Richard Harding Watt

[poliphilo]

Richard Harding Watt (1842-1913) was an amateur architect, who dotted his home town of Knutsford with eccentric, arts and craftsy buildings in the Italian taste. They're very pretty. Knutsford is within commuting distance of Manchester and lots of celebs live in the area- Gary Barlow of Take That, for example. Historically, the town's most famous resident was Elizabeth Gaskell, whose husband was minister at the Unitarian church. Harding Watt built a very peculiar, Italianate tower in her memory. Knutsford is Gaskell's Cranford- but so much changed since her day- notably by Harding Watt- that the BBC filmed their dramatization of the book elsewhere.



This is Harding Watt's Ruskin Reading Rooms- a surprising building- with a surprising history...



And here's another Harding Watt creation just down the road....



 

Comments

[jenny_evergreen]

Marvelous buildings!

[strange-complex.livejournal.com]

You've set me off musing on the term 'amateur'. Is it fair to call Harding Watt an amateur architect if he designed buildings which were built and still stand a century later? Do you know what else he did?

[solar-diablo.livejournal.com]

World War II is so much more in the consciousness of Europeans than Americans. Makes a certain bit of obvious sense, in that it was fought in your backyard, but I still find it somewhat amazing how oblivious some of us here in the States are to the details of it. I think were it not for my history buff father and two grandfathers who fought in the war, I'd probably be much more ignorant of that period in history. We have war memorials in the States, of course, but they are often generalized with no real sense of specific time and place. My feeling is Vietnam gets the most airtime in the American national psyche - that's a wound that's never healed properly.

[mummm.livejournal.com]

I LOVE those buildings!

[oakmouse]

Those are MARVELOUS buildings! I love them ---- especially #1! *wants to live in it*

[pondhopper.livejournal.com]

The Ruskin Rooms building is wonderful. Italianate, yes, but you'd be surprised how many buildings in Spain have similar characteristics. Lovely!

I like the tower rising out of the centre of the second building very much.

[goddlefrood.livejournal.com]

Trawling through the old inbox for the first time in a while I was surprised to see pictures of the old home town. I lived in Watt's own house for 17 years, do I get a prize?