Percy Richard Morley Horder (18 November 1870 – 7 October 1944) was an English architect who early in his career worked from offices in Stroud and later in London. His early work was in the Arts and Crafts style, but after the First World War his buildings were increasingly in the Neo-Georgian fashion. His work included public houses for the Godsell Brewery and designing new country houses or partially rebuilding existing houses. He also designed country-house gardens and is noted for laying out Highfields Park, Nottingham together with the adjacent Nottingham University Campus. He undertook architectural work in many parts of the British Isles including Ireland. He is probably best remembered for the Trent Building in the University of Nottingham.Parks & Gardens UK and for design of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. His work at Upton House, Warwickshire for Viscount Bearsted is notable, but it is his work for Jesse Boot, both the Boots the Chemists stores, but most importantly the Trent Building and the laying out the campuses of the University of Nottingham, which influenced design at other English universities, for which he must take the greatest credit.
Biography He was born in Torquay, the son of the Congregationalist minister William Garrett Horder but later the family moved to Tottenham, London.Dictionary of Scottish Architectshttps://www.ancestry.co.uk/family-tree/person/tree/172093004/person/422234261172/facts He married Rosa Catherine (Katie) Apperly in 1897, the only daughter of Ebeneezer Apperley, a Stroud, Gloucestershire cloth manufacturer.Morning Post 10 April 1897 The Horder family lived at 6 (now 18) Hamilton Terrace, St John's Wood and their daughter Barbara Morley Horder (1898–1986) became a noted actress.The Horder Family Architect, Actress, Physician, Musician
In 1927 Morley Horder acquired the Court House at East Meon in Hampshire. This was a country residence of the bishops of Winchester. It was in a badly dilapidated state and he set about restoring the building. Of this residence, the great hall, a solar, and a garderobe block survive largely intact. The Court House is remarkable for its fine state of preservation. It was commissioned by the bishop, William of Wykeham and built by his master mason William Wynford, one of the greatest of 14th-century architects, who remodelled the nave of Winchester Cathedral and designed Winchester College and New College, Oxford. Morley Horder added a north wing, joining the medieval house to the 18th-century thatched cottage on the roadside, and he laid out the gardens between the house and the 18th-century thatched barn on what had become a farmyard. Morley Horder also bought and restored a number of thatched cottages in the village. An account of Morley Horder's restoration work is given in a Country Life article.Arthur Oswald (1937) The Court House, East Meon, Hampshire - The Home of Mr P Morley Horder, Country Life Vol. 81, 8 May 1937
Horder appears to have been eccentric, with a domineering character: "To his pupils he was "Holy Murder" (a Spoonerism on his name); according to his daughter, "he was most charming... and most awful"... "pushing artistic temperament to its limits, [he] looked and behaved like a cantankerous Old Testament prophet.""Whyte" (2015), p. 177
Architectural work Churches and chapels St Andrew's Mission Church, Gravesham (now St Andrews Arts Centre) renovated and adjoining Mission House "erected to his plans"(1891)Gravesend Reporter, North Kent and South Essex Advertiser 26 December 1891 pp4 Willesden Congregational Church - interior of church rearranged and redecorated - described as Architect to London Congregational Union.(1893)Willesden Chronicle 11 August 1893 pg 4 Queen's Avenue Congregational Church, Muswell Hill (1897–1900). According to Cherry and Pevsner, "Nicely detailed, Perpendicular…roughcast with stone dressings. Handsome inside with piers without capitals, broad barrel-vaulted roof, and galleried transepts."Cherry and Pevsner, London 4: North, The Buildings of England. p. 552.For account of foundation stone laying see Islington Gazette 25 October 1898 pp3 Fetter Lane Congregational Chapel, Langthorne Road, Leyton (1899). Arts and Crafts style; Grade II Listed. Trinity Congregational Chapel, Lauriston Road, Hackney (1901). Red brick and sandstone in a late Gothic style.Cherry and Pevsner, London 4: North, The Buildings of England. p. 487. Congregational Church, High Street, (Bushey, Hertfordshire (1904). Now a theatre. Ealing Green Congregational Church (1911). Penge Congregational Church (1911–1912). Brondesbury Park Congregational Church (1911). Westfield College Chapel, Camden (1928–9). Rendered with deep eaves and small rectangular windows high up lighting an austere but well proportioned interior. Doric porch leads into a foyer at gallery level, from which two flights of stairs descend.Cherry and Pevsner, London 4: North, The Buildings of England. p. 211.
University and college buildings
Cheshunt (Congregational) College, Bateman Street, Cambridge (1913–4). Later combined with Westminster College. Free Tudor style. Main range with square central porch-tower. and two symmetrical bay winds. Pale brick with buff stone dressings. Now the provincial Grand Lodge of the Freemasons.
Chapel Court, Jesus College, Cambridge.
Jesus College, Cambridge boathouse. The boathouse was designed by Morley Horder, and was built in 1932 to replace the Victorian structure destroyed by fire in September of that year. The roof is hipped, with a central clock tower topped by a weathervane. The roof tiles are said to have come from old farm buildings owned by the college. The first floor has a central balcony with a timber balustrade displaying the college crest. Darbishire Quad, Somerville College, Oxford (1934). Morley Horder was commissioned to build a quadrangle and the porters' lodge and the New Council Room were constructed at the entrance to the quad, which housed undergraduate and fellows' rooms.
