Roderick Gradidge

Roderick Gradidge (1929 – 2000) was a British architect and writer on architecture.

Biography

Career

Roderick was an evangelist for the Arts & Crafts, the Victorian and a vernacular architecture which had become so unfashionable by the beginning of his career. It is this passion that drove him to his writing career and to become a repository of the knowledge of the architecture of this period and in particular in the County of Surrey, near his home at Chiswick, where so much interesting architecture was produced in this period. Roderick had the opportunity to work on a number of buildings in the County by prominent architects, such as Sir Edwin Lutyens, Harold Falkner, Thackeray Turner, Detmar Blow and Charles Voysey. He completed a number of interesting projects, particularly with fine interiors and country houses.

He was active in the Art Workers Guild, acted as its Secretary from 1977-84 and Master in 1987. He was a founding member of the Georgian Society (later to become the 20th Century Society) and was prominent in the Victorian Society, at a time when these were marginal interests within the architectural profession.

Partnership with Michael Blower

Roderick completed a number of fine restorations and extensions to country houses in Surrey in the 1980’s and 1990’s. He did these in a loose partnership with the prominent Surrey-based architect, Michael Blower. Their first project was on Detmar Blow’s Charles Hill Court for an Austrian industrialist. From there, they went onto Harold Falkner’s Tancreds Ford, which they designed and built for the writer Ken Follett and his first wife, and which was published in two articles in Country Life^[1]. Next came The New House, reputedly designed by Thackeray Turner and for which they jointly one a RIBA Award. Just prior to his death, they were working on a project at Combe Court, which was completed by Michael Blower’s practice, Stedman Blower.

Personal life

Roddy was born 3 January 1929 in Old Hunstanton, Norfolk, and died 20 December 2000 in London, aged 71. H. His father Brigadier John Gradidge, was posted in India at the time of his son's birth, who was then brought up amidst the splendours of the British Raj. He was sent off to school at Stowe and from there, he moved to London and the Architectural Association, where he completed his training as an architect and was elected an Associate of the Royal Institute of British Architects (ARIBA). He remained in London parctising as an architect and writer for most of his life, where he was a prominent figure in social and architectural circles in the last half of the 20th Century. He had no children and was never married.

Legacy

The Telegraph obituary from the 22nd December 2000 described him as 'one of the most colourful and underrated English architects of recent years'. Obituaries also appeared in The Times on the 1st January 2001 and in The Independent on the 2nd January 2001, the latter one penned by the prominent architectural historian and critic Gavin Stamp. At the twightlight of his career, he was awarded a RIBA Award, (the gold-standard of archiectural awards in the UK) for the design of a house in the Surrey Hills.

Bibliography

• Dream Houses: The Edwardian Ideal , by Roderick Gradidge. Constable, 1980 (hardback, ISBN 0-0-0).
• Edwin Lutyens: Architect Laureate, by Roderick Gradidge. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd, 1981 (hardback, ISBN 0-720023-5).
• The Surrey Style, by Roderick Gradidge. Kingston: Surrey Historic Buildings Trust, 1991 (paperback, ISBN 0-9517022-0-3).

External links

• Obituary in The Independent by Gavin Stamp

1. Country Life