One from north Wales, one from the south. In contrasting two examples of early twentieth century housing, Simon Unwin reminds us how far we have strayed from the essence of architecture of the home
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THE CLOSE AT LLANFAIRFECHAN
RHIWBINA GARDEN VILLAGE The previous issue of Touchstone reported the publication of Adam Voelcker’s book Herbert Luck North. North worked in north Wales during the early twentieth century. He was the architect of a ‘village’ (houses and a few community buildings) called The Close at Llanfairfechan, where he built a house for himself too. What might house builders and local authorities learn from looking back at North’s work and that of his contemporaries? Issues addressed a hundred years may be relevant to the RIBA’s current Homewise campaign and to the remit of the Future Homes Commission. Certainly the current government, as well as the occupant of Clarence House, have occasionally expressed a (maybe nostalgic) desire to return to Edwardian values. The Close is broadly contemporaneous with, though not part of, the Garden City Movement instigated by Ebenezer Howard at the end of the nineteenth century. Probably the best (though incomplete) example of the movement in Wales is Rhiwbina Garden Village on the outskirts of Cardiff, begun almost a hundred years ago in 1913. There are superficial similarities between Rhiwbina and The Close. They both use that white painted, roughcast render, those steep-gabled slate roofs with high chimneys, those small-paned windows, those porches and bays… comprising that instantly recognisable Arts and Crafts ‘vernacular’ developed by C F A Voysey and others for Edwardian private houses, and codified by Barry Parker and Raymond Unwin in the early twentieth century to give tangible form to Howard’s dream.
But there are significant differences between North’s scheme and Rhiwbina too: in layout, procurement and how they were managed. As Voelcker informs us, North owned land at Llanfairfechan on which he enjoyed designing and building comfortable houses for middle class customers. It was the architect’s dream: he was client and architect with the resources to be developer too. To some extent, and certainly acknowledging its charm, The Close was a personal project for North, seasoned by profit, which produced attractive bourgeois villas in the guise of country cottages.
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Philosophical differences Rhiwbina, on the other hand, was philosophically different. It was born of the Garden City mission to provide dwellings for workers who did not have the financial means to buy a house of their own, to help them escape the cramped unsanitary conditions of industrial Victorian cities and to enjoy a comfortable and healthy, if modest, life in fresh air and surrounded by greenery. Rhiwbina (however bourgeois it too may
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PHOTOS ©
1 Simon Unwin 2 Crown Copywright: RCAHMW 4 From the collection of the NMRW © Adam Voelcker