Crawley Blue Plaques — Philip Webb

9 min readJun 5, 2024

Philip Speakman Webb born Jan. 12, 1831, at 1 Beaumont Street, Oxford, the second among the eleven children of Charles Webb (c.1795–1848), physician, and his wife, M. Elizabeth Speakman and grandson of the medallist, Thomas Webb. His parents moved in 1834 to 15 St Giles’, the former Oxford home of the Dukes of Marlborough. Webb was a boarding pupil from the age of eight at Aynho Free Grammar School, Northamptonshire, where he gained a good education and developed a broad and independent outlook. Accompanying his father on his rounds, he grew to love the English countryside and the ancient buildings of Oxford. His father taught him to understand and sketch animals, and a Mrs Richardson, a skilled flower painter of Oxford, instructed him in drawing.

The death of his father when Webb was seventeen led him to abandon painting for architecture, which offered greater financial security. From 1849–54 Webb served a successful apprenticeship in Reading with architect John Billing, who specialised in traditional building repairs.

Webb returned to Oxford, after a brief and unsuccessful position in highly-industrial Wolverhampton, to become chief assistant to Diocesan Architect, George Edmund Street, a leading figure in the Gothic Revival movement — and architect of London’s Royal Courts of Justice. It was here that in 1856 he met William Morris, who had joined Street’s firm as a trainee. Two years later Webb set up his own architectural practice, and in 1859 designed his first and still most famous domestic building: Red House in Bexleyheath in Kent. This property was commissioned by Morris as a first home for himself and his new wife, Jane.

Working closely with Morris, who had a strong interest in reviving the template of a medieval-style work-based community, Webb conceived Red House as both a distinctive family home and a practical studio space. The original design was intended to be flexible and easily altered to accommodate members of Morris’s circle, although plans for an extension to make room for Edward Burne-Jones and his wife Georgiana were later shelved. Nonetheless, Red House still embodied a positive expression of community. The house was furnished and decorated by Morris’s friends and family, featuring bespoke elements that included hangings and embroideries by William and Jane Morris, tiles and murals by Edward Burne-Jones, and furniture, tiles, metalwork, and tableware by Philip Webb.

The pleasure Morris, Webb and others in their circle took from working together on Red House led in 1861 to their establishing an interior decorating company, Morris, Marshall, Faulkner & Co., for which Webb worked as a lead designer. It was the rapid expansion of this business that led Morris to sell Red House in 1865, only five years after it was completed. He had realised that trying to produce goods in Kent wasn’t practical given that the market for those goods (and many of the specialists he needed to produce them) was almost exclusively in London — plus the long commute was having a negative effect on his health.

In the spring of 1864, he took chambers at 1 Raymond Buildings, Gray’s Inn, where he spent the rest of his working life. He declined election to the Royal Institute of British Architects or the Royal Academy, believing them to be too much concerned with the professional and social status of members, but he joined the Sanitary Institute in order to become an expert on drainage.

It’s known that he adored a girl in the 1860s, but it’s not known who she is, and he never married. He told friend S.C. Cockerell during his later years that he could not afford to keep a wife, if he had chosen to push forward with his own practice, that might have been different. It’s been documented that he told Dante Gabriel Rossetti that anyone who wished, “to follow art with advantage to the world and with hope of competing with art before” had “very severe in the liability of disturbance from collateral courses, such as payment, popularity — position” because whilst these were not “of necessity ruinous to art” often, they “ruin the workman.” It’s clear in these letters, what a passion architecture was, over riding everything else, including money or marriage to his unidentified love.

George Howard of Naworth Castle near Brampton in Cumbria was an able artist and friend of the Pre-Raphaelites, and a keen patron of Philip Webb. Webb had built two houses for his Naworth Castle Estate: Four Gables and Green Lane House, as well as his London house at 1 Palace Green. Much financial help was offered by Charles Howard MP (George Howard’s father) towards building a new church in Brampton on condition that he chose the architect. Webb’s plan for St Martin’s Church is quite unlike most other Victorian churches, with the body of the church being almost square. It is the only church designed by Webb, and contains an exquisite set of stained-glass windows designed by Burne-Jones, and executed in the William Morris studio.

His friendship with the family of Sir Thomas Hugh Bell, a leading iron founder of Middlesbrough, led to three commissions: Rounton Grange (demolished in 1953), Red Barns House in 1868, in which Gertrude Bell lived as a child, and the Bell Brothers office building in Middlesbrough (his only commercial development; later to be the Dorman Long offices). An additional commission in the Cleveland area was Briarmead, completed in 1883, located north of Greatham village, near Hartlepool. The adjoining St Francis Cottage was completed by W.F. Linton (Middlesbrough) in 1895 in the style of Webb.

Webb and Morris formed an important part of the Arts and Crafts movement, and founded the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings in 1877. With Morris, Webb wrote the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Manifesto, one of the key documents in the history of building conservation. He attended over 700 Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings Committee meetings as well as undertaking numerous site visits. Webb also joined Morris’s revolutionary Socialist League, becoming its treasurer.

The Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings (also known as Anti-Scrape) is an amenity society founded by William Morris, Philip Webb, and others in 1877 to oppose the destructive ‘restoration’ of ancient buildings occurring in Victorian England. “Ancient” is used here in the wider sense rather than the more usual modern sense of “pre-medieval.” They were particularly concerned about the practice, of attempting to return functioning buildings to an idealized state from the distant past, often involving the removal of elements added in their later development, which he thought had contributed to their interest as documents of the past. Instead, he proposed that ancient buildings should be repaired, not restored, to protect as cultural heritage their entire history. Today, these principles are widely accepted.

