The Edwin Lutyens Experience

Aerial view of the Pleasaunce

I arrived at “The Pleasaunce” in Overstrand (Norfolk) in the dark of a January evening. After making my way to my room and consulting some floor plans I was struck by the rambling complexity of the building. My first thought was that it must have undergone a considerable number of extensions and changes. I could see no vestige of a medieval hall pattern and my first impression was that it was entirely Victorian or Edwardian. I doubted that a sane architect would build such an informal collection of volumes, surfaces, angles, nooks, and crannies from scratch – in fact its sheer ramification would make it difficult to conceive and implement in one grand slam project. I concluded therefore that it must be an accretion of improvisations.

But then I read the historical blurb in my room. It was a Lutyens. Perhaps then, the late Victorian/Edwardian taste for buildings with an appearance of historical development might explain it. If so it was a remarkable feat; such a pile would require considerable planning in order to reconcile the elements of a seemingly random jumble of spaces. But my mind was to change again. On this web document giving a short history of The Pleasaunce we read:

Deprived of the opportunity to start afresh on the site, Lutyens adopted the solution of disguising the existing villas in a plethora of different architectural elements, forming one of his most odd and perverse designs. As Gavin Stamp put it, the house is “full of clever tricks and eccentricities and touches of Art Nouveau but, as an overall composition [it is] a disaster”.

So it turned to out to be an accretion of improvisations after all. Stamp calls it an “overall disaster”; it’s certainly uncoordinated and Lutyens may have used the excuse to augment to indulge in a series of unconnected architectural essays and experiments making it up as he went along. It is a fact that contriving an appearance of history, given true history’s quirky twists and turns, is very difficult to carry off with authenticity; inventing history is like trying to think of random numbers at one sitting – humans can seldom produce something with an authentic historical ring. Not surprisingly then The Pleasaunce is not a one sitting design. Perhaps the difficulty of creating intricate designs in one shot has something to do with the mathematical fact that only a very few complex patterns can be reached by small short-time algorithms. It is an irony that there are huge continents of apparent random complexity out there that in actual fact are far more demanding of computational resources than are symmetry and order.

It may be that a playful incongruity is precisely what Lutyens had in mind as he designed the Pleasaunce. If so the joke is on us and he is laughing from the grave; he’s achieved what human beings find difficult to achieve; that is to disconnect from their associations and generate something new, something random even. In the absence of any obvious grand-slam plan organising the overall layout of the Pleasaunce the angel appears to be in the detail; namely, high quality of workmanship and materials is paramount as per the arts and crafts tradition of this building.

As I have remarked before in a blog post about Sizewell hall, it is perhaps rather appropriate that a building celebrating arts and crafts should now be a retreat for the Christian community. The arts and crafts movement was a reaction to rapid industrialization; this reaction included a return to the appreciation of hand crafted and natural looking materials. Likewise the Christian community have also reacted to the dehumanising aspects of a machine society by seeking out the human face of Christianity; in particular its irrational and feeling side. In fact they have been knocked for six and destabilized by an encroaching modernity; they often have great difficulty in coming to terms with and making sense of the kind of culture industrialized society throws up.

The architecture of the Pleasuance is also very apposite to the Christian community for another reason. If The Pleasaunce is an eclectic disaster the same could be said of an overall perspective of Christianity. Of course, Christian sectarians attempt to disconnect themselves from the eclectic church by connecting with some purist sect that attempts to “restore” a version of christianity founded on the fancied natural bedrock of the faith, eschewing and purging all other influences. But in effect sectarians simply create another incongruous carbuncular annex atop the rambling development that Christianity has always been. Sectarians simply can’t come to terms with chaotic eclecticism of their faith. In fact during my stay at The Pleasaunce I heard a story that one party of guests (fundagelicals, by the sound of it) left their holiday early because they couldn’t tolerate the presence of another Christian group; stuff like that is all too typical of my overall experience of Christendom I'm afraid to say. What a bunch of pillocks I’ve thrown my lot in with! But I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s an overall disaster; you’ve got to see the funny and ironic side of Christianity to enjoy it and come to terms with it.

Christian Restorationists  periodically drop their worship-warehouse rebuilds on traditional church and tell us they have been dropped from heaven.