Published in the  The Decorative Arts Society, Journal 42, 2018

Edward Welby Pugin and the Granville Hotel Interiors; Some Observations, Clarifications and Theory.

Paul Shutler

Originally conceived as a terrace of eight symmetrical villas, the building of the Granville Hotel (fig. 1) would become Edward Welby Pugin’s (fig. 2) financial and mental undoing. Situated on the West cliff in Ramsgate, 90 feet above the sea, the Granville Hotel was opened in October 1869. The hotel’s inaugural ball (costing £1,000) was attended by the great and good of both Ramsgate and London. At this date its 80 bedrooms, family apartments, five drawing rooms, dining, reading and smoking rooms were furnished throughout with pieces designed by E. W. P. (fig 3)

1870 saw the completion of the sunken garden at the front and a tunnel connecting the hotel with the sea below. In December 1870 the baths were opened; with Turkish, ozone, sulphur, iron and slipper baths, and even a steam powered ever-flowing saline plunge pool, the services on offer could only be described as the very best in modern health treatments. The tower, designed to house water tanks to feed the hotel’s numerous baths, was originally planned to be 170 feet high and topped with a clock face on all four sides. By 1872 the tower was capped[i]. This would ultimately be E. W. P.’s last financial outlay, as three months later he filed to liquidate his estate and his bankers Coutts & Co took control. Numerous bitter legal battles followed until his untimely death in 1875 at the age of 41.[ii]

The furnishing of the entire hotel complex is the subject of this article, addressing, I hope, the problems encountered when attributing E.W.P. pieces today. Indeed, a certain amount of confusion, tentative attribution and even misattribution is often to be seen alongside pieces with the name ‘Granville’ attached to them. Ultimately this article hopes to separate the furniture makers from the wholesalers [were they only wholesalers? No retailers among them?] who were merely selling ready-made bankrupt stock. [was it all bankrupt stock, though? You say later that Cox & Sons offered different timbers etc, which must have been made to order]

When we look at the iconic ‘Granville chair’, the most accurate descriptions state merely that the model was designed for the hotel. Whilst not incorrect, this is often applied to two different versions of the chair. Some references claim that only chairs that follow the registered design are the true version and that other chairs are later in manufacture. I hope to address this inaccuracy. 

The two versions at first glance seem the same, the small but significant difference being the number of holes in the sides or legs. The registered design (fig. 4) shows five holes and a small, presumably brass, foot, slide or castor. Extant five-hole chairs (fig. 5) do not have this addition to the foot. However, the greatest number of extant Granville chairs have four holes (fig. 5), the loss of one hole making room for an elaborate brass foot and thus departing from the registered design. 

Granville-type tables have been identified in oak (fig. 7), walnut, ebonised and gilt and walnut and partially ebonised versions, all linked with the name ‘Granville’ on the apparent assumption that they were originally in the hotel. 

The confusion around attributing manufacture

It is generally assumed that E. W. P. manufactured all of his furniture in his own workshop. Known as the South Eastern Works,[iii]it produced furniture to his design not just for the Granville Hotel, but also for other commissions such as Scarisbrick Hall (fig. 8). Contemporaneous comment in the local press[iv], however, suggests that the contents of the hotel were made both in Ramsgate and in London, with specific London firms being mentioned for the pitch pine furniture (Messrs Mitchell & Co, fig 9) and oak gothic chairs and couches etc. (Messrs J. W. & M. Jarvis). In addition to these two firms, there are the frequently-referenced Cox & Sons and C. & R. Light, both also based in London. We therefore seem to be dealing with at least five different manufacturers of E. W. P. designed furniture. 

Feeling financial strain when the hotel finally opened to paying guests, E. W. P. set about trying to capitalise on his new Granville designs. In 1870 he registered the design of the Granville chair and from 1870 to 1872 an extensive nationwide advertising campaign was started, with near identical advertisements placed in newspapers including the Pall Mall Gazette, The Nottingham Journal, The West Somerset Press, The Ballymena Observer (Ireland) and in London The Morning Post and The London Illustrated London News.

Advertisements, most often entitled ‘Welby Pugin’s Gothic Furniture’, offered for sale, upon application to the South Eastern Works, furniture similar to that at the Granville hotel. In one advertisement in The Globe in 1870 (fig. 10)

‘The Granville Chair’ was specifically referred to as ‘the greatest novelty of the season’ and offered at a price of £2 10s in both oak and walnut.[v]  In 1872 estimates were invited for the furnishing of complete houses in the gothic style[vi]with price lists offered for furniture ‘such as supplied to the “Granville” Hotel’[vii](fig. 11).

