Chimney at Edrington, 2013 Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 27 ABSTRACT 1 School of Architecture and the Built Environment, University of Lincoln Previously colonized by both Holland and Britain, South Africans have always borrowed; many taking aesthetic clues from memories of ‘home’. Applied seemingly irrelevantly, these ‘clues’ often border on the pastiche. Pre and post Union in 1910, the British-controlled colonies of Natal and the Cape absorbed imported architectural influences which not only introduced an Arts and Crafts layer to Victorian Gothic and Classical revivals, but introduced vital new ideas, namely Art Deco and Modernism. Somehow this polemic embraced another revival: a melange of Tudor and Elizabethan focusing on detail, craftsmanship and nostalgia. The ‘Tudorbethan’ Revival occurred at a vital point in the inter-war era, and it is contended that this style demonstrated a calculated resistance to the hybrid ‘Union Period’ architecture and its political role in forging a common diasporic identity and culture in the 1930s, rather than a mere application of fashion. This paper situates the Tudorbethan Revival within contemporary architectural themes in Durban, South Africa, and contextualises the socio-political production of buildings between the wars before examining the works of architects who conceived this well-crafted, nostalgic and irrelevant architecture. It concludes by comparing this complex aesthetic with the contemporary architectural thread of ‘Gwelo’ Goodman’s Cape Dutch Revival suggesting the degree to which domestic architecture is able to support political positions in contested societies. KEYWORDS Tudorbethan, Revivals, South Africa, Alan Woodrow, Gwelo Goodman Snippets from the north: Architects in Durban and their response to identity, common culture and resistance in the 1930s Debbie Whelan 1 https://doi.org/10.4995/vitruvio-ijats.2019.11774 28 1. INTRODUCTION South Africa is well-known for its highly contested recent history, most particularly around race and ethnicity, and the infamous series of legislations that underpinned the exclusionary practice of apartheid in the 20th century. Contestation is not however, limited to disagreement with respect to race and the debates around black and white, aboriginal and settler. Long standing acrimony between Dutch and British settlers has also left indelible marks on the social, cultural and physical landscapes of the former colonial territories that make up the contemporary democratic Republic of South Africa. Whilst today the contemporary Republic consists of nine provinces of which KwaZulu-Natal is one, in 1910 the territory was declared as a Union and consisted of the Cape of Good Hope and Natal, both colonies of the British Crown, and the Orange Free State and the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek, territories under Dutch settler (Boer) control. The Dutch- controlled Cape of Good Hope was subject to a hostile British takeover in 1806, whereas the Colony of Natal was a territory acquired through annexation by the British in 1843, effectively ending the fledgling Dutch rule on the east coast. Further ideological clashes around land and colonization resulted in the well- publicized Anglo-Boer War (now known as the South African War) between 1899 and 1901. This conflict involved imported colonial troops, resident colonists, and loyalist native forces fighting farmers of Dutch origin (Boers) and their conscripted allies. Critically, this war was positioned at a point of technological change which allowed for the spread of news and propaganda through press, visual transcription through photography and rapid innovation in the machinery of war and the means by which wars in the modern era began to be fought. These issues are vital in understanding the political and social positions in which the four territories of Natal, the Cape of Good Hope, the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek and the Orange Free State found themselves in 1910, at the time of a strategic and economically necessary Union. 2. THE ACT OF UNION AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF UNION Natal Colony did not enter into Union lightly: Given its strong British ancestry it resisted, and was forced to join through circumstance rather than choice. Financially cash strapped after the participation in the South African War, together with a number of subsequent social and political calamities, its necessary association with the other territories was critical. Thus, whilst the political act of Union itself was considered a vital point at which to create a new, national identity embracing the settler cultures of the four different territories, this act did not ameliorate the fractured society of white settlers entering into Union. Rather, it manifested in a strongly articulated need to reinforce individual identity; for the residents of the former Colony of Natal, the allegiance to its Crown necessitated a bleeding of influence from the motherland. This