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British architect (1830–1905) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Alfred Waterhouse RA PPRIBA (19 July 1830 – 22 August 1905) was an English architect, particularly associated with Gothic Revival architecture, although he designed using other architectural styles as well. He is perhaps best known for his designs for Manchester Town Hall and the Natural History Museum in London. He designed other town halls, the Manchester Assize buildings—bombed in World War II—and the adjacent Strangeways Prison. He also designed several hospitals, the most architecturally interesting being the Royal Infirmary Liverpool and University College Hospital London. He was particularly active in designing buildings for universities, including both Oxford and Cambridge but also what became Liverpool, Manchester and Leeds universities. He designed many country houses, the most important being Eaton Hall in Cheshire. He designed several bank buildings and offices for insurance companies, most notably the Prudential Assurance Company. Although not a major church designer he produced several notable churches and chapels.
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Alfred Waterhouse | |
|---|---|
 Waterhouse | |
| Born | 19 July 1830 Liverpool, Lancashire, England |
| Died | 22 August 1905 (aged 75) Yattendon, Berkshire, England |
| Occupation | Architect |
| Awards | Royal Gold Medal (1878) |
| Buildings | Eaton Hall, Cheshire Girton College, Cambridge Holborn Bars Liverpool Royal Infirmary Manchester Assize Courts Manchester Town Hall National Liberal Club Natural History Museum, London Reading School Clock Tower at Rochdale Town Hall St Elisabeth's Church, Reddish Benwell Dene Strangeways Prison University College Hospital Victoria Building, University of Liverpool Victoria University of Manchester Yorkshire College |
Financially speaking, Waterhouse was probably the most successful of all Victorian architects. He designed some of the most expensive buildings of the Victorian age. The three most costly were Manchester Town Hall, Eaton Hall and the Natural History Museum; they were also among the largest buildings of their type built during the period. Waterhouse had a reputation for being able to plan logically laid out buildings, often on awkward or cramped sites. He built soundly constructed buildings, having built up a well structured and organised architectural office, and used reliable sub-contractors and suppliers. His versatility in stylistic matters also attracted clients. Though expert within Neo-Gothic, Renaissance revival and Romanesque revival styles, Waterhouse never limited himself to a single architectural style. He often used eclecticism in his buildings. Styles that he used occasionally include Tudor revival, Jacobethan, Italianate, and some only once or twice, such as Scottish baronial architecture, Baroque Revival, Queen Anne style architecture and Neoclassical architecture.
As with the architectural styles he used when designing his buildings, the materials and decoration also show the use of diverse materials. Waterhouse is known for the use of terracotta on the exterior of his buildings, most famously at the Natural History Museum. He also used faience, once its mass production was possible, on the interiors of his buildings. But he also used brick, often a combination of different colours, or with other materials such as terracotta and stone. This was especially the case with his buildings for the Prudential Assurance Company, educational, hospital and domestic buildings. In his Manchester Assize Courts, he used different coloured stones externally to decorate it. At Manchester Town Hall and Eaton Hall the exterior walls are almost entirely of a single type of stone. His interiors ranged from the most elaborate at Eaton Hall and Manchester Town Hall, respectively for Britain's richest man and northern England's richest city cottonopolis, to the simplest in buildings like the Royal Liverpool Infirmary, where utility and hygiene dictated the interior design, and the even starker Strangeways Prison.
His father was Alfred Waterhouse Senior (1798–1873), a cotton broker, and his mother was Mary Waterhouse, née Bevan (1805–1880), of Tottenham, both Quakers. Alfred, first of their eight children, was born on 19 July 1830 when the family was living at Stone Hill, Liverpool. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Oakfield, a Tudor-style villa in Aigburth, Liverpool, Lancashire.[1] His brothers were accountant Edwin Waterhouse (1841–1917), co-founder of the Price Waterhouse partnership, which now forms part of PriceWaterhouseCoopers, and solicitor Theodore Waterhouse (1838–1891), who founded the law firm Waterhouse & Co, now part of Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP in the City of London.[2][3] Alfred Waterhouse was educated at the Quaker Grove House School in Tottenham, later to become Leighton Park School.[4]
He began his architectural studies in 1848 under Richard Lane in Manchester.[5] He was taught to produce architectural drawings with crisp lines and pale tints, very different from the style he would develop later. He was taught theory by copying extracts from books, including Henry William Inwood's Of the Resources of Design in the Architecture of Greece, Egypt, and other Countries, obtained by the Studies of the Architects of those Countries from Nature (1834) and William Chamber's A treatise on civil architecture (1759). He also traced the designs in Frederick Apthorp Paley's Manual of Gothic Mouldings (1845). The scrapbook he used survives in which he sets out Chambers and Paley's opposing views. He is also known to have read during this period John Ruskin's The Stones of Venice (1849) and Augustus Pugin's Contrasts (1836) and The True Principles of Pointed or Christian Architecture (1841). He joined a sketching club, where he met Frederic Shields and Alfred Darbyshire.[6]
In May 1853 he set out to tour Europe with school friend Thomas Hodgkin who stated that Waterhouse "was entirely under the influence of Ruskin, and communicated his own admiration for Gothic art and a perfect detestation of that beastly Renaissance". The trip lasted nine months. Sailing to Dieppe, passing through Rouen, then Paris, taking a steamer from Dijon down the Saône to Lyons, then on to Nîmes, Arles and Orange. Staying the night at the Grande Chartreuse, passing into Piedmont to Susa and Turin, they walked over the Great St Bernard Pass in a snowstorm into Switzerland. In Basel Waterhouse parted company with Hodgkin and returned to Italy in the company of a Manchester acquaintance George Rooke. Waterhouse's sketchbook from the trip survives and is titled Scraps from France, Switzerland, and Italy. Every notebook sketch is dated and labelled so his itinerary can be followed. In Italy he visited Isola Bella, Certosa di Pavia, Milan, Bergamo, Monza and Venice where he remained for two weeks in August.[7] Here he sketched the Doge's Palace and St Mark's Basilica. The tour continued in Padua, Vicenza and Verona. By the end of September he arrived in Florence, where he stayed a week, sketching Giotto's Campanile, amongst other buildings. He continued via Siena, Fiesole, Lucca and Pisa to Naples, where he stayed around three weeks and toured surrounding towns. In November he arrived in Rome and stayed into the new year. Returning to northern Italy he revisited several cities before passing through Turin on the way to Basel and Strasbourg[8]
