Listed at Grade II*, 186 Gwydir Street, now a visitor attraction: The David Parr House, was Parr’s home in Cambridge while 3 St Mary’s Passage, listed at Grade II, housed the showroom of F R Leach & Sons, a nationally-renowned firm of artistic workmen who employed David Parr.
Historic England has also awarded a Covid-19 Emergency Response Fund Resilience Grant of £40,212 to enable David Parr House to develop its audience offer through the creation of an innovative pre-bookable real-time digital tour of the house and a new audio tour for socially-distanced visitors, delivered by the property’s knowledgeable volunteers. This will enable this intimate property to engage with a wider audience. For further information about David Parr House and the innovative real-time digital tours, go to davidparrhouse.org
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18 Gwydir Street appears in passing to be an ordinary mid-Victorian worker’s terraced house, if attention to the details hints that it might be more. Once through the front door, the interior is extraordinary.
In 1886, David Parr bought the house where he would spend the rest of his life with his wife Mary Jane and raise their three children Mary, David and Sarah. Over a period of forty years, Parr transformed his family home, creating a work of art on walls and ceilings with all-over patterns adapted from schemes he painted for his employer F R Leach & Sons, inspired by the designs of renowned artist George Frederick Bodley (14 March 1827 – 21 October 1907) and adapted for a domestic setting. It is a very personal work incorporating Parr’s intertwining initials in the entrance hall pattern.
Parr’s dedication is matched by his prodigious talent: his painted decoration is meticulously detailed and executed to the highest standard. David Parr’s domestic painted interiors are an extraordinary and unique survival; nothing else like them is known to exist.
David Parr kept a notebook in which he carefully recorded the transformation of the house, providing an invaluable and comprehensive archive of the building. His descendants lived in the house until 2013 and their respect for his artistic legacy resulted in very limited alterations to the property. Alongside the painted decoration, items of joinery designed and built by Parr also survive, alongside the original curtain rails, the late 19th century toilet and the 1920s oven, which provide an almost complete picture of a house of this period. The artistic significance of the house is considerably enhanced by its social historical interest. The recent conservation of the house, which was based on detailed research and carried out with scrupulous care, has ensured its ongoing preservation.
The house is a physical embodiment of the renaissance of crafts encouraged by the Gothic Revival and, later, the Arts and Crafts movement with its emphasis on the connection between the artisan, their craft and its materials, a bond that had been destroyed by industrial manufacturing.
Tony Calladine, Regional Director, Historic England in the East of England said: “The listing of David Parr House and 3 St Mary’s Passage gives due recognition to the unknown highly talented artists and craftsmen who brought to life the creative inspiration of celebrated designers. In supporting David Parr House to create a digital tour, we hope this extraordinary artistic masterpiece will be enjoyed by a much wider audience.”
Tamsin Wimhurst, Chair of Trustees, David Parr House CIO said: “This is wonderful recognition for all the hard work shown by everyone who helped to save and conserve the David Parr House. It highlights the importance of having spaces where we can celebrate ordinary working people, the beauty of making and the comfort of home.”
The work of artisans like David Parr has so far been overshadowed by the renown of the pioneering figures such as AWN Pugin (1 March 1812 – 14 September 1852), William Morris (24 March 1834 – 3 October 1896) and George Frederick Bodley (14 March 1827 – 21 October 1907), whose designs they brought to life. The survival and protection of the David Parr House is an important step in recognising their achievements.
3 St Mary’s Passage, Cambridge – listed at Grade II
[[{"fid":"288944","view_mode":"default","fields":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England"},"link_text":false,"type":"media","field_deltas":{"2":{"format":"default","alignment":"","field_file_image_alt_text[und][0][value]":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England","field_file_image_title_text[und][0][value]":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England"}},"attributes":{"alt":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England","title":"staircase in 3 St Mary's Passage Image copyright Historic England","style":"float: right;","class":"media-element file-default","data-delta":"2"}}]]Another important step in the celebration of these highly talented painters and craftsmen is the listing at Grade II of 3 St Mary’s Passage in Cambridge which, in the late 19th century, became the showroom of F R Leach & Sons, for whom David Parr worked.
Built in the neo-Jacobean style, 3 St Mary’s Passage demonstrates typical 17th century architectural features and beautifully-detailed pargetting embellishments. Its striking presence is remarkable as it is a narrow-fronted building dominated by taller neighbouring structures.
Frederick Leach received the keys to 3 St Mary's Passage on 20 April 1880. Work to the new premises was carried out externally and internally: a signature line of fleur-de-lys in raised plasterwork is shown on the façade of the showroom and the fireplace on the west wall of the first floor was installed by Leach and incorporates tiles decorated by his firm.
The company worked in partnership with some of the country’s best known designers and architects, notably William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts movement; George Bodley, the Gothic Revival architect; and Charles Kempe, the stained-glass artist.
Between 1871 and 1881, as the census shows, F R Leach & Sons more than doubled its workforce to meet growing demand for their intricately detailed and high quality interiors. They carried out some impressive commissions, such as working with William Morris on the staircase of St James’ Palace in London. The firm’s trade cards and accounts book reveal that its reputation spread far and wide.