included borrowed architectural influences that allowed for the construction of a little England on the shores of Natal, characterized at the time by late Victorian ideas reflecting the society and its requirements for strongly articulated spatial hierarchies and their associated spatial separations. Fundamentally, these building forms borrowed technology from Europe; generally of masonry or stone construction, most structures until World War II were detailed with cavity walls, bonded brickwork of various configurations, hardwood timber windows which were prepared using imported techniques and doors similarly crafted. These buildings had steeply-pitched roofs, in hipped, gambrel and other derivative forms, which moved quickly towards adopting verandas as part of a distinctive vernacular. These verandas themselves created a specific aesthetic responding to climate and giving buildings depth (Kearney 1984). Many veranda-style buildings adopted the use of corrugated iron sheeting as roofing, which intensified visual textures reinforcing rhythmic patterns formed by veranda posts. Decoration and embellishment was embraced as a marker of wealth and status, a practice that continued through the short-lived Edwardian era. Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 29 The South African War brought with it a new British immigrant population, and one which directly imported up-to-date aesthetics and materials used in England. Frederick Ing arrived from England and, together with more established architects such as E. Probyn Wells implemented the restrained embellishments of the Victorian era, and embraced the palatable proportioning of Edwardian architecture. Ing and Wells’ work was largely in this style, a classical revival employing local brick, locally available hardwood timber and extensive use of concretes and cement, the latter made possible by the increased availability of imported Portland cement. Both Durban Club (Durban, 1902) and Natal University College (Pietermaritzburg, 1910) are good examples of this remnant colonial-era architecture, reflecting the possibility of the new materials but still firmly rooted in British society. Unlike the British colonies which relied on imported ideas, the Dutch political partners in the South African Union relied on a more substantial architectural identity. This had been formed over more than two centuries in their settlement and rule over, the Cape of Good Hope between 1652 and 1795, and then for a short spell between 1803 and 1806. The architecture was originally derivative of their step- gabled Dutch urban building roots. However, over time it developed to allow for different material and climatic conditions and famously, a soft mutation of the gabled form through the plastering techniques of Malay plasterers creating the familiar ‘Cape Dutch gable’. The vernacular developed with specifically generated floor plans and aesthetic toolkits which became quintessentially associated with the architecture of the Cape. The architects of ‘Union’ thus fused the reference points of these disparate locally-driven (in the case of Cape Dutch) and imported vernaculars (in the case of the British architectures). This fusion intended to achieve the aim of creating a nationally-sanctioned architectural style that was representative of all the white settlers within the Union. This was characterized by clear forms, often gabled facades, hardwood windows and shutters reminiscent of the original Cape Dutch vernacular and restrained elaborations derived from the Edwardian period and its elements of Classical Revival. Buildings were often symmetrical, typical of architecture of the time. Further, acclaimed architect Sir Herbert Baker (1862-1946) was partly responsible for creating the template for the new Union Period architecture. His symbolic Union Buildings (Pretoria, 1909-1913) were intended to act as the spiritual focus of the new Union of South Africa. Not long into the period of Union, South Africa joined the First World War, supporting Britain. This participation was not well supported, and it rendered the position of Prime Minister Jan Smuts, Ebden Scholar and friend of King George VI, politically fragile. Smuts was an Afrikaner who sought to engage with the Commonwealth idea, thus fragmenting the ideals of a new, united South Africa. Whilst Afrikaner resistance made itself felt in protest action in the early 1920s, for British South Africans an entrenchment in the English idyll prevailed. 