Much later in life, Waterhouse in his 1890 presidential address at the RIBA had this to say about sketching by architectural students:
If the architect-student knew that it is not by mere number and beauty of his sketches, and by the accuracy of his measured drawings of old edifices, that he could satisfy those who sent him forth on his travels, but by the proofs he was able to afford that he had absorbed and digested what he had seen,....men would be more ready designers after having had such preparation. Having got the ancient examples into their heads, instead of merely in their sketchbooks, they would learn to lean not on illustrations and other extraneous help, but on what had become part of themselves, and so prove not mere copyists, but self-reliant and original designers."[9]
On his return to Britain, Alfred set up in 1854 his own architectural practice based in Cross Street Chambers, Manchester.[10]
Waterhouse continued to practice in Manchester for 11 years, until moving his practice to London in 1865. At this stage of his career most of his commissions were either in the north-west or north-east of England. His earliest commissions were mainly for domestic buildings. Among Waterhouse's first commissions in 1854 were for his family: a set of stables at Sneyd Park, for his father, who had moved to Bristol, and alterations to the home of his uncle Roger Waterhouse at Mossley Bank in Liverpool.[11] In executing the commission for the cemetery buildings at Warrington Road, Ince in Makerfield (1855–56), he began his move towards designing public buildings in his developing Neo-Gothic style, building a lodge for the registrar, and two chapels, one Church of England in Gothic style, and one for Roman Catholic and Non-conformists in Norman style.[12] His first commission for a commercial building was for the now demolished Binyon & Fryer warehouse and sugar refinery in Chester Street, Manchester (1855). The building was of two floors made of brick with stone dressings and Italianate in style. The intended upper floors based on the Doge's Palace remained unbuilt.[13] Also he designed the Droylesden Institute (1858, demolished) in the Manchester suburb of Droylsden. It contained a reading room and other educational facilities and had some Gothic details. A similar building was the Bingley Mechanics' Institute built (1862–65), located in Bingley, with a hall and reading room in a Gothic style.[14]
His first large new country house design was Hinderton Hall (1856–57), Cheshire, for Liverpool merchant Christopher Bushell, built of red sandstone, slate roofs, stables, gardener's cottage and boundary walls. Hinderton, Gothic in style, is very restrained and plain compared with his more mature works.[13] Representative of the several suburban houses of his early career is New Heys (1861–65), Allerton, Liverpool, built for lawyer W.G. Benson at a cost of £6,700 (approx £800,000 in 2019), built of brick with stone dressing, with slate roof, it included stables, conservatory, garden layout and furniture.[12]
In Nantwich, Churchside, Waterhouse designed the former Manchester and Liverpool District Bank (1863–66), built of red brick. It included the manager's house.[15] Waterhouse's first completely new parish church was the Anglican St John the Divine (1863), Brooklands Road, Sale, Cheshire. It is Gothic, built of Hollington stone, with aisles and transepts, patterned brickwork inside, with external stonework of a single colour. The design of the roof is also restrained compared with Waterhouse's later designs.[16] Other early chapels included three for the Congregational church, Ancoats (1861–65, demolished), Rusholme (1863, demolished) and the Besses o' th' Barn (1863) now United Reform church, all were Gothic in style.[17]
Waterhouse had connections with wealthy Quaker industrialists through schooling, marriage and religious affiliations, many of whom commissioned him to design and build country houses, especially near Darlington. Several were built for members of the Backhouse family, founders of Backhouse's Bank, a forerunner of Barclays Bank. In Darlington Backhouse's Bank is of 1864-67. For Alfred Backhouse, Waterhouse built Pilmore Hall (1863), now known as Rockliffe Hall, in Hurworth-on-Tees. Waterhouse designed for Joseph Pease Hutton Hall in Yorkshire (1864–71), a large house Gothic of red brick with stone dressings and a slate roof. The commission included the gardens; the billiard room and conservatory were added in (1871–74) and there were further alterations and new stables added in 1875.[18] Hutton Hall also had a feature unique in a Waterhouse house: a Turkish bath.[19] The first of his significant public buildings outside Manchester was Darlington town clock and covered market hall (1861–64) in Gothic style, with the market built from cast iron, divided into five sections. The main building contractor was R. Stapp; chimneypieces were provided by Joseph Bonehill; the iron work was by F.A. Skidmore and J.W. Russell & Son and the clerk of works was S. Harrison. The building cost £9,851, with an extension and repairs (1865–66) costing £2,615. The clock tower was paid for by Joseph Pease.[12]
During his period in Manchester Waterhouse's most important commissions were for the Assize Courts and Strangeways prison. The competition to design the new Manchester Assize Courts was launched in 1859. It received 107 entries, by many leading architects including: Edward Middleton Barry; Cuthbert Brodrick; a joint entry by Richard Norman Shaw and William Eden Nesfield; Edward Buckton Lamb; Thomas Worthington; and the runner up Thomas Allom.[20] His success as a designer of public buildings was assured when he won the competition. The building, constructed 1859–65 (now demolished) not only showed his ability to plan a complicated building on a large scale, but also marked him out as a champion of the Gothic cause.[21] The building cost £120,000 (approx £14,500,000 in 2019) to build.[22] The Gothic style of the building was influenced by John Ruskin and his views on Venetian Gothic architecture. Designer John Gregory Crace carried out the elaborate decoration in the Grand Jury Room and the elaborate carving in the central hall was by O'Shea and Whelan. The exterior also had elaborate decoration in contrasting coloured stonework with sculpture and carvings. The foundations were dug by H. Southern & Co.; the building's superstructure was erected by Samuel Bramall; heating and ventilation was the responsibility of G.N. Haden as well as O'Shea and Whelan. Stone carving was also done by Thomas Woolner and Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were provided by Thomas Oakenden; stained glass was by R.B Edmundson, Lavers & Barraud, George Shaw and Heaton, Butler & Bayne; furniture and furnishings were provided by Doveston, Bird & Hull, James Lamb, Kendal & Co., J. Beaumont, Minton & Co. and Marsh & Jones Co.; iron work was by F.A. Skidmore & R. Jones; chimneypieces were by J. Bonehill, W. Wilson and H. Patterson; plaster ceiling roses were by J.W. Hindshaw. The clerk of works were John Shaw, G.O. Roberts and Henry Littler.[23] This building was Waterhouse's first exercise in High Victorian Gothic.
