Trust Visit to South East London
- TrustNews Sep 19

On 5 June twenty-five Trust members met at the Pitt Park and Ride for a coach trip to the very far reaches of south east London. Our first destination was the Red House built for William Morris by architect Philip Webb in Bexleyheath. Although it is now very suburban, the surrounding garden and orchard still give a flavour of its original setting in the Kent countryside. The beautiful red-brick and tiled property deliberately harks back to the medieval and was intended to adapt late Gothic building methods to the needs of Morris and his family. Furnishings were designed by Webb and Morris in an austere medieval style and murals were painted by Burne-Jones and other friends.

Sadly, the Morris family only lived there for 5 years - the commute into central London to the Morris design company was just too long. The house fell on hard times until a group of architects bought and restored it after the second world war and it was eventually acquired by the National Trust in 2003. The original features and furnishings by Webb and Morris and the paintings and stained glass by Burne-Jones mean that it is still a very evocative shrine to the ideals of the Arts and Craft movement.

After our tour of the Red House we travelled a few miles to Blackheath for an afternoon at Eltham Palace where again we were fortunate to have a very interesting and entertaining guided tour. This was a royal palace from the early 14th century and Edward IV built the Great Hall with its impressive hammer-beam ceiling. Henry Vlll spent his childhood at Eltham but it gradually fell out of favour over the next few centuries and eventually the Great Hall was used as a barn. And then, extraordinarily, the wealthy socialites Stephen and Virginia Courtauld persuaded the Crown Estate to grant a lease of the site and built an Art Deco country house onto the medieval palace - complete with a special apartment for their pet lemur. The Art Deco mansion has been beautifully restored by English Heritage and has something of the flavour of a great ocean liner of the period but it is the juxtaposition with the moated palace which makes the whole site so unusual.

Just like the Morris family at Red House, the Courtaulds only lived there for a few years and for the next 50 years Eltham was the home of the Army Education Corps - perhaps not the ideal custodians of such an imponant and interesting building.

Sue Owers

(photos by Sue Owers and Elaine Howells)