Charles Winmill
His father was William Hill Winmill of West Ham, and his mother was Fanny Sarah (née Mumford) of Henham, Essex (they were married at St Mary's Church, Plaistow, on 7 November 1863).
In about 1870 the family moved to Augusta Villa, Ramsgate, Kent, where Fanny ran a girls' boarding and day school: she was a good artist and taught drawing.
Winmill learned a great deal from Newman, at the same time attending evening classes in design at the Architectural Association, at 9 Conduit Street.
In 1888 he left Newman's practice to become assistant to Leonard Stokes, a leading Roman Catholic architect with premises at 7 Storeys Gate, Westminster.
Other schemes he was involved in included slum clearance and replanning of part of Shoreditch, as well as work in Bethnal Green and the Tabard Street area of Southwark.
Winmill was put in charge, and the Red Cross Street fire station was completed in 1900, with its formal opening taking place on 23 February 1901.
According to Francis C Eeles, Secretary of the Central Council for the Care of Churches, Winmill steered a course between ensuring practical repairs while retaining as much of the original building as possible.
(Indeed, Winmill's daughter notes that in July 1944 her father disapproved of a stained glass window containing the words 'to the Glory of God' when it also had the sponsoring family's name displayed on it.)
An early private project which Winmill undertook while still with the LCC was for a 'House and Home' exhibition at the Whitechapel Art Gallery in the summer of 1911, organised by Philip Webb.
Originally designed and built for the London Fire Brigade, it provided residential accommodation for firefighters in a separate building in the style of a Kentish farmhouse.
[9] Construction work took place from 1927 to 1928, and the building was officially opened by Princess Marie Louise of Schleswig-Holstein (1872–1956), granddaughter of Queen Victoria, on 3 November 1928.
During part of the First World War the Winmill family stayed at Tunbridge Wells, Kent, in an old house on the Pantiles, from where he could visit the architect Philip Webb in Sussex, riding on a 'motor bicycle'.
Another architect friend was Walter Shirley, who became 11th Earl Ferrers in 1911, and later went to live at the family seat at Staunton Harold, Leicestershire, where Winmill went to visit.
After a time at Woodford, Essex, in the early years of the 20th century, the family moved to Bexleyheath, Kent, to a small house named Grasmere, designed by Winmill himself.
In the mid to late 1920s he was back in Blackheath, where he had lived in his early apprenticeship days - his address was 2 Eliot Place, with a view across the heath, in a building described by his daughter as a "tall, gaunt, haunted old house" which had previously served as a boarding school, St Piran's, with at least one famous former pupil, Benjamin Disraeli, who studied there for about five years in the 1810s.
At Easter 1930 Winmill began renting a furnished labourer's cottage, dating back to the 1730s, at Church End, Henham, Essex, his mother's home village.
Soon afterwards he bought the cottage and the one next door for holiday use, making visits there at Easter, Whitsun, summer and autumn for the next 10 years, before eventually living there permanently from 1942 onwards.
[2] Winmill felt isolated at Henham in his last years, made worse by wartime conditions, and he complained of having 'no work to do', with a lot of his personal things, including books, held in storage.
In April 1942 he was writing about what he had seen in letters to friends, saying that he would wish to rebuild London according to the ideas in William Morris's book, News from Nowhere, with more open space around St Paul's, rather than having all the damaged City churches rebuilt.
Further sadness came when he heard of the death of the artist Sir George Clausen in November 1944, remembering how much he had learned from him in his early days about painting and pictures.
He was buried on 15 January at the church of St Mary the Virgin, Henham; the funeral address was given by Walter Browne (1885-1959), Archdeacon of Rochester, who referred to Winmill's art and craftsmanship, the influence of John Ruskin and William Morris, his preference for simplicity of style, the high standards he set in his work, his perfectionism, reverence, and love of beauty.
His daughter Joyce wrote a biography of her father which was published in the year after his death;[16] she continued living in the family cottage in Church End, Henham,[17] and became a local historian and speaker on a range of subjects.
[18] Joyce Winmill describes her father as a religious man, good with children, kind, gentle, but also quick tempered, followed by penitence and apology.
He loved beautiful things, always wore Liberty silk ties, and enjoyed reading the poetry of William Morris and Christina Rossetti.
He was a man of habit and routine who went to the same tailor in the City of London for over 50 years, he was a tidy person, a keeper of detailed accounts, and he lived by the motto of 'no short cuts'.
