Builders of Felbridge, Pt. 3
Harry C R Nightingale/Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners/Foggo & Thomas
This series of Handouts will look at the stories and lives of some of the builders and architects of Felbridge (not necessarily in chronological order) who developed what had been the ‘gentleman’s estate’ of Felbridge for over 200 years into the village of Felbridge as it had become by the mid 1960’s.
The series has no intention of covering the later re-development of properties and garden in-fill developments that began in 1964 with Felbridge Court off Copthorne Road, Tangle Oak off Mill Lane, Tithe Orchard off Rowplatt Lane and Warren Close off Crawley Down Road, or the more recent developments of Birch Grove and its extension, Cherry Way, Hamptons Mews, Hedgecourt Place, Housman Way/Springfield Gardens, Long Wall, Lyndhurst Farm Close, Mulberry Gate and Eden Gardens off the Copthorne Road; Rowplatt Close and Twitten Lane off Rowplatt Lane; Coppice Vale/Thicket Rise, Leybourne Place, McIver Close/Evelyn Gardens, Oak Farm Place and Walnut Grove, off Crawley Down Road; and Arkendale/Whittington College, Felbridge Gate, Felwater Court/The Feld, The Glebe/Mackenzie House/Barrell House, Glendale, Old Brewery Court, Redgarth Court and Standen Close/The Moorings off the London Road.
The first in this series of Handouts looked at W M Heselden & Sons Ltd who were building in the Felbridge area between 1910 and 1984 and who were responsible for the construction of the early phase of housing in Rowplatt Lane for architect Major T Stewart Inglis; Halsford Croft, Halsford Green and Halsford Lane at North End for Edgar Soames of the East Grinstead Tenants Ltd; The Limes Estate off the London Road with designs by Mark Heselden and Mr Gasson; much of Mill Lane and a number of dwellings on the Copthorne Road and Crawley Down Road, as well as further afield in East Grinstead, Crawley Down, Dormans Park, Dormansland, South Godstone and Groombridge.
The second in the series of builders and architects of Felbridge, looked at the work of William Spurrell who was responsible for the developments of Wembury Park at Newchapel and Stream Park in Felbridge, as well as the architect Cecil A Sharp who was responsible for nos. 17 & 19 and 25 & 27, Crawley Down Road, Felbridge, and Retford, London Road, North End.
This document, the third in the series of builders and architects of Felbridge will be looking at the architect Harry C R Nightingale who drew up the designs for the Felbridge (St John) Institute in Felbridge; architects Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners who re-developed the former home of the Lowdell family that once owned much of the Felbridge Water area and the Northern end of East Grinstead Common; and Foggo & Thomas who were responsible for the construction of The Space House, Pine Grove, North End.
The Development of a ‘gentleman’s estate’ into the village of Felbridge
The development of Felbridge as a village did not really begin until the estate of Felbridge, its mansion house and associated lands were sold off in a succession of auctions that began in 1911 [for further information see Handout, 1911 Sale of the Felbridge Estate, SJC 01/11].
Until the late 17th century, Felbridge was sparsely populated, consisting mostly of Common and fairy boggy, un-developed heath-land. In 1588, George Evelyn of Kingston, Long Ditton and Wotton, purchased the manor of Godstone which included 70 acres of land in Felbridge being at the southern-most end of the manor of Godstone [for further information see Handout, Evelyn Family of Felbridge, JIC/SJC09/13]. By the late 17th century a principal dwelling house had been constructed by George Evelyn of Nutfield, known as Heath Hatch, which was to form the nucleus of the Felbridge estate built up by his son Edward Evelyn from 1719 by his decision to make Felbridge his main residence [for further information see Handout, Evelyn Family of Felbridge, JIC/SJC09/13]. This decision cemented the early development of Felbridge as a ‘gentleman’s estate’ because the only residents to live here were those required in the day-to-day running of the estate. As such residents’ dwellings were pushed out-of-sight of the main house and grounds with little opportunity of creating a traditional village ie: a group of houses arranged around a centre consisting of village green, church, school and public house etc.
Felbridge was to remain a ‘gentleman’s estate’ under a succession of resident and non-resident lords from the early 18th century until the beginning of the 20th century. Firstly under the Evelyn family and then the Gatty family after their purchase of the estate in 1865 [for further information see Handout, Dr. Charles Henry Gatty, SJC 11/03]. However, on the death of Charles Henry Gatty in 1903, the Felbridge estate was left to two non-resident male cousins and in 1910 the decision to sell the estate to Mrs Emma Harvey and the East Grinstead Estate Company (founded by her husband, property developer Percy Portway Harvey) set in motion the break-up of the Felbridge estate that began in 1911 [for further information see Handout, 1911 Sale of the Felbridge Estate, SJC 01/11]. The initial sale was of 1,350 acres (just part of the what was described as the ‘valuable Freehold Estate’ of Felbridge), presented in 43 Lots comprising of residential properties, farms and small holdings, licensed premises and a smithy and over 250 acres of land specifically described as ‘beautiful building sites’ and ‘land for development’.
