A History of Preston
in Hertfordshire
Sir Edwin Lutyens was an internationally-
Lutyens formative years
Lutyens and Jekyll
Lutyens and Preston
Lutyens’ working methods
Navigate from here using links below to photographs and comments
re: Luytens’-
Temple Dinsley additions (including the Rose Garden)
Minsden farm (aka Ladygrove), Kiln Wood and 1 & 2 Hitchwood Cottages
Later work
Sources for Lutyens pages: Gardens of a Golden Afternoon -
‘The greatest artist in building whom Britain has produced’ – thus, Sir Edwin Lutyens has been lauded. Between 1908 and 1920, he designed several properties around Preston ranging from estate workers’ cottages to Temple Dinsley’s extensive additions.
Edwin Landseer Lutyens was born on 29 March 1869 at Onslow Square, London. He was one of fourteen children and was known among his friends simply as ‘Ned’.
His daughter, Mary, asserts that her family descended from a Dutchman called Lutkens who came to England and became a naturalised British subject, changing his name in the process.
Edwin’s father, Charles, held a commission in the 20th Regiment of Foot and was a talented water colourist. In 1852, he married an Irish girl, Mary Gallway, in Montreal, Canada. Five years later, Charles retired from the army with the rank of Captain to paint professionally. He studied with Sir Edwin Landseer who was to be Ned’s godfather and the inspiration for his name. Charles exhibited at the Royal Academy every year and, with Edwin Landseer, designed the lions of Trafalgar Square.
As a child, Edwin contracted rheumatic fever which influenced his development: ‘Any talent....was due to a long illness which afforded me time to think’ and which taught him to ‘use his eyes instead of his feet’. He had a talent for drawing – ‘It’s easy, I just think and then I draw a line around my think’.
As a teenager, he roamed the West Surrey countryside absorbing the styles of old buildings and the methods of construction of new homes – how drains were dug; the laying of foundations; how roofs were tiled and the erecting of chimney stacks.
In 1885, Edwin was sent to South Kensington School for Art. Four years later he was
introduced to Gertude Jekyll, doyen of English garden designers, a meeting which
was to result in several architectural commissions. Lutyens affectionately referred
to Jekyll (who was twenty-
When he was twenty years old, Lutyens opened his own office. It was the age of the grand country house where guests were entertained from Saturday until Monday and he established a reputation for designing picturesque houses for the nouveau riche and country cottages. His first commission was to plan Jekyll’s own home, Munstead Wood in Godalming, Surrey (1896).
Jekyll introduced Lutyens to those for whom she designed gardens and he planned architectural
features for homes and gardens. The ultimate kudos for many wealthy families was
a ‘Lutyens house’ with a ‘Jekyll garden’ -
When studying for a Gardening qualification, I was astonished to read of a Lutyens/Jekyll
project in my father’s old village. Jane Brown in Gardens of a Golden Afternoon (sub-
This is how Lutyens (described as the ‘leading architect of country houses’ because
of a ‘brilliant sequence of houses built for rich and fastidious Edwardians’) became
involved with Preston: he had designed additions to Abbotswood at Stow-
Lutyens’ work evolved, his reputation grew and his designs became more grandiose:
for twenty years he planned the lay-
After becoming president of the Royal Academy in 1938, Lutyens died on New Year’s Day, 1944 and his ashes were interred at St Paul’s Cathedral – an apt choice as he referred to his ‘Wrennaisance’ style at the time he designed the additions to Temple Dinsley.
Lutyens had the self-
Rather like the artist’s ‘golden rule of thirds’, Lutyens also developed, by trial and error, a simple but subtle system of ratios between dimensions and angles of a building which gave a distinctive character to much of his work. He decreed that all inclined planes should be at 54.45 degrees; that the intersection of two roofs should be inclined at 45 degrees and that window panes should have a ‘diagonal of square’ ratio which also gave the proportions of the whole window. If the building design failed to conform to his methods, then the building was adjusted rather than the proportions. His motto was ‘Metiendo Vivendum’ – ‘By measure we must live’ and he said of his work that ‘everything should have an air of inevitability’.