A Visit to Two Charles Rennie Mackintosh Houses

This year I visited two houses designed by Charles Rennie Mackintosh. Both distinct experiences.

78 Derngate is the only house in England designed by Mackintosh. It is well worth booking in advance for a tour, as you will get to hear some interesting historical details about the house. You will also be shown photographs of the house as it was many years ago, and compare these with how the house has been sympathetically restored today.

Before entering, visitors are asked to wear plastic overshoes – as if going in to perform a forensic examination. Once inside, you are allowed to move around the rooms freely, without touching anything.

This townhouse is designed to feel uncluttered even though it is remarkably narrow. Rooms are stacked on top of each other on several floors in more or less this fashion: one room at the front, one at the back, with staircase between.

The 1916 designs – particularly of the front ground floor room and the guest bedroom – still appear modern by today’s tastes over one hundred years after they were designed.

Later in the year I visited The Hill House. Built in 1902-3, with further additions of Mackintosh-designed furniture over the next ten years, I had wanted to see this house for a very long time. When I had the opportunity to visit, I was surprised to find out that it was shortly to reopen with a new conservation project/visitor attraction called ‘The Box’. Upon close inspection, you will see that the walls of the Box are a screen of steel mesh (like chain mail). Originally, visitors would have been able to experience the sight of Hill House against the Scottish landscape, but it looks likely that this view will be denied for approximately ten years while the damp house dries out naturally, shielded from the Scottish rain.

Although denied this view, another experience has taken its place. There are walk ways around and over the roof of the house, so that visitors can see the architecture from several vantages. I thought perhaps, that the Box would spoil the visit to Hill House, making it more of a gimmick. But I was not disappointed. Turning the conservation work into an attraction itself has been advantageous because it gives visitors such a unique opportunity to enjoy the house on many different levels (literally as well as figuratively).

Once inside, it is easy to ignore – nay forget – that the Box is situated outside, and therefore the steel structure in no way affects the experience of walking through the beautiful Mackintosh rooms. 

I walked around the house a couple of times and overheard another visitor say “I don’t want to leave”.

Who would?

Incidentally, items from the Hill House are sometimes loaned out to the Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum. This was the case on my visit. So I visited the latter to see Mackintosh's Kimono writing desk. Another beautiful item, and easy to envisage standing in the drawing room of Hill House on the opposite side of the fireplace to the settle.

A Rather Grand Beach Hut: Brighton Royal Pavilion

If you think that Brighton has become an overpriced suburb of London, accommodated by Hipsters and bright young things then blame Dr Richard Russell and the Prince Regent in the late 18th and early 19th century. Seawater as a restorative cure for all ills had resulted in seaside towns superseding the English spas, particularly after the Prince Regent made it fashionable at Brighton to follow the advice of Dr Russell whose Dissertation Concerning the Use of Sea-Water in Diseases of the Glands had been published in English in 1754 (Walvin, 1978: 16, and Hassan, 2003: 6).

Dr Russell recommended the health-inducing effects of dipping oneself into the sea, hence the invention of the bathing machine for seaside dippers. This was an altogether more palatable way of enjoying the medicinal qualities of seawater than drinking it! Once Prince George made Brighton fashionable, the upper- and mercantile classes followed in his place. 

Prince George's (subsequently King George IV) original Marine Pavilion was not grand enough for him to entertain his aristocratic guests in the lavish style he desired and so in 1815 he commissioned John Nash to transform the house into an ornate oriental palace. The grandest seaside residence ever designed. Rob Shields says that a growing sense of ‘spectacle’ in the mid nineteenth century, alongside a growing number of visitors to Brighton subsequently contributed to the town’s transition from a place of ritualised health-pursuits into a location for fun and social mixing (2002: 81).

However, when Victoria became Queen she was unhappy with the association that the Pavilion had with George IV's extravagant lifestyle and sold the house to the town. Visitors to Brighton can now enjoy the spectacle of the Royal Pavilion for themselves. 

An idea of what Prince / King George IV's lavish banquets were like might also be gleaned from Minnelli's 1970 film On a Clear Day You Can See Forever. Some scenes for the film were shot in the Pavilion itself, as studio sets would not have been able to match the opulence of the palace itself.

Further reading:

Hassan, John, 2003, The Seaside, Health and the Environment in England and Wales Since 1800, Hampshire: Ashgate.

Shields, Rob, 2002, Places on the Margin, Alternative Geographies of Modernity, London: Routledge.

Walvin, John, 1978, Beside The Seaside, A Social History of the Popular Seaside Holiday, London: Allen Lane.

Royal Pavilion website