This was not the total extent of the Felbridge estate, which extended to over 2,000 acres in 1911, and it would take a succession of auctions into the early 1950’s to complete the break-up of the Felbridge estate, but it was the auction of 1911 that fundamentally changed Felbridge. Since 1911, a succession of local builders have developed the ‘gentleman’s estate’ of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries into the mid 20th century village of Felbridge, formulated by 1964.
Harry C R Nightingale
Harry C R Nightingale designed the Felbridge (St John’s) Institute, that was situated on the site of the Mulberry Gate development off Copthorne Road [for further information see Handout, Felbridge Village Halls, SJC 01/12], built by Messrs. T and G Smith of East Grinstead.
Harry Cecil Ridgly Nightingale was born in Horsham, Sussex, on 27th January 1866, the son of Henry Nightingale, a master iron monger, later an accountant, and his wife Maria Jane née Jupe. Harry’s siblings included: Mary/Maria who was born in St Pancras in 1858, Florence who was born in Brighton in 1860 and Charles William who was born in Horsham in 1862.
In 1871, the Nightingale family were living on London Road in Horsham, but sadly five years later, on 7th October 1876, Henry Nightingale died. By 1881, Harry and his mother Maria had moved to 11, East Parade, Horsham; Maria listed as a Governess and Harry as a Clerk. Despite the loss of his father, Harry and his mother Maria were still living in relative comfort and were able to have a ‘domestic servant’. By 1891, Harry had moved to the dwelling Astley in the area of Lingfield, where he was living on his own and working as a surveyor. The property was actually situated in what was then known as Bellaggio [Bellagio], the name by which Dormansland was known in the mid-late 19th century before adopting the name Dormansland when the Bellagio Estate of DormansPark was developed. The dwelling Astley was situated just seven properties away from where his future wife, Margaret Isley, was living with her family.
Margaret Mary Isley had been born in Colchester, Essex, on 4th May 1867, the daughter of Thomas Isley (who had been born in Demerara-Mahaica, Guyana, West Indies, and who was the clerk in charge of the Post Office, then Superintendent in the Civil Service, later Post Master, Civil Service) and his wife Emma Maria née Burridge. Margaret’s siblings included: Edith Violetta who was born in 1866, Albert Charles who was born in 1869, Percy Harold who was born in 1871, Horace who was born in 1873, Ethel Emma born in 1875, Sidney George born in 1879, Cecil Tom who was born in 1882 and William who was born in 1886. The first three children were born in Colchester, like Margaret, the next four were born in Norwich in Norfolk, and William was born in East Grinstead, Sussex, implying the Isley family had moved to the local area sometime between 1882 and 1886, settling at Culliofe, Bellaggio by 1891.
On 25th November 1897 Harry Nightingale married Margaret Isley at St George's church, Bloomsbury, London. At the time of their marriage, Harry was living at 11, Bernard Street, Bloomsbury, working as a surveyor, and Margaret was living in East Grinstead (the Isley family home at the time being Nirvana, St James’s Road, East Grinstead). Within a year, Harry had established an architectural practice operating from 104, London Road, East Grinstead. By 1899, Harry, listed as an architect and surveyor, had moved his business premises to 2, Judges, Terrace, High Street, East Grinstead, also taking up residence at the premises with his wife. By 1901, Harry and Margaret had set up home at 4, De la Warr Road, East Grinstead, where their daughter Margaret Joan was born in October 1901, and which was to remain their family home until about 1909. However, from 1910, their residence and work premises are both listed as 2, Judges Terrace.
The property at 2, Judges Terrace was part of a dwelling house that had been built as an un-jettied three-bay hall house in the 15th century, originally consisting of a two-bay open hall with a plain crown-post truss. A dendrology report for nos. 1 & 2, Judges Terrace, states that ‘it appears to have been built originally (felling date winter 1447-48) on a two rod plot, but judging from the date range of a single sample from the rear wall plate (felling date 1432-64), it was extended by 5 feet /1.5m very soon after it was built to abut against the adjoining Clarence House’. The property, before sub-division, had been the home of Jeremiah (Jeremy) Johnson (forge master at the Woodcock Forge [now the Wiremill]) and his family from the 1670’s to 1747 [for further information see Handout, Woodcock alias Wiremill, SJC 03/06]. As a point of interest, 1 & 2, Judges Terrace, were Grade II listed on 28th January 1948, under the ownership of Harry Nightingale (see below).
In 1905, Harry, working under the name Harry Cecil Nightingale, was operating as an architect and surveyor from 2, Judges Terrace and had also established an architect’s office at 27 & 28, King William Street, London, EC4, which appears to have been in operation until at least 1941. By 1910, the Nightingale family had moved their family home from 2, Judges Terrace to a property called The Jungle on Baldwins Hill, East Grinstead. The Jungle was quite a large dwelling with ten rooms, excluding the kitchen, scullery and any bathrooms or lobbies and was situated on the east side of Baldwins Hill. Sadly it was from The Jungle that Harry and Margaret’s daughter Margaret died, aged just sixteen, being buried at St John’s church, Felbridge, on 1st June 1916. Harry and Margaret remained at The Jungle until sometime between 1918 and 1922 when they moved back to living and working at 2, Judges Terrace.
It is around this date that Harry CR Nightingale was approached to produce a design for a much needed building for the community of Felbridge to come together for social events, thus Harry produced a design for the Felbridge (St John) Institute.
Felbridge (St John) Institute in Felbridge
A Board of Trustees was set up, with Ivan Margary as its President, and an Executive Committee, headed by Cecil Courtney Chorley of Retford, North End, Felbridge [for further information see Handouts, Little Gibbshaven, SJC 07/08 and Builders of Felbridge, Pt. 2, William Spurrell and Cecil Sharp, FRIBA, JIC/SJC 09/18]. The chosen architect was Harry C R Nightingale of The Jungle, Baldwins Hill, and the builders were Messrs. T and G Smith of East Grinstead. Messrs. T & G Smith were father and son, Tilden and George James Tilden Smith; Tilden being born in Crowhurst, Sussex, in 1848, moving to East Grinstead by 1871 (the year that his son George was born) and living at 6, London Road, East Grinstead by 1881. Tilden was a plumber and house decorator by trade. By 1891, the Smith family were living at 25, High Street, East Grinstead; Tilden working as plumber and house decorator and son George, working as paper hanger and painter, with another son, James, working as a plumber’s assistant. By 1901, Tilden and his family had moved to 34, High Street, whilst George had set up home at 5, St James’s Road, East Grinstead (three properties from the Isley family). In 1908, Tilden Smith filed for bankruptcy but in 1911, T & G Smith were still advertising as painters and decorators operating from 34, High Street, although George had by then moved to 101, Dunnings Road, East Grinstead, being listed as an employer in ‘building, painting and plumbing trades’.
The Felbridge (St John) Institute was situated on the south side of Copthorne Road until its demolition in 2009 to make way for the development of Mulberry Gate. It was opened by Lady Elvedon on 19th March 1924, and in the opening speeches, Cecil Chorley said he hoped the people of Felbridge would support the Institute as it belonged to them. He also said that although the building was not strictly speaking a War Memorial, he urged the public not to ‘forget in their gladness’, the men who left Felbridge and never returned. It should be remembered that at the time, the events of the First World War were still very fresh in people’s memories and it is estimated that Felbridge had lost 2 in every 9 males who were eligible for war service [for further information see Handout, War Memorials of St John the Divine, SJC 07/02v], so it would seem fitting to dedicate the new Institute to their memory.
Unfortunately, there are no surviving plans of the Institute but by using a combination of old interior photographs of the building and exterior photographs taken just before its demolition, together with the memories of local residents who used the building, it is possible to build up a description. The building was rectangular in design, built of red brick under a roof of large square grey flat tiles set at a 45 degree angle, with two large and two smaller Crittall-type windows set with cottage-style panes in both the front and back walls. There is evidence to suggest that the main entrance was originally through a central door under a small gabled porch in the front north facing wall. From map evidence, and later newspaper articles, there was originally a small kitchen attached to the rear of the Institute and from a photograph taken in 2008 there was a small platform of red brick (the same as the main building) adjoining the back wall. There were only three courses surviving of the old brick-work with new brick-work above suggesting that when the Institute was extended in 1958 the original kitchen walls were demolished and re-built in the same brick as the rest of the extension.
The front and back walls of the Institute had projecting brick piers symmetrically placed to give enough strength for the single skin brick wall to support the roof. Along the ridge of the roof, and dividing the length roughly in thirds, were what appear to be two chimney stacks. These may have had some connection with an early heating system, possibly two free-standing coal/coke boilers, or may have been for ventilation. The Institute appears to have been designed to blend in with the existing building to the west that had originally been part of the stables and coaching complex that belonged to Harts Hall [for further information see Handout, Harts Hall, SJC 07/05], with its red brick walls, cottage style window and grey roof, although that building had a grey slate roof.
The following is an abridged description of the interior of the Institute [for further information see Handout, Felbridge Village Halls, SJC 01/12]:
The interior decoration consisted of a dado rail with dark paint below and white or light paint above. Heating had originally been free-standing gas-fired radiators; later six hanging gas heaters were fitted to the ceiling, three on each side of the hall. The kitchen was very basic with just a cooker and a sink and drainer situated under a window in its east wall next to a door leading out to the rear of the building and later to the new extension.
The Institute was extended in 1958 with the addition of a new kitchen and committee room on the south side (not the work of Harry C R Nightingale), named the Coronation Rooms in commemoration of the coronation of Elizabeth II, and remained the social hub of the Felbridge community until it was replaced by the Village Hall in Crawley Down Road in 1965.
From a ‘Scrapbook’ kept by former resident Dora Wheeler, the Felbridge (St John’s) Institute had been built with public money in 1924 and was eventually sold in June 1965 for £4,000, the money going towards the construction of the new Village Hall. As for the old Institute, it was sold for use as a warehouse, as permission to build houses on the site had been refused by the East Grinstead Urban District Council. It then spent much of its remaining life as Southways House, a storage unit for the Southways Presentation Print Company until the site (along with Strath Cottage adjoining the rear of the Institute grounds) was purchased by property developers in 2009, being replaced by a gated development of six houses known as Mulberry Gate.
Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to identify any further architectural work of Harry C R Nightingale, either in Felbridge or East Grinstead, or even the London area, even though he was listed in the local and London directories as an architect and surveyor until at least 1941, implying Harry was still working into his seventies. Also, Harry does not appear to have been a member of the Royal Institute of British Architects.
On 28th January 1948, whilst the Nightingales were still in residence, nos. 1 & 2, Judges Terrace, together with the other properties in the row, were given Grade II listed status, the brief description for 1 & 2, Judges Terrace being:
The building abuts Clarendon House. The property has an 18th century painted brick front to an earlier (timber framed) building. It has modern wood 3-light casements [windows] with camber heads. There is a brick band. There is also a 16th century brick stack at the ridge. It has an 18th century 6-panel door, with bracket and hood. The end elevation has an exposed timber frame.
Old Stone House, Clarendon House and Nos. 1 and 2 Judges Terrace form a group.
On 7th August 1949, Harry C R Nightingale died, aged 83, from 2, Judges Terrace, and was buried at St John’s church, Felbridge. Margaret continued to live at the property until sometime between 1953 and 1955 when she moved to Brook House, East Grinstead, from where she died, aged 87, in February 1955, being buried at St John’s on 14th February 1955.
Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners
Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners were responsible for the replacement of the Lowdell family home of Baldwins off Baldwins Hill, Lingfield (postal address East Grinstead). The Loudell/Lowdell family had had connections with the Felbridge area since the mid 18th century with the purchase of land (known as Boxers) in the area of Stone Cottage and Wards Farm in Felbridge, which, in 1780, was in the occupation of James Evelyn of Felbridge Park. James Evelyn then purchased the holdings in 1789 and incorporated the two holdings as part of his Felbridge estate [for further information see from Handouts, Eating and Drinking Establishment of Felbridge, Pt. 1, SJC 05/07 and Stone Cottage JIC/SJC 07/12]. By 1803, Isaac Lowdell had increased his land holding in the area with the purchase of a plot of land in Lingfield, called Mutton Hill (believed to be in the area of Blackberry Lane), together with 88 acres of land off Baldwins Hill, which included the purchase of Cott Croft, an outlier of the manor of Hedgecourt consisting of a ‘messuage and 8 acres’, where he built a large house called Baldwins. The Lowdell’s estate, including Baldwins, then travelled down the Lowdell family to Sydney Poole Lowdell [for further information see Handout, Shopping in Felbridge, Pt. II, SJC 05/12]. By the end of the 19th century, much of the Lowdell’s land holding in the vicinity of what is now the Felbridge Parade and the site of the Crowne Plaza Felbridge hotel had been purchased by Charles Gatty and incorporated as part of the Felbridge estate and in 1960, Baldwins was purchased by Fred Kobler, the dwelling being replaced by an ultra modern house designed by architects Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners.
Bronek Katz, Dip. Ing. Arch, FSIA, was born Boruch Katz in Warsaw, Poland, on 2nd October 1912. He trained in Vienna qualifying with a Degree in Architecture before moving to London in 1936, where he was offered a job by Walter Gropius, the German architect, the pioneer of Modernist architecture and founder of the Bauhaus School. When Gropius moved to America in 1937, Bronek worked with E [Edwin] Maxwell Fry, a Modernist architect and colleague of Gropius. It was whilst working at Fry’s office that Bronek met Reginald Vaughan (see below) and they became great friends and eventual partners. In 1942, Bronek was a founder partner and associate of the Design Research Unit, which was responsible for some of the most important design produced in post-war Britain. The Unit pioneered a model for group practice, being the first consultancy in the country to bring together expertise in architecture, graphics and industrial design. In 1945, Bronek and Reginald established their own architectural practice of Katz and Vaughan (later Bronek Katz and R Vaughan, now Bronek Katz, R Vaughan and Partners), initially specialising in commercial buildings and interior design (see below).
On a personal side, Bronek married Marianne Pasch at Paddington on 19th December 1942; Marianne having been born in Innsbruck, Austria, on 5th January 1917. Bronek and Marianne initially settled at 7, Clifton Villas, Paddington, before moving to 163, Sussex Gardens, Paddington, by 1947 and then to 32, Chepstow Place, Notting Hill, London. They had two children, Michael born in 1945 and Carol born in 1948. In 1951, Bronek received an MBE for his work, along with Reginald Vaughan, on the Homes and Gardens Pavilion at the Festival of Britain. Sadly, just nine years later, Bronek Katz died in a skiing accident at Obergurgl, Tyrol, Austria, on 26th February 1960, aged just 47.
Reginald Vaughan AA Dip, FRIBA, was born in 1906 and unfortunately nothing more is known about his early life. Reginald studied architecture with the Architectural Association School of Architecture, the oldest independent school of architecture in Britain, founded in 1847. In 1933, Reginald was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architecture (ARIBA), being elected a Fellow of the Royal Institute of British Architecture (FRIBA) in 1953.
