Seely & Paget’s ‘Robot Dwelling’ at Cloth Fair in London
Charlotte was one of two interns taking part in a one-week curatorial research micro-internship in Michaelmas 2023, hosted by the University of Oxford Heritage Partnerships Team and co-supervised by English Heritage.
During our internship, we investigated a variety of sources on Seely and Paget, the architectural partnership of John Seely and Paul Paget, who rose to prominence during the interwar years: from the Survey of London series, to architecture magazines, popular periodicals to private diaries. Amongst all this information, the most pervasive image was that of a partnership unafraid to mix old styles with new, to find beauty in the understated and a real dedication to every project. The title from a 1931 Daily Herald article encapsulates this image in a particularly catchy way: ‘Robot Dwelling from 300-Years-Old Ruin’. In an era where previous generations clung to crumbling ancestral seats and eroding Victorian traditions, whilst the new sought to rebuild entirely anew following the conflicts that terrorised Europe, Seely and Paget emerge from this friction by borrowing strengths from both.
In their ‘Robot Dwelling’ at Cloth Fair, this duality is explored most interestingly; far from the Blade Runner-esque buildings this might conjure for us today, the home combined strikingly modern living with the historic Tudor exterior that our journalist feared ‘derelict and condemned’. The blending of modern luxury through the home’s automatic lighting alongside the historic location and framework of the building effectively mirror the pair’s dedication to tradition and contemporary values in Britain. In a somewhat foreshadowing turn, the home is described as sitting ‘under the shadow of the old monastic church of St Bartholomew’. Rather than living in the shadow of these old ecclesiastical buildings, whose often damaged remains would pepper the post-war landscape, Seely and Paget later took on a number of challenging builds to restore and modernise such buildings. Having previously had an interest in the topic of post-war rebuilding, I was engrossed by the sheer number of rebuilds the pair worked on often at the same time. Especially touching were the periodicals reporting on the building of a small village church in Six-Mile-Bottom, where the laying of a foundation stone was ‘an event eagerly looked forward to for several years’ by both locals and ‘many people [who] came from the surrounding parishes’.
Indeed, it is sometimes easy for us to focus on the structure itself, and forget about the countless lives Seely and Paget’s work impacted and continues to impact today. Several churches and other structures (such as Westminster College, which we were lucky enough to visit with Seely and Paget expert, Dr Peter Forsaith, English Heritage Properties Historians’ Team Leader, Dr Andrew Hann and Oxford Heritage Partnerships Coordinator, Dr Rachel Delman) continue to be in frequent use by students, researchers, worshippers, local communities and tourists alike. In a way, the variety of humanity that engages with these structures speaks back to that initial house on Cloth Fair, where new meets old in a unique and powerful way.
Charlotte Bookham is currently undertaking an MSt in Modern British History at the University of Oxford. Her dissertation investigates the material culture of travelling circuses.
References
Unknown, ‘Robot Dwelling from 300-years-old Ruin’, Daily Herald, No. 4648 (1931), p.2. https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000681/19310108/038/0002 [Accessed 27/01/24]
Unknown, ‘New Church at Six Mile Bottom’, Newmarket Journal and Free Press (1933), p.7.
Image: Elisa Rolle, ‘Cloth Fair’, Wikimedia Commons (2013). https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Cloth_Fair_20130324_153.jpg [Accessed 31/01/24]
