Geoffrey Lupton

Geoffrey Henry Lupton (2 September 1882 – 30 December 1949) was a member of the Lupton family of Leeds[1] and is best known for his contribution to the Arts and Crafts movement working with Ernest Gimson and Sidney Barnsley. He was heavily influenced by the writings of Rudolf Steiner.[2]

Early life

Lupton was a pupil at Bedales School at its original location at Lindfield, West Sussex which in 1900 moved to a new permanent site near Petersfield, Hampshire. He was head boy and left in 1901. He was then apprenticed to the family engineering firm, Hathorn Davey of Leeds. He erected pumping engines in the Lea Valley around 1903-4 and worked in Germany.[3]

Arts and Crafts

Lupton left Hathorn Davey in 1905 to train as an Arts and Crafts architect, cabinet maker and builder with Ernest Gimson who was described by Nikolaus Pevsner as "the greatest of the English architect-designers". He spent a year in Gimson’s workshops at Daneway near Sapperton.[4] Under Gimson's direction he prepared and built the timber bridge at Hampton Court Palace.[2] He worked as an architect and builder in Hampshire, constructing his home and workplace in Cockshott Lane, Froxfield in 1906-7. The cottage and attached workshops is a good example of his Arts and Crafts philosophy and craftsmanship.

Lupton designed and built the "Red House" in Cockshott Lane for his friend Edward Thomas, It had a separate building of which half was a study for Thomas and the rest was for his own beekeeping which gave it the name "The Bee House". A number of houses in Cockshott Lane and around Steep were either designed and built by Lupton, or built to designs by Gimson or Alfred Powell or for which he undertook the joinery. In 1913, Lupton built Sir Francis Ogilvie's house, "Dewdney," on Shere Heath which was considered by Sir Lawrence Weaver to be about the best modern small house of its time. These buildings were of hand made brick and English oak.[2] In 1911, Lupton commissioned and largely financed, Gimson to design the assembly hall at his old school, Bedales, as the first part of a quadrangle of buildings to include a library, laboratories and a gym. The war intervened, and only the library was built.

Lupton returned to engineering during the Great War. Early in 1915 he joined up as a private serving in the Army Service Corps, ASC, "Ally Sloper's Cavalry", 3rd Heavy Repair Depot in A.S.C. Motor Transport and was subsequently promoted to captain. He was mentioned in dispatches in May 1918 for work on electro deposition of metals and, in 1919, was awarded the French Order of Agricultural Merit.[3] A learned paper on his work was presented by his Army Service Corps superior to the Institution of Automobile Engineers in 1920.[5]

After the war Lupton resumed his work as a craftsman in wood. Gimson, who knew he was dying, had asked Lupton to finish the work he started on building the Memorial Library at Bedales School. It was being built next to the 1911 Lupton Assembly Hall and was Gimson’s last major project (1918–1919). Lupton, who was supervised by Sidney Barnsley, continued the library's construction and it was completed in 1921. It was estimated to cost £7,000, but building alone cost £10,946, and £2,829 for oak bookshelves and other furniture.[6][3] The Bedales Memorial Library, Lupton Hall and corridor is one of the few Grade I listed modern buildings in England.[7]

Lupton continued furniture making until 1925 when he passed the business to Edward Barnsley. His work is described in Michael Drury’s book, Wandering Architects: In Pursuit of an Arts and Crafts Ideal.

In 1923, Edward Barnsley, furniture maker and architect and son of Sidney Barnsley, took the tenancy of the workshop and moved into the cottage in 1926. Barnsley lived and worked there as a designer craftsman until his death in 1987.[8]

Later years

In 1926 he bought some hundred acres of veldt near Elgin, on the Palmiet River, 50 miles from Cape Town where he built a farmhouse, thatched it with local reed and set to work to make the most unpromising soil productive. Clearing, breaking up, ploughing in lupin, irrigating by means of wooden pipes from a great pump, put in by himself in the river below, he succeeded in growing almonds, peaches, and to some extent apples, which do not thrive in South Africa, and kept cows and poultry. In Elgin he designed a tiny church, thatched and whitewashed, for the English settlers. He built the round chancel arch with his own hands.[3]

He returned to England in 1937 and bought North Wyke Farm[9] near North Tawton in Devon which he worked during the Second World War.[3]

In 1946-7, influenced by L. T. C. Rolt's book Narrow Boat, he joined the Inland Waterways Association and bought a narrow boat which he converted for cruising, working on it on the open canalside near Norwood while he was living in Chiswick. With his 9-year-old son as crew, a 429-mile tour of English canals occupied June and July 1947 including stops to repair the boat's diesel engine and to continue the conversion work.

In 1948 he was again drawn to emigrate to Africa (this time to Southern Rhodesia), where he was engrossed in building up yet another farm when he met his death, while dealing with a bull, on 30 December 1949.[3]

References

1. Lupton, C.A. , The Lupton Family in Leeds, Wm. Harrison and Son 1965
2. Powell, Alfred, Obituary, The Times, 7 January 1950
3. Powell, Oswald , Bedales Chronicle, March 1950
4. "Ernest Gimson and the Arts & Crafts Movement in Leicester". Archived from the original on 26 April 2012.
5. Thomas, B. H., The Institution of Automobile Engineers Proceedings, Journal, 1920, pp. 603-646
6. "Library of the Month: Bedales Memorial Library". CILIP. Retrieved 12 November 2017.
7. "British Listed Buildings".
8. "The Edward Barnsley Workshop". Archived from the original on 26 April 2012.
9. "The World WYKES Web: History of North Wyke". wykes.org.

External links

• Bedales Memorial Library
• Bedales Hall and Library newspaper report