Edward Maufe: The Architect and His Clients
Renowned as the architect of Guildford Cathedral, Edward Maufe had a long, varied and successful career. Juliet Dunmur, author of a recent biography of Maufe, explores one vital component of that success – the formation of close relationships with clients.
Every architect needs clients or he or she has no job. Attracting clients with money, and keeping them happy, is a vital part of the process of designing a building and actually getting it built. Personalities are important, and yet this key factor is often given little attention in assessing the lives and successes of architects.
Sir Edward Maufe (1882–1974) became an establishment figure during his lifetime. His aim was to give his clients as much as he could of what they wanted, and in this he mostly succeeded. He very much disliked discussions of his architectural ‘style’, affirming that the location and purpose of each building would decide the correct approach, and that each site was different. However, Maufe’s own style does gradually emerge during his very long lifetime. It was greatly influenced by visits to Sweden in 1923 and 1930, from which he took new ideas about light and colour, and about the possibilities of large brick buildings. As he grew more confident, his buildings were pared down to the essentials. Maufe was very interested in symbolic decorative detail, for instance rainwater heads depicting the owner’s initials, while the colleges or churches on which he worked always had the correct heraldry or symbols.
An important early commission for Maufe was Kelling Hall in Norfolk, built between 1912 and 1914, and now listed Grade II. Maufe had been sitting next to the Shell Oil magnate Henri Deterding at a dinner party, and as part of the conversation Deterding asked Maufe to describe his ideal country house. Maufe gave such an eloquent description that he was promptly booked to build it for the millionaire, who wanted to use it as a base for shooting parties. Deterding and Maufe frequently exchanged views over the building, and at one stage Maufe was asked to ‘write to the papers’ by Deterding, who was concerned about adverse comments in the press about the number of Dutch bricks that were being used.
Cyril Carter, owner of Poole Pottery, who commissioned Yaffle Hill. © Paul Carter.
One of Maufe’s most successful houses is Yaffle Hill. Built for Cyril Carter, the owner of Poole Pottery, this house was designed with full collaboration between owner and architect. In 1929, Carter and his wife Truda had been invited to the Maufes’ country house in Sussex, and Edward relates:
’After luncheon and looking round the house they said Good-Bye and went off, yet within a quarter of an hour they were back again, saying they had there and then made up their minds to ask me to be the architect for the new house they wished to build in Dorset, with only one special proviso, that there should be three steps down to their principal room similar to the ones down to our dining room.’
The site of Yaffle Hill at Broadstone had views overlooking Poole Harbour. The house is built of brick with external white render. The design was based on a central hexagon, with canted wings to the south and west to maximise the splendid view and the sunlight, and included the important three steps down from the hexagonal dining room to the sitting room. Carter encouraged Maufe to use special glazed material from Poole Pottery, including the dramatic blue-glazed roof tiles. The owner’s initials, CCC, appear on the cast-lead rainheads, and inside the front door a mosaic-tile floor depicts the house with both the owner’s and the architect’s initials. Maufe felt that the build-up of light-coloured shapes against a background of dark trees made it ‘something of an architect’s dream house’. Its quality was recognised early. Even before it was finished it won the Ideal Home award in 1930, and it was listed Grade II in 1988.
Yaffle Hill, Broadstone, 1917. © Juliet Dunmur.
View from the dining room at Yaffle Hill, down the required three steps to the light-filled sitting room. © Paul Carter.
The 30-year effort that went into designing and building Guildford Cathedral was a very different affair, and Maufe talked about ‘my somewhat lonely endeavours’. Having won the competition in 1932, there was a four-year delay before building started, owing to an absence of funds. Eventually, due to the persistence of John Grieg, the first bishop of Guildford, work began in 1936. Construction proceeded until war broke out in 1939, when the site was mothballed. After the war, building licences could not be obtained for projects like a cathedral until the 1950s, and then costs were much higher. Maufe was aged 50 when he won the competition, and was effectively starting it over again twenty years later when he was 70. However, he and his wife Prudence put their heart and soul into continuing with the building. Prudence devised the successful ‘Buy-a-Brick’ campaign, to which almost every schoolchild in Surrey contributed, while Edward gave illustrated talks to local clubs, on one occasion receiving a rather patronising letter saying that the Rotary Club found they could ‘let him have 2 gns. for his cathedral’. Both the Maufes felt such efforts were a waste of his time, and in 1952 they suggested to the Cathedral Committee that a dedicated professional fundraiser was needed. This was Eleanora Iredale, and to encourage the Committee, the Maufes said that they would pay her generous salary for the first year. But as Edward said: ‘It turned out that the Committee let us pay it for ten years.’ Not many architects could have afforded this from their seventieth to their eightieth years, but getting the building finished became an obsession for the Maufes.
