Charles Voysey (architect) - Architectural Work

Architectural Work

Voysey's first design was for a house at Loughton for Octavius Dixie Deacon. A house was erected on the site, but whether it bore any relation to Voysey's design is not known. By 1894 Voysey had moved his practice to Melina Place, St John's Wood, London, next door to the influential Arts and Crafts architect Edward Schroeder Prior, resulting in the development of a long term friendship and exchange of ideas between the two men.

Voysey designed every detail of his houses, including the furniture. His houses were inspired by English vernacular sources of the 16th and early 17th centuries, featuring white roughcast walls with horizontal ribbon windows and huge pitched roofs, and used rough plaster, slate and other materials typical of English farmhouses.

Examples of his completed architectural works are: Perrycroft, Colwall, Herefordshire 1893; Annesley Lodge, Hampstead, London, 1896; Merlshanger (later Greyfriars), Hog's Back, Puttenham near Guildford, 1896; Norney, Shackleford, 1897; Spade House, Sandgate, Kent (the home of the writer H.G.Wells); The Pastures, North Luffenham, Rutland 1903; The Orchard, Chorleywood, 1900, which he designed for himself.

There are several examples of Voysey's design near Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria, with roughcast walls and massive rendered stacks on sweeping slate roofs. Architectural historian Nikolaus Pevsner greatly admired the Orchard and identified Broadleys as Voysey's masterpiece, seeing in them seeds of the modernist movement.

Although theoretically quite different, the simplicity and horizontal emphasis of Voysey's houses were incorrectly distinguished as physical precursors of the International Style. Based on this tenuous connection, Voysey received the RIBA Gold Medal in 1940.

In fact, Voysey himself, who was Master of the Art-Workers Guild in 1924, had a strong dislike of modern architecture, and was irritated by Pevsner's identification of his work with the movement.

Broad Leys (1908) is now the headquarters of the Windermere Motor Boat Racing Club, and featured in the film The French Lieutenant's Woman. It is the only Voysey house open for the public to stay in.

Voysey died in Winchester in 1941.