Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds
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MARTIN RANDALL TRAVEL ART • ARCHITECTURE • GASTRONOMY • ARCHAEOLOGY • HISTORY • MUSIC • LITERATURE Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds Art and artefacts in the buildings they were designed for 15–19 September 2021 (mh 895) 5 days • £1,980 Lecturer: Janet Sinclair Visits to see some of the finest output of the Arts and Crafts movement, including three private houses with work in situ. Includes Rodmarton Manor, Madresfield Court and the artists’ studios and workshops. Some of the loveliest countryside in the world with the honey-coloured stone that marks the buildings from Oxford to the Severn Valley. Stay all four nights in the charming Cotswolds village of Broadway. Following the ideals of Pugin, amplified by Ruskin, the call for a return to a golden age of craftsmanship with respect for the individual Kelmscott Manor, after a drawing by Charles G. Harper, 1910. became a moral as well as an aesthetic crusade in mid-century Britain. A number of idealistic artists, architects and thinkers found is this better illustrated than at Madresfield houses to be built and furnished in a traditional inspiration that was essentially medieval but where Ashbee and Voysey worked in the early style, by hand with local stone, local timber went beyond the imitative aspect of the Gothic twentieth century with Payne’s Birmingham and local craftsmen. Nearby Sapperton became Revival. Group who created the extraordinary chapel home to several members of the Cotswolds William Morris and his collaborators and later immortalised in Waugh’s Brideshead group including Gimson and the Barnsleys. followers, now collectively known as the Arts Revisited. Day 3: Chipping Campden, Madresfield. In and Crafts movement, reacted against the worst 1902 C.R. Ashbee and his Guild of Handicraft by-products of industrialisation, poverty and Itinerary arrived in the hitherto quiet village of Chipping social injustice, and believed in a link between Campden. Here they set up workshops, some these ills and mass-manufactured, poorly Note that appointments for some visits cannot be of which survive to this day, and their lives designed goods and shoddy housing. confirmed until January 2021. and skills are celebrated in a small museum. Ironically perhaps, the railways, the most Day 1: Oxford, Kelmscott, Broadway. The The Guild’s most important commission was omnipresent sign of industrialisation, opened coach leaves Oxford Railway Station at the library for Lord Beauchamp at Madresfield up unspoilt Cotswolds villages as an escape 11.00am. Begin in the Ashmolean Museum – a Court, an ancient moated manor house from sordid city life and provided easy access treasure-house of art and artefacts from many sympathetically extended in the 19th century. to its commercial markets. The villages of civilizations. Kelmscott is the most evocative At the same time the Birmingham Group Daneway and Sapperton were colonised by and best known of the houses associated with led by Henry Payne decorated and furnished craft workers who shared their wealthy patrons’ William Morris. It looked to him as if it had Madresfield’s celebrated chapel that so respect for past styles and high standards of ‘grown up out of the soil’, and became his enchanted Evelyn Waugh, a family friend. craftsmanship. spiritual as well as his family home. Renovation Inspired by Morris, their attitude towards works are ongoing at Kelmscott. All four nights Day 4: Broadway, Cheltenham. Broadway now historic buildings was based on conservation are spent in Broadway. houses a branch of the Ashmolean Museum rather than ‘improvement’. Thus the past and focusing on vernacular British decorative arts. the modern imperceptibly fuse at magical Day 2: Rodmarton, Sapperton, Owlpen. The The Gordon Russell museum showcases an Cotswold Farm, while Rodmarton, begun as first commission for Morris and Co was from Arts and Crafts-trained designer whose work late as 1909, seems as if it has always been there. architect G.F. Bodley for stained glass for All is influential today. The Museum and Art Ernest Gimson and the Barnsleys, who built Saints Church on the Cotswold hills, which Gallery in Cheltenham, self-styled ‘capital’ of and furnished Rodmarton, were not alone: in therefore contains work by Burne-Jones, the Cotswolds, contains a nationally important 1902 C.R. Ashbee had moved the entire Guild Rossetti, Madox Brown, Philip Webb and Arts and Crafts collection, and contemporary of Handicraft, workers and their families, from Morris himself. Owlpen Manor, untouched work by their artistic descendants. East London to rural Chipping Campden. Later since the 17th century, was sympathetically exponents, like C.F. Voysey, turned towards a restored for the Mander family by craftsmen Day 5: Oxford. Oxford was the meeting place newer, more ascetic style, yet worked alongside with sensitive respect for the past vernacular. In of William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones. their medievally-inspired colleagues. Nowhere contrast, Rodmarton is one of the last country Follow in their footsteps to the beautiful Burne- book online at www.martinrandall.com Telephone 020 8742 3355 MARTIN RANDALL TRAVEL Arts & Crafts in the Cotswolds continued Jones window in Christ Church Cathedral. The coach takes you to Oxford Railway Station by 3.30pm. Lecturer Janet Sinclair. Art historian, curator and lecturer, educated at the Courtauld Institute, Bretton Hall and the Barber Institute, Birmingham, where she researched the history of British collecting and taught for many years. She held senior management posts at significant heritage sites in the UK including Petworth House, Sussex. In 2018, she was appointed as tutor on the MA Collections Care & Conservation Management course at West Dean (University of Sussex). She is a member of the Attingham Society, ICOM and a panel member of the Sustainable Communities Fund in the South Downs National Park, and a freelance lecturer in art history and historic house studies. Practicalities Price, per person. Two sharing: £1,980. Single occupancy: £2,320. Included: hotel accommodation; private coach throughout; breakfasts, one lunch and three dinners with wine, water, coffee; all admissions; all tips; the services of the lecturer and tour manager. Accommodation. The Lygon Arms, Broadway (lygonarmshotel.co.uk): a 16th-century coaching inn; some parts date back to the 14th century. Situated in the high street of Broadway. Single rooms are doubles for sole use. How strenuous? There is quite a lot of walking on this tour and it would not be suitable for anyone with difficulties with everyday walking and stair-climbing. Coaches can rarely park near the houses, and gardens are extensive. Average distance by coach per day: c. 64 miles. Group size: between 10 and 22 participants. Combine this tour with Gastronomic West Country, 20–26 September 2021 (mh 904); Walking a Royal River, 20–26 September 2021 (mh 899). book online at www.martinrandall.com [email protected].