Like Bronek Katz, Reginald worked with Maxwell Fry early in his career and in 1945, Bronek and Reginald went into practice together. An early boost to their partnership came in 1948 when their design won the first post-war competition for a shop front and interior for Richards Shops in Regent Street, judged by Maxwell Fry who was unaware they were the designers. This, according to English designer Rodney Fitch, their design ‘blew shop-fitting completely out of the water. To me this company was doing absolutely state-of-the-art stuff’. This was followed in 1951 by a commission to design the Homes and Gardens Pavilion for the Festival of Britain, South Bank Exhibition, the aim being to show the very best home possible.
Katz and Vaughan are known internationally for their commercial work, including Richard Shops and BATA Developments. However, they also worked on smaller conventional buildings including six bungalows at Heol Pen-y-Fai, Newcastle Higher, Bridgend, Wales, and a bungalow on Grange Road, Sutton, Surrey (now demolished). Less conventional was Flagons House, Monxton Road, Amport, Hampshire, which had a broken pitch and flat roof, built of brick and timber and had a cantilevered balcony (demolished c2007 and replaced with two houses). Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners also worked on several hotels for Fred Kobler, including The Mandeville, and it is perhaps through this association that they were commissioned to design his country house called Baldwyns, although it is doubtful that Bronek Katz lived to see the finished building.
Fred Kobler and Baldwyns
Fred Kobler was born Bedrich Kobler in Czechoslovakia, on 12th December 1905, the son of Josef and Cecilie Kobler. Unfortunately nothing more is known about the Kobler family other than Josef and Cecilie were both Holocaust victims. Fred trained as an architect but to escape the rising anti-Semitism in Czechoslovakia, he moved (according to his biography in the Jewish Lives Project) to Lourenço Marques (known as Maputo since 1976, the capital of Mozambique), then on to Vienna and finally Paris. Then, according to the Jewish Lives Project, with the outbreak of World War II, Fred ‘came to Britain to join the Czech army as a private’. At the end of the war, with nowhere to live, Fred took a job managing a boarding house at 89, Davies Street, Mayfair, London, where he met Max Joseph, a hotelier and property developer making the most of redeveloping London after the Blitz.
Max Joseph bought the Mandeville Hotel in Marylebone, shortly after the War, then Mount Royal Hotel on Oxford Street. In 1957, Max Joseph formed Grand Hotels (Mayfair) Ltd with the Mandeville, the Washington on Curzon Street and Green Park Hotel as the nucleus of his company and in 1962 he founded the Grand Metropolitan Hotels that grew into one of the largest firms of its kind in the world. In 1954, Fred Kobler bought half of Max Joseph’s Grand Hotels Company for the sum of £15,000, also taking on half the debts, but within 10 years Fred had become a millionaire, allowing him to retire before he reached the age of 60.
By 1956, Fred Kobler had moved to 5 (later 5a), Mandeville Place, Marylebone, which became his London base as Managing Director of Grand Hotels (Mayfair). Fred then set about looking for a suitable location outside of London to create a country home. Thus by 1960, Fred Kobler had purchased the former family home and estate of the Lowdell family on Baldwins Hill. His chosen architects were Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners (see above) and his brief was ‘Give me comfort, light heartedness and, above all, originality.’ The house they came up with was Baldwyns (see below). This was to remain his country home until his death, aged 80, on 1st November 1987. Fred Kobler left an estate worth in excess of £2,750,000 the money being used to create the Kobler Trust that supports worthy and diverse causes, including founding the Kobler Outpatient Clinic at the Chelsea & Westminster Hospital for HIV sufferers and many charities supporting the arts including: Manchester’s Shoah Museum, the Tricycle Theatre, UK Jewish Film, Opera Scotland, Awards for Young Musicians and many more.
Baldwyns
Baldwyns was built on a 20-acre sloping site within the grounds of the former Lowdell estate off Baldwins Hill. It was considered to be ‘a truly original country house’, the result of the free-hand given by Fred Kobler to assistant architect Roger Balkwill of Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners. Kobler’s request was that the architect used a non-traditional design that did not use traditional materials such as brick and wood. As a point of interest, Roger Balkwill went on to design (with John Tovey and Colin Wears) the new Lion Terraces at London Zoo, Regent’s Park, completed in 1976.
The site of the proposed house of Baldwyns was at the end of a long driveway, invisible from the nearest road, and because of this, the local Planning Authority did not impose any restriction on the architects with regards to the external treatment of the dwelling. For architects Bronek Katz and Reginald Vaughan, who had trained under Modernist architects Walter Gropius and Maxwell Fry and who had spent their career, thus far, pushing the boundaries of commercial design, the commission gave their architectural practice a golden opportunity to push the bounds of a truly modern house. The result was a substantial steel-framed house with a hyperbolic (deliberately exaggerated) paraboloid (a solid generated by the rotation of a parabola about its axis of symmetry, having two or more non-parallel parabolic cross sections) roof. The external walls were made of vitreous steel panels of various colours, notably shades of green and orange. There was a fully glazed hall in the centre, with a partially cantilevered upper floor bedroom on the left and the hyperbolic paraboloid roof of the living room on the right. The living room was in a sunken area and the dining area was elevated. The main bedroom was accessed off the large living room and had a padded leather wall behind the bed, concealing a safe. All the guest bedrooms were designed to the specifications used for the chain of Grand Hotels, of which Fred Kobler was Managing Director, and the interiors were designed by John Heath, another assistant architect of Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners.
