Ernest Gimson: Arts & Crafts Designer and Architect

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Godfrey Blount was a painter who was deeply influenced by the ideas of leading art critic of the Victorian era, John Ruskin. In 1896 Blount and his wife Ethel moved to Haslemere in Surrey to join Ethel's sister, Maud, and her husband Joseph, who had established the Haslemere Peasant Industries. This group of workshop-based craft enterprises together formed an artistic community that aimed at obtaining 'the double pleasure of lovely surroundings and happy work'. The Blounts later set up their own enterprise called the Peasant Arts Society, which used local women to produce hand-woven pile carpets and simple embroidered appliqués on linen known as 'peasant tapestries'. Made to Blount's designs, the tapestries were used as door curtains, casement curtains, bed spreads and bed hangings, and became very fashionable in artistic circles. Fred Orton (1882-1974) was born in Burton-on-Trent. His father was a cooper who transferred to Stroud Brewery in Gloucestershire in the 1890s. Orton however wanted to be a cabinet maker. He worked for builders in Stroud and in Langport, Somerset before joining the Daneway Workshops. Gimson rented Hill House Farm in nearby Tunley as accommodation for unmarried craftsmen such as Orton.

Gimson however was not a socialist. He called himself an individualist, inspired by the nineteenth-century writer and philosopher Herbert Spencer whose work was influential in France and the United States as well as in Britain. Secularism in England grew out the 17th-century tradition of free thought. In the 18th century Thomas Paine had argued that the Church was inextricably linked with the state to the detriment of the people. He and Robert Owen brought together the strands of political, social and religious radicalism out of which the Secular Movement developed. The term Secularism was first used in about 1851. Street. (fn. 13) By 1573 a bridge had been built at Daneway (fn. 14) and that part of the road which led up the hillAccording to Norman Jewson, Gimson, ‘preferred a rush-seated chair to an upholstered one, plain lime-washed walls to wallpapered, plain home-made food to imported luxuries. He was not a teetotaler, but was almost a total abstainer’. According to Harry Davoll he dismissed two men once for being drunk but would take an occasional half pint himself mainly to be sociable.

Norman Jewson, who first met Gimson in the summer of 1907, subsequently described his first impressions: In reading Ruskin the other day I came across this motto: ‘Every man a law to himself’ that would be a good one don’t you think? It shows the distinction between liberty and licence that should be made clear.’Ernest William Gimson was born in Leicester in 1864, the fourth child of Josiah and Sarah Gimson. Josiah was an iron-founder who had established the Vulcan Works in Leicester. Ernest attended Franklin's School in Stoneygate, Leicester, before being articled to a local architect, Isaac Barradale. He also attended a course on architecture at the Leicester School of Art, winning national medals for suburban housing and furniture design. Gimson designed many buildings in the UK, with the two most notable being his first new house commission, Inglewood in Leicester, and the National Trust property in Leicestershire called Stoneywell. Both are now Grade II* Listed in recognition of their architectural importance. [7] [8] His architectural commissions include: That organic look would have been even stronger when the house was built, for Gimson roofed Stoneywell with thatch. Unfortunately, the thatch caught fire in 1938 and was replaced with a slate roof. At the same time, the house was altered to make it suitable as a full-time residence. Prior to the fire, Stoneywell had only ever been a summer residence. Ulverscroft forms the Heart of Charnwood Forest. With some of the counties most expensive and stylish properties, the area is renowned for its outstanding beauty, local attractions including Old John, Bradgate Park (the former home of Lady Jane Grey), The Beacon and The Outwoods. I certainly take Mr Gimson's view, at least as much as I have ever thought of it. That it would be fearful to imagine in a world to come an everlasting time that would go on for ever. It appals me quite.’