John Ruskin, writing to his father in 1863:
I have had a nice day in Manchester....the Assize Courts are much beyond everything yet done in England on my principles. The hall is one of the finest things I have ever seen: even the painted glass is good... It is vast and full of sculpture and very impressive.[24]
The Times edition of 11 February 1867, in an article entitled The New Courts of Law, declared that the Manchester Assize Courts were "the best courts of law in the world.[25] Writing in 1872 in his book History of the Gothic Revival, Charles Eastlake had this to say about the building:
Time has shown that Mr Waterhouse's plan for the Assize Courts is admirably adapted for its purpose and, with regard to the artistic merit of the work, it will be time enough to criticise when any better modern structure of its size and style has been raised in this country.[26]
Eastlake went on to describe the interior:
The interior of the great hall is most successful in its proportions. It has an open timber Hammerbeam roof, and a large pointed window with geometrical tracery, at each end. The doorways leading hence to corridors and adjoining offices are studied with great care; and indeed the same may be said of every feature in the hall, from its inlaid pavement to the pendant gasaliers [Sic]. The Civil Court and the Criminal Court (each holding about 800 people) are respectively to the north-east and south-east of the hall. They are identical in size and arrangement, and are provided with the usual retiring rooms for judges and juries.[27]
The Builder in 1859 described the buildings style:
The character is ...Gothic...yet neither English nor....Venetian .[28]
The Ecclesiologist in 1861 described it as:
New Secular Gothic, partly French, partly Italian, partly English...the most important specimen of civic Gothic which the revival has yet produced.[28]
As a consequence of the success in the competition for the new court building Waterhouse was given the commission in December 1861 to design the new Strangeways Prison. This was immediately behind the Assize Courts. When completed in 1869 the prison cost £170,000 (approx £20,500,000 in 2019). Waterhouse adopted the radial plan of HM Prison Pentonville and showed his plans to its designer Joshua Jebb for his approval. The plan consists of six wings, three storeys high, opening off a twelve-sided central hall. Although the main prison is in a simplified Gothic style, there are also some Romanesque details. The entrance gatehouse is in French Chateau style, with banded stone and brickwork. There was also a Governor's house and boundary walls. The interiors were easily the starkest designed by Waterhouse, devoid of all but the most basic of decoration. The prison was built by the company owned by Mrs Bramall; heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden; tiles by J. Grundy & Woolfscraft; window glass was provided by R.B. Edmubndson; chimneypieces by W. Wilson; iron work by R. Jones and F.A. Skidmore; fittings for the gas lighting by Hart, Son, Peard & Co.. The clerk of works was Henry Littler.[29]
Waterhouse's move to London, was at a fortuitous time. The capital was undergoing major expansion and rebuilding in the 1860s. Both his brothers Edwin and Theodore were already living there. Before his move he had already been commissioned to design the Quaker-run Alexander and Cunliffe's Bank (1864–67) in Lombard Street, City of London, (demolished), Italianate with Gothic features, four-storied of stone.[30] The competition to design the Royal Courts of Justice was by invitation only. It was decided in late 1865 to limit it to six competitors, of which Waterhouse was one. The instructions were drafted in 1866.[31] Due to objections the number of invited architects was increased to twelve. But John Gibson dropped out leaving eleven: Waterhouse, William Burges, George Gilbert Scott, John Pollard Seddon, Edward Middleton Barry, the little known Henry Robert Abrahms, the also obscure Henry B. Garling, John Raphael Rodrigues Brandon, Henry Francis Lockwood, Thomas Deane and the eventual winner George Edmund Street. All the competitors chose to produce Gothic designs .Waterhouse's design was based around two large halls that formed a cruciform design. The lower level of the north-south hall was for the general public with short corridors linked to staircases leading to public galleries in the courtrooms. The east-west hall 478 by 60 feet, crossed the lower one at upper level reserved for the use by lawyers. There were four towers the tallest 354 feet in height.[32] Waterhouse explained the building's plan:
In the plan I submit separate entrance is provided for nearly ever class which can be considered independent of the rest...Judges, Jurors, Witnesses, Registrars, Shorthand Writers, and general public would all have their special entrances and might enter of leave the Court without disturbing those around them.[33]
The Building News magazine issue of February 1867 reviewed Waterhouse's drawings of the design:
..finished in such a thoroughly artistic manner that not only do they far transcend the perspectives of all the other competitors, but might very fairly take rank among the architectural drawings of any water-colour exhibition"[34]
There were seven judges. After the first round of voting, the three designs that were in the running were Barry's with two votes, Street's with two votes and Waterhouse's with three votes.[35] Waterhouse's design was supported by the two lawyers Cockburn and Palmer on the jury.[36] After the second round, Barry had four votes and Street three.[36] After much political intrigue, Street was appointed the winner at the end of 1868.
To cope with the large number of architectural projects the office handled, efficient organisation of the office was vital. At its peak the office could be designing up to thirty different projects at a time. Over his 48-year career Waterhouse employed dozens of draughtsmen and assistants. On setting up the London Office Waterhouse's chief clerk, Willey sought the advice of Waterhouse's brother Edwin:
upon one or two features which I think it desirable to introduce into the bookkeeping of this establishment. First we have no Day Book - no book in which charges appear as a matter of course as soon as our clients become liable for them. Each draughtsman keeps a register of his work which is abstracted monthly and yearly...There is also a journal in which the charges to clients are entered. But I believe no rule whatever has been followed in entering these charges. I think the system is chiefly defective as in the Time Abstracts there is no provision for describing what the labour was expended upon-nor for showing whether it was expended upon one work only or upon several. Indeed it is Mr W's belief that many charges for small works given him by clients for whom perhaps large works were at the time in hand have never been made.[37]
The salaries Waterhouse paid ranged from 5 shillings per week (about £30 in 2019) for an office lad to £3 per week (about £363 in 2019) for senior draughtsman like C.H. Scott who worked for Waterhouse from 1859 to 1875 and chief clerk John Willey worked for Waterhouse from 1859 to 1865.[37] A senior draughtsman would typically be responsible for several projects, T. Cooper worked for Waterhouse from 1865 to 1876 covered Backhouse's Bank, Strangeways Prison, Allerton Priory, Foxhill, The Natural History Museum and Eaton Hall.[37] Supervision was entrusted to assistants such as Giles Redmayne who worked for Waterhouse 1859-64, occasionally they would take over jobs in their own right. However, there were never many in the office, Waterhouse would regularly check and correct drawings himself, often he worked alone in the office long after the staff had left for the day. The office had to produce vast numbers of drawings, up to 1875 there were 88 known employees of the office, 29 worked for less than a year some of whom lasted less than a month, 25 draughtsmen were employed for a year or two, of the remaining 33 only 5 lasted through 1865-75.[38]
Under the supervision of one of the seniors a team would be assembled for each job, for example forty draughtsmen were involved at Manchester Town Hall, although it was usually below twenty at any given time. The drawings from 1858 were consistent in style throughout Waterhouse's career, it was a crisp style with strong lines with colour coding, buff red for brick, yellow for stone, brown for timber, blue for metal. Blueprints were introduced into the office in c.1890.[39]
Waterhouse also employed his own quantity surveyor, from 1860 to 1875 this was Michael Robinson, though of the one hundred jobs he was involved in most were in the north. Waterhouse also sought reliable clerk of works, for example J. Battye, he worked on the Manchester Assize Courts, Yorkshire College and the Victoria Building University of Liverpool.[40] Building contractors were vital in ensuring Waterhouse's designs were both soundly built and faithful to the design, he favoured firms like Parnell's of Rugby who built 16 of his buildings or Holland and Hannen who built 13 buildings. He often chose locally based building contractors like Stephens & Bastow of Reading for his buildings in the area.[41]
Also of importance to the success of Waterhouse's architectural practice were good quality subcontractors, for example for stained-glass in his early career he favoured Lavers, Barraud and Westlake, whereas the more famous Clayton and Bell only received two orders from Waterhouse, later he preferred Heaton, Butler and Bayne. Frederic Shields designed the sixteen stained-glass windows in the Chapel at Eaton Hall as well as the accompanying mosaic decoration. Hardman & Co. was used occasionally for metalwork.[41] In the 1860s he used Mintons or Maw & Co for ceramic tiles. Later he preferred Craven Dunnill or William Godwin. For furniture Maple & Co. and Liberty's were favoured, though for Holborn Bars the Gloster Wagon Company provided the office furniture. He tried Francis Skidmore for decorative iron work at Eaton Hall, but finding him unreliable turned to Robert Jones of Manchester and Hart, Son, Peard and Co. for the rest of his career. Jesse Rust & Co. were responsible for executing many mosaic floors in Waterhouse's buildings and the wall mosaics in Eaton Hall Chapel. For heating systems he favoured Haden's of Trowbridge or W.W. Phipson. Other suppliers were Guynan's for blinds and Gibbons of Wolverhampton for locks.[42]
Many of Waterhouse's buildings include carving and sculpture, Thomas Earp was commissioned on about a dozen occasions most notably Harris's Bank Leighton Buzzard and St Elizabeth's Reddish. Farmer & Brindley were favoured for sculpture, working on nearly one hundred of Waterhouse's buildings, including a tombstone in West Norwood Cemetery, the pulpit in Stanmore Church and the extensive carving on Eaton Hall, plus all the models for the terracotta decoration on the Prudential Assurance buildings.[42] The ceiling of the Great Hall, at the Natural History Museum, is decorated with paintings of plants from across the world, the paintings are executed in a subdued palette and with gilding for highlights, the individual panels have the Latin name of the plant below. Designed by Waterhouse the ceiling was painted by Best & Lea of John Dalton Street, Manchester.[43] The most famous artworks to adorn one of Waterhouse's buildings are The Manchester Murals, painted by Ford Madox Brown in the Great Hall at Manchester Town Hall.
