, merely the letter x. There are other cases where one or other of the numbers appears to have been incorrectly entered on the drawing, an error that would be almost inevitable in fifty years of practice. There are also a very few cases (mostly for Eaton Hall) where the recto and verso of the same sheet are given separate numbers, clearly recognizing different work. LONDON: King’s Weigh House Chapel PA1557/Wat A [68], No. 40, is another example of different numbers (in sequence) for the recto and verso. No. 51 for the same scheme has different numbers for different parts of the same drawing, a practice which is even rarer.
27 Sketches and preliminary designs were never numbered, but there are also many drawings that were not given numbers, either because they were considered uncompleted or were simply missed by the office system.
28 The ‘drawing number’ is recorded as the first item in the note of inscriptions on the drawing.
29 There seems to be no rule whether to use capitals or lower case, but the first tracing is usually marked ‘a’, with subsequent tracings using ‘b’, ‘c’, ‘d’, etc., as required.
30 In particular we have allowed tracings to take a place in the sequence of ‘job numbers’ where there are substantial gaps in the whole run of drawings, and it has seemed more important to be aware of the principal content of a given drawing rather than the – usually minor – alterations that might be shown on a tracing.
31 Several dyeline (and some blueprint) copies bear the letter ‘Q’ in red crayon, which we assume to mean they are the quantity surveyor’s copies. As such, they should completely replicate the information on the design drawings. Where a sequence of design drawings is incomplete we have, therefore, used these copies to fill gaps in the sequence.
32 Occasionally tracing paper was used to provide the only version of alternative designs, and, in such cases, often fixed to the original as fliers. See, for example, MANCHESTER: National Provincial Bank PAigocj/Wat A [93], No. 95.
33 The early volumes covered architects from A-Z, with special volumes on individuals, such as Papworth or the Scott family.
34 Quite a substantial number of schemes are unrepresented in the RIBA Collection because the drawings were ‘returned to client’. The list also appears to ignore a few special commissions, mostly for Waterhouse’s family, which were not charged or are hidden elsewhere in the office accounts. The volume remained in use in the practice until the 1960s and thus also covers the work of Paul, Michael and David Waterhouse.
35 At the time of going to press negotiations are still in progress for the transfer of some of these items from a private collection to the RIBA Drawings and Archives, so that the whole archive may be united.
36 Cunningham, Colin and Waterhouse, Prudence, Alfred Waterhouse 1830–1905. Biography of a Practice (Oxford, 1992), pl. 159.Google Scholar
37 Cunningham and Waterhouse, Alfred Waterhouse.
38 MANCHESTER: Assize Courts PA1906/Wat A [85], No. 55 is only one of several examples where cuts are suggested. A note reads: ‘I think that this had better be omitted on a/c of cost and as / not being much seen in staircases’ (s.) AW.
39 There are occasional hints of uncomfortable pressure. For instance, LONDON: New Court Carey St PA1990/Wat A [73], No. 68 records: ‘The single course band originally shewn [sic] (at base of chimney) to be omitted consequently the chimnies [sic] are 3” lower, if these pots cannot be obtained in time a 9” drain pipe cut in half in the length to be used.’
40 See EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall, North Lodge (PA1990/Wat A [26], Nos 1573–78), which are a set of drawings produced in sequence, and their tracings.
41 See READING, Berkshire: Town Hall. PA1935/Wat A [119], Nos 16 and 17 show the gap in ‘office’ numbering between two sequential drawings. PA1935/Wat A [119], Nos 18–25 constitute a sequence clearly produced together.
42 A recently identified house by Waterhouse in Alderley Edge has a number of atypical features and led the discoverer to comment unfavourably upon the building. See Hyde, Matthew, The Villas of Alderley Edge (Manchester, 1999)Google Scholar. It may well be that early in his career (the house is of 1862) Waterhouse had not developed satisfactory procedures for designing details and for supervision.
43 An analysis of the lettering styles of different sheets might also tell us more about individuals.
44 See TWYFORD, Berks: Bowsey Hill, design for a pair of cottages (PA1935/Wat A [128], No. 11). Not surprisingly, once Redmayne was established (he had a busy practice in Manchester), he collaborated with Waterhouse on occasions. The most notable instance among the surviving drawings is Westerleigh house at St Leonard’s-on-Sea, 1889 (scheme [144]), which is properly attributed to Redmayne, but where Waterhouse’s office provided the drawings for alteration and enlargement.
45 See BRASTED: St Martin’s Church (PA1503/Wat A [10], Nos 14–15).
46 Ernest Geldart (1848-1929) became rector of Little Braxted in Essex and was an authority on liturgical fittings. His best known work is the reredos in St Cuthbert’s, Philbeach Gardens, London. See Betley, James ‘The Master of Little Braxted in his Prime: Ernest Geldart 1878–1900’, Essex Archaeology, 30 (2000), pp. 169–94.Google Scholar
47 Cunningham and Waterhouse, Alfred Waterhouse, pl. 160.
48 See MANCHESTER: Assize Courts (PA1907/Wat A [85], Nos 137 and 162. Binyon (1845-1905) had a successful practice mainly in East Anglia. He became ARIBA in 1872, when he was proposed by Alfred Waterhouse.
