A Life in Education and Architecture

Mary Beaumont Medd

Catherine Burke

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9781317187684
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Architektur
• Subtopic: Architektur Allgemein

This book provides a detailed exploration of the relationships between individual architects, educators, artists and designers that laid the foundation and shaped the approach to designing new school buildings in post-war Britain. It explores the life and work of Mary Medd (née Crowley) (1907-2005) who was alongside her husband and professional partner, David Medd, one of the most important modernist architects of the 20th century. Mary Medd devoted the major part of her career to the design of school buildings and was pioneering in this respect, drawing much inspiration from Scandinavian architecture, arts and design. More than a biography, the book draws attention to the significance of relationships and networks of friendships built up over these years among individuals with a common view of the child in educational settings.

1
Childhood and Education 1907–1927

I was always interested in education. I think it was the education stuff from my father that came through.¹

Mary Beaumont² Crowley was born in Bradford on 4 August 1907. Her family was a very important influence on her life and chosen career and, in particular, her father played a large part in the decisions she took about the way her personal and professional life would develop. Ralph Henry Crowley (1869–1953) (Fig. 1.2) was a Quaker by faith and a medical officer by profession and his combined social conscience and confidence in the means by which society could and should be changed for the better shaped his life and promoted his keen interest in the education and the welfare of children.³ He had graduated in medicine in 1893 and as a young man went to Bradford to work for the pioneering Bradford School Board as Medical Superintendent of Schools.⁴ This was a time of high infant mortality when municipal authorities in the northern industrial towns such as Bradford were beginning to introduce preventative measures to ward off the spread of infectious diseases and improve the health of the population. Increased awareness of the impact of poor living conditions on general health was leading medical experts such as Crowley to realize among other things the vital importance of ventilation in buildings supporting large numbers of children. This awareness was part of a Europe-wide open-air school movement that introduced some experimental designs of schools built with flexible walls to open easily to the outside with implications for the way that the whole school was designed.⁵

In Bradford, Crowley met Muriel Priestman, also from a Quaker family of wool merchants and they married. The Priestman family were involved with educational movements locally and had been founders of Friends schools in Bradford. There was also a connection between the Priestman and the Clegg families that would prove to be significant later in Mary’s life.⁶

Mary resembled her father physically and was thought by those who knew them both to be very like him in character. They shared a tendency to act without regard for personal gain or public recognition. She was also drawn to people who were similar to her father in character and personality and through his many contacts in architecture and education, came to know some of the most significant progressive educational thinkers and practitioners at home and abroad. Many of Mary’s closest acquaintances and most admired individuals were Quakers too.

1.1 An intimate portrait of Mary and her mother Muriel in their Letchworth home. c. 1910. This is quite an informal and intimate photo for 1910, representative of middle class progressive adult child relationships. IOE Archives, ME/A/1/9

Ralph Crowley devoted his career to furthering the understanding of child welfare, and developed a profound interest, before the First World War, in the organization of innovative educational environments in support of ‘the whole child’, a phrase he is credited to have originated. He argued that such a concept posed profound challenges for professionals involved with the care or development of children in the future.

1.2 Ralph Henry Crowley. IOE Archives, ME/A/1/4

Our study, consequently, must be directed, not to this or that defect, or disease or symptom, but to the whole child – to the body and its physiological working and pathological changes; to the mind, as manifested by the general and specific intelligence and the general and specific behaviour of the child; to the environment at home and at school; to the child’s heredity.⁷

To these ends he travelled widely seeking out the most child-centered and efficient environments from the point of view of the health and well being of the individual. He was interested not only in function but also in the character of any planned educational environment

In the planning of the school the aesthetic side should not be forgotten. The keynote should be everywhere simplicity; perfect beauty and perfect hygiene are quite compatible. The school architect should be, of course, as should all architects, an artist: that does not mean that the construction of the school will cost more; a beautiful school, simply built may cost less than an ugly and ornate one.

He considered that even the colour of walls came within his remit of caring for the whole child, ‘... the walls should be tinted, preferably a soft grey-green in the more sunny classrooms, and an ochre tint may be used in the less sunny rooms ... and yellow and red tints should be avoided in rooms naturally bright’.⁸

As we shall see, these remarks by Mary’s father, and published when she was a small child, resonate strongly with the features and characteristics of the approach she took to school design in later years working as an architect, first for Hertfordshire County Council and later for the Ministry of Education (from 1964, Department of Education and Science).