The Royal Institute of British Architects Drawings Collection housed in the dedicated study room at Victoria and Albert Museum contains over 9,000 of the drawings from Waterhouse's practice. The collection covers pages from note-books up to metre square drawings, rough onsite sketches to highly finished watercolours perspectives of complete buildings.[44] The drawings span Waterhouse's full career from the 1850s to 1901.[45] Each finished drawing has two numbers normally in the top left corner: the first of upper number is the 'office number' that related to a now lost register in which the draughtsmen's time was recorded; the second number is the 'job number', records the sequence of drawings for an individual commission, against which charges for the client were calculated.[46] Each of the completed drawings is also dated, some surviving sheets are either unnumbered or damaged. A smaller commission may have needed as few as fifty drawings.[47] Most of the drawings are anonymous and thanks to the uniform style of production it is not possible to distinguish individuals, though some of the seniors in the office like G.T. Redmayne were allowed to initial drawings.[48] In the very early years of his practice the lettering used on the drawings was Gothic, but this was abandoned by the mid-1860s for a plain script.[49] Waterhouse was known for his ability to paint watercolour perspectives, sometimes they were produced for architectural competitions such as the entry for The Royal Courts of Justice competition and Manchester Town Hall, but based on their dates sometimes they were produced towards the end of the building process, most likely for publication.[50] Some of the drawings were produced onsite with annotations by the clerk of works alerting the office staff to problems in the design, in a few cases the replies to these have survived.[51] Some drawings were annotated by the client for example The Duke of Westminster queried the design of the screen in the Chapel at Eaton Hall.[52] The collection allows a detailed picture of how the office functioned to be built up, although not unique for the period it is rare. None of the sets of drawings is complete and several of Waterhouse's commissions are no longer represented in the collection.[53]
In addition to the collection at the RIBA, the Natural History Museum holds a significant quantity of drawings by Waterhouse relating to the design of the terracotta sculpture on the building. The 136 pages of drawings are bound together in two volumes and cover the period 1874 to 1878.[54] The subject matter is not just flora, insects, fish, lizards, snakes and animals, some of extinct species, but ornament as well.[55] Extinct species decorated the eastern side of the building internally and externally, living species likewise decorated the western half of the building as well as the North Hall and Main Hall. [56] The designs are for the sculpture on the top of the facade, gargoyles, column capitals, friezes, relief panels, lunettes, spandrels and other architectural features of the building, both external and internal. These drawings would be turned into the finished terracotta by Gibbs and Canning, who employed Brindley and Farmer and their employee a Frenchman M. Dujardin to do so.[57]
Other institutions have holdings of Waterhouse drawings: the Public Record Office have drawings for the Natural History Museum; the Victoria and Albert Museum holds several of his perspective drawings; Manchester School of Architecture have drawings and perspectives of Manchester Town Hall and some of his other buildings; Balliol College, Oxford, drawings for his work at the College; The Waterhouse family still own some of his drawings, sketches and watercolours.[58]
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Waterhouse has a lasting reputation as a planner of efficient buildings, he was adept at using awkward sites to advantage, and with his public buildings combining large and small rooms and circulation spaces in a coherent manner.[59]
Part of Waterhouse's presidential address at the Royal Institute of British Architects in 1890 addresses the subject of planning buildings:
Your buildings must faithfully adapt themselves to those for whom you build: must embody their requirements, and give what they want, in the most direct way possible, Do not let the conventionalities of style interfere with this. First find out exactly what is wanted; never think about the elevation of your building, till you have ascertained this, and embodied it in your plans as fully and perfectly as you can. Afterwards clothe the building so planned in the most fitting dress you can devise. That dress may be in many cases extremely simple, in others ornate; it may have to be sometimes severe, sometimes of exquisite beauty, if you can make it so. As you have in the first instance been solicitous that your building should adapt itself in every way to the needs and conditions of the people who are to use it, so now strive that every detail of the dress in which you clothe it shall help to make its purpose clear[60]
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Waterhouse is well known for his use of terracotta and faience as a building material, one of the driving factors being its resistance to air pollution, an increasing problem as the industrial age advanced. He relied on Gibbs and Canning to supply the terracotta for the Natural History Museum, who he worked with to improve the quality of the material.[61] He used Gibbs and Canning for Holborn Bars, though for the regional Prudential buildings terracotta from Ruabon was used.[62] Waterhouse liked terracotta because of its versatility giving him control over the texture of his buildings. Waterhouse had this to say about irregularity in colouring found in terracotta:
the fire would at once give us those beautiful tints of which we might avail ourselves if we chose boldly to use them[63]
He used terracotta in buildings of all styles from the Romanesque of the Natural History Museum, the Early English Gothic at Girton College, or the Perpendicular Gothic at St Paul's School Hammersmith, even neoclassical at the Parrot House Eaton Hall.[64] When Burmantofts Pottery developed their process to produce faience in 1879 Waterhouse started using it for his interiors. Most notably at The Victoria Building, University of Liverpool; the Chapel, Royal Liverpool Infirmary; Yorkshire College; the National Liberal Club and the final phase of Holborn Bars. He especially liked to clad columns in faience, but walls and fireplaces as well. He also made much use of glazed tiles and terracotta within buildings, for example in the corridors at Manchester Town Hall.[65]
He was fairly cautious in the use of cast iron, a result of a problem with the market building at Darlington, his only known building failure. On the opening day the floor gave way, pitching two prize bulls and a spectator into the basement. The problem was traced to a faulty casting and Waterhouse was exonerated of any blame. This left him distrustful of the material, though he did use it in his designs.[66] When using the material he used either Andrew Handyside and Company or J.S. Bergheim, both of whom supplied the iron for Manchester Town Hall.[67] He was more at home using decorative wrought iron, especially for balustrades, iron screens and gates, finials and other decorative uses of the material.[68]
Waterhouse was a great enthusiast for the use of brick, especially as the abolition of the Brick tax in 1850 had lowered the price of the material. Until the early 1870s much of Waterhouse's brickwork was polychrome in nature using decoration such as diapering, later he preferred plain brick often with dressings of contrasting material. His sketchbooks are full of details of brickwork on the continent.[69] He never used coloured tiles on his roofs but occasionally designed patterned slate roofs, as on Manchester Town Hall. He also enjoyed using stone, he delivered a lecture on the subject at the Royal Academy of Art in 1885. He used polychromatic stonework at Manchester Assize Courts.[70] His timber work is characterised by its solidity and large size of the members.
