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Winter 2017 ARTS & CRAFTS HOMES| 57

&HISTORIC^ HOUSE

R

AMBLING, UNASSUMING, FACING AWAY from the road,

Stoneybrook is an iconic house of the English Arts

& Crafts movement. The architect and furniture

designer Ernest Gimson built it in 1898–99, in

collaboration with architect and master builder Detmar Blow,

for Gimson’s brother Sydney and his family. The Gimson

family were prominent Leicester industrialists; Ernest de-

signed homes for several siblings. Stoneybrook is the most

unchanged of them.

Inspired by William Morris’s call for a return to crafts-

manship and a simpler life, Ernest designed a vernacular cot-

tage that was one with the landscape. Sited so that it nestles

into a rocky bank, the house’s eleven rooms zigzag over seven

levels within its earthy setting, and it was built purposefully

with local labor and materials. Following the Z-shape of the

plan, windows and roofline step downwards, following the

hill’s contours. Stones were gathered from the land, occasion-

ally supplemented with a few from local dry-laid walls (rocks

reportedly were liberated when a cart was backed into the old

walls, which were then rebuilt without the most desirable

stones). Enormous stone lintels and, later, roofing slates came

from the abandoned Swithland slate quarries nearby.

The undressed stones are left natural on the exterior, but

parged and whitewashed inside. Large structural timbers pre-

pared off site follow the irregularities of the plan, attesting to

the well-planned design.

Sydney and Jeannie Gimson did not wish to furnish

Stoneywell with fancy items from their city residence. They

had Ernest and his circle of craftsmen build solid pieces for

them by hand. As the house could be damp and cold during

the unoccupied winter months, they avoided veneered and in-

laid furniture. On his pole lathe, Ernest turned rush-seated

In Charnwood Forest, Stoneywell was imagined by

British Arts & Crafts designer Ernest Gimson for his

brother’s family. Built with local materials and labor, it

is indigenous and spare, attesting This Is How to Live.

BY BRIAN D. COLEMAN

COURTESY NATIONAL TRUST ANDREW BUTLER (OPP.), NATIONAL TRUST

JAMES DOBSON (LEFT), NATIONAL TRUST ANDREW BUTLER (RIGHT)