Some of the confusion stems from the misquoting of a catalogue dateable to just after 1876[viii], when the church furnishing company Cox & Sons of Southampton Street, London, advertised in their catalogue Extra Designs for Artistic Furniture, having bought from ‘E. Welby Pugin’s’ workshops a large stock of furniture that is similar to his designs for the Granville Hotel[ix](fig. 12). The catalogue listed the items and their prices and crudely  illustrated three pieces (one of which was in fact the hall chair known to have been designed by E. W. P.’s father A. W. N. Pugin for their family home The Grange[x]). It is important to note here that whilst the primary purpose of this dedicated full page (albeit the inside back page, as an addition to Cox’s actual stock) was to sell some ready-made furniture newly-acquired from another workshop, it went on offer a made-to-order service if different timbers, fabrics or finishes were preferred. Looking at curious extant variants, one might assume that alterations to the basic design were also on offer (figs. 13 and 14). This service would also explain the curiously un-Gothic partially ebonised (fig.15) and gilt examples in existence, a clear effort to transform unfashionable Gothic pieces into fashionable ‘Art Furniture’.

Later, in 1880, the east London furniture wholesalers Messrs Charles & Richard Light (C. & R. Light) included in their catalogue Designs & Catalogue of Cabinet & Upholstery Furniture looking glasses & C., three pages of furniture far removed from their usual output (fig 16, 17 and 18). Described as ‘Gothic’ and ‘Mediæval’, they all shared construction details that implied they were grouped together for a reason. 

Given the date of this catalogue was before the sale of the Granville’s contents in May 1899 (see below), but after the sale of the South Eastern Works’ stock, with no reference made to their famous designer it seems safe to assume these pieces had, as with Cox & Sons’ pieces, been acquired ready-made and were simply being offered for sale. 

It is possible, or perhaps even probable, that these pieces had been acquired as ready-made stock from Messrs Mitchell[xi](bankrupted in 1874) or Messrs Jarvis, who, both situated less than a mile from C. & R. Light in Shoreditch, are known to have produced the pieces for the Granville in pitch pine and ‘oak Gothic chairs and couches etc.’ respectively. Among the pieces on the three pages were designs for Gothic chairs, a couch and many other things including the model of a table illustrated here in pitch pine (fig. 9). 

The dispersal of the hotel’s furnishings

Following a succession of owners and further non-Pugin modifications, the experienced hoteliers Spiers & Pond acquired the hotel complete with contents in 1898. They set about an ambitious remodelling project and in May 1899 the hotel was closed and a sale held locally to dispose of some of the now unfashionable hotel furnishings[xii], Spiers & Pond apparently intending to keep the rest for the remodelled hotel. 

Described as being ‘high class and substantially made in oak, ash, walnut and pine’ and ‘for the most part designed by the late Edward Welby Pugin’, individual pieces are listed as plate glass back sideboards, octagonal, dining and side tables, chests of drawers, commodes, hall, high back, reclining and dining chairs.

Spiers & Pond apparently had a change of mind, as a second sale was held locally in January 1900[xiii]to dispose of pieces that had previously been held back for use in the newly refurbished rooms. Again described as ‘high class and substantial’, this time the listed items included drawing room and bedroom suites and other furniture and specifically mentioned ‘octagonal, writing and side tables, settees, sofas and easy and dining chairs’.

Newly-discovered photographs

The emergence of two photographs (dateable to before 1899[xiv]) has allowed us to begin to clarify some of these attributions for the first time. In early 2018 the Ramsgate Historical Society[xv]published two photographs online, one showing the Granville’s saline plunge pool (fig. 19) and one showing a bath cooling room (fig. 20). 

The picture of the plunge pool clearly shows a pair of Granville chairs with elaborate brass feet (therefore the four-hole version) and two schoolboys shivering whilst awaiting the use of weighing scales. The view of the cooling room shows chunky (possibly Puginian) beds separated by curtains. Bedside tables can also be seen in the cooling room, the design of which featured, albeit probably at a more commercial height, in C & R Light’s catalogue (see fig. 21 for a pair of tables of the unusually petite height of 22 inches).

Conclusion

Taking everything written here into consideration, it could logically be assumed that the designs attributed to the Granville Hotel were either made at the South Eastern Works (the pieces described in Cox & Sons’ post-1876 catalogue) or by J. W. & M. Jarvis (the pieces illustrated in C. & R. Light’s 1880 catalogue), whilst the pieces in pitch pine were specifically made by Mitchell & Co. and also illustrated in C. & R. Light’s catalogue.