Generally he provided open fires to heat his buildings, in Manchester Town Hall he used a Plenum space heating system, distributing hot air up the stairwells. From the 1880s he increasingly used electric light instead of gas lighting he used in his earlier buildings, he also introduced lifts and Plenum heating and ventilation.[69]
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Waterhouse designed furniture but only for his own buildings, and only for a specific commission, ensuring stylistic harmony. His first known design being a desk in the 1850s for his father.[71] Buildings that have Waterhouse designed furniture include Manchester Town Hall, both the grand rooms and the office areas; classroom desks at Reading Grammar School; office furniture for the Prudential Assurance offices and the National Liberal Club. He preferred simple sturdy designs for his furniture.[72]
For eighteen of his buildings including Manchester Town Hall, he used the contractor Robert Pollitt to execute the painted decoration. Extensive correspondence survives between Waterhouse and Minton's and Maw's about patterns and colours that their tiles came in, both for floors and walls.[73]
When it came to fireplaces Waterhouse usually designed them in timber, but in his grander buildings like Manchester Town Hall and Eaton Hall he used stone and marble. The most important have elaborate carved decoration. He also often designed fireplace mantels. Often there is a hierarchy of design, in his Refuge Assurance Building in Manchester, for instance, polished stone and timber in the boardroom, faience in the public offices and simpler designs for the managers and clerks offices.[74] The Manchester Town Hall fireplaces contain tiling in the fireplace, some with medieval designs, others classical designs, Turkish designs and Japanese in the Mayor's Suite.
Staircase balustrades in his domestic work were usually either timber or iron often with elaborate designs, he preferred iron, faience or stone in his public buildings. He also designed light fittings such as the large gasoliers in the Great Hall at Manchester Town Hall. He designed grilles and screens such as those on his staircase at Balliol College, Oxford.[75] Floors of terrazzo or mosaic are common in circulation spaces of his public buildings. His early ceiling designs tended to have ceiling roses by J.W. Hindshaw, usually of bold geometric design. Later he tended to pattern the whole ceiling with simple ribs. Rarely did he design painted ceilings, Manchester Town Hall, Eaton Hall and the Main and North halls at the Natural History Museum, being exceptions. Waterhouse had this to say in his 1891 Presidential address at the RIBA about stained glass:
Of all the stained glass with which the churches of this country have been flooded within the last half century, there is not one bit in a hundred that could not in my opinion, be very easily spared. In the majority the drawing is bad, the sentiment is mawkish, and the colour, which is the real excuse for shutting out the cheerful light of day, is the worst thing about these stained glass windows; and yet they are there for all time, unless conflagrations, or another revolution conducted like our first by iconoclasts, intervene to rid us of them.[76]
In domestic and public buildings he preferred glass in muted greys and pinks of simple geometric patterns, he rarely uses heraldic or narrative designs, Eaton Hall was an exception with the Arthurian Scenes. When he used figured glass he would turn to designers like Heaton, Butler and Bayne, or his friend Frederic Shield, who designed windows at Eaton Hall Chapel, for the restoration of St Ann's Church, Manchester, the chapel at Coodham in Scotland and St Elizabeth's Reddish. Waterhouse took interior design seriously, liking to control the overall look, this is why he liked using faience, in his 1890 presidential address at the RIBA he had this to say:
It enables the architect to insure that his more important apartments remain as he designed them. Most of us have been occasionally disconcerted in discovering that some interior which depended greatly on its harmony of colour, and which we may have thought more or less a success when it left our hands, had been handed over when in need of repainting to the tender mercies of some decorator, who failing to appreciate the delicate scheme of colour upon which we had prided ourselves.....had sown discord and vulgarity broadcast over our creation[76]
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Waterhouse designed the former North Western Hotel (1868–71), Lime Street, Liverpool, in the style of French Renaissance Revival architecture, it acted as the station hotel for Liverpool Lime Street railway station. Almost symmetrical in design, built from stone, five floors high plus dormer windows in the roof, there are towers with steep pavilion roofs at each corner and also two close together in the centre of the facade these have spire-like roofs with tourelles, the windows are mainly arched, there are double-storey oriel windows at the ends of the facade. Internally there is an impressive stone staircase with wrought-iron balustrade. The building cost £80,268.[77] The main builders were Haigh & Co; heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden and D.O. Boyd; the stone carving was by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were manufactured by Hargreaves & Craven; stained glass, notably the ceiling over the grand staircase was by Heaton, Butler & Baine; chimneypieces were provided by W.H. Burke; the iron work was manufactured by Lester & Hodkinson; and R. Jones; the plaster ceiling roses were made by J.W. Hindshaw.[78]
The other major hotel designed by Waterhouse is the Metropole Hotel (1888–89) in Brighton, a seafront hotel, six floors high (a seventh was added later not by Waterhouse). It is in an Italian Renaissance style. Built from red Rowlands Castle brick and terracotta, with a Ruabon tile and zinc roof, there are decorative iron balconies along much of the facade. The facilities included an attached ballroom, with garden court, and Victorian Turkish baths. The builders were J.T. Chappel; structural steel-work was by A. Handyside & Co.; the terracotta was manufactured by Gibbs and Canning and Joseph Cliff & Son; faience tiling was by Burmantofts; clocks were by Gillett & Co.; with the lifts by Waygood. The clerk of works was T. Holloway. Built at the cost of £14,720 (approx £1,850,000 in 2019).[79]
The former Liverpool Seamen's Orphan Institution and chapel (now called Newsham Park Hospital) (1870–75) (the Chapel has been demolished), built in a Gothic style with tall pavilion roofs, Built from brick with stone dressings, with slate roofs. It provided a home and school for over 300 orphans. L-shaped in plan, there is a tall tower on the south-west angle, there is also a large hall that separated the boys' and girls' wings. The builders were Haigh & Co.; structural steel work was by J. S. Bergheim; the heating and ventilation systems were by G.N. Haden and D.O. Boyd; the stone carvings were executed by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiling was made by W. Godwin; the window glass was made by F.T. Odell; the chimneypieces were made by the Hopton Wood Stone Co.; decorative iron work was by R. Jones and Hart Son Peard & Co.; the bell was cast by John Warner & Sons. The orphanage cost £26,925 and the Chapel £6,550.[80][81]
The former Knutsford Town Hall (1871–72) in Knutsford, Cheshire, paid for by William Egerton, 1st Baron Egerton, at a cost £6,740 (approx £770,000 in 2019). It consisted of market hall with Assembly Rooms above. Gothic in style, built from red and blue brick with a tiled roof, there is a limited amount of stone in the building. It was built by J. Parnell & Sons; heating was by G.N. Haden; the stone was carved by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were made by W. Godwin; the stained glass was by R.B. Edmundson and F.T. Odell; decorative iron work was by R. Jones and; the plaster ceiling roses were made by J.W. Hindshaw.[82]
Waterhouse designed the Shire Hall at Bedford in two phases (1878–81) and (1881–83), that acted as the town's assize courts. Gothic in style was built from dark red brick and red terracotta with a slate roof. The building cost for the first phase £14,495 and for the second £10,345. The builders were John Wood; heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden and D.O. Boyd; the modelling of the terracotta was by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made Craven Dunnill & Co. and W. Godwin; glass was provided by F.T. Odell; chimney-pieces were by the Hopton Wood Stone Co.; furniture was made by Wells & Co. of Bedford; decorative iron work was executed by Hart Son Peard & Co. and R. Jones; locks and door furniture was made by J. Gibbons.[83]
Wigan Free Library (now the Museum of Wigan Life) (1873–78), is Tudor in style, brick with stone dressings, included internal fittings. Its construction was funded by mill owner Thomas Taylor. The building cost £9,955. It was built by the firm of Hughes of Liverpool; the heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden and D.O. Boyd; the stone carving was by Earp & Co.; the window glass was by F.T. Odell; chimney-pieces were made by the Hopton Wood Stone Co.; internal decoration was by R. Pollitt; furniture and fittings were made by G. Goodall & Co.; decorative iron work was made by R. Jones and Hart Son Peard & Co.[84]
The Turner Memorial Home (1882–85), Liverpool, extended in (1887–89), Gothic home and chapel for seamen, stone and with tiled roof and half-timbered porch. Built for Mrs Anne Turner as a memorial to her dead husband and son. It cost £32,170 (approx £3,750,000 in 2019). The builders were Holme & Nichol; heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden and D.O. Boyd; the stone carving was by Earp & Hobbs; granite columns were provided by G. & J. Fenning; ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co.; the stained glass was made by Heaton Butler & Bayne and R.B. Edmundson; chimney-pieces were provided by W.H. Burke, Blackmore & Nixon and the Hopton Wood Stone Co.; decorative iron work was made by R. Jones and Hart Son Peard & Co.; the external clock was made by Gillett & Co.; the organ in the chapel was by Gray and Davison.[85]
The Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (1896), 12 Great George Street, Westminster, London. The building consists of offices, hall, library and museum, Built of red brick and Darley Dale stone, built in a Jacobethan style, it cost £27,770 to build (approx £3,500,000 in 2019). The builders were Foster & Dicksee, with the structural steel work by A. Handyside & Co.; heating and ventilation systems were installed by J. Jeffreys; the stone carving was by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co.; the mosaic flooring was made by L. Oppenheimer; decorative iron work was made by Hart Son Peard & Co.[86]
As well as Manchester, Waterhouse designed two town halls Reading and Hove, as well as designing the clock tower of Rochdale Town Hall, in England and one in Scotland at Alloa.