Evidence of their creativity as artists survives in ecclesiastical buildings throughout Cambridge and the country as a whole but examples of their domestic work have virtually disappeared as later fashions replaced the Gothic revival designs.
In Cambridge, F R Leach & Sons collaborated with George Bodley at All Saints’ Church, although most of the wall painting was done free of charge by Frederick himself. Other examples of work carried out by his team of craftsmen throughout Cambridge include the decoration of the nave and transept roof of Jesus College Chapel, which was their first commission for Bodley and Morris. At St Botolph’s Church, the firm decorated the chancel roof and a commission for painting and stained glasswork at Queens’ Old Hall included 885 lead castings gilded for decoration.
Three of Frederick’s sons - Barnett, Frederick and Walter - continued the family business as artist-craftsmen, but financial difficulties during the First World War led to the company being placed into liquidation in 1916. The building was acquired by King’s College Cambridge in 1936. It currently operates as a shop.
Images: (top) - The drawing room at David Parr House, 186 Gwydir Street, newly listed at Grade II*
The drawing room is the pièce de résistance, containing an all-over pattern in a variety of scales and designs, with predominant tones of dark green and yellows, from orange to gold, which combine in a sumptuous intensity.
Image copyright Howard Rice Print
inset (top right) - Front Exterior, David Parr House Copyright David Parr House
Inset (bottom right) - The original staircase at 3 St Mary's Passage, Cambridge, believed to have been constructed by F R Leach.
Image copyright Historic England
David Parr (1854-1927)
David Parr was an artisan decorator working in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. He was born in Chesterton, just outside Cambridge, but was effectively orphaned after his mother, a teacher, died of phthisis in 1860, and his father, a labourer, went to prison in 1858 after stealing a pig under the influence of alcohol.
The later part of Parr’s childhood is thought to have been spent under the care of his uncle, a Cambridge-based cask-maker. He trained first as a joiner and then in 1871, at the age of 17, he began a four-year apprenticeship ‘to learn the art of painting and decorating’ with the Cambridge firm of decorative painters F R Leach, one of the many firms that rose to national prominence as a result of the renaissance of crafts encouraged by the Gothic Revival.
One of Parr’s earliest experiences with the firm was at Bodley’s All Saints’ Church, the most celebrated Victorian church in Cambridge. High up on a wall near the west window, the painters responsible inscribed their names and, among them, is ‘David Parr’ with the date 1871.
Parr’s working life took him all over the country, involving him in some of the most accomplished ecclesiastical design and domestic decoration being carried out in Britain at the time.
It was while working at Hare Hill House, near Macclesfield in Cheshire, that Parr first met Mary Jane Wood, a cotton weaver from the nearby village of Bollington, whom he married in 1883.
In 1886 Parr bought 186 Gwydir Street in Cambridge where he and Mary spent the rest of their lives and raised three children, Mary, David and Sarah. The house was in Gothic Terrace, built ten years earlier as part of a mini-development by George Cooper, a wine importer. Although the house was small – consisting of the typical Victorian layout of two ground-floor rooms and three bedrooms with a kitchen and scullery at the back – it was on the more prosperous side of the street, a status marked externally by a small front garden.
Parr then spent the next four decades transforming his modest house into what has been called an ‘architectural self-portrait’, adapting the beautiful and intricate designs he executed professionally in churches and grand mansions. He carefully recorded in a ‘house notebook’ the cost of materials and the length of time he took to carry out particular elements of the schemes, which suggests that he may also have used the house as a testing ground to help him cost his professional work, and as a place to experiment with techniques and materials.
David Parr’s artistic legacy
The sequence of Parr’s projects began with the entrance hall in 1887-1888. The upper walls there were finished in 1891. The drawing room ceiling was painted in 1892-1893 and the dining room acquired a dado of Gothic ornaments in the same painting campaign.
The next major phase was the dado of the entrance hall, staircase, and landing in 1909-1910. The most impressive and complex scheme, the walls of the drawing room, were completed in 1912-1913 and the diaper dado was finished in 1916. In the same year the inscription in the smallest front bedroom was also completed. The final recorded design was Parr’s blue flower pattern in the kitchen in 1920.
In the hallway, the lunette above the door, which is likely to have been designed by F R Leach, contains a roundel with a naturalistic depiction of a singing bird in a wood, surrounded by leaded lights painted in a stylised foliage pattern. The lower two-thirds of the walls are painted on canvas in a pattern of curving stalks and blossoming motifs using deep russet and gold tones, referencing the designs of Pugin and Morris & Co.
The drawing room is the pièce de résistance, containing an all-over pattern in a variety of scales and designs, with predominant tones of dark green and yellows, from orange to gold, which combine in a sumptuous intensity. The walls beneath the dado have a large-scale leaf design, whilst above a more intricate pattern of intertwining stylised flora and foliage is threaded by several inscriptions running around the room in scrolls painted to suggest a three-dimensional form. The scroll to the left of the window reads: ‘If you do anything, do it well.’ This principal pattern bears close comparison with Morris & Co.’s design for the window embrasures in Old Swan House in Chelsea which F R Leach had executed.
