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==Background and history==
==Background and history==
Development of the western outskirts of Cambridge accelerated in the late 19th century, particularly after college fellows were permitted to marry in 1882, but were required to live outside college. Substantial detached family houses set in plots of 0.5–1.0&nbsp;acres were built in and around [[Madingley Road]], [[Grange Road, Cambridge|Grange Road]] and [[Huntingdon Road]], to accommodate married academics and well-off professionals, often designed by well-known London-based architects, including [[M. H. Baillie Scott]], [[J. J. Stevenson]], [[E. S. Prior]] and [[Ernest Newton]].<ref>Bradley & Pevsner, p. 34</ref><ref name=Rawle_p33>Rawle, pp. 33, 219</ref><ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> Most of the houses in west Cambridge were traditional in style, particularly [[Arts and Crafts movement]].<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /><ref name=Guillebaud /> Nearly all of the land (90%) was owned by the colleges, particularly [[St John's College, Cambridge|St John's College]], and was leased under restrictive terms that required the development of expensive high-quality houses, often specifying red-brick construction (rather than the local white brick) with a tiled roof.<ref name=Rawle_p33 /><ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> In 1914, on college-owned land, there was no working-class housing, and the area was exclusively residential with no shops, community facilities or churches.<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> Expansion westwards along Madingley Road before the First World War stopped at the junction with [[Storey's Way]].<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> In 1922–31, St John's leased nine plots for development on Madingley Road, including number 31. Shortly afterwards, the college obtained consent for two new roads, completed in 1933: Wilberforce Road, which joins Madingley Road immediately adjacent to number 31, and Clarkson Road, which runs behind number 31.<ref name=Guillebaud />
Development of the western outskirts of Cambridge accelerated in the late 19th century, particularly after college fellows were permitted to marry in 1882, but were required to live outside college. Substantial detached family houses set in plots of 0.5–1.0&nbsp;acres were built in and around [[Madingley Road]], [[Grange Road, Cambridge|Grange Road]] and [[Huntingdon Road]], to accommodate married academics and well-off professionals, often designed by well-known London-based architects, including [[M. H. Baillie Scott]], [[J. J. Stevenson]], [[E. S. Prior]] and [[Ernest Newton]].<ref>Bradley & Pevsner, p. 34</ref><ref name=Rawle_p33>Rawle, pp. 33, 219</ref><ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> Most of the houses in west Cambridge were traditional in style, particularly [[Arts and Crafts movement]].<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /><ref name=Guillebaud /> Nearly all of the land (90%) was owned by the colleges, particularly [[St John's College, Cambridge|St John's College]], and was leased under restrictive terms that required the development of expensive high-quality houses, often specifying red-brick construction (rather than the local white brick) with a tiled roof.<ref name=Rawle_p33 /><ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> In 1914, on college-owned land, there was no working-class housing, and the area was almost exclusively residential with no shops, community facilities or churches.<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> Expansion westwards along Madingley Road before the First World War stopped at the junction with [[Storey's Way]].<ref name=Guillebaud_1870 /> In 1922–31, St John's leased nine plots for development on Madingley Road, including number 31. Shortly afterwards, the college obtained consent for two new roads, completed in 1933: Wilberforce Road, which joins Madingley Road immediately adjacent to number 31, and Clarkson Road, which runs behind number 31.<ref name=Guillebaud />


31 Madingley Road was among the first [[Modern architecture|Modernist]] houses to be completed in Cambridge.<ref name=Pevsner /><ref>Architectural History Practice, p. 11</ref><ref name=Rawle_p62>Rawle, p. 62</ref> Twelve Modernist houses in the town dating to the interwar period are listed in a 1996 gazetteer;<ref name=Gould /> the earliest – White House in nearby Conduit Head Road, designed by [[George Checkley]] for himself – dates from 1930–31 and is an example of a [[concrete]] Cubist construction drawing direct inspiration from [[Le Corbusier]]'s work in France.<ref name=Pevsner /><ref name=Rawle_p62 /><ref name=Gould /> Brick, as opposed to concrete rendered to appear white, was an unusual choice for a Modernist building of this date.<ref name=Sturgis />
31 Madingley Road was among the first [[Modern architecture|Modernist]] houses to be completed in Cambridge.<ref name=Pevsner /><ref>Architectural History Practice, p. 11</ref><ref name=Rawle_p62>Rawle, p. 62</ref> Twelve Modernist houses in the town dating to the interwar period are listed in a 1996 gazetteer;<ref name=Gould /> the earliest – White House in nearby Conduit Head Road, designed by [[George Checkley]] for himself – dates from 1930–31 and is an example of a [[concrete]] Cubist construction drawing direct inspiration from [[Le Corbusier]]'s work in France.<ref name=Pevsner /><ref name=Rawle_p62 /><ref name=Gould /> Brick, as opposed to concrete rendered to appear white, was an unusual choice for a Modernist building of this date.<ref name=Sturgis />

Revision as of 11:44, 16 October 2022

31 Madingley Road: front façade

31 Madingley Road is a Modernist red-brick house in Madingley Road, west Cambridge, England, designed by Marshall Sisson for the classical archaeologist A. W. Lawrence in 1931–32.[1][2][3] It is one of the first Modernist-style houses in Cambridge,[3] and is listed at grade II.[1]

Background and history

Development of the western outskirts of Cambridge accelerated in the late 19th century, particularly after college fellows were permitted to marry in 1882, but were required to live outside college. Substantial detached family houses set in plots of 0.5–1.0 acres were built in and around Madingley Road, Grange Road and Huntingdon Road, to accommodate married academics and well-off professionals, often designed by well-known London-based architects, including M. H. Baillie Scott, J. J. Stevenson, E. S. Prior and Ernest Newton.[4][5][6] Most of the houses in west Cambridge were traditional in style, particularly Arts and Crafts movement.[6][7] Nearly all of the land (90%) was owned by the colleges, particularly St John's College, and was leased under restrictive terms that required the development of expensive high-quality houses, often specifying red-brick construction (rather than the local white brick) with a tiled roof.[5][6] In 1914, on college-owned land, there was no working-class housing, and the area was almost exclusively residential with no shops, community facilities or churches.[6] Expansion westwards along Madingley Road before the First World War stopped at the junction with Storey's Way.[6] In 1922–31, St John's leased nine plots for development on Madingley Road, including number 31. Shortly afterwards, the college obtained consent for two new roads, completed in 1933: Wilberforce Road, which joins Madingley Road immediately adjacent to number 31, and Clarkson Road, which runs behind number 31.[7]

31 Madingley Road was among the first Modernist houses to be completed in Cambridge.[3][8][9] Twelve Modernist houses in the town dating to the interwar period are listed in a 1996 gazetteer;[10] the earliest – White House in nearby Conduit Head Road, designed by George Checkley for himself – dates from 1930–31 and is an example of a concrete Cubist construction drawing direct inspiration from Le Corbusier's work in France.[3][9][10] Brick, as opposed to concrete rendered to appear white, was an unusual choice for a Modernist building of this date.[2]

The architect, Marshall Sisson (1897–1978), had set up his practice in 1928 in London.[11][12] In his early career he designed several Modernist buildings in Cambridge and elsewhere, some of which – 31 Madingley Road being the best known – married modern design with traditional materials. They are influenced by James Burford (1895–1967), one of his teachers at University College, London.[12] Sisson characterised 31 Madingley Road (as well as similar buildings) as "Essentially 'Traditional' in that it ... represents a serious attempt to find a contemporary expression for the directional character of Western culture ... predominantly realistic and factual, expressed in the emphatic horizontality, simplification and rigid systematization".[13] He uses concrete in his later Modernist house in Cambridge: 26 Millington Road, built in 1934–35 for another classical archaeologist, A. J. B. Wace.[11][14] Sisson turned wholly to traditional styles after 1935, including the Neo-Georgian Orchard Building at Pembroke College (1954–57).[11][15]

31 Madingley Road was commissioned by the classical archaeologist A. W. Lawrence (1900–91), who had been appointed to the Laurence readership in classical archaeology at the University of Cambridge in 1930.[2][16] He and Sisson were friends.[16] Lawrence's household then comprised his wife, Barbara née Innes, their young daughter and a female servant.[2][16] As the site belonged to St John's College, the approval of the college's building committee was required for the design. The house cost more than £4,000, which is relatively expensive for a house on Madingley Road at the time.[2] Lawrence considered that the traditional building material and the expense would be factors promoting St John's approval of the design.[2] The house was constructed in 1931–32.[3] The family did not remain at 31 Madingley Road; in 1951 Lawrence took up a post in the Gold Coast and on his return to the UK, lived in Yorkshire.[16]

The building was listed at grade II in 1996.[1]

Location

The house is at TL 43676 59080 on the south side of Madingley Road, at the junction with Wilberforce Road.[1][3] It lies within the West Cambridge conservation area.[17] Number 31 is set back from the road on a medium-sized plot with a line of large trees obscuring it from Wilberforce Road.[18] Its near neighbour 35 Madingley Road, a large red-brick building of around 1750, is one of the oldest buildings in the conservation area and is also listed at grade II.[3][19] Number 31 stands opposite some of the original accommodation blocks of Churchill College, which are listed at grade II.[1][3] Behind number 31 is 1 Wilberforce Road, a single-storey house built in 1965.[18][20]

Description

31 Madingley Road is in red brick with dressings in cast stone, a form of concrete. There are two or three storeys under a flat roof.[1][3] The style is described as "Early Modern Movement" in the listing.[1] The historian Matthew Sturgis describes the building as a "stylish essay in brick", with a "long, low" profile that he considers relates to Sisson's view that "modern architecture [draws] its energy from the horizontal".[2]