49 MANCHESTER: Assize Courts PA1906/Wat A [85], No. 44 is an example of a contract drawing with many signatures. LIVERPOOL: University PA1518/Wat A [55], No. 185 bears a contractor’s stamp (‘Jones & Sons 25 Pleasant Street Liverpool’) but also has an office number and the petulant comment, ‘This plan is useless for scaling from!’. A different picture is found in MANCHESTER: Town Hall PA 1931/Wat A [106], No. 185, a drawing apparently produced in Alfred Waterhouse’s office for part of the Great Hall roof showing ‘Mr Pollitt’s design’.
50 See EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall, Chapel PA1983 / Wat A [26], No. 886) for a note on the drawing referring to work at courses 136 and 317.
51 The survival of this method is attested as late as the 1940s in the offices of some Clyde ship designers.
52 The blueprint copier did not appear in Waterhouse’s office until the 1880s, and it was still his practice to finish such copies with coloured washes, making an attractive and novel form of drawing. Dyeline copies appear in the later 1890s, at the very end of Alfred Waterhouse’s career, but they make up a substantial element of Paul Waterhouse’s drawings.
53 See LONDON: Natural History Museum PA1952/Wat A [71], No. 50, which bears a lengthy note ending, ‘Will Mr Till please allow the Contractors to copy these instructions on to their own tracings (s.) A. Waterhouse Architect August 22 1878’, on a drawing dated 15 January 1872. See also LONDON, Piccadilly: National Provincial Bank PA1515/Wat A [70], No. 96, where a drawing of 9 August 1894 bears the note ‘Archway formed June 96’. Or again LIVERPOOL: University (PA1517/ Wat A [55], No. 135) where a drawing of January 1895 bears a note of 20 March 1896 to the effect that ‘Windows are to be omitted’.
54 Scale rules would be supplied by the individual terracotta manufacturers, each carefully marked for the specific type of clay and kiln temperature they worked to.
55 OXFORD: Union Society PA1915/Wat A [no], No. 56 bears a note: ‘The Full sizes are drawn to Messrs Gibbs & Cannings shrinkage scale’. LIVERPOOL: Royal Infirmary PA1516/Wat A [51], No. 71 refers to shrinkage scale details. LONDON: City and Guilds Institute PA1520/Wat A [60], No. 63 is drawn to shrinkage scale. LONDON: National Liberal Club PA1953 / Wat A [69], No. 95 has a note of ‘measurements taken jointly by Messrs Wilcock & Co’s representative, Mr Shaw’s foreman & the Clerk of Works on Dec 30/85’.
56 For a more detailed account of the technology of terracotta in architecture, see Stratton, Michael, The Terra Cotta Revival (London, 1993).Google Scholar
57 See, for instance, HINDERTON, Cheshire: Hinderton Hall (PA1992/Wat A [42], No. 1).
58 See READING: Church of St Bartholomew (PA1948/Wat A [112], Nos 1–24). A drawing for Manchester Town Hall shows fine Gothic lettering (PA1931/Wat A [106], No. 180), but this is the design for lettering for titles, not the titling of the sheet.
59 See for instance EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1519/Wat A [26], Nos 108 and 66).
60 See READING, Berkshire: Grammar School [120], No. 18, where the signature (not in Alfred Waterhouse’s hand) ‘A Waterhouse Archt’ with a monogram ‘TC is a very rare example of a draughtsman’s signature; TC were the initials of Cooper, one of the lead draughtsmen.
61 See Figure 3, in which the ‘Perspective View from Street’ is undoubtedly from Waterhouse’s own pencil.
62 The sketches in the background of Figure 7 may very well be by Waterhouse himself.
63 The drawing style can also be compared with that of his sketchbooks, a microfilm copy of which is deposited in the RIBA Library.
64 See [46a] LIVERPOOL: Allerton Priory.
65 See EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1964/Wat A [26], Nos 211, 214 and 233).
66 His diploma piece is a perspective of Manchester Town Hall against a dramatic flaming sky.
67 The competition perspective for Manchester Town Hall does not survive in the RIBA Collection, but is among the ten Waterhouse drawings in the V and A collection (D.1881-1908). See also Stamp, Gavin, The Great Perspectivists (London, 1982), pl. 53.Google Scholar
68 See LONDON: Natural History Museum (PA1952/Wat A [71], No. 7).
69 See LONDON: Royal Courts of Justice (PA1903/Wat A [yy], Nos 11 and 12).
70 A Waterhouse perspective of the Turner Memorial Home in Liverpool hangs in the boardroom of the home to this day, and the perspective he made for the Refuge in Manchester survived in the boardroom of that building until the company abandoned it in favour of new headquarters in the late 1980s.
