Lone-End

Frederick (commonly F.L.) Griggs(1876-1938), was a distinguished English etcher, architectural draughtsman, illustrator and early conservationist, associated with the late flowering of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Cotswolds. He was one of the first etchers to be elected to full membership of the Royal Academy.

Born in Hitchin, Hertfordshire, he worked as an illustrator for the Highways and Byways series of regional guides for the publishers, Macmillans. In 1903 he settled at Dover's House, in the market town of Chipping Campden in the Cotswolds, and went on to create one of the last significant Arts and Crafts houses at 'New Dover's House'. There he set up the Dover's House Press, where he printed late proofs of the etchings of Samuel Palmer, amongst others. He collaborated with Ernest Gimson and the Sapperton group of craftsmen in architectural and design work in the area.

'Fred' Griggs converted to Catholicism in 1912, and set about producing an incomparable body of etchings, 57 meticulous plates in a Romantic tradition, evoking an idealised medieval England of pastoral landscapes and architectural fantasies of ruined abbeys and buildings. His best known etchings include <em>Owlpen Manor</em> dedicated to his friend and near neighbour, the architect-craftsman Norman Jewson, <em>Anglia Perdita</em>, <em>Maur's Farm</em>, <em>St Botolph's, Boston</em> and <em>The Almonry</em> (the last two are in Te Papa's collection). Collections of his etched work are held in major public collections worldwide.

<em>Lone-End </em>is a romantic concoction of Griggs's inventive, pious and antiquarian mind. While it never existed, it certainly did so to the Catholic Griggs. According to his biographer, F.A. Comstock, 'This plate is, of course, the artist's expression of grief over the terrible losses suffered by Cistercian monasteries at the time of the Dissolution, when the Order was suppressed and many of its building burned. Here we see the church roofless and the monastic buildings put to other uses.' (pp. 193-94). I would suggest a more optimistic reading; the farmer who has taken it over is pragmatic and the ensemble is charmingly picturesque.

See:

F.A. Comstock, <em>A Gothic Vision: F.L. Griggs and his Work</em> (Oxford and Boston, 1966, reprinted 1978)

Wikipedia, 'F.L. Griggs', https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F._L._Griggs

Dr Mark Stocker    Curator, Historical International Art    April 2018