The front (north) façade has an asymmetrically placed inset entrance reached by two shallow brick steps, which is surmounted by a plain horizontal canopy, significantly wider than the doorway.[1][21] Vertically above the entrance, a series of horizontal cast stone bands of the same width as the doorway run up to the base of the second storey.[21] The ground floor has five relatively small two-light wooden windows to the left and one to the right of the entrance. The windows are surmounted by a prominent decorative lintel made of cast stone, with three bands, which is continuous over the series of windows and interrupted on the ground floor at the entrance.[1][2] Sturgis describes these banded lintels as "touches of restrained detail" that draw attention to the building's profile.[2] The first floor has eight similar windows, also surmounted by a three-banded lintel, with a series of seven to the left (offset compared with the ground-floor windows) and one to the right.[1][22] The long series of repeated windows with uniform spacing is typical of Sisson's style in both Modernist and traditional buildings.[11] There is a three-storey section at the west end, above and to the right of the entrance; the second floor has four similar windows, which are topped by a lintel with just two bands.[1][22]

The garden (south) front has an uninterrupted series of ten similar windows at the first-floor level, again surmounted by a long continuous three-banded lintel. At the ground level the seven windows are interspersed with French doors and a doorway; they are surmounted by a three-banded lintel and offset from the first-floor windows.[1][22] The pattern of ground-floor windows and doors on this face has been altered from the original design, with the addition of entrances.[13][a]

The original design was for a roof garden with a pergola at the west end (visible in a 1932 photograph[23]) and a partly enclosed area that covered the access stairway; both the pergola and the stairway area were later fully enclosed to form the three-storey section.[2][3] The current flat roof is covered with roofing felt, and has an undecorated parapet; a chimney stack rises at the east end.[1]

On the interior, the ground-floor accommodation includes sitting and dining rooms, a separate small sitting room for the maid, a study, and a large kitchen.[2][13][25] The original built-in cupboards in the kitchen were present at the time of listing. The large hall is internal and receives its illumination from the upper storey; it has an open staircase with chromium banisters.[1][2] The first floor has four bedrooms and a playroom.[13]

References

  1. ^ Compare the 1932[23] and 2003[24] photographs archived at RIBA.
  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n 31 Madingley Road, National Heritage List for England, Historic England (accessed 20 September 2022)
  2. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l Matthew Sturgis (12 July 2003). 1932: the century makers: 100 years of houses: 31 Madingley Road, Cambridge. The Daily Telegraph, p. 4
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j Bradley & Pevsner, pp. 34–35, 342
  4. ^ Bradley & Pevsner, p. 34
  5. ^ a b Rawle, pp. 33, 219
  6. ^ a b c d e Philomena Guillebaud (2015). West Cambridge: 1870–1914: building the bicycle suburb. Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society XCVI: 193–210
  7. ^ a b Philomena Guillebaud (2015). West Cambridge: the two World Wars and the inter-war lull. Proceedings of the Cambridge Antiquarian Society XCVII: 179–93
  8. ^ Architectural History Practice, p. 11
  9. ^ a b Rawle, p. 62
  10. ^ a b Jeremy Gould (1996). Gazetteer of Modern Houses in the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Twentieth Century Architecture (2): 112–128 JSTOR 41859593
  11. ^ a b c d William Fawcett (2013). Post-War Traditionalists in Oxford and Cambridge. Twentieth Century Architecture 11: 82–97 JSTOR 24644441
  12. ^ a b James Bettley (2003). Sisson, Marshall (Arnott). Grove Art Online (Oxford University Press) doi:10.1093/gao/9781884446054.article.T079021
  13. ^ a b c d Powers, pp. 214–15
  14. ^ Bradley & Pevsner, pp. 39, 168, 334–35
  15. ^ Bradley & Pevsner, pp. 39, 168, 334–35
  16. ^ a b c d R. M. Cook (21 May 2009) [23 September 2004]. Lawrence, Arnold Walter. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford University Press) doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/49868
  17. ^ West Cambridge Conservation Area, Cambridge City Council (21 November 2018) (accessed 6 October 2022)
  18. ^ a b Architectural History Practice, Appendix 1
  19. ^ Cambridge City Council, pp. 7–8
  20. ^ Bradley & Pevsner, p. 341
  21. ^ a b Morley von Sternberg (2003). 31 Madingley Road, Cambridge: the entrance, RIBA (accessed 5 October 2022)
  22. ^ a b c 31 Madingley Road, RIBA (accessed 30 September 2022)
  23. ^ a b Dell & Wainwright (1932). 31 Madingley Road, Cambridge: the garden front, RIBA (accessed 4 October 2022)
  24. ^ Morley von Sternberg (2003). 31 Madingley Road, Cambridge: the garden front, RIBA (accessed 4 October 2022)
  25. ^ Dell & Wainwright (1932). 31 Madingley Road, Cambridge: the sitting room, RIBA (accessed 5 October 2022)

Sources

Further reading

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