Interior of Guildford Cathedral, 2018. © Juliet Dunmur.
Edward and Prudence Maufe (right) with the Bishop of Guildford, Montgomery Campbell, and his daughter. ‘In his hand Mr Maufe carries the little box of slides, with the help of which he told a meeting organised by the Master Builders of the surrounding district something of the great project on Stag Hill.’ Farnham Herald, 18.5.1953. Courtesy of the Farnham Herald.
A project that came about through the good offices of Maurice Webb, then president of the Architectural Association, was the building and then rebuilding of the Wesleyan First Clubland Church in Walworth. In 1932 the Reverend Jimmy Butterworth, who had started life as a newsboy in Manchester, wanted to build a church and clubrooms for young people in the East End of London, but could not find an architect who was interested, and in desperation wrote to Webb. Webb suggested Maufe, and an unlikely lifelong friendship between the two began. The Architect’s Journal commented favourably on the architect’s brief, which was ‘to provide a bold relief from the sordidness around … a revolt against the gaudy, flashy and cheap on the one hand, and the austere and harsh on the other’, and stated that the resultant building ‘was a direct negation of the universal idea that “anything will do” where dismal and unlovely surroundings are concerned.’ The buildings took a long time to finish, paid for by voluntary contributions, and were triumphantly opened by Queen Mary in May 1939. Unfortunately, they were destroyed only two years later in the terrible air raids of May 1941. A second Herculean effort was made, and in 1959 Butterworth wrote to Maufe saying: ‘For me there will always be the grateful memory that at great cost to yourself you gave form and substance to a newsboy’s dream of a “college and cathedral” for underprivileged youth.’
Queen Mary with the Reverend Jimmy Butterworth at the opening of Clubland in May 1939. © John Butterworth.
Among Maufe’s prolific output was the restoration after war damage of two of London’s Inns of Court. The invitation to work on Gray’s Inn came from the then treasurer, Lord Uthwatt, who had been the judge in a copyright case against Maufe concerning the extension of the Heal & Son premises in Tottenham Court Road. Maufe lost the case on a technicality, but Uthwatt was so impressed with Maufe’s evidence and the respect in which he was held by his fellow architects that he decided that Maufe should be given the job. It was noted at the Middle Temple how much was being done at Gray’s, and the senior members, or ‘benchers’, decided to employ Maufe as well. In both jobs, he took considerable trouble over heraldic details and got on extremely well with his clients – he was particularly delighted to be made an honorary bencher at Gray’s Inn.
In almost all Maufe’s work, he enjoyed a good relationship with his clients, and his charm and knowledge gave them confidence that the job would come in on budget, and be what the client wanted. His series of ‘Biographies of My Buildings’, essays about 19 of his projects, is full of affectionate reminiscences of the people he met, such as Sir Frederic Kenyon, who asked him to take on work for the Imperial War Graves Commission. Maufe’s lucky break meeting Deterding in 1912 gave him a good start, and he managed to keep up his contacts despite his war service as a camouflage officer in 1918. By the 1930s he was a well-known establishment figure with an excellent contacts list, but would still make time for small projects that interested him. He kept up his client list until the end of his life, and as his work was also his hobby, he never really stopped.
Maufe with Butterworth and Prudence at the unveiling of the rebuilt Clubland premises in 1959. © John Butterworth.
Juliet Dunmur is the granddaughter of Sir Edward Maufe. Her biography Edward Maufe: Architect and Cathedral Builder, published last year by Moyhill Publishing, presents a vibrant portrait of Maufe, using material from his extensive archive at the RIBA, as well as recently discovered correspondence and diaries. It is available from the website edwardmaufe.com, or through Amazon.
