A very ordinary-looking house in suburban Surrey contains an extraordinary secret: the interior is a time-capsule of the Arts and Crafts movement. Guest writer Nigel Andrew ventures into the past, and into the mind of a man who took home interior design very seriously indeed...
Arts and Crafts is the homeliest – the cosiest - of all design styles, inspired not by grand mansions built by named architects but by unpretentious cottages built by local craftsmen. Following the teachings of John Ruskin and William Morris, the Arts and Crafts movement turned its back on the machine age, favouring craftsmanship over mechanical production, natural forms over the mathematical regularities of classicism, and local materials over anything extraneous.
William Morris - father of the Arts and Crafts movement
It was also very much against ostentatious display: ‘Have nothing in your home,’ commanded Morris, ‘that you do not know to be useful or believe to be beautiful’. This is a style, then, that works best on a domestic scale. It became a hugely popular ‘look’ for new houses built – with more or less attention to the principles of Arts and Crafts – right through to the Twenties and Thirties, reaching its last gasp in innumerable interwar ‘half-timbered’ semis that would not have pleased Ruskin or Morris one bit. To find something closer to the Arts and Crafts ideal is not very easy. Because it is such an intrinsically domestic style, it survives mostly in modestly scaled houses that are still in private occupation and not open to the public. A few larger houses – notably the Red House in Bexley and Standen, near Sevenoaks, both designed by Philip Webb (and both featuring in our 10 Most Beautiful National Trust Interiors) – can be visited, but very little on a smaller scale. This is what makes Little Holland House, on a suburban avenue in Carshalton Beeches, such a remarkable survival.
The modest exterior of Little Holland House - photo credit George Rex.
'A house with beautiful things inside'
Little Holland House is a house built on strict Arts and Crafts principles – and built, furnished and decorated by one man, a dedicated disciple of Ruskin and Morris, called Frank Dickinson. As he recalls in his autobiography, Do It Yourself – By Choice and Chance, he determined to build his own home from scratch, ‘a house with beautiful things inside, a house solid-looking and not showy’ – pure Arts and Crafts.
Frank Dickinson - self portrait. Image credit.
With very little money, Frank, assisted by his family and his long-suffering fiancée Florence, managed to build an unpretentious but substantial cottage-style house, with roughcast walls, rows of small windows, overhanging eaves and a long roof-slope down to a covered entrance porch. Visiting the house today is like stepping back in time, or stepping into the mind of Frank Dickinson, whose imprint is everywhere – in the painted panels that are all over the house, in self-portraits and portraits of his heroes (notably Ruskin), in the carvings of figures and mottoes on the wooden beams, in all the furnishings made by Frank’s hand. The front door is welcomingly wide, and in the small entrance hall, as throughout the house, the doors are furnished with Norfolk latches and hand-made copper fingerplates.
1960s photo of the living room. Photo credit.
In the main living room – at one end of which is a small platform that served as a stage for family entertainments – is a silver tea service made by Frank for Florence. Considering he had never worked in silver before, it is astonishingly good – clearly Dickinson was a born craftsman. As well as the furniture, all of it good solid work, he also made the wooden coal box by the fireplace – over which are a copper frieze and copies of paintings by Turner and Watts, all Frank’s handiwork.
Coal box handmade by Dickinson
The living room extends into a sitting room, with a parquet floor ‘for dancing’, a triptych by Frank over the fireplace – Give to Us Each Our Daily Bread - and a cabinet made by him to hold gramophone records.
The sitting room
These two rooms between them stretch from front to back of the house – from the bay window at the front to the doors into the charming little garden. The light is quite dim, as in any small-windowed cottage interior, but there are well-placed standard lamps and pendant lights – all parchment-shaded – giving pools of light where needed and lending a glow to the rich, earthy colours of the interior. The walls, where not wood-panelled, are painted a warm cream colour, while the coffered ceilings are all of wood, all worked by the indefatigable Frank.
The master bedroom
'A time capsule of a house'
Upstairs the main bedroom is dedicated to the theme of ‘sleep’. Pleasingly decorated in blues and greens, it has a quotation from Longfellow running all around the room, and one from Coleridge carved on the bedhead. The motifs of plants and leaves on the curtains were embroidered by Florence. In the smaller bedroom, one of Frank’s more ambitious paintings can be seen – The Death of Ananias, featuring the likes of Lenin, Stalin and George Bernard Shaw as well as Ruskin and Morris.
'Civilisation' by Frank Dickinson. Photo credit; London Borough of Sutton Museum and Heritage Service
On the stairs is a similarly high-minded work called Civilisation – Dickinson was nothing if not an idealist. But he was a very practical one, and to have built Little Holland House was an extraordinary achievement. This time capsule of a house survives because it was lived in by the family continuously until 1972, when Frank’s widow moved into a care home, her son put the house up for sale, and the London Borough of Sutton very commendably bought it, restored the building, and opened it to the public. If you want a taste of pure Arts and Crafts, do go and see it – it’s quite an experience.
Little Holland House, 40 Beeches Avenue, Carshalton, Surrey SM5 3LW. Open 1.30pm-5.30pm on the first Sunday of the month, plus Bank Holiday Sundays and Mondays. Group tours by arrangement. Tel. 020 8770 4781.
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At Pooky we make lovely lamps to make your interiors more beautiful. See our collection of table lamps, floor lamps and more here. Nigel Andrew is a writer and the curator of the renowned Nigeness blog.
