The Homestead, 25 Woodbourne Road,

Edgbaston Edgbaston () is an affluent suburban area of central Birmingham, England, historically in Warwickshire, and curved around the southwest of the city centre. In the 19th century, the area was under the control of the Gough-Calthorpe family an ...

Birmingham Birmingham ( ) is a city and metropolitan borough in the metropolitan county of West Midlands in England. It is the second-largest city in the United Kingdom with a population of 1.145 million in the city proper, 2.92 million in the West ...

, England is a house built in 1897. It was designed by Charles Bateman, and built by ''James Smith & Son''. The architectural style is

Arts and Crafts A handicraft, sometimes more precisely expressed as artisanal handicraft or handmade, is any of a wide variety of types of work where useful and decorative objects are made completely by one’s hand or by using only simple, non-automated re ...

and the house is a

Grade I listed building In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Irel ...

. The garden wall and gate piers facing Woodbourne Road have a separate Grade I listing. The Homestead remains a private residence.

History

Over a period of some three hundred years, the city of Birmingham expanded from a

West Midlands West or Occident is one of the four cardinal directions or points of the compass. It is the opposite direction from east and is the direction in which the Sun sets on the Earth. Etymology The word "west" is a Germanic word passed into some ...

town with few natural advantages into England's second city and "one of the greatest manufacturing centres in the world". The later 19th century saw major growth of the city's

suburbs A suburb (more broadly suburban area) is an area within a metropolitan area, which may include commercial and mixed-use, that is primarily a residential area. A suburb can exist either as part of a larger city/urban area or as a separate ...

, including that of

, to the south-west of the city centre. The area largely belonged to the

Gough-Calthorpe family The Gough-Calthorpe family is descended from ancient and notable families who both held lands in the area around Birmingham, England. Sir Henry Gough, 1st Baronet, Member of Parliament, (1709–1774) was made a baronet in the Baronetage of the Un ...

which presided over sensitive development aimed at the city's affluent middle and upper classes. The city's architects developed a distinctive regional variant of the

architectural style, inspired by

William Lethaby William Richard Lethaby (18 January 1857 – 17 July 1931) was an English architect and architectural historian whose ideas were highly influential on the late Arts and Crafts and early Modern movements in architecture, and in the fields of con ...

's The Hurst at

Four Oaks, Sutton Coldfield Four Oaks is an affluent residential area in Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, lying along the north and east borders of Sutton Park. Four Oaks is situated approximately north of Birmingham City Centre, and is bordered by Sutton Park, Streetly ...

, and culminating in the

Bournville Bournville () is a model village on the southwest side of Birmingham, England, founded by the Quaker Cadbury family for employees at its Cadbury's factory, and designed to be a "garden" (or "model") village where the sale of alcohol was forbidd ...

model village A model village is a type of mostly self-contained community, built from the late 18th century onwards by landowners and business magnates to house their workers. Although the villages are located close to the workplace, they are generally phys ...

developed by the

Cadbury Cadbury, formerly Cadbury's and Cadbury Schweppes, is a British multinational confectionery company fully owned by Mondelez International (originally Kraft Foods) since 2010. It is the second largest confectionery brand in the world after Mar ...

family of chocolate manufacturers. Charles Bateman (1863–1947) was firmly in this architectural tradition. Working with his father

John Jones Bateman John Jones Bateman (1817–1903) was an English architect, active in the town (later city) of Birmingham, where he designed a number of important civic buildings, and nonconformist churches, often in partnership with George Drury. He was the f ...

, and over the course of a career spent largely in Birmingham and the

Cotswolds The Cotswolds (, ) is a region in central-southwest England, along a range of rolling hills that rise from the meadows of the upper Thames to an escarpment above the Severn Valley and Evesham Vale. The area is defined by the bedrock of Jur ...

, he developed a substantial practice. Bateman undertook considerable work in the industrial and commercial, as well as the domestic, fields. Peter Davey considers his printing works, on Cornwall Street in Birmingham, to be "one of the most daring designs for an industrial building of the period." In 1897, he began the construction of The Homestead. The house remains a private residence.