3. COMMON ARCHITECTURAL THEMES IN DURBAN IN THE INTER-WAR YEARS In order to contextualize the extent to which architects in the former colonies referred to the motherland for inspiration, it is important to understand the trends in which architecture was moving in Britain. Doreen Yarwood describes the rebuilding in the inter-war years, producing an architecturally bland landscape: she records that ‘In England, the vast majority of such building, and especially that for civic purposes, was in the classical / Gothic tradition. However, it was not a straightforward imitation of the work of earlier ages. There was a marked and increasing trend towards simplification, larger plain wall areas, less decoration and less sculptural ornament’. Yarwood describes that this was exacerbated in the period between the Great Depression and the outbreak of World War II, and that ‘…the buildings of this period are extremely dull. An emptiness, a vacuous plainness had replaced the Victorian and Edwardian fondness for over- decoration’ (Yarwood 1963: 515). The architecture produced in Durban in this interwar period certainly does not reflect this spare aesthetic: Whilst practitioners such as Rex Martienssen and Helmut Stauch began working in the pared- down aesthetic paradigms of Modernism through 30 the Architecture School at the University of the Witwatersrand, these experiments manifested in and around Johannesburg, and there was little with which to compare in a rather provincial Natal. Instead, the latter flourished with the general trend embracing the politicized hybridity of the Union Period, an extensive experimentation with Art Deco and its associated forms, Spanish Revival, a continued reliance on the principles of Arts and Crafts and the hybrid revival forms of ‘Tudorbethan’. With the Union Period style of architecture as official discourse, architects in Durban remained slavishly rooted in the late Victorian / Edwardian paradigm, with domestic architecture featuring elements typical of the period, a proliferation of hipped, pitched and gambrel corrugated sheeting roofs with verandas, doors and windows in vertical proportions, high ceilings, and suspended timber floors. Large public buildings constructed after the war erred on the side of the conservative, such as the domed and colonnaded Howard College (1931). Designed by William Hirst, this is a mixture of Neo-classical flourish and Union Period conservatism. At the same time, as Radford notes, it has ‘many details of a more Art Deco nature’ (Radford, 2002:34). Hirst’s tentative inclusion of Art Deco references as detail in his considerably more sober building is a mere glimpse into a general practice within the style, evidenced in other buildings in the city with more flair such as the Colonial Mutual Life Building (Hennessy & Hennessy and Elsworth, 1933). Art Deco, Style Moderne and what Kearney calls a ‘…flirtation with Sub-tropical Deco’ responded to the notion of the city as sea-port, and thus subscribed to international perceptions of modernity through the production of a recognisable 1920s application of material and aesthetic: ‘Certainly the atmosphere of Hollywood and Miami and their images of fantasy seemed reasonable for the hot, sunny holiday city of Durban’ (Kearney 1984:15). Other localised unique forms took hold; particularly significant is a highly decorated local vernacular known as ‘Berea Style’, characterized by symmetrical, elaborate facades, twisted pillars, and clay Roman roof tiles, responding to local climatic conditions and displaying a whimsy implicit in an internationally connected seaside town. Kearney suggests that this ‘Sunny Spanish Baroque’ alludes to an engagement with architecture of other hot, sunny climates, but he also concedes that the City Architect in Durban at the time, William Murray-Jones, had worked in Spain and Brazil (Kearney 1984: 13). A good example of ‘Berea Style’ is Quadrant House (Ritchie-McKinley, 1934), reinforcing the influence of the American West Coast phenomenon, as well as what Radford refers to as a ‘milder’ version in Princes Theatre (now forming part of the KwaZulu-Natal Playhouse) completed by WH Mason in 1926 (Radford 2002). The reference points of the Spanish Colonial style were not isolated to merely being woven into the Berea Style: a more directly referenced form also prevailed such as Priestley’s Spanish Baroque St Anthony’s Church (1936) which is directly evocative of the adobe type of architectures of the American South-West. At a domestic level, Roman tiles, thickly applied plaster, and hardwood doors and windows typical of a South- Western United States Spanish Revival was deployed often as an architectural template for houses in newly constructed residential areas. The decorative notions of the Berea Style and the Spanish Revival were enhanced, or perhaps complicated by a significantly popular architecture in the region in the 1920s and the 1930s. The tradition of the decorated Victorian was not ready for the slimmed down Modernism that was emerging in Johannesburg. Instead, a fixation with the European prevailed: Given the history of Victorian architecture, in its Neo-Gothic, and Classical Revival styles which led into the 20th century even in Britain (Yarwood 1963:515), the harking back to the 19th century decorative thread of the Arts and Crafts Movement is not surprising. However the most bizarre resurrection of a nostalgic view of England was perhaps the ‘Tudorbethan’ Revival, which took firm hold in the 1930s and corresponded with the expansion of the suburbs of the major cities. This style is characterized by a half-timbered, black and white aesthetic, embraces much of the cottage style of the Arts and Crafts movement, and is manifested in leadlight fenestration, substantial timber members in the form of heavy doors and exposed beams, as well as painstakingly laid brickwork. ‘Tudorbethan’ as a genre is explained as a type of Jacobean Revival, scathingly referred to by Sir John Betjemen and his rejection of a ‘Merrie England’(Betjemen 1933:41). Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 31 Figure 1. Original sketch designs for Edrington, dated 1939 (Chick, Bartholomew and Poole) Plans in author’s possession) However, the revival of the Tudor/Elizabethan/ Jacobean architecture is not a pastiche application of decorative traditions without consideration. A common thread in the story is the relationship between Sir Herbert Baker, one of South Africa’s foremost architects, and Sir Edwin Lutyens. Perhaps one of the most noted British architects of the modern period, Lutyens worked for the architects Ernest George and Harold Peto at the same time as Baker. He was a man of the time- a firm protagonist of the Arts and Crafts. He worked in the mould of the ‘Country House Tradition’ producing a number of revivalist buildings such as The Deanery Gardens (1896) in Sonning (Yarwood 1963:521). Trained in the same tradition, Herbert Baker was to later design the Union Buildings in Pretoria in addition to a number of other buildings, some of which have revivalist threads. Baker’s influence in South Africa was significant, and whilst the point at which he and Woodrow, a prolific ‘Tudorbethan’ practitioner is not clear, the ground was set for a strong, imported influence on a new nation battling to craft its social, thus architectural identity. 4. TUDORBETHAN REVIVAL AS AN IDENTITY Alan Clement Carr Woodrow was the archetypal protegee to the Hollis family, for whom he recorded a prolific 28 separate projects at Clairwood Turf Club over a period of three decades and most likely completed a number of others not recorded in his Project Register. Woodrow was a committed Catholic, and much of his work was ecclesiastical; a substantial number of projects were completed for St. Joseph’s Church in Durban over the decades. His Project Registers located in the Killie Campbell Collections of the University of KwaZulu-Natal record a variety of work of different scales, industrial, residential and religious. He was an active practitioner in Durban, serving as the President of the Natal Provincial Institute for Architecture for three sessions. In his biography entry on Woodrow, Walter Peters notes that he was born in King Williamstown, in what was then the Cape Colony at the end of the 19th 32 century. He studied architecture both at the University of the Witwatersrand and abroad, before settling in Durban in the late 1920s. His studies in London must have been highly influential in his practice as a revivalist architect, given the significant number of Tudor and Gothic Revival works completed in the early stages of his career. Peters notes that he was apprenticed to the Public Works Department in Pretoria early in his adult life, and worked on the Union Buildings; however this experience would not have intersected with working with Baker on the original building (Peters 1981:898). Woodrow initially registered with the South African Institute of Architects in 1928 and received his first large commission in 1932 (Peters 1981:898). His association with Clairwood Turf Club appears to have commenced with the design of the now demolished Stewards Dining Hall, in a restrained but neo-Tudor style. Brian Kearney notes that Woodrow 'became the chief local architectural protagonist of the Tudor Revival during (this) period 1930's-1940's in Durban' (Kearney 1984:16). Woodrow was not alone: a number of architects in Durban were Tudorbethan practitioners, notably Rogers Cooke and Wolsey Spicer in the Playhouse (now the KwaZulu-Natal Playhouse) completed in1931 (Radford 2002:15), and the house Edrington by Malcolm Poole of Chick, Bartholomew and Poole, located in Kloof (1940) which has significant resemblance to Lutyens’ Country House, The Deanery Gardens (1896). What makes Woodrow so significant is the extent to which he engaged with a total revivalism of an ‘old world’ England, the philosophy of which will be discussed later in this paper. It is perhaps not surprising then that the Clairwood Turf Club (now demolished) became the canvas for Woodrow’s aspirations as a revivalist practitioner. It was a racecourse to the south of Durban, famously known as the ‘Garden Course’, being surrounded by greenery in the midst of Mobeni, what was considered a ‘Garden Industrial Estate’ (Scott 1994: 262). Clairwood Turf Club opened in 1921, and catered to a lower-middle class/working class clientele; as such, its fantastical built environment added to the spirit of escape for its clients. Significantly, this race course actively catered for all race groups, with the Native