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine (with Verner Owen Rees; 1926–28). A competition to design a new building to be sited in Gower Street was held involving five architects, all experienced in laboratory design and construction. This was won in 1925 by Morley Horder and Verner Rees who located the main entrance in Keppel Street. Minimally decorated classical or Neo-Georgian facade of four storeys in meticulously cut Portland stone. Austerely detailed, with large wreaths and names of medical scientists in relief. The iron balconies have delicately gilded tropical flora and fauna.Cherry and Pevsner, London 4: North, The Buildings of England. pg. 280. The building was opened in 1929 by the Prince of Wales. The purchase of the site and the cost of a new building was made possible through a gift of $2m from the Rockefeller Foundation.
Orphanage Gyde Orphanage, Painswick, Gloucestershire (1915–18).
Public buildings Village Hall, Pitsford, Northamptonshire. Tudor in style.Pevsner, Northamptonshire p. 374. Christ Church Parish Hall, Turnham Green Chiswick circa 1914.Illustrated in British Architect October 1918 p 97
Country and town houses Ard Na Sidhe Country House, Carragh Lake, Killorglin, Co. Kerry, Ireland (1913) https://www.ardnasidhe.com/history
New houses
Hill Wooton House, Hill Wooton, Warwick (1893)DAVISON, T RAFFLES. Hill Wooton, Warwickshire, British architect, London, 22 Sep 1893 pp199 Inglewood, Brimscombe, Stroud, now converted into two dwellings known as 163/165 Thrupp Lane, (1895)British Architect 13 December 1895 52-54 Brook Street, London (1896–7). Birchington House, Little Common, Bexhill on Sea (1899)Bexhill-on-Sea Observer 21 April 1900 pp2 Moonhill, Cuckfield, Surrey (1902). In Arts and Crafts style. Letchworth Cheap Cottages Exhibition stated to be "author of several of the designs"(1905).The Speaker : the liberal review 29 Jul 1905 pp 408-409 Greystock in Warwick (1905).The Tatler and Bystander, 18 Apr 1906): 11-12. A Cottage at Upper Warlingham Surrey (1905). Apple Porch Maidenhead (1906)The Tatler and Bystander 27 Feb 1907 pp7 Stone House, Sedbergh-Askrigg Road, High Abbotside, Richmond, North Yorkshire (1909) for Hugh Arden Crallan (1867- 1929) Inverleith, Lime Tree Road Norwich (1908-1909) Little Court, Charminster, Dorset Detached house in grounds (1909) 2 Cottages at Mayhill/Townhill Swansea (1910)- winner of a South Wales Cottage Exhibition Award.Gold Medal for Exhibits 8 and 9 Class D Maximum cost £350 - cost £330 British Architect 25 November 1910This was a competition arranged by Swansea Corporation on garden city/suburb lines https://www.swansea.gov.uk/article/33707/The-South-Wales-Cottage-Exhibition-and-the-building-of-Townhill-and-Mayhill Pinfold Manor, Walton on the Hill, Banstead, Surrey (1912–13) Designed for David Lloyd George, then a Cabinet Minister later Prime Minister Cotsmoor, Private Road Rodborough Common (now divided into three properties known as Rodborough Crest, Endover and Curtal) Designed for Charles Apperly, a nephew of Horder's wife Katie. The original gardens extended to the coach house and now contain two new properties Fair Mount and Wychwood(1911) Mallory Court, Bishop's Tachbrook, Warwickshire (1914). The site was part of an estate owned by the who sold c.9 acres (c 3.5ha) to James Thomas Holt, a retired cotton-bleacher from Manchester. Plans for a house by Percy Morley Horder (1870–1944) dated May 1914 were submitted and approved in June 1914, and construction appears to have begun almost immediately. The new house was occupied in 1916.Spennells Directory, 1914-16 While Horder's plans do not show details of the proposed gardens, the elevations, which were also submitted for approval, show the principal garden compartments as realised, together with the formal garden to the south of the house in broadly the form which was implemented. The Garden is listed Grade II Periton Mead Manor House, Somerset (1915–1922).
Filkins, Oxfordshire: council housing (1929–?1935) Morley Horder worked with the Labour politician and landowner Sir Stafford Cripps and the local stonemason George Swynford on the provision of council housing in the village of Filkins. Cripps insisted that the new buildings should be of stone and stylistically in keeping with local vernacular traditions, meeting the difference in cost for the council housing, re-opening quarries on his own land to provide building. This was recorded in Country Life. As a result, by 1944 Filkins was being hailed as 'a modernised village' and 'an illustration of contemporary village planning', in an article in Country Life by Christopher Hussey.C. Hussey, 'Filkins, Gloucestershire: a Modernised Village', Country Life, 28 Apr. 1944, pp. 728–31;
Historic houses that have been added to or extensively rebuilt.
Rodborough Court, Rodborough, Gloucestershire (1899). The house was extended to the north-east in 1899 by Morley Horder and apparently increased in height.Nicholas Kingsley Otley Hall, Suffolk. Dated to 1512 and home of the Gosnold family until 1674 was not altered apart from minor works in 1600 until Horder made additions and alterations in 1910-11 including a new entrance on the S side through the stair turret and addition of a small extension at the south end of the south wing, as well as removing some of the external plaster and rebuilding the chimney tops.Bettley & Pevsner The Buildings of England Suffolk: East, Yale (2015) p.453. Nether Lypiatt Manor, Gloucestershire. Built in 1702–1705 by an unknown architect for Judge John Coxe, with one wing added in 1931 by Horder, the small house forms a perfect square of 46 feet (14 m) on each side, with sash windows, tall chimneys, hipped roofs and gate piers and railings. The attic storey with dormers was removed in 1844, but replaced by Horder c. 1923. Rockbeare House, Devon. Steeple Manor