We know that E. W. P. kept a stock of furniture; while this would clearly have been costly, it seems he had pieces made in anticipation of orders coming in following his extensive advertising campaign. It is therefore not a stretch to imagine he would have instructed his other manufacturers in London to do the same. Then when E. W. P. finally admitted defeat, his creditors were left holding this expensive stock. 

The four-hole version of the Granville chair that has often been thought to be post E. W. P. seems in fact to have been the version used in the hotel itself, whilst the five-hole version appears to be the version offered commercially, the lack of elaborate brass feet perhaps being a cost-saving feature as this was a desperate fund raising exercise. From an aesthetic point of view, the brass front feet combined with the elaborately chamfered back feet seem to terminate the chair’s legs more pleasingly. A five-hole version, its legs terminating abruptly without metal feet, can be seen in a photograph, dated 1892, of the artist Philip Calderon in his home studio (fig. 22).

If my theory that C. & R. Light and Cox & Sons were merely selling ready-made surplus stock is correct, then the illustrations in their catalogues give us a hitherto unseen glimpse into the interiors of the Granville Hotel in Ramsgate and are perhaps far more important than merely being versions of E. W. P.’s designs reproduced after his death. 

The furnishing of the hotel allowed E. W. P. to start from scratch without the need to please a client looking for the ‘Pugin’ brand. In the Granville the pieces followed a theme, the use of the supported cantilever being applied successfully to both side chairs (figs. 23 and 24) and tables (fig. 9). Planks arranged in cruciform offered a stable support and when pared down with a curve and perforated with chamfered holes they offered a lighter and more modern take on Gothic and were used on tables of various shapes and on hallstands, essential for a home away from home. 

Whilst some pieces looked forward, the scalloping chamfers of the panelled cabinet pieces remind us of the cabinetwork of fellow Gothic revival architect John Pollard Seddon from 1860. It is however, easy to see how the ‘Granville chair’ became and remains the ‘Greatest Novelty’, a striking chair displaying his father’s honesty of construction, the Thames Valley tradition of a thick-dished seat, an ancient Greek tablet back and his own perforated plank supports, all combining to produce a unique chair.

Following his father’s untimely death in 1852, E. W. P. successfully ran the family architectural practice and restored or designed more than one hundred Catholic churches, a handful of houses in the British Isles, Scandinavia, the United States and Western Europe.

However, as the son of the overbearing Augustus Welby Northmore Pugin, he can’t be blamed for his attempt to make his mark on his hometown of Ramsgate. Surrounded by, and even living in a reminder of his behemoth father’s genius, E. W. P. was perhaps destined to struggle. The Granville project could have been very successfully completed with just an admirable set of eight villas, but his desire to be remembered for his own genius led him to die bankrupted[xvi], having repeated his father’s early commercial failings. Rosemary Hill writes in her biography of A. W. N. P.  God’s Architect, ‘He would never learn to bend with the financial wind; when money was short he would still extend his operations and his expenses. He learned to cost his materials more accurately, but not his time.’[xvii]- words that could so easily apply to his son Edward Welby Pugin.

[i]Owing to the strain of the water tanks it held, it was reduced in height in 1899, to the height we see today.

[ii] Benedict Kelly, The Story of the Granville Hotel, 1869-2012, Michaels Bookshops 2012

[iii]Catriona Blaker, Edward Pugin and Kent, The Pugin Society, 2003

[iv] A loose page in the collection of Ramsgate library, KE3.1. 728.5 (2)

[v]The Globe, 8 November 1870

[vi] The Pall Mall Gazette, 21 September 1870

[vii]The Pall Mall Gazette, 20 October 1870

[viii] Whilst undated, reference to their stand at the 1876 Philadelphia centennial exhibition is made.

[ix] Cox & Sons, Extra Designs for Artistic Furniture, undated, but after 1876

[x]Does this mean that E. W. P. continued to make this design available to clients after his father’s death?

[xi]Walter Mitchell and Henry South (Messrs Mitchell & Co) declared bankruptcy in January 1874, described as Furniture Manufacturer and Auctioneer at 10 City Road, Middlesex. The London Gazette, 12 December, 1873

[xii]Thanet Advertiser, Saturday 13 May 1899

[xiii] Thanet Advertiser, Saturday 23 December 1899

[xiv] They show the Pugin designed pieces prior to them being dispersed

[xv] Facebook.com/ramsgatehistorical/ screenshot taken 21 January 2018. 

[xvi] In October 1872 he had unsecured liabilities of £180,000, B. Kelly, The Story of the Granville Hotel, 1869-2012 2012

[xvii] Rosemary Hill, God’s Architect, Yale University Press, 2007, page 86