Grandstand being completed in 1953. During the Second World War, Woodrow saw active duty in which he achieved the rank of Second Lieutenant. After the war, much of his work at Clairwood involved large scale extension, such as the construction of new grandstands and towers. Photographs in his papers show similar structures in Australia, suggesting that he cast far afield for precedent for these large concrete and significantly, modern structures. Certainly, the Totalisater, constructed in 1953 and demonstrating a distinctive move towards a slimmed down modernism is telling. Between the mid-1950s and the mid-1960s he entered into partnership with Austin Collingwood. Whilst Woodrow turned his hand towards more sober architectures towards the end of his career, a number of surviving buildings by Woodrow exist, most notably the Tudor Revival dwelling House Sandys, what is today Thomas More College situated in Kloof. It was originally constructed for Edwin Sandys in 1940, and is a substantial dwelling in the ‘Country House style’ that commands a sweeping view of the inland regions of the coast around Durban. Significantly, it is in direct reference to this particular building that we gain a greater insight into the mind of Woodrow, and his intentions in his embracing of a romanticist, ‘Merrie England’ idyll: In an undated speech at the Thomas More School (which opened Figure 2. Clairwood Turf Club Coat of Arms most likely by Woodrow (Photo: Author 2012) Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 33 Figure 3. Entrance gate to Clairwood Turf Club ca 1950s, now demolished (Photo: Author 2012) on the premises in 1962), Woodrow described his meeting with Sandys, telling the assembly that ‘…I designed a large and expensive house and its costly outbuilding both of which comprise of your school buildings…His name was Edwin Sandys. He was a direct descendent of the English prelate, Edwin Sandys, who lived during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I of England, and therefore at the same time as did Sir Thomas More, Chancellor of England.’ He continued by implying that Sandys would have known of More, but critically offers the following lines on ancestry, ‘It is therefore reasonable I think to assume that through such ancestry there would be a connection, even though it would be a remote one, between the original owner of these buildings and the very great nobleman after whom this good and respected school is named.’ More critically, his fascination for the medieval is borne out in his passion for heraldry: his papers at the Killie Campbell Collections bear this out, with sketches and drawings for myriad Coats of Arms for towns around KwaZulu-Natal; given this, although the evidence is not readily available, he is highly likely to have designed the Coat of Arms of Clairwood Turf Club, pictured above. Indeed, in the same speech quoted above, Woodrow declared that Sir Thomas More’s Coat of Arms formed a substantial template for that of the Thomas More School (as it was known at the time), with the inclusion of the three morecocks, as well as a ‘small gold cross superimposed upon the chevron’. He stressed from this that ‘The cross has been included because it is the most venerated of all Christian symbols. It is a mark - indeed it is THE mark of Christianity – Christianity from which our Western culture emerges bringing with it that most admirable and outstandingly successful 34 system of education based upon Christian ethics, Christian principles, precepts and laws’. Further included in the Coat of Arms was the symbol of the unicorn, of which Woodrow noted there were ‘many instances in the form of carvings and paintings in the cathedrals of Europe, in the cathedrals of Britain and in those of America’ (Woodrow in undated speech: KCC MSWOO). In order to understand Woodrow’s position, it is important to consider that ‘Any account of the past must be understood as being in part a “social portrait”, expressing ideas and sentiments concerning identity, morality and cosmology’ (Bohlin citing Tonkin 2001:274); this was directly expressed in the creation of the heraldry and its disparate references. Further, Woodrow’s professional dexterity of working beyond the field of the building itself was mentioned in an accolade awarded by the then Natal Provincial Institute for his presidency in 1950, 1951 and 1960, as well as specifically mentioning his contribution to the field of heraldry. Notably, ‘The Institute is proud to know that its Blazon, it’s President’s chain and medallions were designed by you and that they form part of the heritage of the Institute which returns the deep affection which you have always shown it and its members’ (Letter to Alan Woodrow, October 1967 from President KE Gow, KCC MSWOO). Woodrow’s Lutyens-esque stance in the production of a whimsical inter-war built environment in Natal was most likely reinforced by his client base which allowed for production of the fantastical and the nostalgic. ‘Old’ settler money, the Church (which had a tradition of such decoration), and the inverted and suspended space of fantasy offered to the punters at the Clairwood Turf Club, meant that his architectural designs could be carried out in a nostalgic, revivalist manner. As an architect, Woodrow’s Project Register (KCC MSWOO) reflects his position as an artist with a number of loyal benefactors demonstrating continuity and identity, particularly in the inter-war period. The inter-war polemic was complemented by the contemporaneous work of Robert ‘Gwelo’ Goodman, an artist who for a short period crafted a new, constructed architectural identity which was to have a prevailing impact. 