Charles Geddes Clarkson Hyslop (29 December 1900''1939 England and Wales Register'' – 13 November 1988)''England & Wales, Civil Registration Death Index, 1916-2007'' was a 20th-century British architect, trained at the British School in Rome. Linked with the

Bloomsbury set The Bloomsbury Group—or Bloomsbury Set—was a group of associated English writers, intellectuals, philosophers and artists in the first half of the 20th century, including Virginia Woolf, John Maynard Keynes, E. M. Forster and Lytton Stra ...

, his work, mostly in the classical style, was fashionable amongst the British upper classes and intelligentsia in the years immediately surrounding

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposing ...

. He is remembered today as a restorer of country houses and a designer of knowledgeable pastiches.

Architecture

Hyslop began his architectural career during the early 1930s. His connections with the Bloomsbury Set and a circle of friends, which included such

Victoria Sackville-West Victoria Josefa Dolores Catalina Sackville-West (Baroness Sackville), (23 September 1862 – 30 January 1936) was a British noblewoman, mother of the writer, poet, and gardener Vita Sackville-West. Early life Victoria was one of seven ...

, Harold Nicolson and

James Lees-Milne (George) James Henry Lees-Milne (6 August 1908 – 28 December 1997) was an English writer and expert on country houses, who worked for the National Trust from 1936 to 1973. He was an architectural historian, novelist and biographer. His extensi ...

, ensured his access to the leading society patrons and

aesthete Aestheticism (also the Aesthetic movement) was an art movement in the late 19th century which privileged the aesthetic value of literature, music and the arts over their socio-political functions. According to Aestheticism, art should be pr ...

s of the day. One of his earliest works, in 1933, was on the St. Helier estate, a new planned community, extending Morden, Surrey to the south and east. Geddes designed the community's modernistic brick Bishop Andrewe's Church, Wigmore Road. In 1934, The 2nd Lord Faringdon employed Hyslop to remodel

Buscot Park Buscot Park is a country house at Buscot near the town of Faringdon in Oxfordshire within the historic boundaries of Berkshire. It is a Grade II* listed building. It was built in an austere neoclassical style between 1780 and 1783 for Edward ...

and restore it to an approximation of an 18th-century appearance. This was achieved by removing the 19th century extensions and alterations which obscured the clean and simple lines of the neoclassical house. To restore some of the space lost by the demolition of a large wing, Hyslop created two flanking pavilions in a classical style, "which suit the house to perfection", John Julius Norwich observed, with temple fronts to the south and north. The pavilions and house were given a unified composition by linking high box hedging, complete with topiary

pilaster In classical architecture, a pilaster is an architectural element used to give the appearance of a supporting column and to articulate an extent of wall, with only an ornamental function. It consists of a flat surface raised from the main wal ...

s. The interior of the mansion received a similar treatment: Victorian decoration was removed and 18th century ceilings, fireplaces and motifs were acquired and installed. Small rooms were merged to accentuate the sense of light and space needed to accommodate Lord Faringdon's large political houseparties. At Buscot, and in smaller neo-Georgian settings, Hyslop introduced actual Georgian fittings. At Great Swifts, near

Cranbrook, Kent Cranbrook is a town in the civil parish of Cranbrook and Sissinghurst, in the Weald of Kent in South East England. It lies roughly half-way between Maidstone and Hastings, about southeast of central London. The smaller settlements of Sissing ...

, a neo-Georgian house that Hyslop designed for MP

Victor Cazalet Colonel Victor Alexander Cazalet, MC (27 December 1896 – 4 July 1943) was a British Conservative Party Member of Parliament for nineteen years. He came from a prominent, wealthy English family. In his political career, he was a noted autho ...

about 1936, he installed an early 18th-century staircase from Tangier House, Taunton, and brought in fine wall panelling from Ashley Park, Walton-on-Thames, and a rococo chimneypiece from a house at Blackheath, London. During World War II Major Hyslop, Royal Engineers, as he was commissioned, saw service in North Africa, where he headed up the Antiquities Department of British forces in 1944–45. He was employed converting Greenlands, Hambleden, Buckinghamshire as a Government administrative staff college in 1945, occasioning the loss of some apparently not–very–characteristic or notable interior work by

Norman Shaw Richard Norman Shaw RA (7 May 1831 – 17 November 1912), also known as Norman Shaw, was a British architect who worked from the 1870s to the 1900s, known for his country houses and for commercial buildings. He is considered to be among the g ...

