Charles Holden (12 May 1875 – 1 May 1960) was an English architect best known for designing many London Underground stations during the 1920s and 1930s.
[1] Holden's early architectural training was in Bolton and Manchester where he worked for architects Everard W. Leeson and Jonathan Simpson before moving to London.
[2] After a short period with Arts and Crafts designer Charles Robert Ashbee, he went to work for Henry Percy Adams in 1899.
[3] Holden's early buildings were influenced by the Arts and Crafts movement, but for most of his career he championed an unadorned style based on simplified forms and massing that was free of what he considered to be unnecessary decorative detailing.
[4][5] After the First World War he increasingly simplified his style and his designs became pared-down and modernist, influenced by continental European architecture.
The single-storey
Southgate station
,
Enfield
, features a canopied roof supported on a single central column above a band of
clerestory
windows that is topped by an illuminated glass and bronze feature.
[
68
]
The designs for new buildings for the
University of London
,
Bloomsbury
, were gradually revised and cut back due to a shortage of funds.
[
69
]
The 19-storey, 210-foot (64 m) tall
Senate House
is the only part that was completed and was the tallest office building in London for 20 years.
[
70
]
The entrance pavilion at Dadizeele New British Cemetery,
Moorslede
, Belgium shows the simple style Holden used for the first of his war cemeteries. The
Reginald Blomfield
designed
Cross of Sacrifice
is a feature of all IWGC cemeteries.
Holden enclosed the irregularly placed graves in the battlefield Cemetery at Polygon Wood,
Zonnebeke
, Belgium with a low wall of local stone capped with Portland stone. The grass path links it to the adjacent Buttes New British Cemetery.
The extremely simplified Portland stone buildings and memorial at Buttes New British Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium are representative of Holden's later war cemeteries.
Linked pavilions and colonnades of the
New Zealand Memorial
, Buttes New British Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium.