John Douglas (English architect)

John Douglas (11 April 183023 May 1911) was an English architect who designed over 500 buildings in Cheshire, North Wales, and northwest England, particularly on the Eaton Hall estate. He was trained in Lancaster and practised throughout his career from an office in Chester. Initially he ran the practice on his own, but from 1884 until two years before his death he worked in partnerships with two of his former assistants.

Douglas's output included new churches, restoration and renovation of existing churches, church furnishings, new houses and alterations to existing houses, and a variety of other buildings, including shops, banks, offices, schools, memorials and public buildings. His architectural styles were eclectic. Douglas worked during the period of the Gothic Revival, and many of his works incorporate elements of the English Gothic style. He was also influenced by architectural styles from the mainland of Europe and included elements of French, German and Dutch architecture. However, he is probably best remembered for his incorporation of vernacular elements in his buildings, in particular half-timbering, influenced by the black-and-white revival in Chester. Other vernacular elements he incorporated include tile-hanging, pargeting and the use of decorative brick in diapering and the design of tall chimney stacks. Of particular importance is Douglas's use of joinery and highly detailed wood carving.

Throughout his career he attracted commissions from wealthy landowners and industrialists, especially the Grosvenor family of Eaton Hall. Most of his works have survived, particularly his churches. The city of Chester contains a number of his structures, the most admired of which are his half-timbered black-and-white buildings and the Eastgate Clock. The highest concentration of his work is found in the Eaton Hall estate and the surrounding villages of Eccleston, Aldford and Pulford.

Biography

Early life and training

John Douglas was born at Park Cottage, Sandiway, Cheshire, on 11 April 1830 and baptised on 16 May 1830 at St Mary's Church, Weaverham. He was the second of the four children, and the only son, of John Douglas and his wife Mary née Swindley. John Douglas senior was born in Northampton about 1798–1800 and his wife was born in Aldford, a village on the Eaton estate in Cheshire; her father was the village blacksmith at Eccleston, another village in the Eaton estate. John Douglas senior was by trade a builder and joiner, and also described himself as a surveyor and a timber merchant. In 1835 he acted as architect for a house at Hartford, a village between Sandiway and Northwich. At the time of the 1851 census he was employing 48 men. He owned land in Sandiway, and a house and land in the neighbouring village of Cuddington.

Nothing is known of John Douglas junior's school education. He gained knowledge and experience in his father's building yard and workshop which were attached to the family house. In the mid or late 1840s he was articled to E. G. Paley, of Sharpe and Paley, architects in Lancaster, Lancashire. When his articles were completed, Douglas became Paley's chief assistant. In either 1855 or 1860 he established his own office at No. 6 Abbey Square, Chester.

Family and personal life

Douglas's elder sister, Elizabeth, was born in 1827. His younger sisters were Mary Hannah and Emma, who were born in 1832 and 1834 respectively. Mary Hannah died five months before Emma's birth, and Emma herself died in 1848. Douglas married Elizabeth Edmunds, a farmer's daughter from Bangor-is-y-Coed, Flintshire, on 25 January 1860 in St Dunawd's Church in the village, a church he was later to restore. Initially the couple lived over the office at 6 Abbey Square, and later they moved next door to No. 4. Their five children were born in these houses, John Percy in 1861, Colin Edmunds in 1864, Mary Elizabeth in 1866, Sholto Theodore the following year, and Jerome in 1869. Only two of the children survived to adulthood; Mary Elizabeth died from scarlet fever in 1868, Jerome lived for only a few days, and John Percy died aged 12 in 1873.

About 1876 the family moved to live at 31 and 33 Dee Banks, Chester, one of a pair of semi-detached houses overlooking the River Dee, which were built by Douglas. His wife died in 1878 from laryngitis after a year's illness. Douglas did not remarry. His son Colin trained as an architect and worked in Douglas's office but died in 1887 at the age of 23 from consumption. His other son Sholto is not known to have had any profession but he was a heavy drinker of alcohol. During the 1890s Douglas built a large house for himself, Walmoor Hill, also at Dee Banks overlooking the river. Here he lived until his death on 23 May 1911 at the age of 81. His funeral was held at Overleigh old cemetery, Chester, where he was buried. The following Sunday a memorial service was held at St John the Evangelist's Church, Sandiway. His estate amounted to a little over £32,000 (). Apart from his surviving buildings, only two memorials remain to his memory. One is a tablet in St Paul's Church, Boughton, the church in which he worshipped and which he had rebuilt. The other is a plaque placed on one of his buildings in St Werburgh Street, Chester, in 1923 by his pupils and assistants.

Practice and personality

Douglas practised on his own until 1884, when his son, Colin, became ill. He then took Daniel Porter Fordham into partnership and practised as Douglas & Fordham. Fordham was born around 1846 and had been an assistant in Douglas's office since at least 1872. In 1898, having developed consumption, Fordham retired from the practice and went to live in Bournemouth where he died the following year. He was replaced as partner by Charles Howard Minshull, who had been born in Chester in 1858 and who became articled to Douglas in 1874; the practice became Douglas & Minshull. During the first decade of the 20th century, Douglas became less active but, for reasons which are unknown, the partnership was dissolved in 1909. The practice returned to the title of John Douglas, Architect. Minshull went into partnership with E. J. Muspratt in Foregate Street, Chester. When Douglas died, this partnership worked from the Abbey Square address as Douglas, Minshull & Muspratt.