; the commission was extended to include conversion of the north range to dormitory bedrooms in 1946, the conversion of the stable block to a library in 1951, and development of a freestanding dormitory on a butterfly-wing-plan, with a "bold flying staircase", in 1955. Hyslop's preference for working in the classical styles was severely tested in the years of austerity and building restrictions immediately following World War II. This is most apparent in

Cambridge Cambridge ( ) is a College town, university city and the county town in Cambridgeshire, England. It is located on the River Cam approximately north of London. As of the 2021 United Kingdom census, the population of Cambridge was 145,700. Cam ...

, where he designed a student hostel, King's College: West Road: Garden Hostel. Built between 1948 and 1950, its utilitarian austerity is softened by the adjacent King's College Fellows' Garden. Despite the imposed restrictions, Hyslop still managed to impart some classical ideals of proportion and height through the use of brick pilasters; further reference to an earlier form of architecture is provided by

oeil-de-boeuf An ''oeil-de-boeuf'' (; en, "bull's eye"), also ''œil de bœuf'' and sometimes anglicized as ''ox-eye window'', is a relatively small elliptical or circular window, typically for an upper storey, and sometimes set in a roof slope as a d ...

windows on the floors above the entrance. Building on his functional college works, Geddes was commissioned as architect for the Staff College at Henley-on-Thame. The post–war work was not all austerity, however, as some wealthy patrons still existed. The Countess of Rosebery, one of the founders of the Edinburgh Festival, in 1950, persuaded her husband, the Earl of Rosebery, buoyed by his mother's fortune, to have the Rosebery's Scottish seat,

Dalmeny House Dalmeny House (pronounced ) is a Gothic revival mansion located in an estate close to Dalmeny on the Firth of Forth, to the north-west of Edinburgh, Scotland. It was designed by William Wilkins, and completed in 1817. Dalmeny House is the ...

, restored. Considered one of Scotland's finest houses, the mansion had been damaged by fire during the war. The resultant work, executed "sensitively" according to Hugh Montgomery-Massingberd and Christopher Sykes, involved the use of older materials such as original bookcases and 18th century fireplaces imported from elsewhere. Another postwar commission was at

Daylesford House Daylesford House is a Georgian country house near Daylesford, Gloucestershire (formerly in Worcestershire until 1931), on the north bank of the River Evenlode near the border with Oxfordshire. It is about east of Stow-on-the-Wold and w ...

, the house built by S.P. Cockerell for the Indian nabob

Warren Hastings Warren Hastings (6 December 1732 – 22 August 1818) was a British colonial administrator, who served as the first Governor of the Presidency of Fort William (Bengal), the head of the Supreme Council of Bengal, and so the first Governor-General ...

. Further works included: Roydon Hall, East Peckham, Kent, the seat of Mr Ralph M. Cook.; alterations to the west front of Greenlands, Temple Island in 1936–38; 41 Kensington Square for Mrs Thomas Lowinsky; works at

Somerville College Somerville College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford in England, was founded in 1879 as Somerville Hall, one of its first two women's colleges. Among its alumnae have been Margaret Thatcher, Indira Gandhi, Dorothy Hodgkin, ...

, Oxford; and a Garden Hostel, King's College, Cambridge.

Private life

Hyslop lived in an 18th-century house in Canonbury Place,

Canonbury Canonbury is a residential area of Islington in the London Borough of Islington, North London. It is roughly in the area between Essex Road, Upper Street and Cross Street and either side of St Paul's Road. In 1253 land in the area was granted to ...

, Islington, London with the one time ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'' editor and art critic,

Raymond Mortimer Charles Raymond Bell Mortimer CBE (25 April 1895 – 9 January 1980), who wrote under the name Raymond Mortimer, was a British writer on art and literature, known mostly as a critic and literary editor, who also wrote a classic history of th ...

.Princeton University Library Some ephemeral essays on architects and architecture by Geddes Hyslop appeared from time to time in ''The New Statesman'', in part through this connection. Geddes Hyslop died in 1989.

Legacy

Geddes Hyslop's contribution to British architecture was his talent for designing buildings in complete empathy with their surroundings. In part, he achieved this by the re-use of materials salvaged from older buildings faced with demolition, this is especially true of his interiors. Hyslop did not design huge futuristic buildings intended to startle the senses, but works that were almost unremarkable, in the sense that their harmony with adjacent buildings, rendered them part of an existing composition. Yet his work was remarkable, for showing a complete understanding of proportion, perspective and historical accuracy.

Notes

References

Cambridge 2000 project
Retrieved 7 October 2009.
Princeton University Library, Manuscripts Division
Retrieved 7 October 2009 * * * Taylor Patrick. "Buscot Park". ''The Oxford Companion to Gardens''. Ed. Patrick Taylor. Oxford University Press 2006. {{DEFAULTSORT:Hyslop, Geddes Architects from London British neoclassical architects English interior designers 1988 deaths 1900 births People from Hendon