The Country Houses of Gradidge & Blower
An insight into the country houses of Architects Roderick Gradidge & Stedman Blower
Gradidge's Tower
Roderick Gradidge (1929-2000) was one of the most colourful British architects of recent times. He had a national reputation as an 'enfant terrible', agitating for a traditional architecture against the prevailing modernist style of the post-war period.
Roderick had started out his career as a pub specialist in London in the 1960's, where he was based. While this paid the bills, his real passion was the Arts & Crafts, especially the great houses built by eminent architects like Sir Edwin Lutyens and Philip Webb.
He developed a thriving country house business, often working almost exclusively on often unloved historic houses. He was particularly busy in Surrey, easily driveable in his old Bristol car from his Chiswick home.
Surrey's Hills
Roddy collaborated on most of these projects with the Surrey based architect Michael Blower, and in his last years with his sons Robert and Damien Blower.
In all, about a dozen country houses, some by eminent Victorian architects were transformed by Gradidge & Blower, including homes by Sir Edwin Lutyens, Charles FA Voysey & Hugh Thackeray Turner. Roderick's final design was only at sketch stage when he passed away, and one project had not begun. These final projects were completed, but also modified or to a new design during detail design, by Robert and Damien Blower.
Photograph of south elevation after alterations and renovations to Charles F. Voysey house in Haslemere, Surrey for a private client (1982) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Charles FA Voysey
The earliest of the collaborative projects by Gradidge & Blower in the early 1980's was a full restoration and upgrade to one of Voysey's few projects in Surrey, the Grade II Listed 'New House' in Haslemere.
Alterations to Charles F. Voysey house in Haslemere, Surrey for a private client (1982) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
The New House
The New House, like many of Voysey's modest homes for middle-class professionals in London's commuter belt, was not grand in scale. The project involved mainly interior updates, similar to Roddy's pub work, to meet late 20th-century standards without major additions.
An early project was again of limited external scope for a rare but quite special and hidden away gem of a building by the prominent Arts & Crafts exponent, Detmar Blow, in deep West Surrey.
Sketch plans of alterations to country house for a private client in Charleshill area of Farnham, Surrey by Roderick Gradidge, architect, in association with Stedman & Blower (1980) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Detmar Blow
This house remains little altered even today; Gradidge & Blower's scheme was also mainly an interior makeover, while retaining the most significant parts of the Detmar Blow building.
The house was reputedly by Hugh Thackeray Turner, but this has now been attributed affirmatively, although its transformation has obliterated much of Turner's original composition. It remains probably one of Gradidge & Blower's most important designs, displaying their deft handling of the vernacular of Surrey for which both in their own way were so passionate - Roderick through his writings and Michael through his sketchbooks.
Elevations of alterations to country house for a private client in Gomshall, Surrey by Roderick Gradidge, architect, in association with Stedman & Blower (1994) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Hugh Thackeray Turner
In the mid-1990s, Roderick, then at retirement age, undertook one of his largest projects: transforming and extending a modest Surrey Hills country house for a renowned eye surgeon and collector of Arts & Crafts furniture.
Sectional elevations of alterations to country house for a private client in Gomshall, Surrey by Roderick Gradidge, architect, in association with Stedman & Blower (1994) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
The project was published in Country Life in 1998, where Michael Hall praised Roddy's brief to update and gentrify the unloved old home - even one by Turner - in glowing terms that '...there are few architects who could accomplish this task with such flair'.
Alterations to country house for a private client in Tilford, Farnham, Surrey by Roderick Gradidge, architect, in association with Stedman & Blower (1983) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Harold Falkner
In the early 1980's, Gradidge & Blower went on to work on a prominent house designed by one of Surrey's greatest architects and a son of Farnham in West Surrey, by Harold Falkner.
The Falkner house is of a period in the early 20th century when a more Classical architecture was being revived, more Sir Christopher Wren, Palladian and Neo-Georgian, than Arts & Crafts. Lutyens was also exploring the sash window, the Classical Orders, symmetry and Palladian proportions which became a dominant theme in the decades up to WWII.
Roderick was equally adept at working with a more Classical architecture, and in fact his pub and interiors work of the 1960's and 1970's was full or Classical references, columns, sashed windows and ornament. Roddy greatest strength, if not always restrained, was hi ability to move seamlessly between a Classical architecture and the Arts & Crafts, from Neo-Gothic to Palladian. He was restless, sometimes failing to edit his excitement, much like his own public persona.
Before
Another Falkner project, at the opposite end of Falkner's career, was on a series of houses built on his own Dippenhall Estate, outside Farnham, which he had inherited as a boy.
After
In fact, rarely this was a project that Michael Blower incepted, but to which he turned to Roddy for some top level ideas for how to extend.
Alterations to Revivalist house for a private client in Dippenhall, Farnham, Surrey by Roderick Gradidge, architect, in association with Stedman & Blower (1999) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Sketches
Grade II Listed, this house involved just a very modest bay window, but this was essential in order to solve myriad problems out of a house knocked together - au Falkner - out of two ancient barns dismantled and brought to Dippenhall by him and with restricted space internally.
Elevations of a design for a new country house (unbuilt) for a private client in the Surrey Hills (1999) by Gradidge & BlowerThe Blower Foundation
Gradidge
It is perhaps a sadness for a lost opportunity that Roddy never built a house from scratch, even though he designed one here - if only!
Roddy was by no means an easy personality to work with. He also never had an office, so was far from being a commercial architect. He worked with Stedman Blower because they brought a more commercial nuance to managing projects and for having a contact book of local skilled tradespeople and builders to hand. Had he been slightly more polished in front of clients and had he lived another decade, it us probable he may have built more and perhaps finally, a new house from scratch.
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