'St Disgustin’s', the charladies called it

Notes taken from Nicholas Taylor ’s "Sir Albert Richardson: A Classic Case of Edwardianism”, in  Alastair Service’s  Edwardian Architecture and Its Origins (London: Architectural Press, 1975).

445 His myth, as the obituary notices sedulously repeated, was that he had been 'The Last of the Georgians.' He was no such thing. His love of fast cars and (in his early days) of long-distance bicycling, his crowded accumulation of high quality bric-a-brac, his experienced courting of the world of big business, his outrageous use of the verbal pun, his rotund oratory, his smoking of equally rotund cigars - these were the essence of an Edwardian 'card,' a dining club man par excellence.

...

I was fortunate in spending two Saturday afternoons with him in 1963 (aetatis suae 83) and, at the first of these in particular, his generosity and enthusiasm and remarkable memory were in full spate.

446 J. Alfred Gotch had already published his Growth of Early English Renaissance Architecture ("A student asked, 'Have you got Gotch's Growth?" The bookseller answered, 'God help me, I hope not’.") [Here, Richardson has confused Gotch’s Early Renaissance Architecture in England with his Growth of the English House, combining them into a single title]

447-8 Richardson admired this church and also Pearson's St Augustine, Kilburn ("It was very High Church - 'St Disgustin’s', the charladies called it") because they displayed a 'classical' handling of the Gothic.

448 Moreover, [Leonard] Stokes had turned to a severe stripped classicism for domestic work, after his marriage in 1898 to Miss Gaine, daughter of the general manager of the National Telephone Company, had brought him a rich harvest of telephone exchanges.

Stokes sat in an end room making sketches and sending them down to be drawn out. His pupils and assistants ('Damned Colonials' and 'Damned Scotsmen' were his two main descriptive labels) frequently felt the whip of his tongue ("One day he was swearing at the top of his voice - and the ceiling of the office fell in. He fell on his knees, prayed and crossed himself, gave cheques to all the assistants - and was worse the next morning.") The assistants used to retreat to the lavatory, where they read the Daily Mail until their master shouted for them.

...

The freedom from Gothic detail that led to the 'free architecture' of Lethaby and Voysey had led simultaneously, and much less satisfactorily, to the development of a relaxed, undisciplined English Baroque manner by architects who had been trained as Goths, but who had large regular practices in the City where clients demanded representational grandeur.

449 Then there was Aston Webb, yet another ex-Goth and an ambitious competition-winner ("He was the fox, the sneak, worked for himself entirely and against others").

451 Selfridges admittedly alarmed students by its vulgarity ("'Don't you be so Selfridge,' we said" muttered Richardson).

456 In the '20s, alas, most of these leaders lost their way somewhere between bypass Tudor and jazz modern.

Richardson’s home, Avenue House in Ampthill, Bedfordshire.