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The Story of William Morris and the Red House

The Red House was designed for William Morris by his friend
Philip Webb.

William Morris

William Morris was born on the 24 March 1834 at Walthamstow. By

the time of his death in 1896 he had been hailed as a genius and had
completely altered many people’s ideas in the worlds of art and
politics.

He was educated at Marlborough College and Exeter College,

Oxford. Although he made quite an impression at Marlborough where
he was expelled after taking part in a school rebellion, it was at
Oxford that Morris began to show signs that he would eventually
develop a far greater sphere of influence. There he met Edward
Burne-Jones who was to become his lifelong friend and mentor.
Together they established `The Brotherhood', an intellectual society
whose aim was to fight `a crusade and holy war against the age'.
Basically, their idea was to preserve all that was good from the past
and Morris and Burne-Jones were particularly interested in medieval
culture (poetry, literature, architecture etc.). Gradually their ideas
and interests brought them into contact with an ever-widening group
of like-minded people including Dante Gabriel Rossetti (leader of the
Pre-Raphaelite artists), Holman Hunt, Millais, Benjamin Woodward
and Ford Madox Brown.

It was through Rossetti that Morris met his future wife, Jane Burden, in
the autumn of 1857. Rossetti discovered her and employed her as an
artistic model. Morris fell in love with her almost immediately and
they were married on 26 April 1859 in St Michael's Church, Oxford.
William was 25 and his wife 19. After a six week honeymoon in Paris,
Belgium and on the Rhine, they moved into furnished accommodation
in Great Ormond Street and the following year to Aberleigh Lodge
near Bexleyheath to await the building of their new house designed
by Morris' friend, the architect Philip Webb.

It was after the building of the house and the designing of the interior
that Morris and his friends felt experienced enough in the art of
interior design to set up in business. So in 1861 the firm of Morris,
Marshall, Faulkner & Co. was established and it quickly grew and
prospered as the public came to appreciate the new and innovative
designs being produced. The company was simply known as `The
Firm' to many of Morris' friends and customers. The Firm was
dissolved in 1875 and the business renamed Morris & Company.

At the same time Morris was also hard at work writing poetry and the
first part of The Earthly Paradise, his first major work, was published
in 1868. In addition to his other activities Morris was also emerging as
a major player in the field of socialism. He was converted to socialism
in about 1884 when it was not considered fashionable and certainly
went through a great deal of social ridicule because of it, not just from
the popular press but also from some of his friends as well. However,
Morris stuck to his convictions and, although not comfortable
speaking publicly, made many public appearances supporting and
promoting the socialist cause.

Another of Morris' interests was printing. In 1890 Morris established

the Kelmscott Press to try to revive what he considered the art of
printing, in its original form. He felt printing had become too formal
and mundane and sought to print in a more varied and artistic way,
using early illustrated manuscripts as his model.

So, by the last decade of the 19th century William Morris had become
a very prominent figure in Victorian society. His extraordinary talent
and boundless energy had enabled him to influence an incredible
variety of art forms including textiles, printing, architecture, painting,
drawing, interior design, literature and poetry. In addition his
thoughts and writings on socialism had an enormous impact on the
early years of the socialist movement and have continued their
influence throughout the 20th century.

On 3 October 1896 William Morris died at Kelmscott House in

Hammersmith, aged 62, and was buried in the churchyard at
Kelmscott Village. His last words were "I want to get mumbo-jumbo
out of the world" and his doctor declared that he had "died a victim to
his enthusiasm for spreading the principles of socialism".

The Red House

The plans for the Red House had been discussed by Morris, Philip
Webb and Charles Faulkner on a rowing trip down the Seine in 1858.
Morris had met Faulkner at Oxford and Webb at the firm of architects
to which Morris had himself been apprenticed. Morris, much affected
by what he had seen on holiday, wanted a house "very medieval in
spirit", a simple design harking back to the cottages in the Cotswolds
rather than the fussy mid-Victorian architecture then in fashion. The
contract with Webb was signed in April 1859.

The choice of site caused Morris to visit several areas before buying
an orchard and meadow near the village of Upton, close to three or
four cottages known as Hogs Hole. Morris liked countryside that was
open and fertile with preferably a river or other feature and Upton
fitted this almost perfectly. The 1868 Ordnance Survey Map shows
that at that time Upton was fairly isolated in the middle of farmland
and orchards with the large estates of Danson and Blendon
surrounding it. Nearby Bexleyheath was growing slowly with shops,
schools and churches just beginning to appear. The house as a whole
was described as bringing in "a new era in house building" and
Burne-Jones described it as, "the most beautiful place on earth". The
garden carried on the theme of the house. There were four closes,
fenced with live hedges, wattle or stout trellises each specialising in
different flowers or kinds of roses.

It was, however, with the interior decoration that Morris's talent was to
show. The decorations were applied directly to the wooden and
plaster surfaces. All weekend guests were expected to help and
Morris would prick out the pattern in the plaster with a pin to help his
less gifted friends. The drawing room ceiling was open to the roof
with floral designs on the walls painted by Burne-Jones. He took as his
theme scenes from the medieval romance of Sir Degravaunt,
incorporating William and Jane as Sir Degravaunt and his bride,
pictures which caused speculation amongst his neighbours. In the
centre of the south wall was a vast settle brought from Morris' studio in
Red Lion Square and the addition of a loft added by Webb did duty as
a Minstrel's gallery and access to the roof. Over the fire-place was
another Latin inscription, "Ars Longa Vita Brevis" - "Art is long, life is
short". Morris said that this room was "the most beautiful room in
England".