The large-scale foliate design on the ceiling in green, yellow and gold with a central orange flower, was inspired by another Morris & Co. design used for the ceiling in the Ambassador’s Room at St James’ Palace. The inner face of the door was grained by Parr to look like oak and the moulding of the panels painted in Abyssinian gold leaf. Parr applied Anaglypta flowers and Abyssinian gold leaf to the simple wooden fireplace surround.
In the kitchen, Parr painted the chimney breast in the 1920s in a delicate design of blue flowers with willow-type leaves. It is not known if he put in the cupboards flanking the chimney breast but he did paint them red on the inside and blue on the outside, although they have since been painted in a cream colour. The stained glass in a swirling yellow foliate design, fitted into the lower half of the sash window, is in the style of F R Leach. The red quarry-tiled floor is original and the coal-fired oven is thought to have been built into the wall in the 1920s.
Parr died before he could finish decorating the two bedrooms at the front of the house. The smaller bedroom has a hand-painted inscription in large letters along the top of the wall reading: ‘May I always be ready when my Saviour calleth me. May I in sight of heaven rejoice, when I hear my Saviour’s voice.’
Parr continued to work for Leach until the last years of his life, enrolling his son into the business in the early 1900s.
When he died in 1927, his granddaughter Elsie Palmer moved into 186 Gwydir Street where she remained for the rest of her life, bringing up her family there and preserving her grandfather’s legacy.
She was reluctant to paint over any of his work but she did make some concessions in the 1950s. The fireplaces installed by Parr in the drawing and dining rooms were replaced (the wooden surrounds were retained), and the back bedroom was converted into a bathroom.
Some of Parr’s ornamental work on the entrance hall and staircase walls, above the dado rail, was painted in magnolia and an area of the drawing room wall damaged by damp was painted in bright green gloss paint.
The David Parr House today – an important artistic time capsule
After Elsie’s death in 2013, 186 Gwydir Street was bought (by prior agreement) by a social historian who had first come across it in 2009. The house was transferred to a charitable trust, created to preserve the fragile interiors and show to the public what is now known as The David Parr House.
In 2017 a Heritage Lottery Fund grant enabled a two-phase conservation plan to repair the damp damage, and then to restore and conserve the decoration. This included replacing the cement pointing with lime mortar, repairing the guttering and pipework, taking out and refurbishing the windows, and redoing the external paintwork. Inside, once the plasterwork had been replaced, the paintwork was meticulously cleaned and the small sections of the pattern-work lost to damp next to the windows of the drawing and dining rooms were reconstructed by an expert paint restorer. The stairs were regrained, and in the hallway, a cracked panel of Lincrusta (a deeply embossed and durable wallcovering invented by Frederick Walton in 1877) was repaired by experts who remade the mould in order to reproduce the panel.
The David Parr House is going into its last year of fundraising for the Endowment that will ensure its long term survival. For the next year every £ donated will be matched by the National Lottery Heritage Fund.
Frederick Leach (1837-1904)
The presence of the Leach family in Cambridge can be traced back to 1675.
One family member, Richard, was apprenticed to an engraver and became a skilled jobbing artist, earning his living from house painting, lettering, portraiture and college work but was best known as a painter of inn signs.
His son Frederick (1837-1904) began his career as apprentice to a stonemason before working alongside his elder brother in his painting and decorating business.
In 1862, aged 25 and with a £300 loan from family and friends, he set up his own business in City Road. Frederick expanded from house and shop painting into ecclesiastical and civic arts, crafts and decoration. In the 1871 census he is described as a ‘Church Ornament and Glass Painting master employing 12 men and 2 boys’, and in the 1881 census as ‘Painter: Designer and Art Worker employing 28 men, 2 women and 6 boys on painted decorations, stained glass and making furniture’.
F R Leach & Sons worked in partnership with some of the country’s best known designers and architects, notably William Morris, father of the Arts and Crafts movement; George Bodley, the Gothic Revival architect; and Charles Kempe, the stained-glass artist.
Between 1871 and 1881, as the census shows, F R Leach & Sons more than doubled its workforce to meet growing demand for their intricately detailed and high quality interiors. They carried out some impressive commissions, such as working with William Morris on the staircase of St James’s Palace in London, which encouraged Frederick to open an office in Great Ormond Street. The firm’s trade cards and accounts book reveal that its reputation spread far and wide.
Examples of work carried out by Leach’s team of craftsmen survive throughout Cambridge, such as the decoration of the nave and transept roof of Jesus College Chapel, which was their first commission for Bodley and Morris.
At St Botolph’s Church, the firm decorated the chancel roof, and a commission for painting and stained glasswork at Queens’ Old Hall included 885 lead castings gilded for decoration.
Frederick's three older sons, Barnett, Frederick and Walter, continued the family business as artist-craftsmen, but financial difficulties during the First World War led to the company being placed into liquidation in 1916.