The Maverick Architects

Breaking from Tradition

In 1907, Lord Curzon, as chancellor of Oxford, choreographed a spectacular honorary degree ceremony to emphasise his university’s independence from a potentially predatory government. Of the 34 mortar-boarded recipients, the Arts were represented by Mark Twain, Rudyard Kipling, Auguste Rodin, Camille Saint-Saëns, and George Bodley. While the choice of the French contingent was motivated by the need, following the drama of Fashoda, to cement the ‘Entente Cordiale,’ that of Bodley was a clear indication that, at the time, he was considered the country’s most distinguished architect.

Gilbert Scott and G. F. Bodley

Sixty years earlier, following his sister’s wedding to GGS’s brother, G.F. Bodley, then aged 19, joined the Spring Gardens office, lodging with the Scott family in Avenue Road. During these six years, he became close friends with Middle Scott and many of his talented colleagues and, like them, rebelled against what he felt was GGS’s over-reliance on historic precedents. In his search for a modern style better suited to the needs of the late 19th century and influenced in part by Ruskin, he drew on early medieval French and Italian buildings to create a new synthesis of Gothic forms.

Garner, who was 12 years his junior, had also served his apprenticeship in GGS’s office and was, unlike Bodley, a skilled draftsman. In the words of fellow architect J.F. Bentley of Westminster Cathedral fame, a ‘man of genius.’ The two architects complemented each other well, being entirely at ease with the other’s designs. Bodley, with his exceptional talent for decorative detail—especially flat-pattern design for painted decoration, textiles, and wallpaper—preferred churches, while the partnership’s Queen Anne secular buildings were more often the work of Garner.

The founders of Watts & Co - 1874

Stained Glass, Socialism, and Scandals

One of the many talented architects Bodley met in Spring Gardens was G.E. Street, an exceptional draftsman and prolific church builder whose designs were inspired by much European travel. One of his better-known works is the polychrome St James the Less in Pimlico, described as a ‘Lily’ emerging from the ‘Weeds’ of the slums that then surrounded it. Thanks to the support of Gladstone, he won, so beating his former master, the competition to build the new Law Courts in the Strand.

The three architects had become progressively disenchanted with Morris & Co. In addition to their underlying cultural differences, they were experiencing increasing difficulties in obtaining delivery, rudeness from Morris’ workmen, and sharp increases in prices. As early as 1870, Bodley had taken the precaution of registering two of his wallpapers, still in print today, in his own name. But it was only in 1874 that they finally took the plunge and set up their own partnership, which they christened Watts & Co.

Their legacy serves as a reminder that architecture, like any art, thrives on those willing to break from the past to build the future.