In (1871–76) Waterhouse extended Reading's Georgian Town Hall, with his range of Gothic Municipal Buildings, of sandstone, brick and terracotta, it contained a new council chamber and office, there is a clock tower with carillon added in 1881, cost £8,650 (approx £980,000 in 2019). The builders were J. Parnell & Sons; structural steel work was by J.S. Bergheim; the terracotta was modelled by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were by Craven & Co.; stained glass was by F.T. Odell; interior painted decoration was by R. Pollitt; fittings and furnishings were made by H. Capel; the decorative iron work was executed by Hart Son Peard & Co.; the clock and bells were manufactured by Gillett & Bland.[87]
Waterhouse designed the new Town Hall in Hove Sussex, built in a Gothic style in (1880–83), it had a clock tower, it was demolished after being damaged by fire in 1966. The building contained municipal offices and the town's fire station. It was built from brick with terracotta dressings with a slate roof. It cost £39,920. The builders were John T. Chappell; heating and ventilation was by D.O. Boyd; stone carving and modelling of the terracotta was by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were made by W. Godwin; granite columns were provided by G. & J. Fenning; stained glass was made by F.T. Odell; chimney-pieces were by the Hopton Wood Stone Co.; mosaic work was by Salviati; decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard & Co. and R. Jones; the clock was manufactured by Gillett & Bland; the organ in the main hall was built by Henry Willis; the decorative plaster work was J.W. Hindshaw.[88]
After the tower at Rochdale Town Hall was destroyed by fire Waterhouse designed its replacement (1885–88) it is 190 feet high, Gothic of stone to match the original building by William Henry Crossland. It cost £11,900 to build. The builder was W.A. Peters & Sons; the stone carving was by Earp & Hobbs; decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard & Co., the clock was manufactured by Potts & Sons of Leeds and the bells were cast by John Taylor & Co.[89][90]
The town hall in Alloa, Clackmannanshire, Scotland, is French Renaissance in style (1886–89). Built of Polmaise stone with a slate roof, of three floors, designed to contain not just the council, but a public library and art school, as well as a large hall. The building was paid for by local mill owner John Thompson Paton, it cost £18,008. The builders were G. & R. Cousin; heating and ventilation was installed by W.W. Phipson and D.O. Boyd; faience decoration was by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring was made by W.H. Burke & Co.; the stained glass was made by R.B. Edmundson & Sons; the internal decoration was executed by Reed & Downie of Edinburgh; the enamelled and painted ceiling lights were made by Edmeston of Manchester; gas fittings were installed by Hart Son Peard & Co.; furniture and fittings were by Taylor & Sons and Whitlock & Reed of Edinburgh; the organ in the main hall was built by Forster and Andrews.[91]
In addition to his extensive work for the Prudential Assurance Company (see section below), Waterhouse designed banks, offices, the occasional shop and warehouse buildings. Manchester even after he had moved to London proved a particularly fruitful source of commissions. Including 16 Nicholas Street (1872–75) a warehouse, built for Bryce Smith & Co. cotton manufacturers, in a Jacobethan style, five floors plus a basement and attic. Stylistically there are some Renaissance details but with Gothic as well. It is of red brick with stone dressings and a slate roof. It cost £8,625.[92] There are a couple of building by Waterhouse in Spring Gardens, Manchester, no. 41 (1888–90) was built for the National Provincial Bank, built on a curving corner, five floors high, stone-faced, in a German Renaissance style, it cost £36,495.[93] No 60-62 (1881–83) was built as a warehouse built for the company of J.H. Gartside & Co. who were cotton weavers, in a Renaissance revival style. It is stone-faced with rusticated arches on the ground floor, and with octagonal domed turrets at the corners. Three storeys tall with basement and attics with dormer windows with pediments, it cost £22,965.[94]
Other commercial buildings by Waterhouse are the former Bassett and Harris Bank (1865–67) in Leighton Buzzard, Bedfordshire, is a solid two-story stone building, in a Gothic style.[95] In London he designed 1a Old Bond Street (1880), Westminster, for Wakefield Christy, a shop with offices above, at a cost of £11,310 (approx £1,350,000 in 2019).[88] He also designed offices for the National Provincial Bank in Piccadilly, London (1892–96), four floors high with a stone facade.
