How Green House
Owners, anxious to impress, encouraged their architects to produce exuberant and often vulgar designs based on a myriad of styles, over-ornamented French Renaissance, Venetian and Gothic predominating.
He created Bedford Park, an Arcadian suburb in west London, and many successful country houses in the new style, of which ‘Cragside’ for the rich armament manufacturer A W Armstrong is the apogee.
A young Scottish architect, Robert Weir Schultz, worked in Norman Shaw’s office with another talented man, William Lethaby.
They joined forces to win the competition for Khartoum Cathedral, before Lethaby was appointed Principal of the Central School of Arts and Crafts in Bloomsbury.
The tradition of Kentish oak mullioned and leaded windows, tile hanging and elaborate roofs was assimilated into the ‘Arts & Crafts style producing a series of country houses admired by discerning patrons.
The plan was of the ‘Butterfly’ principle, the wings being angled to take full advantage of the view over the Eden Valley, and perfectly orientated to enjoy the maximum sunlight.
The house forms a crescent on the north side, dominated by three equal gables, but the scale is reduced by lowering the roofs over the servants and kitchen areas.
The garden, set in 33 acres (130,000 m2) of woodland, orchards and paddocks was carefully landscaped, the terrace being enclosed by a balustraded wall and a box hedge taking account of a fine three-hundred-year-old oak tree.
In 1948 the house was sold to Frederic and Maria Floris, the colourful Hungarian pastry cooks whose well-patronised Soho shop specialised in expensive cakes and chocolates.
Cyril Skinner recalls a visit from Mr Floris who had called at Roodlands Farm, driving a large Daimler with a pre-selector gear, once the properly of president Edvard Beneš of Czechoslovakia.
confection in the shape of a flat-topped bowler hat, heavily iced with chocolate and decorated with 200 fancy sugary feathers commemorating some of the honors and triumphs in the long Churchillian career.