Ralph Crowley was a key figure in an international movement to establish school hygiene and a compulsory medical inspection service in elementary schools and he pioneered the introduction of open air schools in England.⁹ By 1912 there were open air schools in several counties in England, the best examples being in London, Birmingham and Bradford.¹⁰

Mary Crowley once noted the close resemblance between the timber pavilions at the Busch House Open Air School for Delicate Children, Isleworth (Fig. 1.3) that her father officially opened in September 1938 and her own planning of Burleigh Primary School, Cheshunt shortly after the war. Others have noted the influence of the English open air schools on the architecture of Crow Island School, Winnetka.¹¹ There are certainly important connections between the design of open air schools in the first quarter of the twentieth century and post-war designs that achieved a similar feeling of openness to the elements through extensive fenestration, especially in glazed unit corners.

But apart from his enthusiastic engagement with his work, Ralph Crowley was also ‘a man with infectious enthusiasms – his knowledge of flowers, shrubs and trees and vegetables too, was encyclopedic’.¹² Mary inherited her father’s interest in and knowledge of botany and later declared it one of her guiding principles to preserve and plant trees when building schools. Her father’s enthusiasms were ‘boyish in their intensity and ... (he) always appeared to be much younger than his real age.’¹³

In Bradford, as school medical officer, Ralph Crowley had initiated an experiment in feeding school children alongside the campaigner and educator Margaret McMillan.¹⁴ In 1908, shortly after the Liberal Government reforms of 1906/7 had laid the basis of child welfare service through schools, Crowley was recruited to the Board of Education in London. There he became Senior Medical Officer in charge of medical staff but once again, he attempted to broaden the remit. His concern was not merely with medical problems; he was as interested in the educational as in the physical development of the child.

1.3 Busch House pavilion, 1938. IOE Archives, ME/A7/4

1.4 Crow Island School, Winnetka, USA, 1941. Copyright Cranbrook Archives, Richard G. Askew, photographer, 5676-3

Taking up the new post in London necessitated moving the family south and the Crowleys took their young family to live at Letchworth in Hertfordshire, an experimental new town with many like-minded enthusiasts who imagined and were committed to building a better world through community and cooperation. It was at Letchworth, the world’s first Garden City and an experiment in planning instigated by Ebenezer Howard, that the Quaker architect Barry Parker¹⁵ designed a family house for the Crowleys – the last house at the end of Sollershot Road – overlooking a farmed landscape in the direction of Hitchin.

The Garden City was ‘a town designed for healthy living and industry of a size that makes possible a full measure of social life but not larger, surrounded by a rural belt: the whole of the land being in public ownership, or held in trust for the community’.¹⁶ Many Quaker families, like the Crowleys, were involved in the Garden City movement at this time including some of their friends and relations. These included the Cadbury Brothers, also Quakers, who commissioned an ideal village for their chocolate business workers, and others, called Bournville, near Birmingham. Sir Ebenezer Howard’s book Tomorrow: A Peaceful Path to Real Reform, published in 1898, inspired many of these individuals who collectively introduced the Garden Cities of the early twentieth century.

The comfortable household of the Crowleys consisted of the parents and a Mrs Hargreaves brought with them from Bradford as a ‘lady help’ for their two young daughters. Mary’s mother created a pleasing environment and bought good pictures and fabrics from artists and manufacturers associated with the Arts and Crafts movement to decorate the home.¹⁷ The staircase with its rope handrail was at first open to the sitting / dining room but this was subsequently closed off on account of rude remarks that might be made about the many visitors from the two daughters sitting on the stairs.¹⁸

Mary’s early years seem to have been rather idyllic when she was able to play freely and wildly in the adjacent fields and about the house. She recalled climbing the roof tiles to sit on the ridge and that this caused little alarm about safety. Later, she learned to ride a horse, one of her passions enjoyed formally and informally. A farm worker in nearby fields allowed her to accompany him at his tasks. ‘I sat on his horse when he ploughed ... and ... drove his wagon back to the farm ... like an ancient warrior, standing up and holding the reins taut, both the horses and I wanted to gallop.’¹⁹

At night she was afraid of the dark but was calmed by the sound of her mother’s piano, from which she acquired her lifelong love of music. Her vivid memories of these early years include learning piano, starting with the black notes, and acting in a play, taking the part of a piece of ivy. The local community, in the early days at Letchworth, was artistic and eccentric. Neighbours included the Olivier family where a young Laurence, later to become the world-famous Shakespearian actor, lived. There was also a Miss Birch who painted a portrait of the very young Mary, clutching a rag dog. It was from this artist, in her home, that Mary took her first drawing lessons. From about the age of ten, Mary began to keep a diary and we have her nature diary as a record of her early drawing.

1.5 and 1.6 Mary and her older sister Elfreda at their home in Letchworth, c. 1910. IOE Archives, ME/A/9, IOE Archives, ...