The Poplars
Little Eaton’s mystery house
In Station Road Little Eaton there is a rather grand 3 storey Georgian style house which looks like it should be in a town square instead of being in a village. At the rear of the rather formal structure there is a modern extension which doesn’t sit comfortably with the aesthetics of the main house. Neither the house nor the extension seem to fit in with village vernacular architecture.
The front of the house shows classical adherence to proportion and symmetry while the rear shows a disregard for these and a different kind of aesthetic.
To find the origins of the principles of these design matters we go first back to a map of 1880.
Here we see the Poplars (arrowed orange) in fairly close proximity to the Brooks Mill paper mill, the river, the railway station and the gangway (arrowed blue). This all makes sense. The Poplars was occupied by Sarah, the daughter of John Tempest and her husband Robert Harvey who was a manager in the Tempest family business. The imposing house overlooked the mill and was at the centre of a new industrial hub where products and materials were passing through day by day. A classical styled house in an industrial area was probably not unusual at the time. There are examples of this in Wirksworth and other towns. It was probably a way of displaying wealth and authority while at the same time keeping an eye on the business. The mystery of the Poplars is that that it was almost certainly built before the industrial landscape was there. The mill was built in 1834, the railway in 1850 and the gangway was started in the 1790s. The Poplars was most likely built in the 1780s but it could have been before this.
A map from the 1780s shows the Poplars surrounded by houses and farmland devoid of any industrial features. The mill, the gangway and railway must have only existed in the minds of visionaries. Was Thomas Tempest a visionary I wonder?
Did he see the house as a centre of a future industrial hub yet to be conceived?
It is possible the house was built on the foundations of an existing farm building but this is unlikely as a Georgian house had to adhere to certain plan form proportions. It is also unlikely that an architect was involved in the design as drawings showing Georgian proportions and features were being published in the late 1700s for builders to work from.
This shows a typical Georgian house plan layout with main rooms of fixed proportions either side of the hall/stairs/landing. It also shows the Venetian window shape present in the Poplars façade. The feature is also called a Serlian window or Palladian motif.
A Georgian sitting room would typically have a fireplace opposite the door from the landing and two vertically proportioned windows. The architect Joseph Pickford built a model Georgian town house in Derby in 1770.
Pickford’s house in Friargate displays classical Greek pediment motifs for the roof parapet and front entrance and a classical Roman arch motif over the main stair windows. The Poplars seems to represent a pared down version of Pickford’s design. There is only one window for each main room and it is has only one pediment. There are similar houses to the Poplars in Wirksworth.
The one on the left is near the railway station and the one on the right is in the main square. These are elegant houses built to impress using Georgian proportions.
Joseph Pickford died in 1782 and there was a sale of his unused building components. It is understood that components from the sale were used in the building of the Poplars and this most likely took place before the turn of the century rather than after it. Another factor in establishing the date of the Poplars is the size of the facing bricks used. The brick courses appear to be about 3 inches. Before 1784 bricks were a bit less than 2 inches high (1 and 5/8ths inches). A brick tax was introduced in that year of 2/6 (12.5p) per 1000 bricks to pay for the American war. As a result brick makers made their products with an increased height (2 and 5/8ths inches).
Wall of a house in the village showing the change in brick size.
This suggests the Poplars was built sometime after 1784 probably by Michael Tempest (b. 1741). His granddaughter Sarah (b. 1833) was married to Robert Harvey in 1852. Who occupied the house before them?
The origins of the classical style of the house can be traced back to activity around the Mediterranean Sea about a thousand years ago. Ideas about science and geometry were being transported from Arabic countries into European countries. Notably the idea of the pointed arch was imported to enable the cathedral builders to construct stone vaulting which wouldn’t work using semi-circular Roman arches.
The result is very beautiful and it is difficult to appreciate that it is simply the result of structural expediency and the desire to build taller with the materials available. Taller meant lighter, by necessity, and this was the result. The large window area meant that Biblical stories could be told through the stained glass images.
The loads from the building are transmitted smoothly down the curved structure. (Forces don’t like going round corners, as any engineer will tell you).
The architecture is credited to Abbott Suger who is titled the father of gothic architecture.
St Denis Cathedral choir completed 1144
Suger initiated the idea of sacred geometry and it is hard to disagree with this idea when seeing the results. The architecture may well be divinely inspired but the every day truth is that the expertise for this architecture was brought to Europe initially by the Arabic stone masons who had several centuries experience of building pointed arches. Pointed vault construction was perfected over several centuries by a system of trial and error. Vaults sometimes collapsed during construction initiating a design variation. There seems to be no published theory about this. Geometrical secrets were just passed down from one generation to the next and we don’t know who the architects actually were. They were regarded as people just applying their trade as all artists were.
