Title:
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The life and work of Herbert Luck North 1871-1941
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H.L. North was an architect so little known in 1980 that the
research aimed at first to establish the nature and quality of his
work before proceeding to locate him historically. The historical
picture which was constructed, and which is described here, was
the main achievement of the work undertaken. North was thirty in
1901. His spheres of architectural achievement are in the movements
of that time: the arts and crafts cottage house, the arts
and crafts church, and the school of Anglo-Catholic church
furnishing founded by Ninian Comper. As part of his personal
idiom for the cottage house, Gothic tone and character set him
apart. His churches (and private chapels) were built late, and
renounce his early designs of a more detailed and familiar Gothic
type for a forceful structural simplicity which aligns him with
\aI.R. Lethaby and E.S. Prior. In church furnishing he made
original use of the example of Comper throughout his life, and
installed what was probably the first 3nglish altar in \-lalesas
early as 1903. The output of North's country practice was modest,
and almost all of it was imbued in some way with Gothic character.
He was not a church architect who also built houses. He was a
Gothic architect both in his own estimation and in almost all
aspects of his work. This gives him a special position in the
history of architecture in Britain in the early t\ofentieth century.
In Wales, North was the leading figure in his day in the development
of the taste for old Welsh building, as described in chapters
twelve and thirteen, which are located so that this aspect of his
achievements can be met with subsequent to the account of his
architectural career. There was no arts and crafts movement in
,.,Tales.North's role in his house work there was to assimilate
continuing vernacular methods of construction to the advanced
idiom he had started to learn with Lutyens. His success gave
him the false reputation with posterity of actually being the
leader of the arts and crafts movement in \o/ales. His real
significance is better seen at a less provincial level. It shows
him conspicuous as a Goth with a particular feeling for what he
called early Pointed, and with a corresponding economical style,
at a time when the Gothic revival had been repudiated, and when
classical and neo-Georgian were becoming increasingly the idioms
of the day.
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