Completed in 1961, a contemporary article on Baldwyns reported:
Along with the revolutionary style of the house, Fred Kobler also had a large swimming pool incorporated in the design as he always liked to swim before breakfast and at midnight before going to bed. From an article written in 1968, the following gives a good description of the total concept for Baldwyns:
Sculpture and rare shrubs fringe the £8,000 kidney shaped swimming pool which is 45 feet [13.7m] long, of differing widths, has a maximum depth of 10 feet [3.1m], and is usually heated to 72ºF. “I have 20 acres of garden,” said Fred Kobler, a horticulturist enthusiast. “I’ve a very large collection of evergreens and I’m building a Japanese rock garden. I have 1,500 orchids of 84 varieties. Usually there are eight to ten flowers a week.”
Mr Kobler’s landscape garden, his house, and his swimming pool have all been designed to complement one another. “The house is meant to be like a great coloured butterfly which has just alighted on the lawn,” explained Roger Balkwill, the architect.
“Inside the house everything is white because there are huge windows, and the greenery outside provides the colour.” The inside of the pool is blue, and the shape of the square Italian tiles which cover the bottom reflects the angular design of the house. “As the house is very square,” said Roger Balkwill, “the pool itself has a completely free shape to form a pleasant relief.” The five levels of the house and pool are related to the natural incline of the hill which slopes towards the north. “The pool is on the south side to face the sun and be sheltered by the house,” said Mr Balkwill, whose brief was to design a house without using conventional materials such as brick and wood. “The house is built in vitreous enamel and steel. For the diving board by the swimming pool I used pre-stressed concrete.”
The gardens at Balwdyns were extensive and Fred Kobler had four or five greenhouses that were full of the exotic orchids. He employed five full-time gardeners to maintain the grounds, full of exotic trees, which ran down to bottom of Baldwins Hill where there was a lake and the Japanese garden he had created, together with a pagoda summer house (sometimes referred to as The Folly). For the duration of Fred Kobler’s life at Baldwyns, the gardens were well kept, offering a managed landscape to set off the clean lines and geometric shapes of the futuristic house and provide a beautiful vista from each of the large glass walls or windows.
However, within four years of Fred Kobler’s death, outline permission was sought for the erection of a replacement dwelling (this was granted but fortunately not implemented) and permission was also sought to demolish Baldwyns and replace it with a new dwelling, further north of the site, but this was fortunately dismissed. Three years later in 1994, permission was granted to construct a single storey extension and erect a sun-room at the rear of the property. In 2010, further permission was sought to extend again, but this was declined being considered inappropriate in the Green Belt. However, in 2015, with the building in a poor state of repair, a planning application was submitted to infill the ground floor and replace the existing flat and hyperbolic paraboloid roofs with pitched roofs. Sadly permission was granted even though the Planning Authority acknowledged that the existing building was ‘unique in appearance’. Unfortunately, they did not consider Baldwyns worthy of listing, even though the proposed alterations would completely obliterate the original concept of the design. Thus Baldwyns became Hill House.
Sadly, Baldwyns, the building of innovative design, using cutting edge materials for its construction, sitting like a ‘sparkling jewel’ on the Surrey/Sussex border, has become cocooned in a skin of red stock brick under a series of pitched roofs of grey slate tiles, habitual of the style of the first two decades of the 2000’s. Lost forever is the original concept of a ‘great coloured butterfly alighting on the lawn’.
[See Appendix for map and photograph]
Peter Foggo & David Thomas Architects
Peter Foggo and David Thomas were responsible for the Space House, built in Pine Grove, off the east side of North End, Felbridge. The area was once part of Stream Farm, purchased from the Felbridge estate by architect Major T Stewart Inglis in 1919 [for further information see Handouts, Old Felbridge House and The Feld, SJC 02/01, Eating and Drinking Establishments of Felbridge, Pt. 1, SJC 05/07, Felbridge Remembers their WWI Heroes, Pt. 3, JIC/SJC 07/17 and Builders of Felbridge, Pt. 2, JIC/SJC 09/18]. On 24th May 1923, the area was put up for auction as Lot 5 of 33 lots, then as part of the Stream Place Estate. By 1923, roads servicing Furze Lane (joining the west end of Lowdells Lane), Pine Grove and Yew Lane, had all been laid out and constructed to comply with planning approval from the local council. Trees had been planted on the sides of the roads and on some of the plots, but no utility services had been laid; Lot 5 was described as:
Adjoins Lot 4 on the South-East boundary and is at the rear of “Cartref”.
A good site for the erection of a private residence, having a frontage to Pine Grove of about 280ft. and an area of about 0a. 3r. 28p. This lot will be sold with a right to construct an inspection chamber for drainage purposes and to lay sewer, water and gas pipes in the South-East corner of lot 6 marked with a cross on the sale plan, also a right to lay sewer, water and gas pipes through lot 7, such line of pipes to be laid within 4ft of the South-East boundary of lot 7 as indicated on the sale plan.