5. GWELO’ GOODMAN AND CAPE DUTCH REVIVAL: SOUTH AFRICAN RESPONSE AND CREATION OF IDENTITY At the same time that Woodrow was re-contriving an old, Tudor-era landscape, other architects were toeing the Union Period line, and working within the ideals of a localized, South African architecture. At its extreme, this manifested in a Cape Dutch Revival, harking back to the lyrical forms of the gabled buildings constructed in the Cape by the Dutch settlers. A significant contributor to this architectural style in Natal was Robert ‘Gwelo’ Goodman, an artist, who worked predominantly for the sugar baron Douglas Saunders at Tongaat, until his death in 1939. Despite his presence in Natal being rather short-lived, in this brief period and in part with noted sculptor Ivan Mitford-Barberton, his creative input at the end of the 1930s was to leave an indelible imprint on the architectural landscape in the province. Coming from the Cape, Goodman’s reconsideration of the qualities of the Cape Dutch style was purely in terms of its aesthetic rendering of form, surface and space. His primary commission was the reconsideration of Douglas Mackeurtan’s home, Woodley, situated at the top of Montpelier Road in Durban. This house was ‘transformed into a neo- Classical mansion’ and served as the standard for the approach to Amanzimnyama’. His adaptation of 18th Century Cape Dutch architecture onto what was a reasonably pedestrian large suburban dwelling was reinforced by Goodman’s consideration as to the ‘implicit quality of life and behaviour patterns that were linked to improving living conditions’ and that ‘beauty is a power for good’ (Saunders 2007:4-29). Robert Watson notes that ‘Gwelo’s first commission in Tongaat was to redesign the main facades and some of the gardens of the house, Amanzimyama.’ He deployed the elements of Cape Dutch architecture, by the ‘use of unplastered brickwork, bagged and limewashed, merely suggesting the mouldings on his gables, pilasters and parapets’ (Watson 1960:162). Apart from the initial work on Amanzimnyama, Goodman’s primary focus however, was the de- Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 35 velopment of Hambanati Village: a company labour housing initiative. This aggressively championed social sustainable housing provided an architectural tool kit of simple, clean, well-constructed lines, considered proportions allowing for an architecture of intense light and deep shadow, thus extending, in his view, the access to beauty and proportion which he considered was the right of every man. Christopher Saunders recorded that ‘Gwelo Goodman died in March, 1939... in the short space of a few years he had imposed upon Douglas (Saunders) and the Tongaat Management the importance of beauty and the necessity for maintaining standards of excellence. Gwelo Goodman gave to Tongaat the knowledge and understanding of the importance of beauty. Until he was invited to commence architectural work in the community, the general rule was that no care or thought was given to the external appearance of buildings’. Watson noted of him that ‘he had a highly developed social conscience, giving the same meticulous attention to roof tiles and waterborne sanitation as to the strong and delicate colour mixes in his palette’ (Saunders 2007: 4- 129). Certainly the bulk of the buildings that were constructed or modified after 1940 were thus not actively carried out by Goodman, but rather carried out by others in a style loosely referred to as ‘Gwelo Colonial’ (Watson 1960:184). Goodman’s legacy of adherence to a specific architectural theme and a commitment to good design regardless of the intention of the building is commendable. Further, Goodman’s aesthetic considerations have prevailed for the last six decades, essentially branding the Tongaat Sugar Company (now Tongaat Hulett (Pty.) Ltd) and deeply influencing the architecture of the KwaZulu-Natal North Coast. Figure 3. Part of the main elevation of Amanzimnyama, near Tongaat (Photo: Author 2015) 36 Both Woodrow and Goodman were working within a white society which itself was contested, with different aspirations, legacies and politics. Both worked strongly within the perpetuation of a myth, whether it was the glory days of ‘Merrie England’ or an importation of an architecture indigenous to other parts of the country, but forming part of the Union Period aesthetic tool-kit and therefore, to some degree, politically palatable. 