This members’ talk will focus on a single house, Barn Close in Carlisle, to explore the complex legacy of the Arts and Crafts movement.
Barn Close was designed by Norman Evill in 1902 for Edwin and Maud Scott-Nicholson. Edwin was an unusual client – an architect turned industrialist. Born Edwin Nicholson, he had trained in the Arts and Crafts tradition, working as an assistant to Robert Weir Schultz in London. However, in 1900, Edwin gave up his architectural practice when he married the daughter of Sir Benjamin Scott and joined the rapidly expanding firm, Hudson Scott and Sons Ltd, printers and tin box producers. No longer a fully practising architect, he employed Evill to design the family home. In 1902 Evill was fresh from the offices of Edwin Lutyens and had just commenced independent practice in London. The house they created was a collaboration and the builders were told to take direction from both the architect and client. Built according to Arts and Crafts principles, using local materials and decorative details by leading craftsmen such as William De Morgan and George Percy Bankart, Barn Close evolved to reflect the multi-layered taste of its owners. A growing interest in chivalry, heraldry, and pageantry, was joined by a new allegiance to the fledgling Design and Industries Association (D.I.A.) founded in 1915. Edwin’s need to reconcile his artistic talents and the demands of the family firm made him an ideal member of an organisation that aimed to create a closer cooperation between designers and manufacturers. D.I.A. values were applied not only to the interiors and furnishings of Barn Close but to the wider designed environment of Carlisle.
Dr Esmé Whittaker completed her MA and PhD at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, focussing on the Aesthetic and Arts and Crafts movements. Her PhD research informed her book, Arts and Crafts Houses in the Lake District (Frances Lincoln, 2014), which she co-authored with Matthew Hyde. As an Assistant Curator at the V&A, she worked on the exhibition The Cult of Beauty: The Aesthetic Movement, 1860–1900. She also curated the inaugural exhibition at Two Temple Place in London, William Morris: Story, Memory, Myth, for the Bulldog Trust. She is currently a Curator of Collections and Interiors at English Heritage.
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