Queer Places:
Fulbrook House, Warwick Rd, Upper Fulbrook, Stratford-upon-Avon CV37 0PS, UK
Easton Neston House, Easton Neston, Towcester NN12 7HS, UK
Cholmondeley Castle Gardens, Cheshire, Malpas SY14 8AH, UK
Mount Stuart, Rothesay, Isle of Bute PA20 9LR, UK
New Place, Farnham Ln, Haslemere GU27 1HA, UK
Charles Hill Court, Charles Hill, Charleshill, Tilford, Farnham GU10 2AT
Tancreds Ford, Tilford, Farnham GU10 2AJ, UK
The New House, Gomshall Ln, Guildford GU5 9HB, UK
Markham Arms, 138 King's Rd, London SW3 4XB, UK
The Three Greyhounds, 25 Greek St, London W1D 5DD, UK
The Northampton Guildhall, St Giles' Square, Northampton NN1 1DE, UK
Bodelwyddan Castle, Castle Hotel, Bodelwyddan, Rhyl LL18 5YA
St Mary, Pimlico, 30 Bourne St, Belgravia, London SW1W 8JJ, UK
St Edmund's College, Mount Pleasant, Cambridge CB3 0BN, UK
St Chad's Cathedral, 3540 St. Chads Queensway, Birmingham B4 6HJ
St Augustine's Church, St. Augustine's Rd, Ramsgate CT11 9NY, UK
The Waterman's Arms, 1 Glenaffric Ave, London E14 3BW, UK
The Great Northern, 67 High St, London N8 7QB, UK
John Roderick Warlow Gradidge AA Dipl. ARIBA (3 January 1929 – 20 December 2000) was a British architect and writer on architecture, former Master of the Art Workers Guild and campaigner for a traditional architecture.
Gradidge, who everyone describes as ‘huge’ or ‘massive’, started wearing an earring in 1955 and ‘longed to be a Teddy boy’, donning the uniform drape jacket, sideburns, tight trousers and suede brothel-creepers and devoting himself to rock’n’roll. As he got older he did not settle into respectability, even though his active involvement with the Catholic Church intensified. He began to get tattoos long before that was the kind of thing respectable people did until they were all over his body, including a dragon that covered most of his back. Later on he grew his grey hair long and wore it in a ponytail. And, once the Teddy boy phase had passed, he started to have all his suits made with both trousers and ‘skorts’ – plain kilts of his own design. That last habit earned him a nickname, the Kilted Crusader.
John Roderick Warlow Gradidge was born on 3 January 1929 in Old Hunstanton, Norfolk. He spent
his childhood in India, where his father was a Brigadier. He then attended
Stowe School. After 2 years of National Service in Palestine, he moved to
London and the Architectural Association, where he completed his training as
an architect and was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British
Architects (ARIBA). He remained in London practicing as an architect and
writer for most of his life, where he was a prominent figure in social and
architectural circles in the last half of the 20th century.
Gradidge was an evangelist for the Arts & Crafts, the Victorian and a Vernacular architecture which had become unfashionable by the beginning of his career. He became an expert on the architecture of this period and in particular in the County of Surrey (near his home at Chiswick).
Gradidge had the opportunity to work on a number of buildings in Surrey by prominent architects, such as Sir Edwin Lutyens, Harold Falkner, Hugh Thackeray Turner, Detmar Blow and Charles Voysey. He completed a number of projects elsewhere, particularly with fine interiors and country houses. One of his finest country house commissions was for a large extension at Fulbrook House, one of Lutyens's finest and earliest country house commissions outside Farnham, Surrey and which he published in his book, The Surrey Style. He designed a library with David Hicks at Nicholas Hawksmoor's Easton Neston in the style of the English Baroque for Lord Hesketh, a Gothick conservatory at Cholmondeley Castle and altered Mount Stuart for Lord Bute.
Much of Gradidge's work on Surrey country houses was with the Surrey-based architect Michael Blower. Their first projects were on Voysey's New House in Haslemere and on Detmar Blow's Charles Hill Court for an Austrian industrialist. From there, they went onto Harold Falkner's Tancreds Ford, which they designed and built for the writer Ken Follett and his first wife, and which was published in two articles in Country Life.[1] Next came Kingswood Hanger (The New House), reputedly designed by Hugh Thackeray Turner and for which they jointly won a RIBA Award, which was also published in Country Life.[2] Just prior to Gradidge's death, he and Blower were working on a project at Combe Court, which was completed by Michael Blower and his sons through their architectural practice, Stedman Blower.
In 1962 Gradidge was given a job overseeing the well-funded refurbishment of a run-down pub in London docklands, The Newcastle Arms. The Newcastle’s new licensee was the writer and broadcaster
Daniel Farson who changed the
pub’s name to The Waterman’s Arms and set about turning it into a tribute to
the great age of music hall. Gradidge worked on a number of pub interiors for Ind Coope, such as the Markham Arms (now altered) on the Kings Road, Chelsea and the Three Greyhounds in Soho, London. He restored the Gothic interior of E. W. Godwin's Northampton Guildhall, and the interior of Bodelwyddan Castle for the National Portrait Gallery, which won the Museum of the Year Award in 1989.
At St Marys, Bourne Street, South Kensington and the National Portrait Gallery in London, Gradidge carried out interior modifications, although they have since been altered. Further projects included additions to St Edmund's College, Cambridge (1990–3), Pugin's St Chads, Birmingham and St Augustine, Ramsgate.
He was active in the Art Workers Guild being elected in 1969, served as the Guild's Secretary from 1977 to 1984 and was elected Master in 1987.[3] He was a founding member of the Thirties Society (later to become the 20th Century Society), of which he was a Trustee for many years. He was also prominent in the Victorian Society.[3]
Gradidge was an advocate of rational dress, a movement more usually
associated with modernists, and had suits tailored in fine cloths that
featured jackets and kilts. For much of his life he wore his hair uncut and
tied as a plait; he felt cutting it was unnecessary and wasteful of time. He
was a long-time member of the congregation of the Anglo-Catholic St Mary's,
Bourne Street, Belgravia, where his requiem mass was celebrated.
Gradidge died 20 December 2000 in London, aged 71. The Telegraph obituary described Gradidge as one of the most colourful and underrated English architects of recent years.[4] Obituaries also appeared in The Times, The Guardian[3] and The Independent.[5][3][6]
Towards the end of his career, he was awarded a RIBA Award, (the gold-standard of architectural awards in the UK) for the design of a house in the Surrey Hills, completed with Michael Blower.
His legacy is limited in that he never completed a whole building from scratch and in so far as what remains of his work as an architect are wholly interiors, extensions, alterations and extensions to pre-existing buildings.
My published books:
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