The David Parr House - Cambridge

Back in about March, I hard about the David Parr House, in Cambridge, and in September, I visited. I had to wait so long because access is very limited, due to the house's size, so it is necessary to pre-book - it looks as though you can currently book slots in July and August 2020.

David Parr was an artisan who was born in 1854,and in 1871 he became an apprentice with a firm, F.R.Leach, which carried out decorative work, for various churches, colleges and homes in Cambridge and beyond, including carrying out work as subcontractors for William Morris and others. 

In 1886,  David Parr bought a small, terraced house, at 186 Gwydir Street, near Cambridge Station, and moved in there  with his wife and eldest child.

Over the next 40 years, Parr decorated the house using the same skills and styles he employed in his work. The walls are hand painted,  using 'pouncing' (marking out the pattern using charcoal, through pricked holes in tracing paper) but no stencils or wall paper!


In two of the rooms, there are also beautifully hand-lettered quotes - from Shakespeare and from hymns (Parr was a devout Christian)

As well as the walls (and ceiling) Parr also worked on the doors - the doorknobs and finger-plates were probably either samples or left over from properties he worked on, as they are all different (often on the same door), and used paint techniques to make the woodwork look like better quality woodwork .

He was also pretty forward thinking, and installed a magnificent indoor toilet!

David Parr and his wife raised their children in the house, then, following Parr's death in 1927, his widow remained living there, with their granddaughter Elsie, who was 12 at the time.

Elsie remained living in the house for the rest of her life. She married and she and her husband brought their children up in the house, preserving her grandfather's decor. There were some changes -  the house suffers from damp, and Elsie and her husband had to paint over part of the drawing room wall (It has now been restored),after it became damaged by damp,  and the upper part of the hall walls  were painted white as the original decor made it very dark.

The house is also furnished with Elsie's furniture . She died in 2013, at the age of 98. It was then that the house was bought, and a trust set up to restore it. It's beautiful,  fascinating, and I think perhaps unique, both for an artisan to have decorated his own home in this kind of style and for it to have survived.

(They don't allow you to take photographs inside, sadly, but the Guardian has a gallery here, it's well worth taking a look)

If you are interested in going, You can book on the house's website.

Westminster Cathedral, William de Morgan, Art and Family

While I was in London last weekend I had some spare time, and used it to do a little bit of sight-seeing.

I called in to Westminster Cathedral, which is a Roman Catholic cathedral, built between 1895 and 1903 - it's built from brick, so on the outside it has a flavour both of Victorian municipal building and Italian church - I can't help but think that the architect had seen Siena but didn't have the budget (or the marble)

Inside, it isn't completely finished, but those parts which are complete are Neo-Byzantine, with mosaic ceilings. (I do have a very soft spot for a well done mosaic ceiling)

It's impressive, although I couldn't stay long due to the amount of incense!

My second bit of touristing was a visit to the London Guildhall art gallery, to see their (temporary) William De Morgan exhibition.  I am very fond of William De Morgan's work, from when I first came across his work in the Manchester Art Gallery, years ago.

He was a contemporary, and friend of William Morris', and designed and created ceramics - dishes and tiles (including tiles explicitly designed to complement Morris's wallpaper designs.

What I didn't know before seeing this exhibition was that De Morgan's father was a celebrated mathematician (Augustus De Morgan) who was an agnostic who became a professor at University College London as, unlike Oxford and Cambridge, no theological test was required. He also taught Ada Lovelace. It seems likely that his skills in maths and geometry influenced his son's designs.

I also learned that William De Morgan designed a set of tiles for Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (better known, of course, as Lewis Carroll), who was a friend of his,  which were installed round the fireplace in his college rooms: they feature Dodos and dinosaurs, among other things. (They are still in the College, but the exhibition has photos) 

 I loved the dragons and fishes, and the fact that almost all of the designs are symmetrical, some of them in more than one direction.

Sadly the Greast Hall at the Guildhall was not open, so I couldn't look round the hall.

However, the church next door, St Lawrence Jewry, was open, so I popped in for a while. The church was designed by Christopher Wren, but was badly damaged in the Blitz, leaving the walls and facade standing but not much else, so the interior and stained glass are modern. I rather liked St Michael.

 But the best known of the windows is the Christopher Wren window, which features the man himself (flanked by woodcarver Grinling Gibbons and Master Mason, Edward Strong, with the architect and Vicar at the time of the restoration shown at the bottom of the window.

All very enjoyable. As was the duet being played on the church's grand piano, while I was there. It wasn't clear to me whether they were official, as it were, or if they had, like me, simply popped in in passing but (unlike my) had the skills and talent to play wonderful piano duets!

And in between, I got to meet up with one of my cousins, and to have a really enjoyable catch up.