Webb's design for the Red House owed as much to his master, G E
Street, as to his own work. However, following the success of the
house, Webb was able to set up on his own. The design caused the
least number of trees to be cut down and it was said that apple trees
tended to drop their fruit inside the house through the open windows.
The house was built of deep red brick laid in the English bond. It had
two storeys and was L-shaped. The roof was steep with tall chimney
stacks surrounded by a weather vane incorporating Morris' initials
and a horse's head.

Bell Scott in his `Reminiscences' says that, "The only thing you saw
from a distance was an immense red-tiled steep and high roof". The
only reference we have to the builder is in Frank Buckland's
`Bexleyheath', which states, "The house was very well built by William
Kent". We do not know where the distinctive red bricks came from.
Over the front door was the Latin inscription, "Dominus Custodiet
Exitum Tuum et Introitum Tuum" - "God preserve your going out and
your coming in".

In the halls were cupboards painted by Burne-Jones with scenes from

the Nibelungen with stained glass by Morris and Burne-Jones. Dark
red tiles covered the floor. The walls of the principal bedroom were
hung with embroidered serge, a craft Morris taught his wife. The
result was a work of art as well as a dwelling and it was universally
admired by his friends, as Rossetti mentioned to Charles Eliot Norton,
"I wish you could see the home which Morris has built for himself in
Kent. It is a most noble work in every way and more a poem than a
home".

Morris had visions of adding wings for the accommodation of the

Burne-Jones family but moved to Oxford before this could be done; in
fact, he never again built a home. However, it has been said that it
was from this point, after the experience of decorating the interior of
the Red House that Morris' career as a designer really began.

Life in Bexleyheath

Once Morris was settled in Bexleyheath he delighted in entertaining.

His friends would arrive at Abbey Wood Station and drive the three
miles in a wagonette through the North Kent countryside "the rose-
hung lanes of woody Kent". The wagonette, designed by Webb, had
been built in Bexley after the style of an old fashioned market cart and
was used for jaunts into the countryside. The weekends were used for
decorating the house and for fun and games, bowls in the garden and
bear fights among the men. Morris was the perfect host, coming up
from his cellars with arms full of wine bottles. At night they would play
hide and seek or gather around the piano to sing old English songs.
The neighbouring people treated Morris and his friends with
suspicion. Laura Hain Friswell, in a book about her father, James Hain
Friswell, writes of the attitudes of the inhabitants of Bexleyheath:

"Their ideas of artists, authors and actors were of the most crude kind;
they seemed to have the old-fashioned notion that they were
'vagabonds'. Like most of those who live in a narrow sphere, they
understood little outside it, and they told some preposterous stories
and made some wonderful statements. I remember one of the
autocrats of the Heath calling and making some astounding
statements about William Morris, who had built a house in the place.
His chief offence appeared to be having tea parties on Sundays. I was
generally silent, but on this occasion I was roused, and was soon in
dire disgrace for taking up the cudgels on his behalf; I said plainly, I
thought Bexley Heath should be proud that such a man as the author
of "The Earthly Paradise" had lived there. I was promptly told "little
girls should be seen and not heard"; this was adding insult to injury,
for I was by no means a little girl. I can remember well my father's
amused smile, which grew into a laugh, when the lady asserted that
she "had heard, and felt sure it must be true, that Mrs Morris had been
in a circus; no one could ride and manage a horse so beautifully but a
performer". My father explained that this rumour was quite false,
there was absolutely no truth in it; but the autocrat refused to be
convinced and said, "That was not the worst; the man was quite a
heathen; for it was well known down there that he was married in his
drawing-room, the ceremony being of a most curious character and
afterwards he had it painted upon the wall".

Morris did not seem to make much more of an impression on the area
than this, and the only documentary evidence is the 1861 census
which lists for the Red House:

William Morris, aged 27 - Artist Painter, BA, born Walthamstow.

Jane Morris, aged 21, born Oxford.
Algernon Swinburne, aged 24 - Student, Oxford, born London.
Thomas Reynolds, aged 25 - Groom to head of family, born
Woodford.
Jane Chapman, aged 27 - Housemaid, born Faversham.
Charlotte Cooper, aged 28 - Cook (Domestic), born Somerset.
Elizabeth Reynolds, aged 31 - Nurse (Private), born Leyton.
Jane Alice Morris, aged 3 months, born Bexley.
Morris' daughter, although Christened Jane Alice, was known as
Jenny.

After the Red House

Whilst Morris enjoyed his house in Bexleyheath, `The Firm' was

growing rapidly. The original members were Morris, Marshall and
Faulkner, plus Rossetti, Ford Madox Brown and Webb. The
workshops and offices were at 8 Red Lion Square and a circular
describes the firm as `Fine Art Workmen in Painting, Carving and
Furniture, and the metals'. Then, on 25 March 1862, a second
daughter, May, was born and Morris became busier as more
commissions were received, his first wallpaper being printed in 1864.
Morris found the travelling from Upton to London expensive and a
strain so plans were made to move the workshops to the Red House.
However, finances dictated that it was not to be. Finally in November
1865, the Morris family moved to Queen Square. His dream of
creating a medieval world was gone from him forever, he never again
visited the Red House.

The Red House has been used as a residence ever since Morris left
and still contains much of the original decoration. A few years ago a
blue plaque was erected on the house to commemorate its association
with William Morris.

The National Trust purchased the house in 2003 and the house is open
to the public.