Roderick Gradidge

(1929-2000)

We were all greatly saddened by the sudden death of Roderick Gradidge on 20 December. Roddy was a founder member of the Trust and our Architectural Adviser – in fact he was interested in Lutyens long before any of us. He led pioneering tours for the Victorian Society in the 1960’s seeking out neglected Lutyens buildings which had not figured in Butler’s Memorial Volumes. He was especially good at describing the vernacular in Lutyens and his three excellent books – Dream Houses, 1980, Edwin Lutyens: Architect Laureate, 1981, and The Surrey Style, 1991, are extremely perceptive in characterizing Lutyens’s ways of building. He didn’t much care for the stuffiness of architectural historians but could explore sources along with the best, leading a brilliant Goddards Study Day in 1998 looking at the Surrey buildings that Lutyens would have known – based on an article he had written on the influence of Ralph Nevill’s Old Cottage and Domestic Architecture in South-West Surrey. Roddy led splendid tours, always making dry-runs. The best was probably hiss recent tour of India in 1998 – ‘In the Footsteps of Lutyens and Baker’, which was meticulously researched. At the Viceroy’s House he had a long talk with the President of India and was asked to give his views on the state of the Lutyens/Baker complex; he later sent a full report.

I also always valued his lectures. Roddy was not bothered about names and dates but each lecture contained interesting ideas. In September 1996, for example, he suggested that Lutyens was not really an Arts and Crafts architect – an idea that is worth considering. He wanted the Trust to take Lutyens seriously and not always to go country-house visiting.

In Dream Houses he was the first to look seriously at the eccentric houses of the 1897-98 period – Berrydown, the Pleasaunce and Le Bois des Moutiers. He also wanted the Trust to explore the work of other related architects and was a great supporter of Herbert Baker. He really understood the period and, as an architect, made alterations to important buildings by Lutyens (Fulbrook), Harold Falkner, Voysey and others.

As our Architectural Adviser Roddy often worked on cases in collaboration with the Twentieth Century Society and the Victorian Society: in one of his last he was able to prevent drastic alterations to the Crypt of Liverpool Cathedral. He believed that Lutyens was ‘without a doubt England’s greatest Twentieth Century architect’ and in his writing and lectures constantly upheld this view. How we will miss his outspoken views and his commitment to Lutyens.

Margaret Richardson

Roddy’s funeral was described by A. N. Wilson in the Sunday Telegraph 7 January 2001:

“The funeral of Roderick Gradidge at St. Mary’s Bourne Street last Wednesday was one of the most magnificent I ever attended. The choir sang Fauré. The hauntingly huge coffin, containing the mortal remains of that extraordinary individual, was at times invisible behind billows of incense. There was not a spare seat in that church, which he did so much beautify, and where his ashes, in a columbarium of his own exquisite design, now have been placed.”