This book is the first to look at the development of the Arts and Crafts movement in the Lake District. The movement flourished there for a brilliant decade at the beginning of the twentieth century. The houses created by some of Britain's leading architects are arguably among the most beautiful family homes ever built and were fitted out with perfectionist eyes for craftsmanship. The authors document and describe these unique houses showing how architects and clients worked together to make the most of the Lakeland settings and adapt to the vernacular styles and crafts of the Lakes. Blackwells, Broadleys and Moor Crag by Voysey and Baillie Scott are well known but there are a host of other remarkable buildings and interiors that are now hotels or regularly open their doors to visitors. Specially commissioned photographs show the houses in their setting and the detail - tiles, carving, plasterwork and ironware - of their interiors.
The introduction explaining the lure of the Lake District as a holiday destination for wealthy northern industrialists is followed by a chapter describing how and where the lake or hillside sites for their houses were chosen. There follows what is effectively a summation of the architects and their houses, taking each and their interior fittings in turn. The artefacts and craftsmen and women involved with the decoration are then given a chapter as is the lifestyle of the families who enjoyed these houses and the leisure pursuits found all around them. The brief conclusion wonders what the legacy of these houses may be and whether they can have worthy successors.
Matthew Hyde is an architectural historian and author of the recent Pevsner volume on the Buildings of Cumbria. Esm? Whittaker is on the staff at English Heritage. She hails from the Lake District and her doctoral thesis was a ground-breaking study on the much admired work of Dan Gibson. Val Corbett is well known as a landscape photographer based in the Lake District.