6. CONTESTED WHITE SOCIETY AND THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE MYTH The architectures practiced in Natal in the inter-war years pointed firmly towards an attempt at localization of identity; an engagement with a strongly British heritage whether perceived or contrived, and a movement towards the modern, obliquely manifested in the proliferation of Art Deco in Durban. However, Durban and Natal province remained staunchly British, with the reference points located in a distant place and time: a crisis of memory. A similar ‘memory crisis’ in France prior to the turn of the 20th century was explained by anthropologist Michael Rowlands (citing Richard Terdiman) as it ‘… was not post-French revolutionary nostalgia but a product of coming to terms with urbanization, industrialization, and demographic expansion. As memory became envisaged as a representation of the past, not its repetition, it became amenable to nostalgic desires provoked by socio-historical change’ (Terdiman in Rowlands {1993} 2007:130). For residents of the formerly British colonies, the rupture of time and the shift in power to the Union of South Africa perhaps reinforced the focus of nostalgia and its connection to the motherland. For the ‘other’ whites, those from the previous Boer Republics of the Orange Free State and the Zuid Afrikaansche Republiek, the ‘pioneering spirit’ of the 1838 ‘Great Trek’, the origins of which were centred on conflict with the British Crown, was politicized and employed in order to create nationalism around a common origin. A British idyll and a hardened pioneer thus formed the pasts that were used to create links to legitimate the present or to mask change by stressing continuity (Bender 1998:67). Thus for the Afrikaner, the schism created by the Union of South Africa’s participation in what was seen as England’s war after 1918 ‘… revived Dutch racial pride and promoted a peasant culture outside the rich English heritage’ (Thompson 1999:30). Thus, for those residents of a strongly anglicized Natal, the reverse was possible, embracing an exclusionary architectural language to reinforce those notions of belonging, albeit obliquely, to an England which was stable and pure. Woodrow actively engaged with these ideas: In his afore-quoted speech to the scholars at The Thomas More School, Woodrow emphasized the value of purity; ‘Purity is the state of being pure…we speak about pure gold, pure water, pure air. And so do we refer to the purity of one’s relationship with other people.’ The connection between purity and nostalgia is no accident: Item KCM 31574, referenced simply as ‘This article appeared in one of the South African newspapers’ describes Woodrow’s house constructed for himself, in glowing, archaic terms. Dated March 1966, the author refers to the building as “The Three Kings” since the house was constructed during the reigns of all three kings, King George V, Edward VIII and King George VI. The article notes, ‘Affectionately known as ‘The Monastery’, the house manifests an exterior decorated with interesting wrought-iron work which includes a weather vane and light-fittings, while the creeper trailing over the walls nestles against windows and the portcullis-like garage doors give a moat- like effect reminiscient (sic) of a castle draw-bridge’. All the references throughout the article are to Europe, things European and historical references such as etchings from ‘Great Expectations’ (KCC MSWOO). All references, even at the end of the 1960s and in the context of the African sub-continent, are disconnected and irrelevant. Shaw and Chase (1989) interrogate such imagined history and nostalgia, quoting ‘Of all the ways of using history, nostalgia is the most general, looks the most innocent, and is perhaps the most dangerous’ (Shaw & Chase 1989:1). Nostalgia alludes to the romanticization of elements of the past, embraced in a manner which forgets the personal, economic, Vitruvio International journal of Architecture Technology and Sustainability Volume 4 Is 1 37 social and political challenges faced at the time. ‘The sick man of Europe had taken to his bed, dreaming of a childhood that he had never had, regressing into a series of fictitious and cloudless infantile summers’ (Shaw & Chase 1989:1). The authors suggest a cultural phenomenon that chooses to represent the present through ‘falsification of the past.’ Dorothea Schultz reinforces this notion, discussing Jeli singers in Mali. She notes, after Pierre Nora (1989), that ‘In a situation in which people are both aware of and bemoan a rupture with the past, both collective memory and individual memory are made by creating distant symbols of the past’ (Schultz 2007:194). Goodman, on the other hand, was essentially an artist (in fact the only buildings that he ever built were located in KwaZulu-Natal), and as such, he promoted a world view essentially located in the aesthetic polemics of the 19th century which had little to do with a contemporary environment located in alternative social political, and environmental, landscapes. 