71 See LONDON: City and Guilds Institution (PA1520/Wat A [60], No. 3).
72 Waterhouse was well aware of the value of having his buildings published, and must, presumably, have prepared drawings for the Builder and Building News. A recently discovered volume of his designs for the terracotta of the Natural History Museum may even be drawings made for this purpose. The drawings are noticeably more finished than those of the Museum’s original collection (see Cunningham, Colin, The Terra Cotta Designs of Alfred Waterhouse [London, 2001]Google Scholar) and lack any of the notes for the modeller or clerk of works’ signature found on those in the original collection.
73 See LONDON: City and Guilds Institution (PA1520/Wat A [60], Nos 4 and 5).
74 See LEEDS, W. Yorkshire: The Yorkshire College, later Leeds University (PA1535/Wat A [46], No. 64). There is some doubt as to whether this perspective, rather crude in draughtsmanship, is from the hand of Waterhouse himself.
75 The perspective of the Manchester Assize Courts that hangs in the new Manchester Law Courts is signed by J. Battye, and a much later perspective for St Paul’s School was signed by T. Raffles Davison.
76 The practice of hiring in perspectivists was apparently not uncommon, and, in the Waterhouse office, was continued by his son Paul, who employed Cyril A. Farey (whom he had met at the AA) on a number of occasions.
77 R. Spiers, Phéné, Architectural Draughtsmanship (London, 1887).Google Scholar
78 See MANCHESTER: 23 Ardwick Green (PA1912/Wat A [84], Nos 1–7). All of the drawings actually bear the name (though it is apparently not a signature) of Richard Lane. See also CHEADLE: Lunatic Asylum (PA1960/Wat A [160], Nos 1–8), which is listed in the catalogue as a commission of Richard Lane’s.
79 See AMBLESIDE: Rothay Holme (PA1501/Wat A [4], Nos 1–3).
80 See MANCHESTER: Assize Courts (PA1905/Wat A [85], especially Nos 8–13) and MANCHESTER: Town Hall (PA1924/Wat A [106], Nos 1–3).
81 See HOVE, Sussex: Town Hall (PA1954/Wat A [43], No. 11), which bears an explanatory note on the colouring: ‘the yellow lines indicate wood & blue lines iron girders over’.
82 Waterhouse followed common practice in producing preliminary designs to 
in. scale, and designs and contract drawings to ⅛ in. scale. Details were most frequently produced to ½ in. scale, although there are numerous cases in the collection where full-size or half-full-size details were used. i-in. scale and ¼ full-size drawings are much rarer.
83 LONDON, Piccadilly: National Provincial Bank PA1515/Wat A [70], No. 39 bears the note: ‘Tracing must be kept clean and uninjured!’
84 A drawing for Owens College, Manchester PA1918/Wat A [94], No. 60 notes ‘President’s chair same as & traced from “Commissioners Chairs” Hove Town Hall & Table Traced for Dining R[oo]m Turner Memorial’. See also LONDON: King’s Weigh House Chapel (PA1557/Wat A [68], No. 51), which refers to a fireplace copied from Liverpool Royal Infirmary. Also LEEDS: University [46] A 32 which compares a flèche with that on Yattendon School, or No. 53 which specifies a ‘painted basin (Mr Waterhouse’s pattern) as for Prudential Assurance Co’s offices’. Another example is found in MANCHESTER, Reddish: Church of St Elisabeth of Hungary PA1913/Wat A [88], No. 30, which describes the arcade as having ‘Base as before as regards height, Shaft made thinner, Cap as at S Bartholomew’ and specifies certain lengths of shaft ‘If base as at S Bartholomew’ (referring to Alfred Waterhouse’s church in Reading).
85 See, for example, EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1988/Wat a[26], No. 1483).
86 See MANCHESTER: Owens College (University) (PA1920/Wat A[94], No. 120, and PA1928/Wat A [94], No. 307). EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1522/Wat A [26], No. 744 incorporates the office’s reply to a problem encountered on site. LIVERPOOL: Royal Infirmary (PA1516/Wat A [51], Nos 16 and 18 are examples of Clerk’s of Works drawings. LONDON: New Ct Carey St PA1900/Wat A [73], No. 38 appears to contain queries from a terracotta manufacturer.
87 See EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1983/Wat A [26], No. 938). PA1984/Wat A [26], No. 969 verso also has a diagram relating to the view of the preacher by persons in the gallery. PA1987/Wat A [26], No. 1251, a drawing of the serving room in the private wing, reveals the detail with which His Grace was concerned.
88 See EATON, Cheshire: Eaton Hall (PA1987/Wat A[26], No. 1263).
89 Catalogue of the RIBA Drawings Collection, Vol. 1, ed. G. Palmer (Farnborough, 1968), p. i.