Detmar Blow

Detmar Blow
Born	1867 England
Died	1939 Gloucester, England
Nationality	British
Work
Buildings	Hilles Eaton Hall (Cheshire)

Detmar Jellings Blow (1867–1939) was a British architect of the early 20th century, who designed principally in the arts and crafts style. His clients belonged chiefly to the British aristocracy, and later he became estates manager to the Duke of Westminster. The fiction that he was a descendant of the English restoration composer John Blow was started in 1910 by Detmar Blow's wife Winifred, a member of the aristrocratic Tollemache family, as a means of obtaining a licence from St. Paul's Cathedral for the marriage of herself and Detmar.

Life and career

Blow was one of the last disciples of John Ruskin whom as a young man he had accompanied on his last journey abroad. Blow was patronised by the Wyndham family, who at their country house Clouds in Wiltshire created a salon frequented by many of the leading intellectual and artistic figures of the day, known as The Souls, who welcomed Blow into their midst admiring his romantic socialist views.

Blow's architectural work was very much influenced by his mentors Ruskin, William Holman Hunt and Philip Webb, the architect of Clouds (1886). In his early career he adopted the role of the wandering architect, travelling artisan-like with his own band of masons from project to project. He married the aristocratic and intellectual Winifred Tollemache, and began to be patronised by the higher echelons of the British aristocracy. While much of his early work was, like that of his contemporary Lutyens, in the Arts and Crafts style, his later work was dictated by the whims of his aristocratic patrons. At one point during his career he and Lutyens contemplated entering together into an architectural partnership.

Amongst the buildings designed by Blow were Hilles, near Stroud in Gloucestershire, the mansion he built for himself after 1914, very much influenced by the ideals of Ruskin, Webb and William Morris (Blow was present at Morris's death and organised his funeral procession, driving the flower-strewn hay-wagon carrying the coffin, dressed in a farm worker's smock). In 1908 he rebuilt Bramham Park for the Lane Fox family; however, this commission was a restoration of the former Baroque house which had been severely damaged by fire in 1828.

Horwood House, designed by Detmar Blow in an William and Mary style in 1912

Detmar Blow's grandson, also Detmar Blow, was married to the fashion stylist Isabella Blow, and lives at Hilles, Harescombe, Gloucestershire.

Patronage of the 2nd Duke of Westminster

Blow designed various properties for Hugh "Bendor" Grosvenor, 2nd Duke of Westminster, including Château de Woolsack, a hunting lodge in Mimizan, France, near Bordeaux. In due course he became a great friend of the duke, which led to the latter appointing Blow in 1916 to manage the Westminster estates. These covered vast tracts of Belgravia and Mayfair in London, a position given, to which the quixotic Blow was completely unsuitable. As a result of the demands of overseeing the properties, Blow allowed his architectural career to dwindle. This proved to be a catastrophic mistake, when his reputation was later destroyed.

The popular and wholly untrue version of Blow's fall from service with the 2nd Duke of Westminster is that the architect became the target of the jealousy of the duke's third wife, the former Loelia Ponsonby, who convinced her husband that Blow was embezzling money from the estate, a claim Blow vigorously denied. Following a vindictive campaign of hatred by the Westminsters, the architect and his family were shunned by society. He was driven by the scandal to insanity.The truth of the matter is that the Duke tasked a Grosvenor trustee, Sir Vincent Baddeley and a leading solicitor, Arthur Borrer of Boodle Hatfield, to look into Blow's conduct as the Duke's secretary. They found such strong evidence that Blow had been defrauding the Grosvenor Estate that Blow offered to pay some of the money back.^{[citation needed]} He defaulted on this promise and was dismissed.^{[citation needed]}

Notable works

• All Saints' Church, Avon Tyrell (for Lord Manners, with murals by Phoebe Traquair, 1906)
• Amesbury Abbey, Wiltshire
• Billesley Manor, Warwickshire
• Bramham Park, Yorkshire (restoration for the Lane-Fox family, 1908)
• Breccles Hall, Norfolk
• Château de Woolsack, Mimizan, France (a hunting lodge for the 2nd Duke of Westminster, 1912)
• Eaton Hall (Cheshire) (alterations for the 2nd Duke of Westminster)
• Happisburgh Manor (St Mary's), Norfolk
• Hatch House, Wiltshire
• Heale House, Wiltshire (for the Hon. Louis Greville)
• Hilles, Harescombe, Gloucestershire (for himself)
• Holcombe House, Stroud, Gloucestershire
• Horwood House, Little Horwood, Buckinghamshire
• Lake House, Wiltshire (1898)
• Lavington Park, West Sussex
• Little Ridge (for the Morrison family)
• Schloss Kranzbach, Krün, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany (for The Hon. Miss Mary Portman)
• Stanway House, Gloucestershire (for Earl of Wemyss)
• Wilsford, Wiltshire (for Edward Tennant, 1st Baron Glenconner)
• Wootton Manor, Polegate, Sussex (for the Gwynne Family)

See also

Butterfly plan

References

• The Duke who killed my father retrieved 18 January 2007
• Books: It's off to work we go retrieved 18 January 2007
• Works by Detmar Blow
• Images of England website entry for Horwood House

Persondata
Name	Blow, Detmar
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1867
Place of birth	England
Date of death	1939
Place of death	Hilles, England