In parts of southern Europe there was a rebellion against this approach. The description ‘gothic’ was something of a pejorative term to do with barbarians and there was a desire to link architecture with scholarly activity. New knowledge about mathematics was being conveyed from the Islamic world to the west notably by Leonardo Bonacci (b. 1170) known as Fibonacci or Leonardo of Pisa.
His particular sequence of numbers was able to generate the golden ratio, first thought up by the ancient Greeks, to inspire artists to create perfect proportions. Perfect proportions in architecture would bring it in line with the way music and astronomy were viewed.
The four elements of the mathematical arts (the Quadrivium) were arithmetic, geometry, music and astronomy. Correct ratios in music ensured clearly perceived harmony and it was thought the apparent movement of the sun, moon and planets were part of a parallel divine geometry. The drive for architectural harmony meant a revival of what had happened in ancient Greece and ancient Rome.
The angled pediment came from Greece and the semi-circular arch came from Rome. Both forms displayed decorative motifs that had no structural function and could simply be applied to wall openings. This rebirth of antiquity led to a rapid re-examination of ideas. Churches that had begun as gothic constructions buildings were completed in the new renaissance style, notably the Florence Duomo.
Gothic interior Renaissance exterior
It was a time for architects not just to build but also to write things down to ensure good practice was followed. Sabastian Serlio published pattern books for guidance in good design. The entrance door and ground floor windows of the Poplars show adherence to his work.
1545
The renaissance style was perfected by Andrea Palladio who added many axes of symmetry and alignment to his designs. Villa Rotonda 1570
The Poplars displayed classical motifs and had some classical symmetries and would have represented a cultural statement intended to stand out amongst the villages vernacular buildings. Perhaps the Tempests imagined it would one day be in the centre of an industrial town.
The classical style continued to be used for buildings required to display good taste and its forms are still used today to elevate the ordinary to a higher level.
GRP portico. White House extension.
In the nineteenth century engineers and architectural theorists were looking elsewhere for inspiration. Engineers were designing large structures to accommodate the requirements of the railway industry.
St Pancras train shed. 1868
The structure looks like a gothic vault but in iron instead of stone. The geometry of its form comes directly from its function and decoration is subordinate to this. The theorist were at work too.
William Lethaby opposed the adherence to classical architecture stating:
“Abandon the vague idea of absolute proportion in favour of proportion resulting from fitness for purpose.”
and:
“When periods of architectural styles reach their end, we should avoid sham versions of that style.”
(He actually looks quite stylish for someone opposed to the principle of style)
In his late teens Lethaby worked for a firm of architects in Duffield (we believe they were somewhere near the King’s head) where he won a national award for his drawings of Wingfield Manor. Seven years younger than Lethaby and living in Little Eaton at that time was Percy Currey who was later to become an architect. Lethaby went on to have an influential career as a writer and theorist but, unlike Serlio and others before, he did not publish books of patterns. He urged architects to explore new forms and crucially to just follow function. Sometime just before the year 1900 Percy designed a rear extension to the Poplars for his brother Henry which abandoned the classical style of the main house.
1898 1864 - 1942
It is difficult to say if Currey was influenced directly by Lethaby but he was building in a similar form to the architect Charles Voysey. (1857 – 1941)
This is The Homestead by Voysey was built over 5 years after Currey’s extension to the Poplars so it is possible Currey was something of a pioneer.
It is possible that Curry’s extension was seen as something new and exciting in the village.
There is also the idea that Currey was trying out new forms in preparation for the design of a new home for himself.
The Homestead 1906
The Hatherings in Vicarage Lane in Little Eaton built in 1910
The Hatherings was built by Percy Currey to be his family home when they moved from Wyndesmore in Little Eaton.
In the listing entry by Historic England for the Poplars in 1967 the main house is described in some detail while the rear extension is not referred to at all.
Footnotes questions:
1. Would the iron components for the St Pancras train shed have been transported by train from the Butterley works near Ripley to London via Little Eaton?
2. Is it possible that the young Percy Currey met the young man William Lethaby at the time when they lived in adjacent villages?
…. and finally:
The ground floor windows of the Poplars are described as Venetian windows. To preface anything with the word Venetian was a way of elevating a product from the ordinary to the realms of the sublime. Venetian art and Venetian glass are clear examples of high quality thinking and production. You could put Venetian in front of the name of any product and quality would ensue. A Venetian stew (look it up on the internet) is meant to convert cheap meat into an illustrious feast. I tried it. I can’t say that’s a 100% true.