The initial sales history of the plot has not yet been established but by 1930, Lot 5 and the adjacent Lot 4 had been purchased by Angus Grant Simpson who, by 1931 had constructed the Southern Service Station (now the site of ATS and the Texaco Garage on London Road, North End, Felbridge), a petrol station, with tea rooms and a house for his family, known as North End Lodge. Pine Grove was then gradually developed over the years and in 1963 the Space House was commissioned from architects Peter Foggo and David Thomas as a speculative prototype by a ‘gentleman developer’ with a military background (name not yet established).
Peter Foggo was born Kenneth Peter Foggo in West Derby, Lancashire, on 25th April 1930. He began work as a bank clerk in Liverpool before he decided to study architecture at Liverpool University School of Architecture, where he met David Thomas. David Thomas was born David Paramor Thomas in Sydenham, Kent, on 5th August 1931.
Foggo and Thomas both admired the work of Mies van der Rohe, the German-American architect, who, along with Alvar Aalto, Le Courbusier, Walter Gropius (see above) and Frank Lloyd Wright, is regarded as one of the pioneers of Modernist architecture. Mies was a director of the BauhuasSchool founded by Walter Gropius (see above). Mies, like Walter Gropius, helped create a new 20th century architectural style – extreme clarity and simplicity. His buildings made use of modern materials such as industrial steel and plate glass to define interior spaces, ideas used by the architects Bronek Katz, R Vaughan & Partners for Baldwyns (see above). Impassioned by Mies’s work, Foggo and Thomas managed to persuade him to come Liverpool University School of Architecture to lecture the students on his ideas.
Peter Foggo and David Thomas graduated in 1959 and Foggo began working briefly for Kenneth Capon of Architects’ Co-Partnership. Alongside this fulltime job, Peter and David founded Peter Foggo David Thomas Architects, working together in their spare time until 1969. Their first commission came via Kenneth Capon who had been asked to design a house for client George Scott he’d purchased a small woodland plot at Bosham Hoe near Chichester, West Sussex. Scott had approached Capon as a result of seeing a picture of Capon’s own weekend house in a magazine. Unbeknown to Scott, the small woodland plot he’d purchased for his new house was actually next door to Capon’s weekend house. At the time, Capon was too busy to design a house for Scott so passed it to his associate Peter Foggo, who, with David Thomas, carried out the design in their ‘spare time’ collaborative partnership. The resulting house, now called Sorrell House, was competed in 1960. Five years later this iconic deckhouse, clad in cedar with large plate glass windows/walls was extended to further deigns by Foggo and Thomas and in 1998 the house was given Grade II* listed status. Also, in 1998, George Scott approached David Thomas for designs to extend the house still further. By this time Thomas had retired but agreed to design the extension and gain planning permission, passing the design to Foggo Associates who, in conjunction with Lee/Fitzgerald Architects, progressed the construction and managed the build. The project earned them an RIBA regional award for excellence in architecture in 2002.
By 1960, Peter Foggo had joined Ove Arup & Partners, a multi-discipline practice that included structural, mechanical and electrical engineers, quantity surveyors, interior designers and architects. Ove Arup, the founder of the company, had started out as an engineer-designer but during the 1950’s and 60’s increasingly employed architects in his engineering firm Ove Arup & Partners and eventually formed a separate practice Ove Arup Associates, registered as architects but still working as a mixed team of designers from different backgrounds. By 1970, Foggo was a Partner in Arup Associates and in 1984, he became a senior Director. David Thomas also joined Ove Arup & Partners and he, like Foggo, went on to become a Partner and Director. Foggo is remembered for Ove Arup & Partners Scottish Head Office (1965) at Scotstoun House in Queensferry near Edinburgh (now listed) and his Broadgate (1985) development in London (partially demolished in 2015) and Thomas is remembered for his collaborative design for the Sussex Grandstand at Goodwood Racecourse (1987) and his significant contribution towards the transformation of Hong Kong’s infrastructure as Head of Arup’s Hong Kong practice.
In 1989, Peter Foggo founded Peter Foggo Associates establishing its own reputation (in their words) ‘with schemes characterised by specific responses to context and the integration of architecture, structure and services’. Examples of their works include 111, Old Bond Street, London and 60, Queen Victoria Street, London. Sadly Peter Foggo died on 1st July 1993, aged 63, but the practice he established still continues as Foggo Associates. The works completed to date range from small-scale residential extensions such as Sorrel House, winner of the RIBA Southern Region Prize 2002 (see above) to large scale urban mixed-use master plans and developments such as Cannon Place, the ICEBuilding of the Year for 2011.
On retirement from Arup Associates (sometime between 1987 and 1998), David Thomas decided to train as a teacher at GoldsmithsCollege, London, and spent the rest of his working life as a special needs teacher. Although, when approached in 1998, he did draw up the proposed extension to Sorrel House (see above). David Thomas died on 21st October 2010.