Today, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings still operates according to the original manifesto. It campaigns, advises, runs training programmes and courses, conducts research, and publishes information. As one of the National Amenity Societies, the Society is a statutory consultee on alterations to listed buildings, and by law must be notified of any application in England and Wales to demolish any listed building in whole or in part.

The latter years of Webb’s life, by 1899, he was in poor health and losing money. He couldn’t afford to build a property for himself based on his savings, and so he accepted a rental from his friend William Scawen Blunt at a low price. He handed over his architecture practice to chief assistant George Jack, he moved in Jan 1901 to Caxtons, where he spent a comfortable retirement, looked after by a housekeeper, Margaret Dickinson, whose two children also lived in the house. Between 1902 and 1903, Webb contributed to the design and manufacture of the University of Birmingham’s ceremonial mace. Rheumatism stopped him from earning by designing artefacts as he had intended, but his general health improved with physical work in the house and garden. He continued to enjoy nature as he clearly did throughout his life, creating many of the birds and other elements of nature for Morris’s work. He developed rheumatism and so he wasn’t able to go ahead working on passion projects as much as intended during his retirement, creating artefacts, but he did lots of work on house and garden, attended SPAB meetings and in 1915, passed away peacefully.

He died on April the 17th, 1915, at Worth, Sussex. After his cremation at Golders Green on 20 April, his ashes were scattered on White Horse Hill, Berkshire. At his request, he has no memorial. Webb’s estate was worth only £1643, but he left greater legacies in the foundation of the SPAB and in his approach to architectural design: an approach applicable at any time in any country with a heritage of traditional architecture. Examples of furniture designed by Webb are in the Victoria and Albert Museum, London, and at Kelmscott Manor. Standen, together with much of its Morris & Co. furniture, is now owned by the National Trust.

He was described as being truthful and honourable, tall, slim, and handsome, Webb had a gentlemanly manner leavened by a ready wit that made him popular as a dinner guest; a man of simple tastes, he preferred a plain supper with close friends. He enjoyed concerts and the opera, but otherwise disliked grand social occasions or receiving praise or being in the limelight. He dressed appropriately for the occasion but, detesting greed, aimed ‘to consume the least possible, yet without impoverishment’. What little he bought was of the best, including cigars for friends and snuff for himself. He relished companionship from friends of both sexes, to whom he was loyal and supportive.

Major projects include

Red House, Bexleyheath, (1859)

Sandroyd, now Benfleet Hall, Cobham, Surrey (1860)

Cranmer Hall wing, Fakenham (c.1860) and Coach House (1860)

91–101 Worship St, London EC2 (1862)

Arisaig House, Highland (1863, rebuilt 1937)

All Saints’ and St Richard’s Church of England Primary School, Old Heathfield, East Sussex, (Formerly Heathfield Church of England Primary School) (1864)

1 Palace Green, London (1868)

Red Barns House, Redcar (1868)

19 Lincoln’s Inn Fields, London (1868)

The West House, 35 Glebe Place, Chelsea, London (1868–69) for George Price Boyce

Joldwynds, Holmbury St Mary, Surrey (1874) Demolished 1930 and replaced with a Modernist house by Oliver Hill. Some ancillary buildings by Webb remain and are listed.

Smeaton Manor, Yorkshire (1878)

Four Gables, Green Lane House, Brampton, Cumbria

St Martin’s Church, Brampton (1878)

Conyhurst, Surrey for Mary Ewart (1885)

Clouds House, Wiltshire (1886)

Naworth Castle, Cumbria

Standen, West Sussex (1892–94)

Bell & Co Ltd (offices), Zetland Rd, Middlesbrough (1891)

Rounton Grange, near Middlesbrough (for Sir Isaac Lowthian Bell) — subsequently destroyed in 1953

Forthampton Court, Forthampton, Gloucestershire (1889–92)

Berkeley Castle, Gloucestershire (1874–77)

There is a Greater London Council (precursor to English Heritage running the scheme) blue on the Red House at Bexleyheath naming him as the architect, and that William Morris lived there. In addition there is a brown London Borough of Hackney plaque on the buildings at 91–101 Worship Street. A somewhat neglected green Middlesbrough Heritage plaque is on Webb House — the former Bell & Co Ltd offices.

Caxtons is a Grade II listed building on Turners Hill Road Crawley.

It was listed on 17th March 1978 under listing number 1187116 and hasn’t been updated since. The details of the listing are as below.

Late C16 timber-framed building with red brick infilling in east wall. Two storeys. Three windows. The south front has been refaced in red brick on the ground floor and tile-hung above with a strip of weatherboarding between. Steeply pitched tiled roof with pentice behind. Casement windows. Doorway with flat hood on brackets. Large inglenook fireplaces inside and possible smoking chamber adjacent to the chimney.

Plaque Details

Location — Caxtons, Turners Hill Road, Worth, Crawley. RH10 4SW

Dedicated to — Philip Webb

Dedication Text — The architect Philip Webb 1831–1915 Co-founder with William Morris of The Society For The Protection of Ancient Buildings lived here 1900–1915

Dedicated by — Worth Parish Council & West Sussex County Council

Date Installed — 2005

For other Crawley related pieces check out the list below