7. CONCLUSIONS Woodrow’s presentation to the schoolboys at the Thomas More School demonstrates an overt excitement at the connection between his client Edwin Sandys (1940) and his ancestor Edwin Sandys (1561- 1659). The latter had served in the English Parliament, and ironically was one of the original partners in the Virginia Company of London, effectively an Emigration Scheme. Christopher Shaw and Malcolm Chase explain that the intrinsic connection with the past is one in which ‘one had to be connected to the object of scrutiny, perhaps through kinship or through a broader feeling of identity such as class affiliation. ‘These were in some way my people and my present therefore was bound up in their past’ (Shaw & Chase 1989:2). Sandys of the past, and Sandys of the present were inextricably tied in the production of the ‘Tudorbethan’. Keith Thomas, cited in Roy Judge’s work on May Day festivals, noted that ‘The attributes of Merry England were constant: a contented, revelling peasantry and a hierarchical order in which each one happily accepted his place and where the feast in the baronial hall symbolized the ideal social relationship’ (Judge 1991:131). Whilst Alan Woodrow played an active part in World War II, (indeed his notebooks reflect considered thinking about camouflage and bomb removal), perhaps increasing his ties to ‘Merry England’, other evidence of his life exists dealing with the everyday in Southern Africa. Besides his obsession with the Church and his passion for heraldry, Woodrow was an avid adventurer; certainly he appears to have been part of the development of the first lodge across the border in Lesotho, at the top of Sani Pass which was a notorious climb (KCC MSWOO). Similarly, ‘Gwelo’ Goodman was a well-travelled and acclaimed artist who found a highly influential architectural career in in Tongaat. His development of ‘Gwelo Colonial’ in the production of a pastiche, well-considered Cape Dutch Revival went beyond the ambit of housing for the sugar barons, to include labour housing for the workers. Perhaps the famed mid-20th century poet John Betjemen, who coined the phrase ‘Jacobethan’ from which the conflated term Tudorbethan is derived, had a point. Betjemen’s cynical note on his shortening of the term is simply ‘To save the time of those who do not wish to distinguish between these periods of architectural uncertainty, I will henceforward use the term "Jacobethan" (Betjemen 1933:41). Understanding the complexities of architecture by limiting them to digestible, definable category ignores their context, and their social, political and economic content. Understanding architectures in any polemic needs a broader and more considered approach: on the other hand, whilst ‘Union Period’ exists to some degree as a portmanteau term, it ignores the more subversive tensions existing on the ground in a period of highly charged social and political contestation in white society alone 38 REFERENCES Bender, B. (1998) Stonehenge- Making space. Oxford: Berg Publishers Betjeman,J. (1933) Ghastly Good Taste. London: Chapman and Hall Bohlin,A. (2001) Places of Longing and belonging. Memories of the Group Area Proclamation of a South African Fishing Village. In Contested Landscapes: Movement, Exile and Place, edited by B.Bender & M.Winer. Oxford: Berg Publishers Judge, R. (1991) May day and Merrie England. In Folklore Vol 102:ii pp131-148. Lowenthal, D. (1989) Nostalgia tells it like it wasn’t. In The Imagined past: history and nostalgia, edited by C.Shaw & M.Chase. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Kearney, B. (1984) A Revised listing of the important places and buildings in Durban. Durban: City Council of Durban Newton-Thompson, Joyce. (1951) .Gwelo Goodman: South African artist. Cape Town: Allen & Unwin Peters, W. (1981) Alan Woodrow. In Human Sciences Research Council. Dictionary of South African biography. Durban : Butterworth Press Radford, D. (2002) A guide to the architecture of Durban and Pietermaritzburg. Cape Town: David Philip Publishers Rowlands M, (2007) Entangled Memories and Parallel Heritages in Mali. In Reclaiming Heritage- Alternative imaginaries of memory in West Africa, edited by F.De Jong & M.Rowlands. Walnut Creek. West Coast Press Saunders: C. (2007) The history of the Tongaat and Hulett Sugar Companies. Durban: Tongaat Hulett Pty.Ltd. Shaw,C. & Chase,M. (1989) The Imagined Past: History and Nostalgia. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Scott, D. (1994) Communal space construction: the rise and fall of Clairwood and district. University of Natal: unpublished PhD dissertation. Thompson,P. (1999) The British Civic Culture of Natal South Africa 1902-1961. Howick: Brevitas Press. Watson, R. (1960) Tongaati: An African Experiment. London: Hutchinson Woodrow, A. Collected papers, Killie Campbell Collections, Durban MSWOO Yarwood, D. (1963) The architecture of England from prehistoric times to the present day. London: Batsford