Returning to the ‘spare time’ partnership of Peter Foggo David Thomas Architects of the 1960’s, apart from Sorrel House, Peter and David designed a further eleven known single storey houses and one in-fill structure between 1960 and 1969. The houses include: Space House at North End, Felbridge (see below), two houses at Black Heath, London (1960’s), four houses at Wimbledon, London (between 1963 and 1965), three houses at Holyport, near Maidenhead, Berkshire, one house at Buxton, Derbyshire (1967) and an infill in a street of stucco houses described as ‘two glassy maisonettes with an external concrete frame’ at Pimlico, London (1969). With the exception of 76, 76a and 78, Cambridge Street, Pimlico, all the houses comprise of a single-storey steel frame, with extensive use of glass and wood, reminiscent of the ‘Californian style’ that can be seen in the designs of Richard Neutra, Craig Ellwood and husband and wife team Ray and Charles Eames.
Space House
Space House in Pine Grove, North End, Felbridge, was one of the first commissions that followed Sorrel House. The design of the Space House was based on the Californian ‘Case Study Houses’ of Neutra, Ellwood and the Eames, the four eminent Modernist American architects inspired by the work of Mies van der Rohe, much admired by Foggo and Thomas. The brief for the ‘Case Study Houses’ was to design and build inexpensive and efficient homes to fulfil America’s growing demand for housing in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The Space House was designed in 1963 and built to a budget in 1964, in conjunction with a small ‘gentleman developer’ of military (army officer) background, as a prototype for second development. This speculative second development of three houses of the same design was subsequently built in 1964 in the village of Holyport near Maidenhead, Berkshire, nos.1, 2 and 3, Manor Road.
Devised as a prototype by Foggo and Thomas for future residential design, the Space House is a raised single-storey pavilion standing on 8 pilotis or stanchion columns, 1 yard [0.9m] above the ground, giving the illusion that the house is floating above its site. The stanchion columns support a series of rectangular steel trusses braced with diagonal tie rods, clad externally and internally with timber walls, with floors and roof slung between. Like many of the ‘Case Study Houses’ the framing was originally black and the cedar cladding was varnished to prevent it silvering with age, thus retaining the contrast in colours. This was supplemented with large areas of plate glass. The strong horizontal planes of floor and roof-line were emphasised by the transparency of the elevations, a result of the 60%-40% glass to wall ratio. The main wings of the front and back of the house were glazed from floor to ceiling and there was also floor to ceiling windows in every room. The simple but logical H-shaped plan of the house was made up of a central service core, opening onto front and rear terraces (with a simple set of stairs leading to the front terrace), with the living and bedroom wings flanking on either side. Inside, the flow of light from the storey-height glazing was muted by the use of timber boarding for floors, walls and ceilings, finishes that would darken over the years.
Space House first sold in 1965 and within three years was back on the market after which the property remained in the possession of the purchaser until his death in 2002. In 2002, Space House was put back up for sale but by then showed signs of some dilapidation in the decades since it was built. The exterior and internal walls were still quite intact, though through lack of maintenance, some of the boards had suffered water damage. However, the central core and bedrooms had been considerably altered and over-clad, some of the walls being clad with fabric, and there was dark wood on the ceiling, all in a manner at odds with the original design. Restoration work began following the purchase of the property in 2002, the new owners commissioning Lee/Fitzgerald Architects to carry out the work, the same architectural practice that had been used for the 1998 extension work on Sorrell House (see above).
The external cedar cladding that had acquired a heavy build-up of varnish over the years was removed, sanded and recoated to keep their original panel-like quality. The original black frame of the house was painted white, which some consider emphasises that this is a framed house and makes it float more freely above the ground. The rear central screen of the house was re-configured and re-glazed with new cedar double doors (matching the entrance door) to allow the kitchen/breakfast room to flow onto the terrace. All internal cedar was removed from the walls (along with the fabric coverings) and belt sanded prior to refinishing and the original pine match-boarded ceilings throughout the house were replaced with plasterboard framed with cedar to improve daylight penetration and give the interior a more spacious feel. All the floors were stripped and resealed and the central core of the house was re-planned and reconceived as a white cube at the heart of the building. A new bathroom and new shower room were inserted and the kitchen was designed so as to be as part of the cube. All doors into the cube are detailed as moving panels within the cube. A 360º hallway around the service core now gives maximum circulation space, whilst the symmetrical floor-to-ceiling glazing creates deep vistas that cut through the house, pulling the front and back gardens inside. The partition between the two central bedrooms was also removed to make one larger room. However, many of the original features have been retained, including the original neoprene gaskets for the glazing, internal and external Western Red Cedar panelling and the vertical timber ventilation louvers.
The refurbishment was completed in 2004 and the Space House was awarded the RIBA Conservation Award the same year in recognition of the high quality and sympathetic manner of the work done. In 2006 the Space house received a replacement roof and was again back on the market, the owners looking for a ‘new project’ to challenge them.
Space House is a fine example of the use of industrial materials combined with simple elegance in the detailing, resulting in an extremely powerful design statement that has stood the test of time and, although not listed, is considered to be an outstanding example of mid 20th century Modern architecture and is one of the few buildings in Britain that stands comparison with the celebrated ‘Case Study Houses’ built in California in the 1950’s. Constructed largely from steel, with large areas of plate glass and cedar panels, Space House is a testament of Foggo and Thomas’s admiration of Modernist architect Mies van der Rohe, designing an interpretation of his iconic pavilion house in Farnsworth, Illinois, built here in Pine Grove, North End, Felbridge.
Bibliography
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SJC 03/19