If you drive over the Hammersmith flyover you are sure to to have noticed this parade of artists’ studios by Barons Court station.
There’re eight of them built in 1891, they face north and if you look carefully you can see the slit windows through which large canvases could be taken. The exterior is rich in arts and crafts decorative features.
Many years ago Ingy worked at RIBA and gave me some prints from their collection. Two particularly decorative ones are plans for houses designed by Voysey; here is one.
Now, as it happens, the houses on the south side of Barons Court Road, the east side of Palliser Road and the north side of Barton Road are in the style of Voysey but to see the real thing I only have to walk around the corner into St Dunstan’s Road. It was commissioned in 1891 by artist and illustrator, WEF Britten and is another studio.
At first sight it is not impressive but in the magisterial Buildings of England series, Cherry and Pevsner make this comment:
It is an appealingly humble cottage with studio behind, deceptively simple, but designed with Voysey’s characteristic attention to detail. Roughcast walls, battered chimney, delectably inventive iron railings. Broad central door with canopy suspended from iron brackets. To its left, the timber window of the former kitchen, and another window, formerly a large studio door. To the right, the more formal stone-mullioned corner window of the well-lit small entrance hall. The staircase formerly rose within the hall. The studio had a gallery above a deep fireplace recess, now partitioned off. The exterior
was originally quite colourful; the woodwork painted green, with green-glazed brick sills to the large segmental-arched studio windows.
Since 1958 it has been home to the Hungarian Reformed Church and some of the detail admired by Pevsner has gone but nevertheless it is another fine piece of architecture on my doorstep.
Thank you, Christopher. I was walking past the Voysey Cottage only last week, had no idea what it was, and promptly did nothing about it. Thank you for putting me straight!
Fans of CFA Voysey may like to have a look at the current Landmark Trust appeal to restore Winsford Cottage Hospital which is both a fine example of his work and a pretty unspoilt example of the cottage hospitals that were in most communities.
https://www.landmarktrust.org.uk/Properties-list/winsford-cottage-hospital/Appeal/
There is also a rather controversial Voysey in Bedford Park (14 South Parade) which is rather out of keeping with Shaw’s original conception.
I love those studios. Also it is great to have leads into the Voysey sort of aesthetic. It’s a sort of bridge between Arts and Crafts and Modernism; also between the standalone house and the suburban standardised development. Great.
My grandmother Vera Bax had a studio in Edith Grove, with a North facing double-height window as I recall. It gives me a buzz to think of visiting her there. It had a stove and a screen attempted to keep the sitting area warmer than the easel-zone. Torn-out magazine pictures of cats fell from all her books. And then we went out for suppers at Salamis. Her life had been grand, bohemian, racy, brave, sad, pioneering and severe by turns. Still, she disapproved of my aimlessness, and my Rolling Stones hair, just as many of her generation, less experienced than her, might have. (The Stones lodged just down the road from her a little after the time she lived there.)