Little is known about Douglas's private life and personality. Only two images of him are known to survive. One is a photograph taken in later middle age. The other is a caricature sketch made by an assistant in his office. This shows him in old age, bowed, bent and bespectacled, carrying a portfolio and an ear trumpet. According to architectural historian Edward Hubbard, Douglas's life "seems to have been one of thorough devotion to architecture ... which may well have been intensified by the death of his wife and other domestic worries". His obituary in the Chester Chronicle stated that he "lived heart and soul in his profession".

Douglas was a dedicated Christian who regularly attended his local church, St Paul's Church, Boughton, a church he rebuilt. His house, Walmoor Hill, included an oratory. He also had a "strong sense of national loyalty", incorporating statues of Queen Victoria in niches at Walmoor Hill and in his buildings in St Werburgh Street, Chester. Douglas was not good at handling the financial matters of his practice. The Duke of Westminster's secretary wrote of him in 1884, "A good architect but a poor hand at accounts!". Delay in presenting his accounts often led to difficulties and confusion; such delay sometimes amounted to as much as ten years. Otherwise very little is known about his personal life. No family papers have survived and none of the documents from the office at 6 Abbey Square has been found.

Styles and practice

Output and patronage

Douglas designed some 500 buildings. He built at least 40 new churches or chapels, restored, altered or made additions to many other churches, and designed fittings and furniture for the interiors of churches. He designed new houses, altered or made additions to others, and built various structures associated with those houses. Douglas's works also included farms, shops, offices, hotels, a hospital, drinking fountains, clocks, schools, public baths, a library, a bridge, an obelisk, cheese factories, and public conveniences. As his office was in Chester, most of his works were in Cheshire and North Wales, although some were further afield, in Lancashire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire and Scotland.

Throughout his career Douglas attracted commissions from wealthy and important patrons. His first-known independent work was an ornament, which is no longer in existence, for the garden of the Honourable Mrs Cholmondeley. She was the sister-in-law of Hugh Cholmondeley, 2nd Baron Delamere, and it was from the 2nd Baron that Douglas received his first major commission, a considerable rebuilding of the south wing of his seat at Vale Royal Abbey in 1860. Around the same time, Lord Delamere commissioned him to build the church of St John the Evangelist at Over, Winsford, as a memorial to his first wife.

Douglas's most important patrons were the Grosvenor family of Eaton Hall, Cheshire. In 1865 he was commissioned to design the entrance lodge and other structures for Grosvenor Park in Chester, and St John's Church in the village of Aldford in the Eaton Hall estate for Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster. When the marquess died in 1869 he was succeeded by his son Hugh Grosvenor, 1st Duke of Westminster. Douglas received a large number of commissions from the 1st Duke and from his son, the 2nd Duke, throughout his career. It is estimated that for the 1st Duke alone he designed four churches and chapels, eight parsonages and large houses, about 15 schools, around 50 farms (in whole or in part), about 300 cottages, lodges and smithies, two factories, two inns and about 12 commercial buildings on the Eaton Hall estate alone. He also designed buildings on the duke's Halkyn estate in Flintshire, including another church.

Other wealthy landowners who commissioned work from Douglas included William Molyneux, 4th Earl of Sefton, Francis Egerton, 3rd Earl of Ellesmere, George Cholmondeley, 5th Marquess of Cholmondeley, Rowland Egerton-Warburton of Arley Hall, Cheshire, and in Wales, the family of Lord Kenyon, and the Gladstone family, including W. E Gladstone. He also received commissions from industrialists, including John & Thomas Johnson, soap and alkali manufacturers from Runcorn, Richard Muspratt, a chemical industrialist from Flint, Flintshire, and W. H. Lever, soap manufacturer and creator of the village of Port Sunlight.

Styles

Although the firm where Douglas received his training was in a provincial city in the north of England, it was at the forefront of the Gothic Revival in the country. The Gothic Revival was a reaction against the neoclassical style, which had been popular in the 18th and early 19th centuries, and it incorporated features of the Gothic style of the Middle Ages. Both Edmund Sharpe and E. G. Paley had been influenced by the Cambridge Camden Society and, more specifically, by A. W. N Pugin who believed that "Gothic was the only correct and Christian way to build". Sharpe had also been influenced by Thomas Rickman, and he had written papers on medieval scholarship himself. Paley had been influenced by his brother, Frederick Apthorp Paley, who was enthusiastic about Gothic architecture, and who had also been influenced by Rickman. During the time Douglas was working in Lancaster the firm was responsible for building and restoring churches in Gothic Revival style, one of which was St Wilfrid's Church in the Cheshire village of Davenham, some from Sandiway. Douglas's first church, that of St John the Evangelist at Over, Winsford, was entirely English Gothic in style, more specifically Early Decorated.