The distinctive Foster's Bank (1891–94), Sidney Street, Cambridge, built on an irregular site. In style it is Jacobethan. The exterior has a stone ground floor with banded stone and red brick covering the two upper floors and the gables. There is a clock tower on the right of the facade above the main entrance. The banking hall is octagonal and domed the centre of which is glazed, the walls and columns have faience decoration the floor is of mosaic. The builder was William Sindall; the structural steel work was by A. Hanyside & Co.; the stone carving, mainly around the doorway, on the clock tower and in the gables was by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by Craven Dunnill & Co.; the faience was by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring was by J.F. Ebner and J. Rust; the decorative iron work and light fittings were made by Hart Son Peard & Co.; the lighting was by Belshaw & Co.; the clock in the tower was made by John Moore & Sons of Clerkenwell. The bank cost £32,190.[96]
In Leeds Waterhouse designed (1895–98) a bank and offices for the Williams Brown & Co. Bank, (now known as Greek Street Chambers) on Park Row. The ground floor is of polished dark grey granite with mullioned windows and porch with Ionic columns, the two upper floors are of banded red brick and buff terracotta, the roof is slate. There are low square towers with pyramidal roofs on two of the corners. The foundations were dug by S.M. McFarlane; the superstructure was erected by Armitage & Hodgson; the structural steel work was by J. Butler & Co.; stone carving was by W. Beveridge; the modelling of the terracotta was by Farmer & Brindley; the terracotta was manufactured by Burmantofts who also manufactured the faience used inside; internally the ceramic tiles were made by A. Whitehead who also laid the mosaic flooring; the furniture and fittings were made by Marsh Jones & Cribb. The building cost £45,110.[97]
Waterhouse designed the Pearl Life Assurance Building (1896–98), St John's Lane, Liverpool, clad in stone, with a corner turret, of three floors with gabled attic windows. Though similar to his work for rivals the Prudential, the use of materials and the plainer walls set it subtly apart. The main office has walls clad in faience. The builders were F. Morrison & Sons; the structural steel work was by A. Hanyside & Co.; heating and ventilation was by J. Grundy; the stone carving was by Farmer & Brindley; the faience was manufactured by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring was by J. Rust and J.F. Ebner; the chimney-pieces were made by Shuffrey & Co. and their principal Leonard Shuffrey; the decorative iron work and light fittings were made by Hart Son Peard & Co.. The cost was £20,076.[98]
Waterhouse designed the corporate headquarters of the Refuge Assurance Building (1891–96), in Oxford Street, Manchester, in a Jacobethan style. It is five floors high of red brick and plum coloured terracotta, this first phase cost £86,525, the clock tower and wing to its right were added later by Paul Waterhouse. The foundations were dug by the company of C.H. Normanton, the superstructure was erected by William Southern & Sons., with the structural steel work by A. Handyside & Co.; heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden; the terracotta was manufactured by Doulton & Co.; the modelling of the terracotta was by Earp & Hobbs; ceramic tiles were made by William de Morgan and D. Conway; the faience was by Burmantofts; the mosaic flooring was by J.F. Ebner; chimney-pieces were provided by J. & H. Patterson and W. Wilson; internal decoration was executed by Heighway & Son; furniture and fittings were made by G. Goodall & Co.; the decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard & Co. and R. Jones.[99]
During his career Waterhouse built or made major alterations to around ninety houses for clients of varying wealth. The clients were largely upper middle class rather than aristocrats. The houses ranged from country cottages, parsonages, suburban houses mainly in the expanding cities of the Victorian age to large country houses. In the 1860s and 1870s Waterhouse received an increasing number of commissions for larger country mansions from bankers and industrialists. Later in his career from around 1880, Waterhouse received fewer commissions for houses, fashions were changing. Late Victorian taste was turning to houses in the Queen Anne Style and in the Arts and Crafts style, both of which were at odds with Waterhouse's robust style.[100]
From the late 1860s, Waterhouse lived in Reading, Berkshire, and was responsible for several significant buildings there. These included, alterations to and a new stable block (1861–62) at his parents' home Whiteknights House, his own residences of Foxhill House (1867–68) both houses are now used by University of Reading. Waterhouse built a new country house for himself at Yattendon, called Yattendon Court (1877–78), demolished c.1926. Foxhill House was built with the main block containing the hall, morning room, drawing room and dining room, upstairs were five bedrooms, two dressing rooms and a night and day nursery. The servants wing projected to the east, it was hidden by a conservatory to its south. There was an attached stable yard with servants bedrooms above the coach house. Yattendon Court was a larger house, built from red brick with terracotta decoration, with light coloured stone mouldings, with a tile roof. It was in an early Tudor style with some Gothic details. There was a four storey battlemented tower on the west side, there were gables and prominent chimney stacks. The house was sited on knoll 400 feet above sea level, to provide good views. The house was entered from a porch to the north, leading to the large hall, the drawing room and library were to its south, a corridor stretched east of the hall. The rooms laid out to the south of the corridor were the dining room and school room, with the butler's pantry and housekeeper's room to the north. The kitchen, servants' hall and scullery were in a block to the east. there were separate, stables, coach house, laundry and kitchen garden. The landscaping of the grounds was carried out by Edward Milner from 1878, and included planting 3,000 trees, evergreens and rhododendrons, a small lake was also created and a rose garden was laid out. The cost of Yattendon was £11,865.[101]
Goldney Hall (1865–68), Clifton, Bristol, was built for Lewis Fry a member of the chocolate manufacturing Fry family. It is a suburban house, but with large gardens. It is in Italianate style one rarely used by Waterhouse, he refaced the existing eighteenth-century house in Bath stone, adding the tower with its belvedere, also entrance cloister and new main staircase, plus a new kitchen wing in brick. The cost was £12,850. The builders were J. & J. Foster; ceramic tiles were provided by W. Godwin; the stained glass was made by Heaton Butler & Bayne; the panelling in the drawing room was executed by Howard & Son; chimneypieces in the hall were by Benham & Co., in the staircase hall by W.H. Burke & Co. and the oak chimneypieces used in other rooms were by W. Farmer; decoration was by J. Hankins; decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard & Co. and F.A. Skidmore & Co.; the decorative plasterwork was executed by J.W. Hindshaw. The clerk of works was Alexander Gray.[102]
Easneye Park (1866) near Stanstead Abbotts, Hertfordshire, was a country house built for Thomas Fowell Buxton, a large red brick in early Tudor style, with typical diaper work and terracotta decoration with crow-stepped gable and tiled roof the chimneys are base on those at Hampton Court Palace. The commission included the mansion, stables and entrance lodge. The building cost £32,800. The main block of the house is entered from a porch on the east front, the large entrance hall has to the west the drawing room of two sections, to the south is the study and school room. There is a wing to the north, this is set slightly to the east of the main block, it contains the dining room, gun room, butler's pantry. Another wing, also slightly to the east, contains the housekeeper's room and kitchen. The builder was William Brass, central heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden; the modelling of the terracotta and carving on the building was by Farmer & Brindley; the ceramic tiles were made by W.B. Simpson; stained glass windows were by Heaton Butler & Bayne and F.T. Odell; the chimneypieces were manufactured by the Lizard Serpentine Co. and W.H. Burke; fittings were made by W. Wilson; decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard & Co., R. Jones and Lester & Hodkinson; the plaster ceiling roses were executed by J.W. Hindshaw; advice on the garden design was given by Robert Marnock.[103]