Architecture and description

The Arts and Crafts architectural style in domestic architecture was championed by

Edwin Lutyens Sir Edwin Landseer Lutyens ( ; 29 March 1869 – 1 January 1944) was an English architect known for imaginatively adapting traditional architectural styles to the requirements of his era. He designed many English country houses, war memori ...

and popularised by his friend, collaborator and client, Edward Hudson, the owner of '' Country Life''. The style caught hold in the English suburbs; Peter Davey, in his study ''Arts and Crafts Architecture'', notes that "the architecture of Voysey,

Baillie Scott Mackay Hugh Baillie Scott (23 October 1865 – 10 February 1945) was a British architect and artist. Through his long career, he designed in a variety of styles, including a style derived from the Tudor, an Arts and Crafts style reminisc ...

Parker Parker may refer to: Persons * Parker (given name) * Parker (surname) Places Place names in the United States *Parker, Arizona *Parker, Colorado * Parker, Florida * Parker, Idaho * Parker, Kansas * Parker, Missouri * Parker, North Carolina *Park ...

and early Lutyens lives on in endless copies of

hips In vertebrate anatomy, hip (or "coxa"Latin ''coxa'' was used by Celsus in the sense "hip", but by Pliny the Elder in the sense "hip bone" (Diab, p 77) in medical terminology) refers to either an anatomical region or a joint. The hip region is ...

and

gable A gable is the generally triangular portion of a wall between the edges of intersecting roof pitches. The shape of the gable and how it is detailed depends on the structural system used, which reflects climate, material availability, and aesth ...

half-timbering Timber framing (german: Holzfachwerk) and "post-and-beam" construction are traditional methods of building with heavy timbers, creating structures using squared-off and carefully fitted and joined timbers with joints secured by large wooden ...

and harling,

mullion A mullion is a vertical element that forms a division between units of a window or screen, or is used decoratively. It is also often used as a division between double doors. When dividing adjacent window units its primary purpose is a rigid supp ...

s and

leaded Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cut, ...

bay window A bay window is a window space projecting outward from the main walls of a building and forming a bay in a room. Types Bay window is a generic term for all protruding window constructions, regardless of whether they are curved or angular, or r ...

s". The Homestead is built to an L-plan and is of two storeys and three bays. The interior remains "virtually as built". Julian Holder notes the "Voysey-like assurance" of Bateman's composition. The house's

Historic England Historic England (officially the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England) is an executive non-departmental public body of the British Government sponsored by the Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport. It is tasked wit ...

listing record calls it "the most innovating of Bateman and Bateman's domestic Arts and Crafts designs". In his 2007 ''Birmingham'' volume of the

Pevsner Architectural Guides The Pevsner Architectural Guides are a series of guide books to the architecture of Great Britain and Ireland. Begun in the 1940s by the art historian Sir Nikolaus Pevsner, the 46 volumes of the original Buildings of England series were published b ...

, Andy Foster references The Homestead but does not describe it. Foster's new guide, ''Birmingham and the Black Country'', published in 2022 has detailed coverage of the house. Describing it as one of Bateman's "most important houses, and perhaps his most progressive", Foster notes the uncommon, double-pile, design and the many, more traditional, features including a

billiard room A billiard room (also billiards room, or more specifically pool room, snooker room) is a recreation room, such as in a house or recreation center, with a billiards, pool or snooker table. (The term "billiard room" or "pool room" may also be us ...

inglenook An inglenook or chimney corner is a recess that adjoins a fireplace. The word comes from "ingle", an old Scots word for a domestic fire (derived from the Gaelic ''aingeal''), and "nook". The inglenook originated as a partially enclosed heart ...

fireplaces and the almost obligatory, inscribed

homilies A homily (from Greek ὁμιλία, ''homilía'') is a commentary that follows a reading of scripture, giving the "public explanation of a sacred doctrine" or text. The works of Origen and John Chrysostom (known as Paschal Homily) are considered ex ...

, in this case, ''East, West, Home's Best''. The Homestead is a

. The garden wall and the gate piers facing Woodbourne Road also have a Grade I listing.

Notes

References

Sources

* * * * * * * * * * {{cite book , last = Strong , first = Roy , author-link = Roy Strong , title = Country Life 1897-1997: The English Arcadia , year = 1996 , url = https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/36064626 , publisher =

Country Life Books A country is a distinct part of the world, such as a state, nation, or other political entity. It may be a sovereign state or make up one part of a larger state. For example, the country of Japan is an independent, sovereign state, while t ...

, location = London , isbn = 978-0-752-21054-4 , oclc = 36064626 Edgbaston, Yateley Road, 21 Grade I listed houses Houses completed in 1897 Arts and Crafts architecture in England Edgbaston Architects from Birmingham, West Midlands