The National Life Story Collection
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THE NATIONAL LIFE STORY COLLECTION INTERVIEW SUMMARY SHEET Title Page ____________________________________________________________________ Ref. No.: C467/22 Playback No.: F5868-F5876 ____________________________________________________________________ Collection title: Architects’ Lives ____________________________________________________________________ Interviewee’s surname: Hollamby Title: Mr Interviewee’s forenames: Edward Date of birth: 8.1.1921- 29.12.1999 Sex: Male ____________________________________________________________________ Date(s) of recording: 21.08.1997; 12.09.1997; 26.09.1997 Location of interview: Interviewee’s home Name of interviewer: Jill Lever Type of recorder: Marantz Total no. of tapes: 9 Type of tape: 60” cassette Mono or stereo: Stereo Speed: Normal Noise reduction: Dolby B Original or copy: Original ____________________________________________________________________ Additional material: ____________________________________________________________________ Copyright/Clearance: Full clearance ____________________________________________________________________ Interviewer’s comments: ____________________________________________________________________ Edward Hollamby C467/22/01 F5868A Page 1 F5868 Side A Interviewing Ted Hollamby on the 21st of August 1997 at his home, the Red House, Upton, Bexley. Interviewer is Jill Lever, and this is tape One A. And we’re going to start, Ted, as far back as you wish to go. Well as far back as I wish to go, is to some extent as far back I suppose as I can memorise. I can memorise some things intensely when I was very very young, like walking, so it seemed to me, a long distance, along the cliffs to Brighton with my mother, I always think I was about four or five then, remembering that. My mother had a tremendous influence on me, so I tend to remember things often through her. But my grandparents, with the exception...well, all my grandparents really were an absolute mystery, an absolute mystery in the case of my paternal side because I didn’t know them at all. In the case of my maternal grandmother, she lived with us at Hammersmith, in Ravenscourt Road, and she was an incredible lady. We had an interesting old cottage there, with a big garden for a cottage, and with a coach-house, and she lived in the coach-house adjoining, and it was always a mystery place that, because it was...weren’t always allowed in there, and when I could go in there, I had to be well dressed and behave myself, and it always seemed to me to be immaculate. And that was the strangeness of her. Her life is a mystery. She ran off, so we believe and understand, with a batman from the Army, from a very good family in Buckinghamshire, her family. She was expelled or something from the family. She had two or three liaisons. She was a real lady. But she had strong principles, and not about her sort of personal life in that way, I suppose, but about the way she dressed, the way she behaved, the way she brought up her children. So that even during the war, the First World War, when I learnt more about what she did, because she even told us about that, she had to take in washing to support the children, she could do that, and yet she could appear to be the grand lady as well. So she impressed me enormously. But she was always a great mystery. But my mother was, as I said, had an enormous influence on my life. My father was a policeman, a kind, dear man, but reserved; went right through the First World War in every one of the most terrible battles, and survived the lot. Would never talk about it. And... But she, especially when I was a young student, would sit up late at night, and we would talk and talk Edward Hollamby C467/22/01 F5868A Page 2 until one o’clock in the morning, she was marvellous in that way. And so, I, as a young boy, how did my interests grow? I’ve asked myself often, it’s curious that. I know, and I always remember, that it was about thirteen that I said I wanted to be an architect. I was very interested in woodwork, in craft work, as a child, and used to make both models, I used...I was a pretty good model-maker, model aircraft maker, and...but also all sorts of craft work that I used to do in wood, and it was perhaps that that somehow made me think of architecture, I don’t know. But I can always remember that it was when I was thirteen years old that I decided I would love to be an architect, not ever believing that I would ever be able to be such a person. In those days architects very largely came from a class who, maybe not even then were so highly paid, but nevertheless were from well-to-do or middle-class, upper-class families, or so it always seemed. However, I did at school get a scholarship, and was able to go to the School of Building and Arts and Crafts, which was, the junior section of which, from the scholarship, was known as the technical school, and there my interests of course broadened and deepened. I learnt not only normal conventions of language and literature and history and so on, but a great deal about using your hands and technique and making things. And then, from then I went on into the senior school, with the idea of becoming an architect, and was...so this was in the...by that time it was about the late Thirties, ’36, ’37 I suppose, May Morris had lectured and taught at the school, but she had left just a few years before that, but I didn’t know of Morris then. The School of Building and Arts and Crafts was marvellous, because it was both...it did what Morris had so much recommended; it taught widely over the whole span of the arts and the crafts, from figure painting and figure drawing to bricklaying and carpentry, and I learnt all the building crafts there. All of them? All... Ah. Bricklaying, plumbing, painting and decorating, joinery, machine woodwork; not plastering. How did you learn, did you go on site and do it? Edward Hollamby C467/22/01 F5868A Page 3 We did go on site, but much of this was done in workshops at the school, you built walls, you made joints and windows and doors and things like that, all in the workshops in the school. And was this part of an architect’s training, or was it a general...? It was a general training, from which you could go into becoming a craftsman, or you could go into becoming an architect, or...and any one of the other professions that were related. What, surveying or... Surveying, yes. And building managers and so on. Anything in that direction. So it was quite a wide span. But there was a section of it which was for architectural studies, and the tutor was Alwyn Waters, and Alwyn Waters was a wonderful man, what a tutor to have. He was, I suppose, a very late Arts and Crafts architect himself, trained at the Academy Schools, but he was such a wonderful teacher. He would... We were to go our own way, but whatever we did it was to be well done, was his primary, the lesson I learnt from him. But he was, God!, when I remember the beautiful drawings he used to make in chalk on the blackboard of construction details, it was absolutely incredible, they were like those beautiful drawings you see in the early books on building construction, but he would draw them in the morning there so that when we came in, there they were, beautifully drawn, and he could explain it all to us, and there it was, just like a beautiful drawing, all in chalk on the blackboard. And did you sit down and copy it? We sometimes did. In fact frequently would do that, yes. But we would also be lectured, or could ask questions about how it would be made, and how it would be done. So, that was the early part of my life there. And then... Can we sort of slow down a bit, because I think you’re sort of...we’ll be at the end. How many schools were there like that in London? There was Brixton wasn’t there? Edward Hollamby C467/22/01 F5868A Page 4 There was Brixton. Was that similar? There was I think also, in north London was... Oh there was Woolwich Polytechnic, but I’m not quite sure whether Woolwich had building studies. Brixton was the oldest one of those. Yes. But...and...but it was a very different sort of school in many ways. It was much more, I would have said less revolutionary. Mm. That seems... But going back to your first school that you went to, you would have been about five. Ah, well of course I missed that, my primary school? Mm. Yes. Well I first went to a school where nursery classes were held, it was infants, an infants school, and indeed... Now...yes. Yes, at the infants school in Paddenswick Road, there was a Miss Foxall and, I’m sure that was her name, as I remember her, because for some reason or other she remembered me, and we even had a connection in the early days, right here at Red House, as a mature man, long after the war, she had remembered me, and as much as I perhaps remembered her, but I always remembered her, I loved her. I stole the flowers in the garden of the Ravenscourt park caretaker’s lodge, beautiful tulips, to present to her, I remember.