Allerton Priory a large house was designed by Waterhouse in 1866 and built (1868–71), the picture gallery was added in (1872–76). Located in the Liverpool suburb of Allerton. It is built from brick with sandstone dressings and in a French Gothic style, with the distinctive four storey tower with its steep pyramidal roof surrounded by four tourelles rising above the entrance porch. Also by Waterhouse is the large entrance lodge to the extensive grounds and a vinery. The building was built for John Grant Morris, a colliery owner, who served as Lord Mayor of Liverpool (1866–67). It cost of £16,500 (roughly £1,900,000 in 2019) to build, the work of (1872–76) cost about £5,000. The building is L-shaped in plan, the servants wing sticking out from the main block. The large single storey picture gallery housed the owners extensive collection of contemporary British art and made the building's plan U-shaped. The main rooms were the long entrance hall entered from the porch on the north front, around which are the billiards room, study, smoking room, library, drawing room and dining room with its separate serving room. There is also a schoolroom and a butler's pantry within the block. The servants wing contains the kitchen, servants' hall and housekeeper's room. The builders were Holme & Nicol; the heating and ventilation system was by G.N. Haden; the stone carving on the building was executed by Farmer & Brindley; decorative ceramic tiles were manufactured by W. Godwin and L. Oppenheimer; the stained glass windows were made by Heaton Butler & Bayne, R.D. Edmundson and F.T. Odell; the chimneypieces were supplied by the Lizard Serpentine Co., W.H. Burke and W. Wilson, the iron grates were made by Hart Son Peard & Co. and D.O. Boyd; the fittings and furniture was made by Gillows of Lancaster and London; the decorative iron work was by R. Jones, F.A. Skidmore and Lester & Hodkinson; the plaster ceiling roses were executed by J.W. Hindshaw. The clerk of works was J. Dickson.[104]
Another large country house is Blackmoor House, in Blackmoor, Hampshire, built in stages around an existing farm house, they were 1865, (1866–67), (1868–73) and (1882–83). Gothic in style and built of stone with a tiled roof. The commission included stables, lodges gardens and furniture. It was built for Roundell Palmer.[102] Dryderdale Hall (1871–72), near Hamsterley, mansion, stables and lodge, stone in the style of Scottish baronial architecture, built for Alfred Backhouse.[105] Coodham (1872–79), Kilmarnock, a large house with chapel, music room and conservatory, lodge, cottages and farm buildings for William Houldsworth.[106] For Lt-Col James Fenton Greenall, Waterhouse designed Lingholm, Keswick, a large stone house with slate roof.[105] In Hurworth-on-Tees he designed Hurworth Grange (1873–75), now the Hurworth Grange Community Centre, which Alfred Backhouse had commissioned as a wedding gift for his nephew, James E. Backhouse, large brick house with stone dressing.[107] Waterhouse was commissioned (1873–76) by Henry Pease (MP), to extended his existing mansion Pierrmont in Darlington, adding a new wing and conservatory, redecorated the hall, and built the gatehouse and the prominent clock tower.[107] Silwood Park, Sunninghill, Berkshire (1876–79), built for Charles P. Stewart was a large mansion, with double height great hall, red brick with stone dressings.[108] Rockcliffe, Kirkcudbrightshire, Baron's Craig (1879), granite faced house with rubble stone walls and dressed stone with battlemented tower, for Christopher Morris.[88] Crimplesham Hall (1880–82), Norfolk, built for John Grant Morris for his daughter Mrs A.T. Bagge, built from yellow brick and low pitched slate roofs, in a simplified classical style.[88] East Thorpe House, Reading, built in 1880-82, house and stables of brick and terracotta for Alfred Palmer, it is now the Museum of English Rural Life.[109]
Waterhouse was never a major church designer, but throughout his career he received commissions for churches and chapels.[110] In 1865 Waterhouse was commissioned to rebuild the ruinous medieval parish church of St Martin's Brasted in Kent, only the original tower was kept, apart from a new north aisle the building was rebuilt on the old foundations, the south window in the tower was also new, Gothic in style, the windows are a mixture of geometrical and perpendicular tracery, it is built of stone with a tile roof.[102] St Seiriol's parish church (1867–68), Penmaenmawr, Wales, is in the Early English Period style built from local granite with sandstone dressings and slate roof, the tower was added in 1885. The builder was H. Atkinson, heating system was by G.N. Haden, stained glass was by F.T. Odell, decorative iron work was by R. Jones, the fittings were made by Mark Foggett, the organ was made by Bevington and the font was carved by T.L. Carter. The church cost £3,610.[111][112] He designed the Chapel (1873–74) for Reading Grammar School that he had designed in 1868 from red brick, it is Early English Gothic in style[84]
Another of Waterhouse's parish churches this time in Decorated Gothic is St Matthew's Blackmoor (1867–70), built of stone with tiled roofs. It was built for Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne. The builder was Thomas Kemp; the heating system was by G.N. Haden; the stone carving was by Farmer & Brindley, ceramic floor tiles were by W. Godwin; the stained glass was made by Heaton Butler & Bayne and F.T. Odell; furnishings and fittings were manufactured by Christopher Prat and Heal & Sons; the decorative iron work was by Lester & Hodkinson and R. Jones; the grate in the vestry was by D.O. Boyd; the organ was manufactured by Bevington; the clock in the tower was made by E. White; the bells were cast by John Warner & Sons. The church cost £8,635.[113]
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St Mary's Church of England parish church in Twyford, Hampshire (1876–78) is a village church it replaced the previous dilapidated medieval church. It was built in a decorated Gothic style, the roof is covered in red tiles and the walls are of knapped flint with bands of red brick. Showing similar patterning to the Natural History Museum and was designed at the same time. The columns in the nave and windows in the clerestory are from the old church and were incorporated into the building. The builders were Messers Dyer. Stained glass was made by Heaton Butler & Bayne and F.T. Odell, decorative iron work was by Hart Son Peard &Co., ceramic floor tiles were made by W. Godwin and the heating system was by G.N. Haden. Thomas Fairbairn donated £1,000 towards the cost of the building his wife gave £500, a local woman Mrs Waddington gave £700 to build the spire to an amended design, originally it was to be much taller and built from stone at a cost of £2,000. The spire as built is of wood with a tile covering. The nave is of five bays with aisles, the tower is in the north west corner of the nave, the chancel is of two bays with transepts, the vestry is on the east side of the north transept. The total cost of the building was £7,655.[21][114][108]
St Elisabeth's Church, Reddish (1883–85) is a Church of England parish church and was designed for William Houldsworth, for whom Waterhouse designed other buildings in the area all part of Houldsworth Model Village. The church is of red brick with stone dressings, it is Romanesque in style. The chancel which is vaulted of three bays, the Lady Chapel to the south of the chancel is also vaulted, both have an apse. The nave has aisles and is of four bays, there is a south porch leading to the western bay of the nave, the foursquare bell tower rises from just south of the chancel, it has a short lead-covered spire with four pyramidal lead pinnacles around its corners. The bells were cast by John Taylor & Co. The builders were for the foundation C.H. Normanton, the superstructure was built by William Southern. The stained glass in the clerestory was designed by Frederic Shields and made by Heaton Butler & Bayne, the rest of the stained glass was to Waterhouse's design and was executed by F.T. Odell. Internal decoration was executed by Watts & Co. The polished granite for the monolithic nave columns was provided by G & J Jenning. The stone carving was by Thomas Earp that included the marble and alabaster rood screen that supports four marble statues of the Four Evangelists, reredos and sedilia. The sanctuary walls are clad in pale green and grey marbles, this and the other marble work was provided by W.H. Burke. Ceramic tiles used to pave the floor were by W. Godwin. The decorative ironwork including the screens separating the Lady Chapel and the organ built by William Hill & Sons, from the chancel was made by Hart Son Peard & Co. and R, Jones. The heating system was provided by G.N. Haden. Waterhouse also designed the communion-plate, altar-frontal and altar cross. The church cost £19,425 (approx £2,230,000 in 2019), this is one of Waterhouse's finest and his most lavishly decorated church.[115][116]
Lyndhurst Road Congregational Church (1883–84), Camden, originally built for the Congregational church, is unusual as the body of the church is hexagonal built in purple brick with red brick and terracotta dressings in a Romanesque style. The builders were J. Parnell & Son; structural steel work was by W.H. Lindsay, heating and ventilation was by D.O. Boyd; the modelling of the terracotta decoration was by Farmer & Brindley; ceramic tiles were by Craven Dunnill & Co., and the decorative iron work was made by Hart Son Peard & Co. and R. Jones. The church cost £15,970 to build.[117] The building is now the Air Lyndhurst complex of recording studios.
The former King's Weigh House chapel (1889–90) in Mayfair, another Congregational church, is built from red brick and orange terracotta, it has an oval nave and a tower in the south-west corner, built in a Romanesque style. The builders were John Shillitoe & Son, the structural steel work was by A. Handyside & Co., heating and ventilation was by G.N. Haden, the ceramic tiles were manufactured by Craven Dunnill & Co., faience tiling was by Burmantofts, and decorative ironwork by Hart Son Peard & Co.. The cost was £26,495.[118]
Waterhouse's hospital designs all date from later in his career. These include: the