#knutsford

On a walking tour of Elizabeth Gaskell's Knutsford, my fancy was taken by the architectural constructions of Richard Harding Watt, (1842-1913) which became more eccentric and eclectic with each building we spotted. The first we saw was this one, The Ruskin rooms, built in 1902, which at one time played host to General Patton and the US Third Army.

You can see the plaque below. Watt, the illegitimate son of a gentleman and a servant, lived in Australia, before making money in the glovemaking business. He then decided to spend his later years designing buildings. He would make a clay model of his ideas, often picked up in his travels in places like Palestine and Syria, and employed four architects to create buildings from them. As you can imagine, this often led to arguments, including one over the chimneys on this building.

Even more bizzare is the Gaskell tower, which includes a portrait of Gaskell, and for some reason a list of English kings, but seems to have been inspired by the medieval towers you see in the Italian towns like Lucca, Bologna, and most famously San Gimignano.

Pevsner described his creations as the 'monstrous desecration of small and pleasant country town' but admitted that some might describe him as the 'Gaudi of England'. I'm not sure I'd take it that far, but they certainly are entertaining and Lucinda Lambton would love them.

Then we discovered that there was another contingent on a affuent street on the outskirts of town, Legh Road. He obviously bought a job lot of land, and built a series of large villas overlooking a lake, in a variety of styles from Swiss to verging on Corbusian modernist.

I would not at all mind one of these, if I had one or two million pounds to spare. But I'd want a full structural survey before exchanging contracts.

Knutsford, UK

‘A stag and a rainbow spotted in Tatton Park.’